1. A
The Scarlet Letter
What Happened to Pearl?

2. What Do We Know? Character: Symbol Smart Capricious Inquisitive Beauty
Freedom
Innocence
(daniels)

3. What Does Pearl Experience?
Shunned by her community
Witness to her mother’s shame
Identity of father revealed, followed suddenly by his death
(Daniels)

4. How Does Our Story End?
Large Inheritance
Leaves and never returns A

5. Pearl’s Adulthood Hawthorne tells us very little Moves to Europe
Marries into aristocratic family
Minimal contact with Hester

6. Childhood into Adulthood
Exposure of her father (Manheim)
Transition from innocence to understanding
Leaves strict Puritanism in favor of an established class system (McNamara) A A

7. Pearl as a Symbol Her parents’ sin Innocence tainted by ugliness
Judged, and yet free from judgment
(McNamara)

8. From Symbol to Person Ethereal Presence Probing questions Fully Human
(McNamara)
Sudden knowledge
Pearl becomes HUMAN at the death of her father; no longer a haunting symbol for Hester, she is fully her own (Manheim)

9. So… What Might Pearl’s Life Be?
Wealthy and established
Not burdened by her mother’s past
How might her childhood have shaped her?
What FAMILY means
How she views society
Anger or bitterness
Pearl as a mother

10. References
McNamara, A. M. (1956). The Character of Flame: The Function of Pearl in The Scarlet Letter. American Literature, (4) Daniels C. Hawthorne's Pearl: Woman-Child of the Future. Atq [serial online]. September 2005;19(3): Available from: Literary Reference Center, Ipswich, MA. Accessed April 28, Manheim, D. (2010). Pearl's Golden Chain in THE SCARLET LETTER. Explicator, 68(3),