As I've been reading and listening to The Scarlet Letter these past few weeks, I've decided that Nathaniel Hawthorne's depiction of Pearl (the daughter of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale) is quite remarkable. Pearl is truly childlike: unaware of society's rules (and hypocrisies) at some times, then fully aware just moments later.
She has a fantastic ability to entertain herself. The scenes during which she plays joyfully are hitting home for me as I watch J, T and B find countless new ways to amuse themselves during these long days of coronavirus.
Hawthorne had a knack for communicating the thought process (and the soul) of a child that escapes many authors. In truth, Pearl is -- in many respects -- the most interesting and fully realized character in the book. Dimmesdale is so wooden and incapable of empathy as to seem misdrawn (how could his sermons have been so powerful, if he couldn't understand the world from another's eyes?), and Chillingworth is villainous to almost comical effect.
Here's a sampling of Pearl's adventures:
And she was gentler here [in the woods] than in the grassy-margined streets of the settlement, or in her mother’s cottage. The flowers appeared to know it; and one and another whispered, as she passed, “Adorn thyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me!”—and, to please them, Pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these she decorated her hair, and her young waist, and became a nymph-child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Pearl adorned herself, when she heard her mother’s voice, and came slowly back.
