Symbolism In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Pearl refuses because this is all she knows of her and since her mother wears the a on her chest and always had she doesn't understand why it's not there and doesn't know what it means because she's a child. Pearl seems to see the letter on her mother's chest as a metaphorical lack of sunshine on her mother's life. She thinks that all grown women wear a scarlet letter and once she sees others do not she doesn't want to accept the symbol as being something to do with sin. She thinks it's a part of her mother, so she wants Hester to put it back on.

Hester has worn this letter A on her chest to stand for the crime she committed and once in the beginning she's ashamed to wear it because who wants to wear something around all the time to let people know you've committed adultery? Over time Hester comes to see the letter as a symbol of her strength and individuality and she comes to see it as time goes by. Now that the village has changed it's values, it perceives Hester and her letter as a symbol of being honorable and she gets this respect that she so once desired and wanted all because of time. …show more content…
The quote goes to show that Hester isn't an individual woman anymore. She's a fallen woman, an example to other girls who might be battling woman's "frailty and sinful passion." And because of this no one had ever read something like this before, so you could definitely say this was the first feminist