Moreover, Pearl is the person who eventually makes Dimmesdale admit his crime. She constantly asks why the minister keeps putting his hand over his heart, and figures out it is for the same reason that her mother wears the scarlet letter. Her role as a living scarlet letter is to announce to the whole world who the guilt parents are. After Dimmesdale manages to keep the mother and daughter together in the governor's hall, Pearl responses amazingly. She takes his hand and places her cheek against it. This simple gesture is full of meaning, because it implies that Pearl recognizes Dimmesdale as being connected to her. Meanwhile, Pearl's stand of urging the minister to commit his sin is firm. When Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold where Hester suffered her public humiliation several years before, he meets Hester and Pearl, who have been at Governor Winthrop's deathbed, taking measurements for a robe, he invites them to join him on the stand. When all three hold hands, Pearl asks Dimmesdale," Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, tomorrow noontide?"(P140) Dimmesdale answers," Not so, my child, I shall, indeed, stand with thy mother and thee, one other day, but not tomorrow."(P141) Pearl laughs and attempts to pull away her hand until the minister promises to take her hand and her mother's hand at "the great judgment day". When they later meet in the forest, Hester says to Pearl, "He loves thee, my little Pearl, and loves thy mother too. Wilt thou love him?" Pearl says,"Doth he love us?" then asks, "wilt he go back with us, hand in hand, we three together, into the town?" The answer is "not now". So when Dimmesdale impresses a kiss on her brow before they leave the forest, "Pearl broke away from her mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off…"(P194) At the end of the novel, when the minister climbs up the scaffold with the help of Hester and Pearl, confessing his sin to his followers, Pearl kisses his lips. She accepts her father finally. Pearl's role as the living scarlet letter is over, and Dimmesdale, who finally takes responsibility for his sin, has learned the moral, which she is meant to teach.
3. The Symbolic Meanings of the Objects that are Described in the Novel.
In The Scarlet Letter, most of the objects that are described have many symbolic meanings. The novel is filled with light and darkness symbols because it represents the most common battle of all time, good versus evil. When Hester and her daughter are walking in the forest, Pearl exclaims:" Mother, the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on you bosom. Now see! There it is, playing a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me, for I wear nothing on my bosom yet." (P168) Hester tries to stretch her hand into the circle of light, but the sunshine vanishes. She then suggests that they go into the forest and have rest. This short scene actually represents Hester's daily struggle in life. The light represents what Hester wants to be, which is pure. The movement of the light represents Hester's constant denial of acceptance. Hester's lack of surprise and quick suggestion to go into the forest, where is dark, shows that she never expected to be admitted and is resigned to her station in life. Another way light and darkness is used in symbolism is in the way Hester and Dimmesdale's plan to escape is doomed. Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the shadows of the forest with a gloomy sky and a threatening storm overhead when they discuss their plans for the future. The gloomy weather and shadows exemplify the fact that they can't get away from the repressive force of their sins. It is later proven when Dimmesdale dies on the scaffold! Instead of leaving with Hester and going to England. A final example occurs in the way Hester and Dimmesdale can not acknowledge their love in front of others. When they meet in the woods, they feel that," No golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark forest."(P199) This emotion foretells that they will never last together openly because their sin has separated them too much from normal life.
The opening chapter introduces several of the images and the themes within the story to follow." The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison."(P45) The prison represents several different symbols. Foremost it is a symbol for the Puritanical severity of law. The description of the prison indicates that it is old, rusted, yet strong with an "iron-clamped oaken door." This represents the rigorous enforcement of laws and the inability to break free of them. The prison also serves as the symbol of the authority of the regime, which will not tolerate deviance. Hawthorne directly challenges this notion by throwing the name Ann Hutchinson into the opening pages. Hutchinson was a religious woman who disagreed with the Puritanical teachings, and as a result was imprisoned in Boston. Hawthorne claims that it is possible the beautiful rosebush growing directly at the prison door sprang from her footsteps. "But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as the came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart if Nature could pity and be kind to him."(P46) This implies that the Puritanical authoritarianism may be too rigid, to the point of obliterating things of beauty.
The rose bush is a symbol of passion. As will later become obvious, Hester Prynne's sin is one of passion, thus linking her crime to the image of the rosebush. Hawthorne also indirectly compares Hester with Ann Hutchinson via the rosebush, and again makes the same parallel in Chapter 13, Another View of Hester. Hawthorne cleverly links the rosebush to the wilderness surrounding Boston, commenting that the bush may be a remnant of the former forest, which covered the area. This is important, because it is only in the forest wilderness where the Puritans' laws fail to have any force. Thus the image of the rosebush serves to foreshadow that some of the passionate wilderness, in the form of Hester Prynne, may have accidentally made its way into Boston. The rosebush in full bloom indicates that Hester is at the peak of her passion. This parallels the fact that Hester has just born a child as a result of her passion. The child is thus comparable to the blossoms on the rosebush. Hawthorn's comment that the rose may serve as a "moral blossom" in the story is therefore actually saying that Hester's child will serve to provide the moral of the story.
After Hester is released from prison, she finds a cottage in the woods, near the outskirts of the city. Her choice of habitation is crucial to the symbolism within the novel. The forest represents love, or the wilderness where the strict morals of the Puritan community cannot apply. Thus, when Hester makes her home on the outskirts of the city, directly on the edge of the woods, she is putting herself in a place of limbo between the moral and the immoral universes. This is important because it shows that Hester does not live under the strict Puritanical moral code, but rather tries to live in both worlds simultaneously. Hawthorne uses the forest to provide a kind of shelter for members of society in need of a refuge from daily Puritan life.
In the deep, dark portions of the forest, many of the pivotal characters bring forth hidden thoughts and emotions. The forest track leads away from the settlement out into the wilderness where all sign mandates of law and religion, to a refuge where men, as well as women, can open up and be themselves. It is here that Dimmesdale openly acknowledges Hester and his undying love for her. It is also here that the two of them can openly engage in conversation without being preoccupied with the constraints that Puritan society place on them.
When Hester takes Pearl with her to the Governor's Hall in order to plea with Governor Bellingham to let her keep Pearl, whom the Governor felt would be better raised in a more Christian household. Pearl looks around in the mansion and sees the shiny metal of the Governor's suit of armor. She then calls her mother's attention to the fact that the convex shape of the armor grotesquely magnifies the scarlet letter, causing it to appear gigantic. Hester feels that Pearl must be, "an imp who was seeking to mold itself into Pearl's shape". (P97) It is the symbol of the Puritan society's ever - lasting punishment to Hester's sin.
Symbolism is a traditional artistic form; it also is a major feature of Romanticism. As a famous writer of romanticism, Hawthorne is skillful at the using of symbolism in his works. The various usage of symbolism in The Scarlet Letter makes the novel a work of the world.
