A pearl is made in an oyster through heat and pressure. The making of a pearl is a metaphor for Hester's Situation. Her daughter was created out of a sin, yet Pearl came out beautiful. I guess in a Puritan's mind, they expected her to come out with red skin and horns. Just like her mother, she inherited that wild spirit that made her unique amongst other puritans. She was born an outcast due to her mother's punishment and didn't socialize or play with other children. Even though there's only Hester and Pearl to keep each other company, you can tell that it seizes some of the loneliness. In this chapter it reveals that Hester is living in a cottage in the woods, on the outskirts of the town. Hawthorne is using personification to describe Hester's loneliness and isolations towards the town. It aslo says that the cottage is near the shore. The shore represents Hester's yearning to leave. It's obvious there's a special bond between the her and her daughter. Whether Hester is in her lonely, isolated cottage or in the marketplace, little Pearl is there to keep her mother company:
"Never, since her release from prison, had Hester met the public gaze without her. In all her walks about the town, Pearl, too, was there; first as the babe in arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her mother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of three or four footsteps to one of Hester’s."-Hawthorne
In this chapter, you get the sense that Hester is worried for her child. Sometimes Pearl can do unexplainable, weird things that leaves her mother questioning to if there's evil inside her. Yet again, Pearl is only a child, but in a Puritans way of thinking it could be easily mistaken for something unholy. Hester's paranoia displays itself in this chapter:
"At last, her shot being all expended, the child stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little, laughing image of a fiend peeping out—or, whether it peeped or no, her mother so imagined it—from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes."-Hawthorne
"Never, since her release from prison, had Hester met the public gaze without her. In all her walks about the town, Pearl, too, was there; first as the babe in arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her mother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of three or four footsteps to one of Hester’s."-Hawthorne
In this chapter, you get the sense that Hester is worried for her child. Sometimes Pearl can do unexplainable, weird things that leaves her mother questioning to if there's evil inside her. Yet again, Pearl is only a child, but in a Puritans way of thinking it could be easily mistaken for something unholy. Hester's paranoia displays itself in this chapter:
"At last, her shot being all expended, the child stood still and gazed at Hester, with that little, laughing image of a fiend peeping out—or, whether it peeped or no, her mother so imagined it—from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes."-Hawthorne
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