4.2.2 The Interior of a Heart Summary
During her first three years, Pearl, who is so named because she came “of great price”, grows into a physically beautiful, vigorous, and graceful little girl.
She is radiant in the rich and elaborate dresses that Hester sews for her. Inwardly, however, Pearl possesses a complex character. She shows an unusual depth of
mind, coupled with a fiery passion that Hester is incapable of controlling either with kindness or threats. Pearl shows a love of mischief and a disrespect for
authority, which frequently reminds Hester of her own sin of passion. Because both Hester and Pearl are excluded from society, they are
constant companions. When Pearl is on walks with her mother she occasionally finds her self surrounded by the curious children of the village. Rather than
attempt to make friends with them she pelts them with stones and violent word. Pearl’s only companion in her playtime is her imagination. Significantly in
her games of make - believe , she never creates friends : she creates only enemies – Puritans whom she pretends destroy. But the object that most captures her
imagination is scarlet letter A on her mother’s clothing. Hester worries that Pearl posseses by a friend, and impression strengthened when Pearl denies having a
Heavenly Father and then laughingly demands that Hester tell her where came from.
Universitas Sumatera Utara
Analysis
This chapter developes Pearl both as a character and as a symbol. Pearl is a mischiefous and almost unworldly child, whose uncontrollable nature reflex the
sinful passion that led to her birth. Her’s character is closely tied to her birth, which justifiece and makes the “other worldliness” about her very important. She
is a product and a symbol of the act of adultery, an act of love, and act of passion, a sin, and a crime. Hawthorne, the narrator, states [“Pearl”] was worthy to have
been brought forth in Eden worthy to have been leavt there, to be the plaything of the angel … “ However , she “lacked reference and adaptation to the world in to
which she was born”.
The Puritan community believed extramarital sex to be inherently evil and influence by the devil, and, because Pearl is a product of her mother’s extramarital
sex, Hawthorne raises the issue of Pearl’s nature can something good come from something evil ? is Pearl inherently evil because she was born from what the
Puritan conceifed to be an immoral, sinful union? Perhaps thinks Hester, who is fearful at least of such a predetermined out come. Our modern sensibilities,
however, shudder at the implication that an immoral act between adults necessarily means that a childs born from the sexual affair will be inherently evil.
Hawthorne’s condenations of Puritanizem continuous in this chapter his strongest rebuttal of the society’s self – serving, false piety occours when he
ironically contrasts the Puritan community’s treatment of Hester and God’s
Universitas Sumatera Utara
treatment of her. He notes of Hester’s fellows citizens, “Men had marked this women’s sin by a Scarlet Letter, whish had such potent and disastrous efficacy
that knoe human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself “ ironically justaposted against the Purintan’s sentence that Hester wear the Scarlet
Letter A is “God, [who] as a direct consequence of the sin which man this punished, had given her a lovely child,… to be finally a blessed soul in heaven”
the comparison between the community’s Puritan’s and God’s responses to Hester’s extramarital affair is dramatic.
4.2.3 The Minister’s Vigil Summary
Kategori