What is the significance of Pearl's clothing in The Scarlet Letter?

In the chapter entitled
"," the narrator makes a particular point of talking about the way in which Hester
dressed her daughter. What is so interesting about this is the way that there is a deliberate
link made between the scarlet letter that Hester wears on her breast, that the reader is told is
so lavishly and beautifully sewn on, and the way that Pearl, the fruit of that illicit
adulterous union, is presented:

Her mother, with a morbid
purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be
procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of
the dresses which the child wore before the public eye.

Just as the scarlet "A" that Hester is forced to wear is turned by her skill
with the needle into a symbol of beauty and finery, so Pearl, the illegitimate child of an
illicit and unlawful union, is a figure of beauty and is arrayed in all finery by her mother.
Far from being ashamed of her state and of her daughter,seems almost to flaunt her in front of
the society that has made her an outcast and branded both her and her daughter sinners. One way
of viewing the appearance of Pearl therefore is to consider the way in which Hester Prynne
subtlely challenges and subverts the rules and beliefs of the day through turning what is
despised into things of beauty and value.