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...
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.
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