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The Symbol of Pearl
“The Scarlet Letter is Hawthorne’s most widely read
and admired novel and is also the one that has inspired
the most inconclusive debate…” (Hyatt Waggoner).
As Hyatt Waggoner, a renowned scholar of Nathaniel Hawthorne, states, The Scarlet Letter is a multifaceted and complicated novel; most of this confusion that Waggoner alludes to revolves around the symbolism that Hawthorne uses repeatedly. Symbolism plays an extremely important and intricate role in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and the most important of these complex symbols revolve around Pearl, Hester Prynne’s daughter. I feel Pearl was put into this novel by Hawthorne as an ever changing symbol for the reader to understand the severity of adultery in Puritan society. Pearl, among other things, represents a reminder of Hester’s sin that can never go away. Her character is the object of a lot of criticism as to whether she is just a living symbol or a real child. In my opinion, there are too many possible symbols of Pearl for it to be a coincidence and Hawthorne did in fact put Pearl in the novel to portray many different objects.
In the novel initially, Pearl is a symbol of God’s and the Puritan society’s way of reminding Hester of her sin of adultery.
Approximate Word count = 1034
Approximate Pages = 4.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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