It has been seven years since Hester stood on the scaffold holding Pearl as an infant.
7 years
Hester and Pearl had been visiting Governor Bellingham's house, where they were discussing Pearl being taken away from Hester. On their way home, they stop at the scaffold where Hester was punished.
Pearl and Hester do join dimmesdale in his vigil.
In chapter 2 of The Scarlet Letter, after Hester leaves the jail, she is publicly displayed on a scaffold holding her infant daughter, Pearl. She is subjected to public humiliation and forced to wear the embroidered scarlet letter 'A' on her chest as a form of punishment for her adultery.
Roger Chillingworth approaches Dimmesdale just as he invites Pearl and Hester to join him near the scaffold.
There are three main scaffold scenes in the Scarlet Letter. The fist is in the beginning of the novel, when Hester has to go up on the scaffold with Pearl in front of the entire town. The second is in the middle of the night, when Hester and Pearl find Dimmsdale on the scaffold. Pearl stands between Hester and Dimmsdale, holding both their hands and linking them together. The third scaffold scene is at the end of the novel when Dimmsdale asks Hester and Pearl to join him on the scaffold in pulblic, during one of his sermons. He confesses his crime and Pearl finally finds out who her father is. These scenes are used as a unifying device throughout the novel. In the first scene, Hester and Pearl are unified together, in front of the rest of the town. In the second scene, Pearl is the link between Hester and Dimmsdale, which brings them together - except it's in the middle of the night, so it isn't public unification. In the third scene, all three are united together on the scaffold, in front of the whole town. In that scene, Pearl's life id fulfilled because she knows who her father is, and Dimmsdale can finally stop suffering internally because he confessed.
Pearl is not meant to be a realistic character. Rather, she is a complicated symbol of an act of love and passion, an act which was also adultery. She appears as an infant in the first scaffold scene, then at the age of three, and finally at the age of seven
One example of foreshadowing is when Chillingworth is talking to Hester in the dungeon. He keeps saying "He will be known! He will be known! He will be known!" Here, Chillingworth is talking about how he will find out who the father of Hester's child is, as this is the man who wronged both Chillingworth and Hester. Another example is some of the scaffold scenes. In the second scaffold scene, which takes place at night, Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl stand on the scaffold together holding hands. Pearl asks Dimmesdale if they will stand on the scaffold together the next day, in which Dimmesdale replies that they will another day, but not tomorrow. This foreshadows the last scaffold scene, where Dimmesdale calls Hester and Pearl to the scaffold during the Election Procession.
During the procession, Hester stands on the scaffold in the marketplace with her daughter Pearl. During Dimmesdale's sermon in the church, she stands in the back of the congregation, unseen by the rest of the town.
Before he dies, Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl in front of the townspeople. When he does this, he reveals that it was he who committed the sin of adultery with Hester...
The scaffold, the scarlet letter itself, and Pearl are all devices in "The Scarlet Letter" that symbolize sin and its consequences. The scaffold is where public shaming occurs, the scarlet letter is a physical reminder of Hester's sin, and Pearl embodies the product of Hester's sin.
Pearl stops throwing stones when Dimmesdale stands with Hester and Pearl on the scaffold in the marketplace at the end of the novel. At this moment, it symbolizes her acceptance of her family and their collective sin.