Throughout Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Pearl, the greatest sufferer, bears the weight of a sin which she neither committed nor understands. Socially, she is shunned as not only a living symbol of her parents transgression, but also reminder to all who look apon her of their own sinfulness. Throughout her childhood, Pearl is both spiritually and morally questioned. Physically, her exquiste bueaty and lavishly adorned dress exepmlify a defiance of puritan codes, making her a sign of the immorality of mankind. In all aspects she is a wild thing, derived from the blackness of sin, true, but also from the purity of passionate love. She is a living testament to the conflict of Puritan demands and desire; her life seems to flout the standards of the era. Pearl suffers the pain of her mother, but she doesn't understand the reasoning of her comdemnation and life as such an...