Symbols and Symbolism - Pearl as Living Symbol in The Scarlet Letter

Pearl as Living Symbol in The Scarlet Letter

Pearl. A child born of sin. Conceived by lust. Created by

impurity.

As the result of her parents fall from grace, she represents the

sinfulness of their act, and is a continual tool for the recollection of

their dubious deed. Sent, was she, from the Almighty God as a gift, and a

burden of the heart.

"'God gave me the child?' cried she. 'He gave her in requital of

all things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness!- she is

my torture, none the less! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only

capable of being loved, and so endowed with a million fold the power of

retribution for my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!'"(109)

"'There is truth in what she says,' began the minister, with a

voice sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall reechoed, and

the hollow armor rang with it - 'truth in what Hester says, and in the

feeling which inspires her!'"(110)...

"'I must be even so,' resumed the minister.'" " 'This child of its

father's guilt and its mother's shame hath come from the hand of God, to

work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so earnestly, and with such

bitterness of spirit, the right to keep her. It was meant, doubtless, as

the mother herself hath told us, for a retribution too; a torture to be

felt at many an unthought-of moment; a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring

agony, in the midst of a troubled joy! Hath she not expressed this thought

with the garb of the poor child, so forcibly reminding us of that red

symbol which sears her bosom?'"(110-111).

Pearls gestures, and the essence which her presence pours forth,

insinuate to the child's evil roots and the effect there of.

"the child could not be made amenable to rules. In giving her

existence, a great law had been broken, and the result was a being whose

elements where perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder."...

"Above all, the warfare of Hester's spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated

in Pearl. She could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the