Elaine Wang
Carpenter
American Literature Honors 6
19 October 2015

The Scarlet Letter Literary Analysis: Pearl as the Antithesis to Puritanism

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, most characters are created as subjects under Puritan ideals, yet Pearl, the daughter of the women most toiled by the judgments of Puritanism, is the character who is able to defy those ideals. Hawthorne presents Pearl as the antithesis to Puritan values through the various ways her character can be interpreted; these abstract characterizations of Pearl as nature, the scarlet letter itself, and a Romantic hero distinguish her as the world the Puritans tried, but failed, to create and Hawthorne's criticism of this failure.

From the moment she is introduced, Pearl’s character is likened to nature with her “wild-flower prettiness”, and like the circumstances of her birth, the presence of this comparison already sets Pearl deeply apart from the Puritans as they regard nature (the “shadow of the forest”) as a forbidden construct, favoring the safe, predictable disposition of the town (Hawthorne 62, 37). In the beginning of the novel, the harshness of Puritan justice is connoted through the nature surrounding the prison door: Hawthorne uses organicism to reflect the convoluted nature of Puritan justice as the “grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation” grows in front of the prison door (36). Yet, on the other side, there is also a “wild rose-bush, covered . . . with its delicate gems” representative of “some sweet moral blossom” (37). Pearl is this “blossom” from the passion of Hester’s sin, and is, therefore, the morality Hawthorne hopes to present against the harsh Puritan morals. Although a central theme of The Scarlet Letter is sin, Hawthorne also highlights the idea of incessant penitence, and Pearl, through her connection with nature, embodies this theme: as she walks through the forest with her mother, Pearl is shown to “resemble[] the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious” (121). Pearl is equated with the “gushing” of the water, yet she is also contrasted with its “gloom” as “she dance[s] and sparkle[s]” (121). The brook is unable to move past its “gloom”, prompting Pearl to ask it, “Why are thou so sad?”: literally, she is asking the water why it is sad, but here, Hawthorne is also suggesting that one must have the capacity to “pluck up a spirit” instead of wallowing in the malaise of self-pity (121). Pearl is able to move past the ostracism she received all her life and be happy, while both Hester and Dimmesdale are stuck with the idea of the Puritan’s perpetual shame of sin.

Furthermore, Pearl is presented as a physical representation of the scarlet letter Hester is forced to wear; however, the reason for this similarity is unlike her connection with nature as it is not of her own volition. Hester is the one who adorns her with a “crimson velvet tunic . . . embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold thread”, a description almost indistinguishable from the scarlet letter itself (69). On the other hand, Pearl herself chooses to form an A on her chest with green seaweed: green is the complementary color to red as they cancel each other out when mixed. This juxtaposition of Hester and Pearl suggests that although Pearl is like the scarlet letter in that she is born from Hester’s adultery, she also transcends this simple idea as she does with most things. Pearl appears to be strangely fascinated with the letter, but she also seems to enjoy poking at it with her piercing judgement of her mother. One afternoon, Pearl “amuse[s] herself with gathering handfuls of wild-flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother’s bosom”; her “dancing up and down” when she hit the scarlet letter suggests her otherworldly intelligence and understanding of the significance of her actions (66). Pearl is portrayed to love the scarlet letter not because she believes the Puritans are correct in shaming Hester, but because she wishes for her mother to move past the Puritan judgement, just as she asks the brook to move past its gloom. Her criticism is firmly depicted when Hester takes off the scarlet letter and throws it at the river; when she does this, Pearl no longer wants to approach her because, by discarding the letter, Hester is succumbing to Puritan judgement by admitting to the shame the letter brings her, and in doing this, she is essentially discarding Pearl as well. As stated in Daniel G. Hoffman’s literary criticism, Hester’s Double Providence: The Scarlet Letter and the Green, “[Pearl] will not let her mother cast the scarlet letter aside because Pearl herself is emblem of a passion which partook of that same heathen, natural wildness” (Hoffman 345). However, besides her own unwillingness to be “cast aside”, Pearl’s own misgivings toward Puritan ideals cause her to be critical of her mother and Dimmesdale’s plan to run away from their past and make a new living where nobody knows their sin; they would simply be making the same mistake the Puritans had of running away from a society that shunned them, only to create a new society just like the old one. Through Pearl’s characterization as contemptuous of her mother and father’s plans, she is vicariously implying Hawthorne’s Romantically motivated disapproval of Puritan society.

As reflected previously, Pearl is critical of her mother’s plan of escape because, like Hawthorne, she is a Romantic. Throughout the novel, she constantly judges the people around her despite her age: Pearl has a natural intuitive understanding of others. For example, when she adorns herself with the seaweed-green A and her mother asks her if she knows the meaning of the letter, Pearl, with her preternatural intuition answers, “Truly do I! It is for the same reason that the minister keeps his hand over his heart!” (Hawthorne 116). While it took Chillingworth years to realise the complete truth of Dimmesdale’s sin, Pearl is able discern that truth in moments. Because of her role as the Romantic hero, she possesses a sense of morality that ignores that of society’s values, as referenced by the narrator in the first chapter with the rose-bush’s “sweet moral blossom”. Pearl often strays from the temptations of society like the “wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law” and is, therefore, unhindered in seeing the truth (130). However, despite her preternatural insight, Pearl still possesses the Romantic quality of youthful innocence as illustrated in many different parts of the novel. At one point, Hester and Pearl are walking through the forest, and Pearl notes that the “sunshine does not love [Hester]” and it hides itself because it is “afraid of something on [her] bosom” (119). Although Pearl, to an extent, knows the significance of the letter, she still innocently believes in the possibility of running sunshine and that, when she grows up, she will have a letter too. Finally, like a true Romantic hero, Pearl’s story ends in doom. Her “wild, rich nature [is] softened and subdued, and made capable of a woman’s gentle happiness” (165). She is given a binary path in life: either die a martyr, or become a regular woman. When Pearl kisses Dimmesdale, “a spell [is] broken” and she pledges that she would not “forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it”, and her role as a symbol and a “messenger of anguish [is] fulfilled” (165). Because her role as “messenger . . . [is] fulfilled” and she becomes the “object of love . . . with some inhabitant of another land”, Pearl is implied to have gone to Europe and married a rich aristocrat; essentially, by stopping her “battle with the world”, she is allowing the world to stay the same as it was, just as the Puritans did. Though Pearl is able to achieve happiness, in terms of Hawthorne’s views as a Romantic himself, her ending is tragic. She represented the world the Puritans could have created, but ultimately, she left her role as this symbol and consequently also represents the failure of the Puritans.

Nathaniel Hawthorne imbues Pearl with the qualities of nature, Romanticism, and his novel’s namesake as to contrast these same qualities with that of Puritan values. Through this contrast, he criticizes the nature of Puritan justice and their failure to create the better, different new world they claimed they would. Yet, he also presents a tragic ending to the novel as Pearl, the symbol of his criticism is allowed to leave her role and mimic the Puritan’s failures she was made to refute, suggesting the difficulty of truly breaking away from the temptation of an easy, non-confrontational life.