Scarlet Letter Lecture 2
The Individual and Society
Lecture Focus
• The ‘Custom-House’ prefatory sketch
in relation to the actual novel
• In what ways does The Custom-House
help the reader into the world of
The Scarlet Letter?
Note title
The Scarlet Letter
A Romance
The Custom-House
Introductory To “The Scarlet Letter”
• Background about his job as a surveyor in
Salem Custom House, and his co-workers;
• Background about his Puritan ancestors, and
foreshadowing the Puritan theme;
• Ideas about writing
• Philosophy of Art; and the theme of Art
• The concept of a ‘Romance’
• Explains how he ‘discovered’ the manuscript
of ‘The Scarlet Letter’;
• Narrating voice – Hawthorne; Narrator/author
• Writing this lengthy introduction / Induction,
has been driven by the ‘autobiographical impulse’
• Connotation: suggestive of irrational motivation;
a key word in ‘Scarlet Letter’
• See connections: Implicitly suggests a link between
Hester Prynne and the narrator;
• Further connotes weaknesses and susceptibilities
common to humanity generally
• ‘Our impulses are too strong for our judgment
sometimes.’ Thomas Hardy’s ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’
Bridge / Link
• Autobiographical sketch of author in
19th century America
• Forms a link / bridge between 19th century
(the present of his America)
• And the mid-seventeenth century past of
New England; And the differences between both time
worlds;
• Convention of the early 17th century English novel for
its authors to represent themselves as editors;
• ‘Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend
M was obliging enough to read and explain…’ from
‘A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig’ by Charles Lamb
Two Styles
Present (19th century)
• Light, genial, humorous, informal; candid, and
satirical tone; (relative to the main text)
Intended to contrast with
• 17th century New England Puritanical Culture
• More formal and stern atmosphere and tone
Introducing the Puritan Theme
Narrator in describing his job as Surveyor
• Tells us about his Salemite ancestors;
William Hathorne (arrived in New England in 1630)
• Was ‘a bitter persecutor of the Quakers, and
John Hathorne involved in the notorious
Salem witch trials of 1692
• As readers, we become aware of the profound tensions
and conflicts in the narrator that inevitably inform the
narrative of ‘The Scarlet Letter’
• Such as the tension between Puritan and artist;
Hawthorne’s role as Surveyor
and Conflicts with Mundane World
Narrator/author
• Mode of writing: Descriptions of government and
fellow employees;
• Reflective of how scathingly critical of his fellow
workers, notably the Inspector,
the patriarch of the Custom-House;
• Alludes to his perceived mistreatment as an
employee;
• Described as “Swept out of office” and replaced
by a “worthier successor”
Representations of Co-workers
Representation of the Inspector p18-20
• Possessed no power of thought, no depth of
feeling
• A man without morals, intellect, or feeling
• Inspector rarely showed regret concerning
deaths of his three wives and twenty children,
‘likewise returned to dust’; ‘one brief sigh’
• But notable for his gourmandism;
• Obviously very unintellectual company at work
• More visceral than cerebral;
Ideal Company p26
Tells us Readers who, for him, would make ideal
company?
• Ralph Waldo Emerson: ‘Self-Reliance’
• David Henry Thoreau: ‘Civil Disobedience’
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Lyric Poet)
• Reinforces the extent he sees himself as a man
of thought and sensibility
• Connections / Link to main text?
The Custom-House
a Social Microcosm
• ‘It contributes greatly towards a man’s moral and
intellectual health, to be brought into the habits
of companionship with individuals unlike
himself, who care little for his pursuits, and
whose sphere and abilities he must go out of
himself to appreciate.’ p25
• Variety and diversity of humanity; all kinds;
• No overarching ideology can accommodate all
• Need for Openness and Tolerance
• Links / Connections to main text?
Philosophy of Narrative Writing
Reader / Writer Relationship
• Genre of Writing: Autobiographical
‘an autographical impulse’ p7
• Writers should imagine they are speaking to a
friend, a person who is “kind and
apprehensive, though not the closest friend.”
• Personalizing the voice of the writing, yet not
revealing one’s innermost self;
Must preserve and protect ‘the inmost Me’ p7
• Narrative technique in The Scarlet Letter?
From p7
Some authors, indeed...
indulge themselves in such confidential depths
of revelation
as could fittingly be addressed,
only and exclusively,
to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy;
• Narrator/author stresses the merits of authorial
reserve, indirectness,
• Keeping the ‘inmost Me of behind its veil’
For example
• This is what Hester and Dimmesdale do
in preserving their guilty secrets and subversive
thoughts from the Puritan community.
• Chillingworth’s penetration of Dimmesdale’s self;
see Chapter 10 The Leech and His Patient
• “I must search this matter to the bottom!”
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
by Thomas De Quincey (1821)
Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to English
feelings than the spectacle of a human being
obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or
scars, and tearing away that “decent drapery”
which time or indulgence to human frailty may
have drawn over them;
Narrator’s Voice
• Though voice is reserved
• Also obtrusive;
guiding our reading like a sympathetic friend
• Offering explanation, interpretation,
commentary to deepen our understanding;
• Yet also ambiguously characterized by
contradiction and concealment
Concept of Romance
Perfect place for writing a romance?
• A familiar room in the evening, with the
moonlight ; moonlight “spiritualizes” the room
erasing its physicality and endowing it with
“strangeness and remoteness”
• In moonlight, the real world and the fairy-tale
world meet and interweave with each other;
• With moonlight and a dim coal fire, more
spiritual imagination is possible
The Real and the Fantastic
• Story of ‘Scarlet Letter’, also an interweaving /
blending of moonlight and a coal fire
• A blending / mixing of intellectual ideas and
human passions; of the imaginary and fantastic
over the probable and the ordinary;
• Note: when, where, and how the real world and
the fairy-tale world meet each other
• Methods of how the real is made to seem
fantastic, or the fantastic to appear real;
• Noteworthy example: Second scaffold scene
Chapter 12: ‘Walking in the shadow of a dream…’
Philosophy of Art / Aesthetics
• Foreshadowing theme of Art and Artistry;
Art and Sensibility;
• The power of Art: enables us to mediate the
mental and the emotional sides of our selves;
• Our rule-governed, matter-of-fact world,
and the imaginary
• Codes of discipline and the imagination
• Conflict between cold-hearted logic and
impassioned
• Sense and Sensibility
Seeing Connections / links
• Hester Prynne’s artistic skills help her to
preserve her humanity amidst adversity
• And regain her life and re-entry to the
community
American Culture’s Attitude to Art
• A writer of storybooks!
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. p13
One idle and rainy day p 29
• Fortune; to make a discovery of some little
interest
• ‘I chanced to lay my hand on a small package,
carefully done up in a piece of ancient yellow
parchment. This envelope had the air of an
official record of some period long past,
when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal
choreography on more substantial materials
than at present.’
• Pretends to have discovered the manuscript in
an unused room of the Custom-House;
• Presents himself as Editor rather than
originator of the story; (again this is pretense)
• Effect?