The Scarlet Letter: The Custom-House

While reading the custom-house, I initially believed it was from Hawthorne’s perspective before realizing that this section was a part of the whole narrative as well. I later found that the fictional, custom-house author reflected Hester’s character in a way that might have been intentional by Hawthorne to foreshadow what was to come in The Scarlet Letter; the narrator in the custom-house seems to share some of the same aspects of alienation and solitude that Hester experiences throughout her own story. Narrator points out that they share a similarity: his time spent in the custom-house will be left with little evidence and be forgotten eventually, just as Hester’s story has faded overtime- This fact seems to confirm to me that the similarities were intentional by Hawthorne. Perhaps, this is also why the narrator felt the need to write a novel about Hester, so that both he and she would be remembered in some way or another; I have to add that I found it interesting that one of the last things narrator mentions is that he finds his own memories of the custom-house becoming hazy and dusty as well.