Hawthorne's The Custom House

Syracuse Law Review
Volume 53, Number 4 (2003)
reprinted by permission of the Law Review

HAWTHORNE'S "THE CUSTOM HOUSE,
INTRODUCTORY TO THE SCARLET LETTER,"
AND THE CONFLICT BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY
AND SOCIAL CONTROL**

Robert Batey *

"The Custom House," Nathaniel Hawthorne's odd introduction to The Scarlet Letter, sparks varied reactions, most of them negative.¹ The introduction's chatty tone differs markedly from the more magisterial voice of the novel's narrator; its focus on political patronage seems trivial when compared to the exploration of sin and penitence found in the novel; and its fabricated account of Hawthorne's "discovery" of the actual letter embroidered by Hester Prynne, the ostensible reason for writing the introduction, renders the whole exercise slightly ludicrous. But despite these limitations, "The Custom House" adds an intriguing perspective to The Scarlet Letter, especially for those interested in law, morality, and the control of human behavior.
Hawthorne's asserted discovery of the scarlet letter, along with a few pages reciting its history, came while he held a federal appointment as the Surveyor of Revenue in the custom house at Salem, Massachusetts. The introductory sketch not only relates the discovery,² but also explains how Hawthorne's work there interfered with crafting a romance from the letter's evocative history, a task completed only after a change in administrations swept him from office.³ Thus, one purpose of "The Custom House" is to

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show the incompatibility of creativity and the workaday world.⁴
     Another apparent purpose of the introduction is to provide the opportunity for biting descriptions of several of the denizens of the custom house, all (like Hawthorne) the beneficiaries of political patronage. The three individuals most tellingly depicted are an elderly inspector of voracious appetites, an illustrious general now in his dotage, and a clockwork "man of business."⁵ These portraits, of real persons with whom Hawthorne worked, proved controversial, as he acknowledges in the introduction to The Scarlet Letter's second edition.⁶
     But he is doing more than settling personal and political scores. By providing a thumbnail account of the dispiriting state of government in Nineteenth Century America and its deleterious effect on those who work in it (including himself), Hawthorne emphasizes his novel's contrasting presentation of government and its ministers in Seventeenth Century America. Though the leaders of Boston imposed a rigid morality on Hester Prynne - at odds with the more laissez-faire attitudes of the custom house - they also felt a duty to care for her and for her child Pearl⁷ that was totally foreign to the self-interested officeholders with whom Hawthorne passed his days in federal employment.
     The juxtaposition of introduction and novel thus forced the Nineteenth Century reader to recognize that two centuries of gains in individual freedom had been accompanied by two centuries of losses regarding the moral authority of government and society and their ability to exert that authority to control wrongdoing. Hawthorne's contemporary reader would also have noted that this loss of moral grandeur had affected the citizenry as a whole, as implied by comparing the epically flawed figures of Hester, her lover the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and her husband Doctor Roger Chillingworth to the gluttonous inspector, the impotent general, and the thoughtlessly "ethical" man of business.⁸ The incipient individualism instanced by Hester and Arthur's sin and by Roger's thirst for revenge had grown and spread, with negative consequences to accompany the obvious positive ones.

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     More than one hundred fifty years later, we are much further along this track, so that even the world of "The Custom House" seems enviable in terms of the moral authority of government and society's ability to shape individual behavior. This point hardly needs elaborating, but there can be no sadder evidence of it than the 1995 film version of The Scarlet Letter,⁹ which turned Hawthorne's account of sin and penitence into a screed against social attempts to control individual behavior (at the end Hester, Arthur, and Pearl ride away together, after an Indian attack meant to symbolize nature's revenge on the Puritans). At the turn of the millennium, we are thus deemed unable even to comprehend Hawthorne's cautions about the cost of individualism, much less to respond to them.
     Study of "The Custom House, Introductory to The Scarlet Letter" thus allows a literary inquiry into issues of social control that constitute the very heart of law. This questioning produces no easy answers, a point lost both on the Puritan leaders Hawthorne depicts and on heedless contemporary advocates of sexual freedom for Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne. My essay pursues this inquiry in three main parts. Part I develops and compares the contrasting portraits Hawthorne renders of government in Massachusetts in the 1800's and in the 1600's. Part II builds on this comparison by highlighting similarities and differences between the inhabitants of the Custom House and the principal characters of The Scarlet Letter, emphasizing the degrading effects of American individualism on society's capacity to control behavior through law. Part III confirms this downward trend by inspecting the humiliating treatment given Hawthorne's classic in 1995's Hollywood movie.
     As one who thinks of himself as a left-leaning partisan of individual liberties, the neoconservative bent of this conclusion is to me rather astonishing. Perhaps this wider perspective is a function of age - I am well beyond Hawthorne's forty-six years when he wrote The Scarlet Letter - but more likely it results from the breadth of vision that literature can bring, forcing one to see the inevitable flaws in even the most heartfelt of beliefs.

