Pearl, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"
Felix Octavius Carr Darley American
Related author Nathaniel Hawthorne American
Not on view
Darley illustrates Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter, A Romance" (published 1850). His drawing was reproduced in 1879 as the third print of twelve "Compositions in Outline." Set in seventeenth-century Boston, the story explores the consequences of a liason between Hester Prynne and the Puritan pastor Arthur Dimmesdale. When Hester becomes pregnant, she refuses to identify her child's father, is imprisoned, and forced to wear a red letter "A" on her dress (to mark her as an adultress). Upon release, she lives in an isolated cottage and supports herself as a seamstress while raising her daughter Pearl. This image responds to text in chapter 6 which decries the cruelty of local children towards the girl who, like her mother, is shunned by the community. As Hester leads her daughter away from town, they endure verbal abuse and physical threat–one girl holds and prepares to throw a stone. See 14.111.1,.2,.4.,.5 for other drawings from the set.
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