response, but it is also a true answer in terms of the novel's symbolism: Pearl is a fruit of the natural goodness and redemptive compassion of God's creation that is symbolized by the rose-bush.

Chapter 1 of The Scarlet Letter, titled "The Prison Door" describes the "ugly edifice" that is the village's prison. Hawthorne explains that, when the villagers entered their territory for the first time,  they sure would have had all the wishful thinking expected of newcomers who think that they have just reached Utopia.

Nevertheless, after reality sets in, it is more that clear that, even in Utopia, there must be a place where people who are not behaving need to face consequences. Similarly, there is also a need for a cemetery. In this village, both places were plotted in close proximity as far as their planning goes.

Back to the prison, the building is absolutely dilapidated, as its existence is allusive to the people who will eventually end up inside of it. With time, it has begun to decay, and there are grown weeds of the worst kind surrounding it, which gives it a terrible atmosphere. Hawthorne is very descriptive of this place, and his description is anything but positive.

However, in an ironic twist, the author explains,

But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rosebush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems

The significance of the rosebush is found in the explanation that comes afterwards, where it essentially says that the rosebush is a symbol of mercy; a way for nature to tell us that she is more forgiving and understanding than mankind. That she, nature, is willing to smile upon the downtrodden, and even cheer up the day of those whose souls are "the black flower of civilization".

[the rosebush] offer[s] [its] fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him

There are more meanings attributed to the rosebush. Hawthorne says that the rosebush has kept alive despite the bigger trees growing around it and keeping the sun away from it. This shows that the rosebush is a symbol of resilience and strength, much like those who entered prison, not for crimes, but for standing up for their rights and beliefs, such as "the sainted Ann Hutchinson".

Finally, this beautiful, flowering plant is also made to "relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow". This means that, whoever enters the prison, has a sad story to tell. Nobody goes to prison for being happy, stable, or in harmony with life. The prison is a place with people whose "frailty and sorrow" will coexist with them as long as the imprisonment lasts, maybe even longer than that. Therefore, the flower is a way to, at least, give some joy to that lonely soul, and bring some hope back into the hearts of those who witness it.

In Chapter II of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlett Letter, Hester Prynne stands as a figure of singular innocence and enchantment amidst the ugliness and vituperation of the community that has condemned her for the sin of sleeping with a man not her husband.  Her punishment for this transgression – for which she has been harshly judged – in addition to the large, prominent “A” she was forced to wear on her breast, signifying her adulterous nature, was time in the local prison.  Hawthorne, in the opening chapter (excluding his extensive prologue, “The Custom-House Introductory”) describes this place of enforced confinement in unsurprisingly bleak terms, with its “ugly edifice” and its decaying structure.  It is here where Hawthorne first discusses the rose bush that adorns one side of the prison entrance:

“. . . a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.”

Lest anyone underestimate the significance of this rose bush, Hawthorne proceeds to invest it with a divine meaning, noting that the community has associated it with a one-time Puritan spiritual leader:

“This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness . . . or whether, as there is far authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson as she entered the prison-door, we shall not take upon us to determine.  Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.”

Hawthorne clearly intended this rose to represent the moral purity that Hester similarly represents among the shrill, judgmental hypocrisy in which this beautiful young woman exists.  If Hawthorne ascribes to the rose bush a spiritual meaning that invests it with inordinate importance, he also suggests that Hester is of one with the roses that blossomed on its stems.  How else can one explain the references to scripture common among those who condemn Hester, such as in the following exclamation from one of the women gathered outside the prison door to protest the leniency shown this adulterer?  It is surely no accident that the protester most vocal in calling for Hester’s execution on the grounds of biblical prophesy is “the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges.” That this decidedly unattractive woman should call for Hester’s death – “This woman has brought shame upon us and ought to die” – is part of Hawthorne’s theme regarding false piety.  Hawthorne was a subscriber to Puritan principles, but recognized the distinctions between God’s Word and those of mere mortals.  For added emphasis, Hawthorne contrasts the dour, virtually evil town official who releases Hester from her confinement with the disgraced woman:

“The door of the jail being flung open from within there appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim and gristly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and closest application to the offender.”

“Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.”

As with the rose bush, Hester represents a higher level of spirituality, as does her daughter, Pearl, borne out of that illicit affair.  Describing his protagonist’s emergence from the darkness of the prison cell, Hawthorne introduces not only Hester, but her child as well, imbuing in the baby a Christ-like aura:

 “. . .stepped into the open air as if by her own free will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day;”

Next, in Chapter VIII, Hawthorne reintroduces the figure of Reverend John Wilson, a “great scholar” and “a man of kind and genial spirit,” who nevertheless, in response to his questions regarding the young girl’s knowledge of her origins, looks askance at Pearl’s suggestion that she “had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door.”

