Pearl is also the conscience of Dimmesdale. In Chapter 3, when Hester stands with her on the scaffold, Pearl reaches out to her father, Dimmesdale, but he does not acknowledge her. Once again on the scaffold in Chapter 13, Pearl asks the minister to stand with them in the light of day and the eyes of the community. When he denies her once again, she washes away his kiss, apt punishment for a man who will not take responsibility. She repeats her request for recognition during the Election Day procession. In her intuitive way, she realizes what he must do so to find salvation.
In the end, it is Dimmesdale’s actions that “save” Pearl, making her truly human and giving her human sympathies and feelings. On the scaffold just before his death, Pearl kisses him and “a spell was broken.” At that point, Pearl ceases to be a symbol. The great sense of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge that she would “grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it.”
While Pearl functions mainly as a symbol, she is allowed to become a flesh and blood person at the end. She is a combination of her mother’s passion and intuitive understanding and her father’s keen mental acuity. In her, Hawthorne has created a symbol of great wealth and layers.
