Helen Barr, author of Pearl--or 'The Jeweller's Tale' takes a different look at how the Pearl Poem is interpreted. Most interpretations summarize that its meaning is about a father grieving over the death of his young daughter. This possibility is generally accepted. Rather than just accepting the obvious meaning of the poem, Barr suggestsanother possible, less obvious meaning that could have been an influence over the writer with or without him even knowing it. The author introduces her discovery by declaring, "I wish to continue recent moves to break out of a closed hermeneutic system of juxtaposing the heavenly and the earthly, the literal and the figurative, the aesthetic and the cultural, to show how the narrative strategies and verbal texture of Pearl are embedded in the late fourteenth-century social concerns and practices."The author's thesis, "The social implications of figurative language," gave a deeper and more intricate view of the poem itself. Barr presented the argument of whether the Jeweler is a representative of fallen humanity, or of a newly emergent social group. During the time Pearl was written, merchants did not truly fit in with a social group. Technically, they were peasants, but their wealth rivaled the nobility on occasion. This was confusing for them because they weren't nobility, but were very much needed by the upper class. So, this "new social group" argument correlates with both the poem and fourteenth-century society because the Jeweler is a tradesman that deals with wealthy aristocracy all the time, but is not a part of the group. .
In the dream sequence, the Dreamer goes into this heavenly place where he tries to survey the value of everything and maintains his earthly ideas of wealth. He is there, in an indescribable place but he also is not a part of the group. He is limited, cannot see everything there is to see, and .
cannot cross the river.
