There is no doubt that Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is a novel about morality. How society judges Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale's actions speaks to Hawthorne's views on Puritanism and religion, as well as the treatment of women. However, there is very little attention to the significance of Pearl, Hester's illegitimate daughter with Dimmesdale. In many ways, Pearl is essential to understanding the bond between Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Indeed, not only is Pearl the visible link between Hester and Arthur, but her character speaks to the presentation of truth and the idea that sometimes children see the truth more clearly than adults can. Through detailed imagery of Pearl and his sympathetic interest in her mother's plight, Hawthorne presents Pearl as a moral compass and compassionate ideal in The Scarlet Letter. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Although she is a playful seven-year-old, Pearl is precocious and intelligent, almost to the point of being too independent and wise beyond her years. Hawthorne emphasizes Pearl's importance to the story through his consistent imagery applied to Pearl. For example, Pearl is “endowed with natural dexterity and native grace” (Hawthorne 194). While on one occasion Pearl is a beautiful, possessed flower, on another occasion she has the "beauty of a wild flower". Hawthorne repeatedly compares Pearl to a bird: "a wild tropical bird, of rich plumage" and "a floating sea-fowl." Hawthorne also gives Pearl an otherworldly description, such as that of an air sprite with an “elven intelligence” as if she were “a little elf picking handfuls of wild flowers. Mistress Hibbins suggests that the child is of the Air Prince's bloodline!” These descriptions make Pearl a saint, beyond this temporal world that might judge and confine her, as people did with her mother. In this sense, when Pearl demonstrates her perversity toward social and religious authority, readers share her hostile anger toward the Puritan brats and her sympathetic interest in the Scarlet Letter on Hester's chest. Another important aspect of Pearl's character is her instinct for truth and her compassion. perception of Hester's predicament. Pearl appears to have an unconscious awareness of her blood relationship to Dimmesdale, as when she rests her cheek against Dimmesdale's hand in the Governor's mansion. Pearl also has the intuition to see the truth about dissimulation in humans, perhaps as a result of living with her mother in the woods. Because she is surrounded by nature, she is able to preserve her innocence from society's deleterious conventions and religious demands. Hawthorne also connects Pearl to nature by saying that "the mother forest and these wild things she nurtured all recognized a kindred wildness in the human child." He identifies this wilderness "not as the wilderness of savagery but as the wilderness of innocence" and that Pearl is a "child worthy of being begotten in Eden." For example, Hawthorne describes how "a wolf in the forest, responsive to his primitive innocence, came near and smelled Pearl's robe, and offered his wild head to be caressed by his hand." Pearl, therefore, is an undeniable link between humans and nature, uncontaminated by the perverse rules of society. Hawthorne also symbolically uses the character of Pearl as a social commentary against religion and society's arbitrary rules. In Governor Bellingham's hall, Hawthorne describes the