"The Custom House" briefly sketches a scene from American government at the middle of the Nineteenth Century, while the novel it introduces uses as its backdrop one of the Seventeenth Century precursors of that government, the Puritan colony in Boston. Though as portrayed by Hawthorne, Boston's Puritan elders rule harshly, their rigor springs from a

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genuine concern for the well-being of each soul in the colony. In contrast, the somewhat laughable denizens of Salem's custom house seem to their colleague Hawthorne to care only for themselves, and as a result are remarkably lax enforcers of the law. This contrast implies that while something has been gained in two centuries, something has been lost as well.
Hawthorne begins "The Custom House" by giving a false reason for succumbing to "an autobiographical impulse": to "explain[] how a large portion of the following pages came into my possession" and how he is only an "editor, or very little more" of The Scarlet Letter.¹⁰ With only this implausible explanation, he launches into what he calls "a faint representation of a mode of life not heretofore described, together with some of the characters that move in it."¹¹ His portrait moves from general setting to individual characters, invariably emphasizing the negative effects the passage of time has brought to each.
The custom house sits on what was once "a bustling wharf, - but which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life."¹² Hawthorne continues this imagery of decadence with references to the grass growing in the chinks in the pavement surrounding the custom house, the sign of a port now "scorned ... by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit her wharves to crumble to ruin"; to "the wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded, careworn merchant," the "pale and feeble [sailor], seeking a passport to the hospital," and "the captains of rusty little schooners"; and in concluding summary, to "our decaying trade."¹³

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This descriptive motif extends within the custom house. The surveyor's office there is "cob-webbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn with gray sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen into long disuse."¹⁴ The furniture is similar: "There is a stove with a voluminous funnel; an old pine desk, with a three-legged stool beside it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and infirm."¹⁵

But even more decrepit and infirm is the human furniture of the custom house, its "officers": On ascending the steps, you would discern ... a row of venerable figures, sitting in old-fashioned chairs, which were tipped on their hind legs back against the wall. Oftentimes they were asleep, but occasionally might be heard talking together, in voices between speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that distinguishes the occupants of almshouses, and all other beings who depend for subsistence on charity, on monopolized labor, or anything else, but their own independent exertions.¹⁶

As a former student (a product of Twentieth Century Boston) once observed to me, this passage captures the essence of the self-satisfied political appointee, safe in his sinecure, and is as applicable today as it was 150 years ago.
These officers, all but a few of them "aged men," slowly go through the motions of their work as customs inspectors,¹⁷ but accomplish little: "Sagaciously, under their spectacles, did they peep into the holds of vessels! Mighty was their fuss about little matters, and marvelous, sometimes, the obtuseness that allowed the greater ones to slip between their fingers!"¹⁸ Hawthorne will not say whether this obtuseness - for

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example, allowing "a wagon-load of valuable merchandise [to] be[] smuggled ashore, at noonday, ... and directly beneath their unsuspicious noses" - results from incompetence or graft, but he hints at the latter by mentioning "the evil and corrupt practices, into which, as a matter of course, every Custom-House officer must be supposed to fall," and by characterizing the officers as "usefully employed, - in their own behalf, at least, if not for our beloved country."¹⁹
The epitome of such self-interest is "the father of the Custom House ... a certain Permanent Inspector," who had obtained his position through nepotism while a young man and was approximately eighty when Hawthorne arrived at the custom house.²⁰ "Hale and hearty" despite his age, the unnamed inspector is a man of extreme appetites, which he satisfies without qualm:

Looking at him merely as an animal, - and there was very little else to look at, - he was a most satisfactory object, from the thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and his capacity, at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights which he had ever aimed at, or conceived of.²¹

According to Hawthorne, the inspector achieved this exemplary condition in part because of his less-than-demanding employment, but mostly because of "the rare perfection of his animal nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman from walking on all-fours."²²
This devastating caricature, from which Hawthorne has to tear himself away, serves not merely to skewer a former coworker, but also to indict a livelihood, as he concludes that "of all men whom I have ever known, this

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individual was fittest to be a Custom House officer."²³ The soft life of a politically appointed, easily corrupted governmental employee in Nineteenth Century America best suited those who placed appetites and creature comforts first, those who like the inspector "possessed no power of thought, no depth of feeling, no troublesome sensibilities; nothing, in short, but a few commonplace instincts ... in lieu of a heart."²⁴
Hawthorne gives two other portraits of individual denizens of the custom house, which are less brutal but which still support his indictment of this form of governmental service. At slightly greater length than his discussion of the aged inspector, Hawthorne describes General Miller, "New England's most distinguished soldier," who had held the post of Collector of the Salem Custom House for twenty years prior to Hawthorne's joining him there as Surveyor.²⁵ "[W]ith affection" for "the old warrior," Hawthorne notes his "noble and heroic qualities": "[w]eight, solidity, firmness," "endurance," "integrity," "benevolence," "humor," "native elegance," and "the soul and spirit of New England hardihood."²⁶ Yet, undercutting these attributes at every turn is Hawthorne's reminder that the general is in his dotage and does little to earn his continuing federal salary.
"[B]urdened with infirmities," the general must daily be assisted to "his customary chair beside the fireplace," where through a "veil of dim obstruction," "he seem[s] away from us, although we saw him but a few yards off; remote, though we passed close beside his chair; unattainable, though we might have stretched forth our hands and touched his own."²⁷ Hawthorne underscores the general's decrepitude by an extended analogy to the ruins of Fort Ticonderoga and by concluding that in the custom house the general "was as much out of place as an old sword."²⁸ Thus, it seems that Hawthorne wants to emphasize that despite the general's military record and strong personal qualities, the services he has provided to the United States of America as Collector of the Custom House are negligible. Even a "noble and heroic" man can succumb to the temptations of life on the government's payroll.²⁹

