Ambiguity In Scarlet Letter

Ambiguity and The Scarlet Letter go better together than two people that have been happily married for 75 years. There is no exemption in Hawthorne’s exquisite symbolism of one of his main characters, Pearl. The Scarlet Letter A, worn by Hester Prynne, was a punishment for the immoral sin of adultery she had committed. Following Hester's act of adultery, she became pregnant with a baby girl whom she named Pearl. From the first moment that …

…Pearl had. She symbolized the scarlet letter, innocence and treasure, evil and sin, and the moral blossom and rose. It is evident that he wanted to ambiguously portray the symbolism of Pearl. So, was Hawthorne meaning to show the possibilities of combining sin and innocence through the ambiguous description or was he just putting symbolization in the only one character that wasn’t a sinner? Well, this is a question that can never be answered.