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Sometimes beauty is found in places as unexpected as a rosebush growing outside of a prison in a puritan colonial village. Pearl Prynne is an unearthly beautiful child with a with spirit born under unimaginably sinful conditions, all of which are somehow related to the ideas, actions, and views of others on Hester’s punishment. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Pearl serves as Hester’s living, breathing Scarlet letter. Pearl evokes the same …

…She manages to embody so many things that come along with something like a symbol for adultery in a puritan society, but still holds onto the innocence of a child. It is just as rare that someone of such a young age is described as so passionately beautiful as is the use of the same description for something as negative as Hester’s scarlet letter. Pearl is Hester’s living, breathing, and inescapable Scarlet letter.