THE SCARLET LETTER opens with a long introduction on the book came about. The unidentified narrator was the surveyor of the customhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. In the customhouse’s attic, he discovered a number of documents, one of them were a manuscript that was bundled with a scarlet, gold-embroidered patch of cloth in the shape of an “A.” The manuscript was written by surveyor in the past. It narrated events in great detail that took place around two hundred years before the narrator’s time. When the narrator lost his job at the customs, he decided to write a fictional story based on the events contained in the manuscript. The Scarlet Letter is the fictional story he wrote.
Hawthorne begins The Scarlet Letter with this long introductory essay that served as a preface. This preface though was aimed to accomplish four important tasks: 1). outlines information pertaining to the author’s autobiography, 2). describes the contradiction between the artistic inclination and the commercial setting, 3). defines the romance novel (which Hawthorne is credited for his efforts in refining and mastering the craft), and 4). confirms the basis of the novel by explaining that he had discovered in the Salem Custom House the faded scarlet A and the parchment sheets that contained the historical manuscript on which the novel is based.
Despite its claim, there is no existing serious, scholarly work that supports the idea that Hawthorne ever actually had in his possession such letter or manuscript. This narrative technique, typical of the narrative traditions of his time, serves as a way of giving his story an air of historic authenticity.
Of the American writers from the mid-nineteenth century whose names are still recognized today, the majority are writers of prose narrative, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter is one the products of prose narrative genre.
The kind of narration employed in The Scarlet Letter is that of an omniscient narrator. Editorial omniscience pertains to an interruption by the narrator to be able to describe a character for a reader, such as the part of the story where the narrator of The Scarlet Letter describes Hester’s relationship to the Puritan community. Narration that enables the characters’ actions and thoughts to speak for themselves is termed neutral omniscience. A number of modern writers use neutral omniscience to enable readers to arrive at their own conclusions.
Limited omniscience happens when an author confines the role of the narrator to the single viewpoint of either a major or minor character. The way people, places, and events are seen by the character is the way they are seen by the reader. Sometimes a limited omniscient narrator can be use in more than one character, specifically in a work that dwells on two characters interchangeably from one chapter to the next. Short stories, however, are often limited to a single character’s point of view.
Hawthorne organizes the story of Hester and Minister Dimmesdale around three vital scenes, each of these scenes occur on the scaffold outside the prison in Boston. Each is used to reveal some important information about his hero and heroine. All throughout the novel, the author balances his narrative among scenes describing the career of Hester among the villagers, the growing agony felt by Dimmesdale over his secret sin, and the subtle efforts of Chillingworth to uncover his wife's lover.
Brief History of Narratives
Literary narratives appeared in the 1850’s. It seemed to be the means authors used to counter the pressing issues of the day - a political crisis over slavery, which threatened the nation’s existence and produced a compromise meant to suppress the controversy. At this moment, Hawthorne emphasized certain elements present in their own earlier writings and in those of Poe and set their work apart from national narrative. The “Custom-House” introduction to Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter shows an attempt by author to detach himself from national concerns.
It presented a startling contrast not only to national narrative but also to local and personal narratives, both of which addressed and reflected the concerns of everyday public life, the literary narrative of The Scarlet Letter deviates from the conventional narratives to be able to cultivate a freely imaginative space.
Through the irony of Hawthorne works of literary narrative, it does not only differ from but also appears to rise above and, indirectly, to criticize the common life. Yet their critical authority was based on the fact that it was limited to influential audiences, mysterious topics, and indirect methods. The potential triumph of creating a “different world” through writing was often viewed by the authors themselves as boringly recurring, lonely labor. The moment in which the “literary” writer was transformed into an “artist” marks a crisis in the relation of narrative to its readers, for the work of the artist was understood to draw its main worth from its personal relation to the writer’s self.
Narrative technique: Romance versus Novel
Jonathan Arac (714) in his “Narrative Forms” stated:
“Hawthorne, in his longer works, maintains an extremely high proportion of narration to dialogue, while at the same time abandoning most of the materials—that is, the actions— of traditional narration…. Hawthorne defined the special ‘medium’ of the romance writer as ‘moonlight, in a familiar room’ …. The key figure in Hawthorne’s long narratives, in keeping with his theatricality, is the ‘sensitive spectator’ … another of the bridging devices by which Hawthorne’s romances function….
In an Emersonian movement of compensation, the sensitive spectator responds to the absent and contrary features of a face or context, feeling the pain in bravery and the triumph in humility that together make Hester a reconciliation of opposites, embodying the power Coleridge had attributed to the imagination.”
Narrative persona: “The Custom-House”
What is the purpose of the Introductory section? This question is effectively addressed by Jonathan Arac (711):
“ This interdependence of romance and everyday marks the relation of “The Custom-House to “The Scarlet Letter”, that is, of the introductory sketch of modern life to the long tale of seventeenth century with which it shares a book.… it offers to prove the ‘authenticity’ of the narrative, but it does so by invoking ‘literary propriety’, an appeal to convention rather than a warrant of authenticity. By taking possession through “The Custom-House” of the (physical) scarlet letter as his property, the author of “The Custom-House” personalizes the narrative.
There are many correspondences between the authorial figure of “The Custom-House” and the characters of “The Scarlet Letter”. Both Hester in the tale’s opening and Hawthorne in the sketch are subjected to disapproval by an imagined crowd of Puritan authorities. Both Dimmesdale in the tale and Hawthorne in the sketch are split by a passionate inner life that is wholly at odds with their ‘official’ public position.
Both Chillingworth in the tale and Hawthorne in the sketch display prowess as critical analysts of character….A recurrent mood of “The Custom-House” … is harried dejection…. Consider a major rhetorical motif in “The Custom-House”, the insistence that the gloom of “The Scarlet Letter” stems in part from an act of revolutionary victimization…. The sketches of ‘official’ character that occupy Hawthorne in the avowedly antipolitical literary practice of “The Custom-House” correspond to his occupation during his maximal political involvement…”
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