Beautiful Disasters Pearl as a Living Breathing Scarlet Letter
Sometimes beauty is found in places as unexpected as a rosebush growing outside of a prison in a puritan colonial village. Pearl Prynne is an unearthly beautiful child with a wild spirit born under unimaginably sinful conditions, all of which are somehow related to the ideas, actions, and views of others on Hester's punishment. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Pearl serves as Hester's living, breathing Scarlet letter.Pearl evokes the same emotion and reactions from the townspeople, as does the scarlet letter. The people look at the slight sense of pride Hester has in her letter in the same way they look at the way Hester lets Pearl do whatever she wants. They feel Hester isn't fit to raise the child. The extremity of gossip from the females of the village in the beginning of the book is only matched by the amount that Pearl's wild attitude stirs up later on. Hester's "A" is the example for all of what sin is. The "A" makes Hester much avoided and the parents tell their chi
Hawthorne portrays Pearl in a very detailed specific manor, meant to put emphasis on the similarities between Pearl and the "A". In conclusion, Pearl is born from and into sin but still manages to be portrayed as a pure entity. She manages to embody so many things that come along with something like a symbol for adultery in a puritan society, but still holds onto the innocence of a child. She even goes so far as to dress Pearl up in a velvet dress of a deep shade of red when she takes her to the governor's house. When Hester crafts the "A" that she has to wear on her chest, She uses a deep, passionate shade of red and embroiders it very intricately with bright gold thread. Hester takes something extremely negative and makes it appear as passionately beautiful. She is proud of her child through it all. Like Hester's scarlet letter, Pearl shows extreme beauty in a form that is not traditional, positive, tame, or fully accepted. She could've given the child up to the governor and had one less "branding" to worry about, but she fought for that child to stay under her care. It is just as rare that someone of such a young age is described as so passionately beautiful as is the use of the same description for something as negative as Hester's scarlet letter. Hester has no pride in the "A" on her chest, but even after she is not required to wear it, she keeps it on anyway. Hester consciously envisions Pearl as a living breathing scarlet "A", running ahead with free spirit flying. She shows this same attitude towards Pearl. There are also many similarities between the relationship of Hester and Pearl and the relationship between Hester and her letter.
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