Finally, at the end of Chapter XII, Hawthorne returns the theme of rose bushes and their relationship to his protagonists.  Visiting the mansion of Governor Bellingham, Hawthorne noticeably adorns this fanciful estate with rose bushes, and connects these beautiful flowers to Pearl:

“There were a few rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the descendants of those planted by the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first settler of the peninsula; that half mythological personage who rides through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull.

“Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would not be pacified.”

The role played in The Scarlett Letter by the rose bushes clearly suggests that the author intended a direct connection between them and his protagonists, Hester and Pearl.  The flowers represent virtue and stand out in the novel’s settings for their rarity – just as with Hester.

In chapter 1 of The Scarlet Letter, theblack flower which is mentioned is allegorical to the prison itself. The narrator speaks of the early days of the settlement which, out of the dirt of their soil, built their village. The term "black flower" is used as a metaphor that suggests that the dirt of the soil could only be capable to produce something as dingy and ugly as a prison; a black flower.

..such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison.

Contrastingly, at the foot of the prison stood with much resilience a wild rose bush. The juxtaposition of the bush at the threshold of the prison creates the dramatic irony, where the rose bush is meant vibrancy, uniqueness, resilience, and strength. The narrative explains how the existence of this bush is mysterious, since it seems to have surpassed the passing of time. The narrator gives the rosebush a supernatural origin

whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson, as she entered the prison-door,—we shall not take upon us to determine.

Therefore, although the prison is figuratively identified as a "black" flower, the flowers at its threshold are meant to represent, as the reading says "some sweet moral blossom" that goes completely juxtaposed to the image that the prison represents to the villagers.

As a woman who, herself, is mysterious, enigmatic, strong, and resilient, Hester mirrors the rose bush that has remained standing for years by the prison door. Similarly, as the most beautiful inmate of the prison she also charmed it with her elegant nature, with her beauty, and with the strange magic that she seemed to bring to it during her imprisonment. 

The rosebush at the governor's mansion is an echo of the mention of the wild rosebush that grew beside the prison door where Pearl was born while her mother was jailed for her adultery. The narrator describes it as covered with roses that "offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him."

Pearl was conceived in an act of passion that Puritan society could not condone. Her mother, Hester Prynne, was living alone in the wake of her husband's disappearance; moreover, their's had been an arranged and loveless marriage, because of her parents' poverty. Pearl's father, Arthur Dimmesdale, would not acknowledge Pearl or Hester because he was a Puritan minister.

The wild rosebush represents something beautiful that comes from Nature, much like Pearl herself. Because the novel is romantic, Pearl has a seemingly supernatural ability to intuit that she is wild and beautiful as well. When Pearl reaches out and cries for the rose in the governor's garden, it is as if she has a sense memory of the place of her birth and identifies with the rose's natural beauty.

In chapter one of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne offers a brief description of the prison in which Hester Prynne has been incarcerated. He does not mention Prynne yet; in fact, he does not allude to the subsequent narrative at all. His purpose in this brief chapter (about a page long) is to set the tone of the story for the reader.

After noting that the prison was one of the first necessities that Boston’s forefathers’ had built, he describes the door of the prison. This door, on which “the rust of the ponderous ironwork looked more antique than anything else in the new world” represents the idea that punishment is a never-ending aspect of life in a civil society. This reflects on the inability of man to behave appropriately—prisons will always be necessary, even in a proposed religious “utopia” like Puritan Boston.

Then Hawthorne mentions the rose bush.

But on one side of the portal . . . was a wild rosebush.

To Hawthorne, this rosebush is more than just an object of natural beauty to relieve the dreariness of the prison, it is also a potential comfort to the prisoner.

Its delicate gems [roses] . . . might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

Note that Hawthorne has suggested that, while man cannot create a functioning society without the need to imprison others, nature has a more forgiving attitude to those who transgress man’s law.

Finally, Hawthorne alludes to his main character, Hester Prynne, without naming her. Look at how the following quote associates the main character with the beauty and goodness of the rose.

It [the rosebush] may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.

It is unusual that Hawthorne actually uses the word “symbolize” in his narrative. He is simply coming right out and telling the reader that the rosebush is a symbol. Writers usually aren’t as obvious as that about their symbols.