The Scarlet Letter | Chapter 6 Summary and Analysis

New Character
Pearl: Hester’s perplexing child

Summary
The narrator devotes this chapter to the first three years of Pearl’s life, so named because she cost her mother “a great price” (a Biblical reference). She is a child with no apparent physical defect but one who has moods of defiance and gloom mixed with great exuberance. In public, Pearl acts as if she were a child of the devil, defiantly hurling stones at the other Puritan children. Privately, Hester at first thought Pearl might be a fairy child because of her wild...


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