1
“A
writer of story-books! What kind of a business in life,—what mode
of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and
generation,—may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well
have been a fiddler!” Such are the compliments bandied between my
great-grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time! And yet, let
them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves
with mine.
This passage comes from the introductory
section of The Scarlet Letter, in which the narrator
details how he decided to write his version of Hester Prynne’s story.
Part of his interest in the story is personal—he is descended from
the original Puritan settlers of Massachusetts. Like Hester, the
narrator both affirms and resists Puritan values. He is driven to
write, yet the Puritan in him sees the frivolity in such an endeavor:
what good, after all, can come of writing this story? Yet in that
very question lies the significance of this tale, which interrogates
the conflict between individual impulses and systematized social
codes. The narrator finds Hester Prynne compelling because she represents
America’s past, but also because her experiences reflect his own
dilemmas. Thus, for the narrator, the act of writing about Hester
becomes not a trivial activity but a means of understanding himself
and his social context.
