“The Custom-House”, Introductory to The Scarlet Letter.

The author establishes himself as narrator of this book by adopting a first-person voice in this introduction, and by relating experiences drawn from his own life, while acting as Surveyor in the Custom-House, in Salem Massachusetts.

After describing the dilapidated building, Nathaniel Hawthorne discusses his New England ancestors. The first “was a soldier, legislator, judge”, “a ruler in the Church”, and had “all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil”(p.12)

He proceeds to describe his role as Surveyor, and his own aged colleagues: the Inspector and the Collector. Throughout his description he presents thinly veiled suggestions that this government institutions is peculiarly prone to corrupt practice.

During this break in his literary career, Nathaniel Hawthorne discovered, he tells us, a bundle of documents left by a previous Surveyor with a penchant for antiquarian research. The most immediately intriguing part of the package is a faded piece of fine red cloth, with traces of embroidery.

Accompanying the cloth is a fairly full account of its history, and of the story of Hester Prynne. The written account of this singular woman was composed largely from oral testimony, gathered from aged members of the local community. She is remembered as a dignified and sober figure, who in later life acted as a voluntary nurse and counsellor, assisting the needy of Massachusetts.

Nathaniel Hawthorne identifies himself as the narrating voice, indicating that in writing this long introductory chapter, he has been driven by an “autobiographical impulse” (p. 7).  By immediately invoking his own life, Nathaniel Hawthorne forms a bridge between the mid-nineteenth-century present, and the mid-seventeenth-century New England past, which forms the setting for the tale of The Scarlet Letter. That histrorical dimension is important to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s conception of morality. He believed that human beings had to acknowledge the past, and act responsibly towards its legacy. He also believed that we have the capacity to learn from history and to make practical improvements in the way society is organised. He saw American democracy as an important stage in that gradual amelioration.

It was a convention of the early-seventeenth-century English novel for authors to announce that they were acting as editors of documents that had come into their possession. A famous example of this practice is Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1709). Nathaniel Hawthorne uses his introductory chapter to explain how he came into possession of the manuscript which outlines the story of the scarlet “A”.

It is also important that the narrator does not lay claim to privileged understanding of the materials. He has found them, and is relating them to us. He may suggest certain ways to read them, but he does not have the authority of an originator, or God-like figure, and that should encourage us to feel that our own acts of interpretation are equally legitimate. The Scarlet Letter emphasises that reading and interpreting are processes in which all human beings are necessarily engaged at all times.

The narrator imagines his reader to be in a relaxed conversational relationship with him. The frank informality of his tone contrasts starkly with the stern reserve of the Puritan community, described in the tale that follows.

Salem, in Massachusetts, is the narrator’s home town. In 1692, it acquired notoriety as the scene of virulent persecution of witches. One of the presiding judges was William’s son, John Hathorne. ( William Hathorne, 1607-81, was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great-great-great grandfather.) In the twentieth century, that persecution has been dramatised by the American playwright, Arthur Miller, in The Crucible (1951). It was a symptom not only of irrational religious fervour, but also of appalling intolerance towards women within a gravely patriarchal society. The eccentric Mistress Hibbins, who appears at intervals throughout The Scarlet Letter, was eventually executed as a witch. William Hathorne’s severe persecution of Quaker women is actually on record, but more generally this first New England ancestor of the author personifies a structure of social power, which is fundamentally oriented towards men and conventionally masculine values. As such he is an incarnation of that society which stigmatises and seeks to ostracise Hester Prynne. It persists in milder form in the “patriarchal body of veterans” at the Custom-House. Nathaniel Hawthorne suggests that telling this tale is part of his expiation for the sins of his forefathers. He is not willing to ignore this unpalatable aspect of his family’s past. He archly suggests that their guilt has met with sufficient retribution in his own person; they would not have approved of his being a writer.

Art and artistry assume major thematic importance in The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne believed that art has the capacity to mediate between head and heart, between discipline and imagination. It may thus give a clearer and fairer sense of how human beings live than cold rational detachment of impassioned emotional response. It is Hester Prynne’s artistic skills which preserve her humanity amidst adversity, and provide a means for her to gain respect from the community. Nathaniel Hawthorne is surely also indulging in self-justification in an American cultural climate that was predominantly practical and had little time for, or tradition of aesthetic pleasure. In his temporary stay at the Custom-House, he tells us, he lived remote from literature, in the company of men who cared little for the written word.