The Scarlet Letter

It wasn’t uncommon for 18th- or 19th-century novelists to frame their works as edited versions of real-world events, so the story of Hawthorne discovering an actual scarlet letter is most likely an invention. That does not make the Introduction irrelevant, however. Hawthorne did spend several years working in a customs house, and the shared themes that run through the Introduction and the main narrative suggest that this period of his life shaped the way he wrote The Scarlet Letter.

The most obvious connection between the Introduction and what follows is the shared setting. As Hawthorne notes, his family had lived in Salem since their arrival in America; in fact, an ancestor of Hawthorne’s—John Hathorne—served as a judge during the Salem witch trials. Hawthorne himself was deeply ashamed of this history, and in the Introduction he describes himself as “invariably happiest” when living outside of Salem. Nevertheless, Hawthorne suggests that the very darkness of his family’s past keeps him tethered to his ancestral hometown, in much the same way that he is obligated to atone for his predecessors’ “cruelties” and the “strong traits of their nature [that] have intertwined themselves with [him]” (13).This depiction of the sins of the past echoing through the present and future carries over into the main narrative; in fact, it’s the weight of the past that keeps Hester, like the narrator, in Salem.

This is not the only parallel between Hester and the narrator (at least as he presents himself to readers). Similarities are also apparent in the way both Hester and the narrator relate to the social world around them. Like Hester, who must contend with the expectations and assumptions the scarlet letter gives rise to, the narrator must contend with the public circulation of his name as a customs officer:

“The Custom-House marker imprinted [my name] with a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise […] Borne on such queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it, was carried where it had never been before” (28).

Although the tone here is tongue-in-cheek, Hawthorne’s extreme unhappiness while working at the Custom House creates an undercurrent of anxiety. The stamped objects convey an idea of the narrator’s identity that is at odds with his own sense of himself, and one result of this gap, for both Hawthorne and Hester, is a sense of alienation from the society around them. Here, for instance, is how the narrator imagines his coworkers perceive him: “My fellow-officers, and the merchants and sea-captains with whom my official duties brought me into any manner of connection, viewed me in no other light, and probably knew me in no other character” (27). The irrelevance of the narrator’s identity as a writer to those around him is part of what makes working in the Custom House so intolerable.