Blog Post #2- Critical Lens Close Reading: Scarlet Letter

It is interesting to see how much affect the scarlet letter on Hester's chest has on Hester herself compared to her own child, Pearl. We can see that the town has acted collectively-- giving mean looks in the streets, kids teasing her own child, and the shunning that takes place whenever she crosses paths with them-- even though she gives to them what they don't to her. Hester also puts the blame on herself as if the Scarlet Letter now defined her. However, the effects of the scarlet has not damaged her daughter Pearl’s life or perspective of her mother. Hester fears that her child will be deemed as dark and evil as, “She knew that her deed had been evil...She looked fearfully into the child’s expanding nature; ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being” (pg 80). None of this turns out to be true as Pearl was a perfect child-- just in an unfortunate circumstance. Hester sees the children of the town playing among one another and growing up together and longs for her child to have the same experiences, but knows that her child could never have them seeing as “Mother and daughter stood together in the same circle of seclusion from human society” (85). While this bothered Hester, Pearl doesn’t seem to mind. “If the children gathered around her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with a shrill, incoherent exclamations that made her mother tremble, because they had so much the sound of a witch’s anathemas in some unknown tongue” (84). I find this quote significant in demonstrating how Hester’s perspective of Pearl is from the influence of the town and the Scarlet Letter. She believes that her child, because she was born unlawfully, will forever be internally evil not considering the fact the Pearl is untouched by the wrongdoing of her mother and is normal relative to everyone's beliefs. The Scarlet Letter has not only changed the way Hester lives her life, but also the way she perceives it and her child.