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     The final individual sketch Hawthorne gives of a custom house employee (much shorter than the other two) shows a different, more subtle form of temptation. In a single long paragraph,³⁰ Hawthorne describes his exposure to "a man of business" who had been "[b]red up from boyhood in the Custom House."³¹ This man, "prompt, acute, clear-minded," was the master of "the many intricacies of business," and so became "the Custom House in himself, ... the mainspring that kept its variously revolving wheels in motion."³² Hawthorne lauds the man of business as exemplifying "a new idea of talent" and classifies his "integrity" as "perfect."³³ Yet the amplification of the latter compliment gives pause: "[I]t was a law of nature with him, rather than a choice or principle."³⁴ Elaborating on the notion that the man of business has no choice but to be "honest and regular in the administration of affairs" suggests the clockwork nature of his integrity, thereby making the quality much less of an achievement.³⁵ This implicit undercutting of the standing of the man of business continues in Hawthorne's last comment on him, which echoes the author's conclusion regarding the aged inspector: "Here, in a word, ... I had met with a person thoroughly adapted to the situation which he held."³⁶
     Bracketing the aged inspector and the man of business as fit denizens of the custom house implies that there is more than one way to be seduced by the temptations of government employment. In addition to giving in to one's appetites, one may accept the higher mores of the work environment and perhaps eventually come to embody them. A person in the latter situation such, as the man of business, may retain the "power of thought" that the aged inspector has forgone, as well as a few "troublesome sensibilities" (those that arise purely from the business), but seems himself to have forgone "depth of feeling"; "in lieu of a heart," he has "instincts," not the commonplace ones of the inspector, but those of the place of business.³⁷
     These three sketches in the introduction to The Scarlet Letter suggest that at their worst those who manned government in Nineteenth Century America were self-serving and potentially corrupt, while at their best they

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were either impotent or soulless.³⁸ This thumbnail portrait of government in 1850 contrasts sharply with the government of 1650 depicted in the novel itself. While uncommonly severe, the leaders of Puritan Boston as portrayed by Hawthorne show heartfelt concern for the least among them: an unwed mother named Hester Prynne and her child Pearl.
The stark severity of Boston's Puritan elders needs little emphasis. They vigorously punish Hester's adultery though her husband, absent two years, has reputedly been lost at sea.³⁹ The punishment chosen, though not the harshest possible,⁴⁰ is considerable: to stand on the scaffold in full public view for three hours with her baby in her arms and a large red "A" upon her breast⁴¹ and subsequently to wear the scarlet letter as long as she remains in Boston.⁴² Both penalties strongly affect Hester. After her time on the scaffold, she falls ill, in "a state of nervous excitement that demanded constant watchfulness lest she should perpetrate violence on herself, or do some half-frenzied mischief to the poor babe."⁴³ Even worse is her subsequent life in the community as a branded woman:

In all her intercourse with society ... there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished ... .
Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of the

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Puritan tribunal.⁴⁴

      The harshness of Hester's public shaming thus lies in the way it degrades her before and ultimately separates her from her community.⁴⁵
     Hawthorne takes pains to suggest that such public shaming would be less effective in his day, in part because its audience would take it much less seriously. Speaking of Hester's time on the scaffold, he writes, "the scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it." This latter reaction he characterizes as "the heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present."⁴⁶ The implication of these comments is that Hawthorne's contemporaries, such as, perhaps, his coworkers at the custom house, would lack the gravity necessary to witness public shaming.
     Hawthorne specifically ties this difference in reaction not just to the character of the citizens of Puritan Boston, but also to the quality of their leaders:

Even had there been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no less dignified than the Governor, and several of his counselors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of the town ... . When such personages could constitute a part of the spectacle, without risking the majesty or reverence of rank and office, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was somber and grave.⁴⁷

So the solemnity of the Puritan leadership communicates itself to the public at large, quelling any temptation to ridicule, which would cheapen a shaming punishment and thereby render it less effective both to the person being shamed and to the public at large. By doubting the efficacy of public shaming in his own time, Hawthorne thus also implicitly decries the relative lack of moral leadership among his contemporaries, including

