When was pearl prynne born

The townspeople say that she barely seems human and spread rumors that her unknown father is actually the Devil. He is much older than she is and had sent her to America while he settled his affairs in Europe. Because he is captured by Native Americans, he arrives in Boston belatedly and finds Hester and her illegitimate child being displayed on the scaffold.

Chillingworth is self-absorbed and both physically and psychologically monstrous. His single-minded pursuit of retribution reveals him to be the most malevolent character in the novel. Read an in-depth analysis of Roger Chillingworth. Dimmesdale is a young man who achieved fame in England as a theologian and then emigrated to America.

In a moment of weakness, he and Hester became lovers. Although he will not confess it publicly, he is the father of her child. He deals with his guilt by tormenting himself physically and psychologically, developing a heart condition as a result. Dimmesdale is an intelligent and emotional man, and his sermons are thus masterpieces of eloquence and persuasiveness.

His commitments to his congregation are in constant conflict with his feelings of sinfulness and need to confess. Read an in-depth analysis of Arthur Dimmesdale. Governor Bellingham is a wealthy, elderly gentleman who spends much of his time consulting with the other town fathers. Despite his role as governor of a fledgling American society, he very much resembles a traditional English aristocrat.

He remains blind to the misbehaviors taking place in his own house: his sister, Mistress Hibbins, is a witch. As they stood on the scaffold, Chillingworth appears and coaxes Dimmesdale to come down the steps. Dimmesdale asks who he is as he is afraid of him, but since she must keep her husband's identity a secret, Hester does not tell him who he is. Dimmesdale and Chillingworth went back home together. She is shocked on how frail the minister is, and thinking something has caused him to be weak, she now wants to have the duty to help him.

Seven years have passed since she had Pearl. Hester is now more active and respected in her community, such as bringing food to the poor, nursing the sick, and being more supportive of those in need. However, Hester finds herself in solitude since the letter had took her passion, and wonders if she is worthy to live.

She decides that she must help him by revealing who Chillingworth is and exposing his vengeful acts on the minister. She would first ask Chillingworth to stop tormenting Dimmesdale. She spots her husband at the beach one day and leaves Pearl to play on her own while she goes over to talk to him. As she approaches him, he smirks at her by saying he has heard some good intentions about her.

He informs her that the officials have been talking about allowing Hester to remove the letter from her chest. She blames herself for believing her sin has caused his suffering, and talks about Dimmesdale, even saying he should be better off dead than be constantly stalked by the physician for the past 7 years. After Chillingworth leaves, Hester hates him for his evil deeds, despite it considered a sin.

She could hardly believed she had agreed to be his wife and even resents him for trying to make her happy. When she rejoins Pearl by the seaside, the girl has arranged an "A" shape on her chest with seaweed.

She is asked by her daughter what does her letter mean and why Dimmesdale covers his chest with his hand. Hester, realizing Pearl is still too young to understand the letter's significance, lies to her and says she wears it mainly because of its lovely golden thread. Later that day, during dinner and when putting her to bed, Pearl kept asking her about the letter and did this the next day until Hester snaps and threatens to put her in a dark closet if she wouldn't stop bothering her.

She decides to meet Dimmesdale at a forest path after she finds out he went to visit a Native American settlement and would walk down that route. She would warn him of Chillingworth and telling him his identity. Hester brings Pearl and while she waits for the minister by the brook, Pearl asks her mother to tell her the story of the Black Man and his connection to the letter.

Hester asks her where she has learned that story, and she tells her it was the old woman Mistress Hibbins who told her that the Black Man has left his mark on the letter. Hester even said she had met the Black Man once and placed his mark on the letter. At that moment, Dimmesdale is seen coming down the path. Wanting some time alone, Hester tells Pearl to go play in the woods, and assures her that Dimmesdale is not the Black Man. After the girl scurries away, the minister approaches Hester covering his chest with his hand and appearing weak.

The couple hold hands and sit together near the brook, and that their presence in the forest keeps them safe from Chillingworth and from society. They talk, with Dimmesdale asking Hester if she has found peace, which she doesn't answer but asks him the same thing, and the minister responds by confessing about his misery.

Hester reveals to Dimmesdale that Chillingworth is her husband, which shocks the minister and condemns her, blaming her for his suffering. Not wanting to hear Dimmesdale speaking ill of her, she pulls him to her chest and has his face placed against the letter. She apologizes to him and he eventually forgives her, stating that Chillingworth is a worse sinner than both of them. He is worried of the physician and him exposing his secret, so Hester convinces him he should flee Boston and start a new life in Europe.

When he says he is unable to go alone, she tells him he won't need to and she and Pearl would join him to live together as a family. The couple are delighted at the fact of escaping the country together, and is even called an "angel" by the minister. She unpins the letter and tosses it away at the bank of a stream. While still smiling, she takes off her cap and lets her long, dark hair loose to flow. She regains some of her passion again as she is brightened by the sunlight.

They talk about Pearl, and Hester is excited at the fact of Pearl meeting her father for the first time. She calls her daughter, who was playing by the brook. The girl is suspicious and refuses to come to her when she spots her mother isn't wearing the letter. Hester asks her to go pick up the letter and bring it to her, but Pearl refuses.

When she puts it back on herself and places her hair back in her cap, the girls accepts her by kissing her and then the letter. She encourages Pearl to embrace Dimmesdale as well, even though she doesn't tell her she is his child. When her daughter asks if the minister is coming back to town with them, Hester responds that he won't just yet and Dimmesdale kisses her with Pearl washing off the kiss at the brook.

Shortly after her meeting, Hester makes arrangements for their escape. She meets the captain and crew at their ship in the harbour that is to depart for Bristol, England. If so, Pearl is the embodiment of that passion. The poetic, intuitive, outlawed nature of the artist is an object of evil to the Puritans. As a symbol, Pearl represents that nature. As she looks in the brook in Chapter 19, she sees "another child, — another and the same, with likewise its ray of golden light. Filled with the glory of sunshine, sympathetic, but only "somewhat of its [Pearl's] own shadowy and intangible quality," it is the passion of the artist, the outlaw.

This is a passion that does not know the bounds of the Puritan village. In the forest, this passion can come alive and does again when Hester takes off her cap and lets down her hair. Pearl is the living embodiment of this viewpoint, and the mirror image makes that symbol come to life. Hester herself tries to account for the nature of her child and gets no farther than the symbolic unity of Pearl and her own passion. 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.