“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
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. |