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those with whom he worked at the custom house and those who appointed them.
If in their severity the Puritan leaders nevertheless show their concern both for the public and for the person being shamed, they continue to manifest a similar concern in their subsequent intrusive oversight of Hester and her willful daughter Pearl. When Pearl is two or three, her mother learns "that there was a design on the part of some of the leading inhabitants," including Governor Bellingham, "to deprive her of her child."⁴⁸ This scheme is not a further part of Hester's punishment; the motivation is instead the welfare of either the mother, the child, or both:

On the supposition that Pearl ... was of demon origin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christian interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a stumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, were really capable of moral and religious growth, ... then, surely, it would enjoy all the fairer prospect of these advantages by being transferred to wiser and better guardianship than Hester Prynne's.⁴⁹

     Once more, Boston's Puritans show themselves willing to embrace harsh measures, but for the best of reasons.
     Again Hawthorne digresses to compare this aspect of government in 1650 to that of 1850, considering it "singular, and indeed not a little ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which, in later days, would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction than that of the selectmen of the town, should then have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence took sides."⁵⁰ Hawthorne gives as the reason for this disparity the "pristine simplicity" of the earlier period,⁵¹ which suggests superiority to the muddied political complexity Hawthorne encountered in the custom house and in the world of patronage it represented.
     Pristine simplicity reigns as Boston's Puritan leaders debate this question in Governor Bellingham's mansion, an impromptu discussion

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caused by Hester's arrival at the mansion with her daughter in tow.⁵² Determined to keep her child, Hester sparks a discussion among Bellingham and his three guests of the moment, the Reverends Wilson and Dimmesdale, Boston's religious leaders, and Dimmesdale's physician friend Roger Chillingworth.⁵³ Though Dimmesdale and Chillingworth have ulterior motives (as Pearl's unknown father and Hester's unknown husband, respectively), their discourse and that of Bellingham and Wilson remain on the high plane of what is best for both mother and child.⁵⁴
     Bellingham begins the debate by "fixing his naturally stern regard on" Hester and asking her to respond to a ""point [that] hath been weightily discussed, whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge our consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen, amid the pitfalls of this world.'" Bellingham thus mentions only one of the two community motivations previously posited by Hawthorne, concern for the child's moral welfare; respect for Hester's sensibilities as a mother likely prevents Bellingham from suggesting the alternate reason, that the child is a devil, who will tempt Hester further.⁵⁵ Even though the child quickly confirms such a suspicion, by giving willfully impious answers to the religious questioning of Reverend Wilson, Bellingham and the other men present show a kindly discretion by refusing even to hint at this concern.⁵⁶
     Discretion seems necessary, for Hester's agitation grows as she responds to Bellingham's assertion.⁵⁷ At first she is "calm[]" but "pale," however, after Pearl fails Wilson's religious test and an "astonish[ed]" Bellingham concludes, ""we need inquire no further,'" Hester shows "a fierce expression," "raising her voice almost to a shriek" as she, "provoked ... to little less than madness," argues for her child.⁵⁸ In this state, perhaps sensing that her agitation is undermining her argument, she turns to Reverend Dimmesdale, adjuring him to "speak for me!"⁵⁹
     In response (and perhaps in response to a whispered comment from Dr. Chillingworth, the physician's only apparent contribution to the discussion⁶⁰), the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, who suffers from his own

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guilt as Pearl's unacknowledged father,⁶¹ eloquently rephrases and then expands Hester's arguments and thereby persuades first Wilson and then Bellingham.

"There is truth in what she says, ... God gave her the child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements, - both seemingly so peculiar, - which no other mortal being can possess. And, moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation between this mother and this child?"⁶²

This last comment intrigues Bellingham, who asks Dimmesdale to elaborate.⁶³ The minister's reply stresses that keeping mother and daughter together will prove a moral benefit to both.⁶⁴ As for the mother, her child ""was meant for a blessing ... . It was meant, doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for a retribution too; a torture, to be felt at many an unthought of moment; a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled joy!'"⁶⁵
At Wilson's comment of "'Well said,'" Dimmesdale adroitly links the mother's moral welfare to the daughter's:

"[T]his boon was meant, above all things else, to keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths of sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her! ... - to remind her, at every moment, of her fall, - but yet to teach her, as it were by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child will also bring its parent thither! ... For Hester Prynne's sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them as Providence hath seen fit to place them."⁶⁶

Wilson quickly agrees with Dimmesdale that it would be best for the child to stay with her mother and then turns to Bellingham, who likewise acquiesces, saying that Dimmesdale ""hath adduced such arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands.'"⁶⁷ This forbearance shows both flexibility and sagacity. But there is also balance in Bellingham's wisdom: he conditions his decision on there being ""no further scandal in the woman,'" and on the child's receiving religious education both now and throughout her childhood.⁶⁸

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In thus resolving this issue, Governor Bellingham and Reverend Wilson show concern for the moral life of the less fortunate in their community, respectful discretion in dealing with community members, a willingness to change their minds, and the wisdom to do what is right. They are undoubtedly severe, but compared to Hawthorne's colleagues in the custom house, they are far better leaders. Juxtaposing the officeholders described in the novel's introduction to those portrayed in the novel suggests a precipitous decline in the quality of government between 1650 and 1850.

