The Scarlet Letter: Reputation (CH 4, 6, 8, 9)

In these chapter, we see more about how important reputation was during the puritan time period. Hester has already been through enough, but now Governor Bellingham wants to take Pearl away from Hester. Hester argues that she has learned a lot from the Scarlet A on her cloths and that she can take care of Pearl perfectly well. Pearl does not help the situation at all, in fact she is trying to be difficult with the Governor. This starts to give Pearl a bad reputation as well and it certainly give Hester an even worse reputation than what she already had. Bellinghame asks Pearl where she came from and since Pearl is not a normal child, she tries to make Bellingham angry so her answer is that she was plucked from a rose. This make Bellingham go nuts and he almost immediately takes Pearl away from Hester. As you can see, a person reputation could effect people around them during this time. In Hester's case, it was going to effect Pearl and she was going to be taking away, Dimmesdale even suggests that they do research on Pearl because of her strangeness, "It is easy to see the mother's part in her. Would it be beyond a philosopher's research, think ye, to analyze that child's nature, and, from its make and mould, to give a shrewd guess at her father." He used this as one excuse to take her away from Hester, they would do anything to get Pearl away from her because they fear that Pearl will grow up as a sinner due to her mother's reputation and history.