Summary:
Sketches of the major and minor characters in Nathanial Hawthorn's "The Scarlet Letter," including Pearl, Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester and Roger Chillingworth. Plus, an explanation of the settings and symbolism in the novel.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," Pearl is not portrayed in the novel as simply an ordinary rambunctious child. She is given no definite description physically, but her emotions and behaviors are described often with an array of words. Her emotions make her an unreal child, a child who is intuitive, curious, happy, passionate, self-reliant and imaginative all at once, or simply a natural element such as fire or air. Constantly her elemental and emotional personality clashes with the overall gloom and sorrow of the novel and Puritan society. Unlike her mother, who has chosen to be an outcast from the Puritan community she lives in and treats her outcast status as a burden, Pearl is an un-chosen outcast and diametrically feels no heaviness from it whatsoever. In fact, because she is allowed to live without.....
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