Bellingham and Wilson are but minor characters in The Scarlet Letter. The novel's center stage is held by Hester Prynne, her penitent lover Arthur Dimmesdale, and her vengeful husband, known to Boston as Roger Chillingworth. Each of these characters is fatally flawed, as over 150 years of Hawthorne criticism has demonstrated.⁶⁹ What is less well appreciated is how the flaws of these characters forerun the defects Hawthorne sees in his fellow Americans, as represented by those who work in the Salem custom house. In their nascent individualism, Hester, Arthur, and Roger prefigure the gluttonous inspector, the impotent general, and the thoughtlessly "ethical" man of business. The flaws of 1650 - magnified by two centuries of nurturing in a climate celebrating individual liberty - have become scandalous by 1850.
Hester Prynne is of course one of the few truly heroic women in American literature. After her initial punishment,⁷⁰ she suffers the virulent scorn of her community⁷¹ with amazing dignity and fortitude,⁷² eventually winning the grudging respect of many.⁷³ Though she leaves Boston after her lover's death, she ultimately returns, again taking up the scarlet letter

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and becoming a valued counselor to those in distress⁷⁴ - particularly women, who must have heard her protofeminist message⁷⁵ with some small relief. At her death, she is buried near Arthur, where their single tombstone - ""[o]n a field, sable, the letter A, gules'"⁷⁶ - symbolizes their eternal union. Yet despite this saga of ultimate triumph over adversity, throughout the novel Hawthorne emphasizes the defects he sees in her otherwise heroic character.
In describing Hester's reason for staying in Boston with her newborn child - under her sentence, she is free to depart the Puritan colony, without her scarlet letter⁷⁷ - Hawthorne notes that Hester is not being honest with herself.⁷⁸ "Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul ... ."⁷⁹ But mixed with such piety is another emotion, one born of adulterous passion: "There dwelt, there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union, that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution."⁸⁰ Though she tempers this vision of union in the next world by acknowledging the punishment she and Arthur Dimmesdale deserve there, Hester still recognizes that even so tempered, the vision is a devilment that must be rejected.⁸¹ She tries to do so, but in the end, "her motive for continuing [to be] a resident of New England ... was half a truth, and half a self-delusion."⁸²
Hester has deluded herself regarding her continuing love for Arthur - though she now knows, as she did not when they became lovers, that her husband is alive⁸³ - and so allows herself to remain near him, even though the religion to which she still subscribes considers her lust for him the blackest sin. Hawthorne is careful to describe other traits of Hester that show a similar subconscious tolerance of her own sinfulness. Hester

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subsists in Boston through her work as a seamstress, and Hawthorne digresses to note, "She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristic, - a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in the exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing else, in all the possibilities of her life, to exercise itself upon."⁸⁴ Though the reader might dwell on how this "rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristic" would have been expressed in her intercourse with Arthur Dimmesdale, Hawthorne discusses its manifestations only in her handiwork, in the scarlet letter itself⁸⁵ and in her ornamentation of her child:

little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore, before the public eye.⁸⁶

In fact, when Hester takes Pearl to Governor Bellingham's mansion to argue for her continued custody,⁸⁷ she dresses her daughter in "a crimson velvet tunic ... abundantly embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold thread," so that Pearl became "the scarlet letter in another form; the scarlet letter endowed with life!"⁸⁸ This dress is definitely bad argumentative strategy - on seeing Pearl, Bellingham likens her to one of the "children of the Lord of Misrule."⁸⁹ Further, Reverend Wilson asks if she is "one of those naughty elfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left behind us, with other relics of Papistry, in merry old England."⁹⁰ One also wonders whether making a young child the symbol of her mother's sin is good parenting.
Pearl's refusal to repeat the lessons of her religious training when quizzed by Wilson is representative of her overall willfulness: "The child could not be made amenable to rules."⁹¹ How much of this unruliness is attributable to her mother's allowing the child to reflect Hester's "rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristic," in behavior as well as in dress - that is, to the "morbid purpose" Hawthorne elsewhere posits?⁹² As the author

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also notes, Hester eventually abandons the effort to discipline Pearl: "she sought early to impose a tender, but strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her charge. But the task was beyond her skill... . Hester was ultimately compelled to stand aside, and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses."⁹³ By connecting Hester's passion for Dimmesdale with her taste for excessive ornamentation and the indiscipline of her child, the novel implies that in all three areas Hester Prynne has subconsciously let her desires overcome her sense of what is right.
Subconscious tolerance of wrong soon becomes conscious tolerance. As Pearl turns seven, Hawthorne appraises her mother's state of mind in a chapter entitled, "Another View of Hester," which as the title implies, revises the reader's impression of the novel's heroine.⁹⁴ One token of this revision is that Hawthorne acknowledges that those members of the community who admire Hester for her strength are "inclined to show [their] former victim a more benign countenance ... perchance, than she deserved."⁹⁵ Her desert is less because she has become a freethinker:

