The Custom House

You may have fallen asleep or skipped the little introductory appetizer to The Scarlet Letter known as “The Custom House.” We don’t really blame you. The language seems particularly thorny, and it’s hard to make out why exactly this introduction is so important. In it the narrator tells us the story of how he came across the scarlet letter and of how he came to write the story down. Our narrator is the chief executive officer of the Salem Custom House (sometime during the mid-1800s). His account is a mixture of fact and fiction and loosely follows the story of how Hawthorne himself came to write The Scarlet Letter.

A Custom House is a governmental building situated near a port or a wharf. All sailors, sea captains, merchants, and sea traders are required to report directly to the Custom House upon laying anchor in Salem. These tradesmen must pay taxes on their imported goods. Things aren’t so hopping in this particular Custom House – business has slowed down and the building itself is falling apart. The narrator describes a statue of the American eagle that hovers over the Custom House entrance:

Over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community. […] But she has no great tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later—oftener soon than late—is apt to fling off her nestlings, with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a ranking wound from her barbed arrows. (Custom House.3)

Woowee, that’s one cold bird. We all know the eagle is one of the most famous and beloved symbols of America and of the freedom that America represents. Here, however, we get the image of a very unwelcoming and unfeeling symbol – one that doesn’t care whether you survive or not. This eagle, a statue though it may be, suggests that something might not be right with the Custom House or with the government to which Custom House reports. Upon reading The Scarlet Letter, we begin to think this eagle might be a descendent of the strict Puritans that spurn Hester Prynne so harshly.

The narrator goes on to tell us that his ancestors were involved in both the Salem Witch Trials (check out Shmoop History on the Witch Trials and The Crucible) as well as in the persecution of Quakers. Needless to say, the narrator feels mighty guilty and mighty weirded out by the fact that he is related to so many hateful and cold people. He also seems to hear their voices in his head, mocking his dream of becoming a writer (“Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!” [Custom House.9]).

One day, while exploring the abandoned and slightly creepy second floor of the Custom House, our speaker comes across a scarlet letter A and an account of its history written by a former chief executive officer of the Custom House. Our narrator, inspired to write his own version of this incredible story, can’t seem to tap into his creative juices in the stifling workplace environment. As luck would have it, he gets laid off! He finds himself scorned and rejected by an organization he has so long worked for, and, therefore, he feels a connection to Hester Prynne. Through his account, we see a more modern account of house laws and government can be stifling and cruel.