guilt. Dimmesdale causes her guilt when he sees her suffering alone for the sin that they both committed. Though they both committed the same sin, only Hesters shines through. Pearl was cheerful due to the scarlet letter her mother possessed. When the breastplate at Governor Bellinghams Mansion distorts the scarlet A into something overpowering and horrible, it is Pearl who points at it, smiling at her mother with the elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy (Hawthorne 1065). Even as a child, Pearl is affixed to the letter and, putting up her little hand, she grasped it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam (Hawthorne 1059). Pearls tendency to focus on the scarlet letter is fully developed when she mimics her mother by placing a seaweed A on her own chest. Hester and Pearl are constant companions , both of them being refused from the circle respectable society. When Pearl goes for a walk with her momther, pearl sometimes finds herself surrounded by curious children of the village. Pearl does not make any attempt to be friends with them; instead, she pelts them with rocks and violent words. Pearls only companion in her playtime is her imagination. As Hawthorne notes in the novel:Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that had drawn an inviolable circle round about her; the whole pecularity, in short, of her position in respect to other children.(1058)Later on, in Pearls games of make beleive, she never makes friends. She creates only enemies. Puritans whom she pretendeds to destroy . The only thing that most capture her imagination is the scarlet letter A on her mothers breast. As Hawthorne recalls in the passage:In the afternoon of a certain summers day after ...
