Summary: The Custom House Introductory to The Scarlet Letter
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?
(See Important Quotations Explained)
This introduction provides a frame for the main narrative
of The Scarlet Letter. The nameless narrator, who
shares quite a few traits with the book’s author, takes a post as
the “chief executive officer,” or surveyor, of the Salem Custom
House. (“Customs” are the taxes paid on foreign imports into a country;
a “customhouse” is the building where these taxes are paid.) He
finds the establishment to be a run-down place, situated on a rotting
wharf in a half-finished building. His fellow workers mostly hold
lifetime appointments secured by family connections. They are elderly
and given to telling the same stories repeatedly. The narrator finds
them to be generally incompetent and innocuously corrupt.
The narrator spends his days at the customhouse trying
to amuse himself because few ships come to Salem anymore. One rainy
day he discovers some documents in the building’s unoccupied second story.
Looking through the pile, he notices a manuscript that is bundled
with a scarlet, gold-embroidered piece of cloth in the shape of the
letter “A.” The narrator examines the scarlet badge and holds it briefly
to his chest, but he drops it because it seems to burn him. He then
reads the manuscript. It is the work of one Jonathan Pue, who was
a customs surveyor a hundred years earlier. An interest in local history
led Pue to write an account of events taking place in the middle
of the seventeenth century—a century before Pue’s time and two hundred
years before the narrator’s.
The narrator has already mentioned his unease about attempting to
make a career out of writing. He believes that his Puritan ancestors,
whom he holds in high regard, would find it frivolous and “degenerate.”
Nevertheless, he decides to write a fictional account of Hester
Prynne’s experiences. It will not be factually precise, but he believes
that it will be faithful to the spirit and general outline of the
original. While working at the customhouse, surrounded by uninspiring
men, the narrator finds himself unable to write. When a new president
is elected, he loses his politically appointed job and, settling
down before a dim fire in his parlor, begins to write his “romance,”
which becomes the body of The Scarlet Letter.
Read a translation of
The Custom House Introductory to The Scarlet Letter →
Analysis
This section introduces us to the narrator and establishes
his desire to contribute to American culture. Although this narrator
seems to have much in common with Nathaniel Hawthorne himself—Hawthorne
also worked as a customs officer, lost his job due to political changes,
and had Puritan ancestors whose legacy he considered both a blessing
and a curse—it is important not to conflate the two storytellers.
The narrator is not just a stand-in for Hawthorne; he is carefully
constructed to enhance the book aesthetically and philosophically.
Moreover, Hawthorne sets him up to parallel Hester Prynne in significant
ways. Like Hester, the narrator spends his days surrounded by people
from whom he feels alienated. In his case, it is his relative youth
and vitality that separates him from the career customs officers.
Hester’s youthful zest for life may have indirectly caused her alienation
as well, spurring her to her sin. Similarly, like Hester, the narrator
seeks out the “few who will understand him,” and it is to this select
group that he addresses both his own story and the tale of the scarlet
letter. The narrator points out the connection between Hester and
himself when he notes that he will someday be reduced to a name
on a custom stamp, much as she has been reduced to a pile of old
papers and a scrap of cloth. The narrator’s identification with
Hester enables the reader to universalize her story and to see its
application to another society.
Despite his devotion to Hester’s story, the narrator has
trouble writing it. First, he feels that his Puritan ancestors would
find it frivolous, and indeed he is not able to write until he has
been relieved of any real career responsibilities. Second, he knows
that his audience will be small, mostly because he is relating events
that happened some two hundred years ago. His time spent in the
company of the other customhouse men has taught the narrator that
it will be difficult to write in such a way as to make his story
accessible to all types of people—particularly to those no longer
young at heart. But he regards it as part of his challenge to try
to tell Hester’s story in a way that makes it both meaningful and
emotionally affecting to all readers. His last step in preparing
to write is to stop battling the “real world” of work and small-mindedness
and to give himself up to the “romance” atmosphere of his story.
The narrator finds writing therapeutic. Contrary to his
Puritan ancestors’ assertions, he also discovers it to be practical:
his introduction provides a cogent discourse on American history
and culture. Hawthorne wrote at a time when America sought to distinguish
itself from centuries of European tradition by producing uniquely
“American” writers—those who, like Hawthorne, would encourage patriotism
by enlarging the world’s sense of America’s comparatively brief
history.
