makes Arthur Dimmesdale suffer for what he did, making her a living conscience for Dimmesdale. Pearl also shows a special interest in Arthur Dimmesdale, which is odd because she never trusts anyone but her mother. When Pearl is an infant, she first sees Dimmesdale on the scaffold and she “directed its hitherto vacant gaze towards Mr. Dimmesdale, and held up its little arms, with a half-plaintive Lai 4murmur.”(Hawthorne 33) Pearl’s actions make Dimmesdale realize that he is a horrible man and father because he denied his own daughter. Later in the forest, Pearl comments on the difference in Dimmesdale’s character away from the town and questions, “Doth he love us? Will he go back with us, hand in hand, we three together, into the town?”(Hawthorne 129) Such comments make Dimmesdale extremely miserable to where he regularly places his hand over his heart so that no one can see his letter “A” or his false symbol of a cross. Pearl is a constant reminder to Arthur of his terrible sin, which gives him such a guilty conscience that he eventually confesses his transgression to the whole town. In this novel, Pearl is a steady reminder to both Hester and Dimmesdale of their sin and she gives them both cause for great suffering. Pearl teaches Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale many important lessons about life itself, and if it was not for Pearl, Hester could not have survived. Hester tells the witch, Mistress Hibbins, “Had they taken her away from me, I would willingly have gone with thee in the forest and signed my name in the Black Man’s book too, and that with mine own blood!”(Hawthorne 162) Dimmesdale’s soul is also saved because of Pearl. Pearl makes Dimmesdale feel so horrible that his only option left is to confess. Once Arthur Dimmesdale confesses to the town his sin, “Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief in which the wild...
