Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:. Email required Address never made public. Name required. Follow Following. The Scarlet Haikus Join 31 other followers.
Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. A close examination of Chapter 6, "Pearl," shows the unification of the child with the idea of sin. Hester is recalling the moment when she had given herself to Dimmesdale in love. The only way she can account for Pearl's nature is in seeing how the child is the symbol of that moment. She recalls ". The mother's impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the untempered light of the intervening substance.
Even Pearl's clothes contribute to her symbolic purpose in the novel by making an association between her, the scarlet letter, and Hester's passion. Much to the consternation of her Puritan society, Hester dresses Pearl in outfits of gold or red or both. Even when she goes to Governor Bellingham's to plead for her daughter's custody, Hester dresses Pearl in a crimson velvet tunic. With Pearl's attire, Hester can give "the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play," embroidering her clothes "with fantasies and flourishes of gold-thread.
Mistress Hibbins invites Hester to the forest and Hester says if the governor takes her child away she will gladly go. Their conversation reminds us that, as a symbol, Pearl is also the conscience of a number of people. First, she is the conscience of the community, pointing her finger at Hester. In any number of places, she reminds Hester that she must wear, and continue to wear, the scarlet letter.
When they go to the forest and Hester removes the A , Pearl makes her put it back on. She tells her mother that "the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom" Chapter Where Hester must hide because of her sin, Pearl must be celebrated for the Purity and sincerity of love.
Hurn, Susan. How is Pearl dressed, and what is her dress compared to? Pearl is wearing a scarlet dress with gold embroidery. Any other observer might have seen few but unamiable traits, and have given them a far darker coloring. She possessed affections, too, though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as are the richest flavors of unripe fruit. With all these sterling attributes, thought Hester, the evil which she inherited from her mother must be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out of this elfish child.
It occurred to Hester that the child might really be trying to enter into her confidence, doing what she could as intelligently as she could to establish a rapport with her mother. This thought revealed Pearl in a new light. Until now the mother, though she loved her child with the intensity of an only love, had forced herself to hope for little in return except the unruliness of an April breeze. Such a breeze spends its time playing breeze-games, sometimes gusting passionately for no good reason, behaving uncooperatively even in its best moods, and chills you more often than it caresses you when you try to hug it.
To pay you back for these small offenses, the breeze will sometimes, for its own obscure reasons, kiss your cheek with a questionable tenderness, play gently with your hair, and go about its other pointless business, leaving a dreamy pleasure in your heart. Any other observer might have seen almost entirely undesirable traits and have viewed them far more harshly.
Hester might entrust Pearl with as many of her sorrows as could be shared between a mother and daughter. Perhaps they had been there all along: unflinching courage, an unbreakable will, a sturdy pride that could be disciplined into self-respect, and a bitter distaste for hypocrisy. She had feelings too.
0コメント