Standing alone in the world, ... she cast away the fragments of a broken chain. The world's law was no law for her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and wider range than for many centuries before... . Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a freedom of speculation, ... which our forefathers, had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage, by the seashore, thoughts visited her, such as dared enter no other dwelling in New England.⁹⁶

Her thoughts coalesce around a radical feminism: "The whole system of society is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, the very nature of the opposite sex ... is to be essentially modified ... . Finally, ...woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms, until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier change."⁹⁷
Freedom of thought, especially asserting itself against the sexism of the Seventeenth Century, is laudable, yet Hawthorne also presents its dark side. Hester's speculations leave her "wander[ing] without a clew in the dark labyrinth of mind."⁹⁸ She faces "insurmountable precipice[s]" and

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"deep chasm[s]."⁹⁹ "There was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere."¹⁰⁰ She even contemplates murdering her daughter and herself as a better choice than remaining in this world.¹⁰¹
     Hawthorne ends his description of Hester's mental anguish with a surprising one-sentence paragraph: "The scarlet letter had not done its office."¹⁰² This conclusion suggests that individual freedom of thought is fundamentally inconsistent with the attempt at social control of aberrant behavior symbolized by the scarlet letter. The "office" of the scarlet letter is to use social disapproval to help Hester Prynne purge herself of her desire to sin. Instead, the individualism reflected in Hester's rejection and proposed reformation of Puritan society allows her to face disapproval with disdain and gives her the courage to embrace further sin.
     Her first step is to resolve to break her sworn promise to her husband, made seven years before, that she would not reveal his identity as Roger Chillingworth.¹⁰³ Her next is to risk the temptation of meeting Arthur Dimmesdale in the forest, the first private encounter she has sought with him since the birth of Pearl, in order to reveal that his closest friend is also his worst enemy.¹⁰⁴ Her most momentous decision to embrace wrongdoing comes while urging Arthur Dimmesdale to flee Boston, as she promises to accompany him.¹⁰⁵ The novel does not dwell on the necessary consequences of this promise, but it is inevitably a decision for a lifetime of adultery. Only the freedom of thought Hester has developed in her enforced individualism would have allowed such a complete rejection of her chosen religion. This rejection makes Hester's last step, to throw off the scarlet letter and thus deny her society's legal as well as moral authority, seem trivial by comparison.¹⁰⁶
     Despite Hester's heroism, Hawthorne portrays her as a woman willing to embrace what she once recognized as sin. Her ability to do so proceeds directly from a freedom of thought that had become a hallmark of

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American individualism by the time The Scarlet Letter was written.¹⁰⁷ Hawthorne is eager to criticize the severity of the Puritans who would have punished such freethinking, but he also seems interested in criticizing the tendency to such individualism. It leads Hester Prynne into "the dark labyrinth of mind,"¹⁰⁸ and has a similarly deleterious effect on Arthur Dimmesdale, who finds himself unable to leave Boston as he and Hester had planned.¹⁰⁹
Another facet of this criticism is that unbridled individual freedom can produce Americans like the aged inspector whom Hawthorne lampoons in "The Custom House."¹¹⁰ Hester's first subconscious and then conscious succumbing to her passion for Arthur Dimmesdale is a grand and tragic version of the inspector's tawdry and comic pursuit of gluttony (and who knows what other vices). Theirs is the same story, except that Hester struggles for much of the novel to do what her religion tells her is right, while the inspector has spent all of his eighty years satisfying his appetites. And who can blame him, since that is what Nineteenth Century America's exaltation of the individual permits one to do? Juxtaposing Hester Prynne and the inspector, as Hawthorne did by using "The Custom House" to introduce The Scarlet Letter, implicitly exposes the costs of championing individual liberty at the expense of social cohesion.
A similar point can be made by comparing Arthur Dimmesdale to General Miller, the famous soldier with whom Hawthorne serves in the custom house.¹¹¹ Like Miller, Dimmesdale has achieved a position of eminence in his community. Dimmesdale knows his saintly reputation is not deserved, because he is an adulterer, just as General Miller knows - or should know - that his former military achievements do not justify his holding a sinecure well into his dotage. To Dimmesdale's credit, conscience finally overcomes weakness after seven years, and he publicly reveals his sinful past just before his death. But Hawthorne offers no

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evidence that Miller ever considers resigning the position for which he does so little work.
From the novel's opening scene it is clear that Dimmesdale wants to reveal his sin, but he is too weak to do so. As Hester stands upon the scaffold before Boston's citizens, Dimmesdale - asked as her minister to beseech her to name the father of her child - phrases his public request so that Hester will understand that he desires to be outed:

"Hester Prynne," ... "thou ... seest the accountability under which I labor... . I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him - yea, compel him, as it were - to add hypocrisy to sin?"¹¹²

