1 What relation does “The Custom-House” have to The Scarlet Letter? What themes are introduced in the former that are developed in the latter?
7 Locate references to childhood in The Scarlet Letter and discuss Hawthorne’s portrait of what it might have been like to be a Puritan child.
“The Custom-House” is a stand-alone section of the novel. It resembles more a tract or a personal essay than an introduction to a piece of fiction, but it offers plenty of insights that will support the rest of The Scarlet Letter. We gain a sense of the themes the narrator feels the need to describe in the story. As a man of youth and vigor, he feels somewhat at odds with the Puritan nature of his society. He himself seems to feel a deep resentment for the strict fidelity to rules and values that would deem his whole personality, and his ambition to write, as frivolous or even sinful. The theme of pious hypocrisy that the Puritans were so good at is made quite clear.
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