Pure Community In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

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Pearl: A Threat to a Once Pure Community

Through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing in The Scarlet Letter, it can be inferred that Pearl represents a threat to the purity of Boston’s religious community. There are several passages within this scandalous narrative that support this theory. Beginning as early as chapter one, an allusion references the unseemly Ann Hutchinson. Ann Hutchinson was a woman of transgression who was banned from her early American colony. By connecting Hutchinson to Hester and Pearl, the reader knows very early on that the mother-daughter duo is a commination to their theological colony.

Throughout the entire book, Pearl’s purpose as a symbol is reflected in Hawthorne’s immaculate writing. The people of the puritan