     Hester refuses her lover's injunction (another mark of her heroism¹¹³), leaving Dimmesdale to struggle on his own to overcome hypocrisy.
     The problem is that he likes the life of a well-respected clergyman - "the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had achieved a brilliant popularity in his sacred office"¹¹⁴ - and fears losing his eminence. As he explains in a supposedly impersonal discussion with Roger Chillingworth about those who refrain from disclosing their secrets: ""[G]uilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God's glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service.'"¹¹⁵ This statement reveals both Dimmesdale's admirable commitment to assisting his parishioners and the pride that underlies this commitment; thus like Hester, Arthur is grandly flawed, mixing greatness with sin.
     The sin of pride prevents the revelation of his adultery, from the pulpit where he repeatedly attempts disclosure but always shrinks back at the last moment,¹¹⁶ and from the scaffold, which he mounts one black night and there lets out a shriek of guilt. But the shriek summons no one.¹¹⁷ A few minutes later Hester and Pearl arrive, join Arthur on the scaffold, and share

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with him an "electric" moment of connection as each parent holds one hand of their child. Dimmesdale's urge to publicize the family's relation has flagged, however, and he rejects Pearl's immediate request, ""Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, tomorrow noontide?'"¹¹⁸ Hawthorne explains the minister's change of heart as fear of losing his esteem in the community: "[W]ith the new energy of the moment, all the dread of public exposure, that had so long been the anguish of his life, had returned upon him."¹¹⁹
The harshness Dimmesdale thus shows to his daughter (who repeatedly spurns him until he tells his secret¹²⁰) reappears when Hester discloses to Arthur that his doctor and confidante Roger Chillingworth is in fact her husband. Dimmesdale's initial anger at his lover for not telling him sooner - ""Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this! I cannot forgive thee!'"¹²¹ - is unspeakably cruel to Hester, in light of all that she has suffered while Dimmesdale has had his community's esteem. Too weak to maintain this anger born of pride, however, Arthur soon accedes to Hester's plan that they and Pearl will leave Boston.
But he is too weak even for this plan. Unlike Hester, Reverend Dimmesdale is not a freethinker,¹²² and the contemplation of renewing adultery with Hester fills him with a license he finds totally unacceptable. In a chapter entitled "The Minister in a Maze," Hawthorne depicts Dimmesdale's state of mind on returning from his talk with Hester: He is tempted first to utter blasphemy to one of his church's deacons, next to argue against human immortality with his congregation's oldest female member, then with a young maiden to "drop into her tender bosom a germ of evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon," and finally to teach "some very wicked words" to a few Puritan children and to exchange a few oaths with a drunk sailor.¹²³ Aghast at the actions he has contemplated and aware that his agreement with Hester gave rise to these temptations,¹²⁴ Dimmesdale apparently resolves on a different course, finally to reveal his connection to Hester and Pearl on the day he is slated to deliver the

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Election Sermon, the center of the Puritans' annual civic festival.¹²⁵
Perhaps Arthur also senses that his death is near. Never very healthy,¹²⁶ seven years of guilt have taken their toll upon him, as have the private flagellations he has inflicted on himself¹²⁷ and whatever "medicines" Dr. Chillingworth has prescribed for him.¹²⁸ Immediately after the exertion of delivering the Election Sermon, mounting the scaffold with Hester and Pearl before the assembled multitude, and there unequivocally declaring his sin, he succumbs, in Hester's arms.¹²⁹
Yet even in death there is a touch of pride, as he speaks of "d[ying] this death of triumphant ignominy before the people!"¹³⁰ The "triumph[]" Dimmesdale feels in his shameful end shows that he still cares for his standing among his "people," that he is not free of the sin of pride. Hawthorne underscores this weakness in Arthur's character in criticizing his attitude toward the Election Sermon itself. The minister was happy that his departure from Boston with Hester and Pearl (by boat) was not scheduled until the day after the sermon's delivery: ""At least, they shall say of me,' thought this exemplary man, "that I leave no public duty unperformed, nor ill performed!'"¹³¹ Hawthorne's negative evaluation of this attitude follows immediately:

Sad, indeed, that an introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister's should be so miserably deceived! We have had ... worse things to tell of him; but none ... so pitiably weak; no evidence ... of a subtle disease, that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his character. No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.¹³²

Hypocrisy has deluded Dimmesdale into pride. At his death his revelation may have cured the hypocrisy, but his pride remains.
Hawthorne's critique of Dimmesdale also applies to General Miller. From the custom house, Miller too wears two faces: to the public he is a military hero, while to himself he draws a federal salary in exchange for little effort at all. Two centuries after Dimmesdale, Miller is unable to

