Pearl spends most of the narrative as "The elf-child," the ostracized offspring of a forbidden union. Even her play reflects her isolation, where she smites unmercifully "The ugliest weeds in the garden," whom she fancies the children of Puritan elders. Her attitude to her father changes, from caressing his hand early on, to refusing to kiss him in the woods, to finally kissing him on the scaffold. Her transformation occurs precisely at this moment, at the story's end, when Dimmesdale publicly acknowledges her and Hester. It is here she cries for the first time, breaking her spell, and moving her from a girl who would no longer "...battle with the world, but be a woman in it."
This transformation is borne out in her relationship with her peers, from tearing them up as weeds as a child to potentially marrying when she comes of age; when Pearl inherits from Chillingworth, (So Pearl, the demon child...became the richest heiress of the day in the New World) her social standing improves to the point where she could have "mingled her wild blood with the devoutest Puritan of them all."
Pearl, the elf-child, returns to the land of elves and fairies, yet fulfills the prophecy of her being a woman in the world when we surmise that she has borne children and made Hester a grandmother at the very end of the tale.
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