er up the scarlet letter; “wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another.”(Hawthorne 95) As the day Lai 2progresses, the infant is “writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a forcible type in its little frame.”(Hawthorne 111) In this, Pearl represents the agony and torture that Hester experiences during the day of her public confession and humiliation. As Pearl grows up, she develops a personality of an “elf-child” or “demon offspring”. Pearl has a mixture of moods; she could be laughing uncontrollably one minute and then screaming the next. She has a brutal temper and can contain the “bitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childish bosom.”(Hawthorne 130) This type of character in Pearl is symbolic for the emotion that accompanies Hester’s sin. Hester is angry and ashamed of what she did and can “…only account for the child’s character—and even then most vaguely and imperfectly—by recalling what she herself had been, during that momentous period while Pearl was imbibing her soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its material of earth. The mother’s impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery luster, the black shadow, and the untempered light of the intervening substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester’s spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated in Pearl.” (Hawthorne 147) Pearl is a passive reminder of sin, and her actions, questions, and comments are an increasing torment to Hester. The one thing that Pearl shows most fascination in is “the scarlet letter on Hester’s bosom! One day, as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant’s eyes had been caught by the g...
