Scarlet Letter

3 Pages 626 Words

The Pariah

“…The talk of the neighboring townspeople, who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child’s paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring…” – page 95 of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Since Pearl had no known father, the townspeople gossiped freely of Hester and her Pearl. Because Dimmesdale was not revealed as her father until later in the novel, Pearl suffered the early years of her life as an outcast. Pearl was taunted and stared at by other children. She was even almost taken away from Hester as a toddler. Despite being born of shameful beginnings, Pearl overcomes her lowly status as an outcast; although she is labeled as the “witch child” of an ignominious mother, does not get a clear explanation of her origin until the day of her father’s death, and when she does, it changes her fate as the “under-dog”.
Everyone has been teased in his or her lifetime. Some forms are harmless, and others are down right cruel. Teasing pertains to Pearl because she is teased unmercifully by the Puritan children. “… The children of the Puritans looked up from their play… and spoke gravely one to another: ‘Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet letter, and, of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet letter running along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!’” (98). Since Pearl senses that she is an outcast, she scares the Puritan children by jabbering indistinctly and making wild gestures while shrieking. This causes the nobles of the town to question Hester’s values in child rearing. Pearl, however, beats all odds and is a success story.

Ard 2
The magistrate asks Pearl a simple question, “Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee?” –(107). Pearl replies that she had not been made at all, but that she had been plucked off the wild rosebush that grew by the prison d...