Pearl's Redemption In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

The only way to escape reality is to deny and refuse it. Some individuals believe that it is better to be a part of society and to suffer from being normal rather than influence their societies with their differing characteristics. These people decide to silence the truth by denying reality until they die. Society may be the basis of morality, but individuals are the influencers for redemption. Nathaniel Hawthorne has written a book known as The Scarlet Letter where a woman in the Puritanical Era becomes cast out of society for becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Hawthorne challenges the idea of society and its effect on an individual’s development through his use of Hester, her family members, and the harsh Puritan society they lived in. Hawthorne suggests that it is important to live true to one’s self in

Hawthorne uses Pearl’s affection towards the scarlet letter and her parents in the book to convey how Pearl wants the truth to be in the spotlight of the Puritan society that they were in, as the truth should be according to Hawthorne. In the forest around the brook, after Hester takes off her scarlet letter in front of Dimmesdale and has her youth restored, Hester calls for Pearl to meet Dimmesdale but Pearl stays in place and throws a tantrum while pointing at Hester’s chest, so Hester observes that “Pearl misses something which she has always seen me wear,’” the scarlet letter (Hawthorne 173). Once Hester puts on the scarlet letter again in the forest, Pearl feels familiar with Hester again and runs into Hester’s arms, but “in a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her, she drew down her mother’s head, and kissed her brow and both her cheeks . . . but then — by a kind of necessity that always impelled this child to alloy whatever comfort she might chance to give with a throb of anguish —