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rectify his hypocrisy as the minister did. One reason for this inability could be an intellectual climate that champions individual achievement, allowing the achiever to take pride in his accomplishments - despite inevitable knowledge of how limited one's achievements really are and how tainted they are by one's failures. In the midst of the triumph of American individualism, is it any wonder that General Miller cannot muster the courage to leave the custom house and thus to follow the moral Hawthorne draws from Dimmesdale's story, to ""Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!'"¹³³
     Of all the denizens of the custom house, none is perhaps more reflective of American individualism than the "man of business" Hawthorne briefly describes. He has shorn himself from any ordinary sense of community, to adopt the custom house itself as his new community, accepting its mores as his own.¹³⁴ Yet the man of business is heedless of the dangers in this self-transformation, which contrasts sharply with the experience of Doctor Roger Chillingworth, who ultimately learns all too well the dangers of assuming a role - in his case, that of the wronged spouse. In treating the man who committed adultery with his wife, the physician lets his anger get the better of him.
     After his marriage, and for a long while before, the husband of Hester Prynne was "a man of thought, - the bookworm of great libraries," with an interest in alchemy.¹³⁵ In Boston under the name of Roger Chillingworth - assumed because he does not want to be known as a cuckolded husband - he combines his learning in alchemy with knowledge acquired while a hostage of the Indians (the reason for his two-year delay in joining his wife) to become, in his words, ""a better physician ... than many that claim the medical degree.'"¹³⁶ Because doctors are rare in Boston, Chillingworth is inevitably drawn to the sickly Arthur Dimmesdale and becomes his "medical adviser" and ultimately his housemate.¹³⁷
     What begins as a friendship between doctor and patient soon takes on a sinister aspect because of Chillingworth's covert goal: to identify and

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punish the man who impregnated his wife. Roger announces this goal to Hester when they meet privately soon after her public shaming upon the scaffold. In this conversation Chillingworth shows unexpected magnanimity to his wife, acknowledging that he should not have married a woman so much younger than he, especially one who professed no love for him: ""Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, ... I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced ... .'"¹³⁸ Magnanimity disappears though, when Chillingworth's mind turns to the adulterer: ""But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us both! ... I shall seek this man ... . Sooner or later, he must needs be mine!'"¹³⁹
Like Hester and Arthur, Roger Chillingworth thus shows a combination of qualities, most of them good but one quite bad. In addition to learning and the desire to put that learning to use in helping others, there is forgiveness for his wife (and for her child, both of whom he medicates¹⁴⁰). But there is also overweening anger directed at his wife's lover. As the realization grows that Chillingworth's patient Arthur Dimmesdale is also the man the doctor hates, his anger soon begins to gain the upper hand. His aspect changes, bringing "something ugly and evil in his face,"¹⁴¹ as does his personality. Though previously "a pure and upright man," as Chillingworth seeks to ferret out Dimmesdale's guilt, "a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity seized the old man within its gripe, and never set him free again, until he had done all its bidding."¹⁴² He begins to torture Dimmesdale, with a purportedly abstract conversation about men who hide their guilt, with another about Hester and Pearl, and with a mild complaint that no physician can well treat a patient who keeps secrets from his doctor.¹⁴³ Chillingworth's behavior thus well suits the name Hawthorne gives him in two chapter titles: "The Leech."
Worse sobriquets become appropriate as Chillingworth sinks deeper into the angry role he has selected for himself. When Hester approaches him to say that she must reveal his identity to Dimmesdale, she discerns "a glare of red light" in his eyes, upon which Hawthorne comments, "In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was striking evidence of man's faculty for

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transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office."¹⁴⁴ And Chillingworth sums himself up as he asks Hester:

"Dost thou remember me? Was I not ... a man thoughtful for others, craving little for himself, - kind, true, just, and of constant, if not warm affections? Was I not all this?

"All this, and more," said Hester.

"And what am I now?" demanded he, looking into her face, and permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his features. "I have already told thee what I am! A fiend!"¹⁴⁵

     Leech, devil, fiend - Chillingworth has let his anger completely overcome his humanity. So he continues to pursue Dimmesdale for his own gratification, even booking passage on the ship in which Arthur, Hester, and Pearl plan to leave Boston, and then entreating Dimmesdale not to confess as he stands upon the scaffold after the Election Sermon.¹⁴⁶
     Only Arthur's public admission of guilt can end Chillingworth's pursuit. As Dimmesdale dies, Chillingworth has "a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed."¹⁴⁷ This appearance is correct, for Chillingworth - deprived of his role and thus of any reason for living - dies within a year. But not before atoning in one small way: He makes Pearl the beneficiary of his will, and so she becomes "the richest heiress of her day, in the New World," which enables both Hester and Pearl to leave Boston.¹⁴⁸
     Like his self-condemnation as a fiend, Chillingworth's bequest suggests insight into his own failings. When he took up a new identity, he also chose a new definition of himself, one that committed him to the sin of anger, and it destroyed him. The clockwork man of business has not committed himself to an angry role, but his is a morally dangerous one nonetheless. He has accepted the ethics of the custom house, which Hawthorne's experience showed to be a locus for decay and corruption.¹⁴⁹ And one day the man of business may find himself similarly destroyed by the role he has chosen (through scandal or worse). But he will be less prepared to deal with the crisis than even Chillingworth was, for the doctor

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had a strong sense of the wrongfulness of his conduct; in mid-Nineteenth Century America, with its burgeoning ethic of individual liberty, there is little to forewarn the man of business that moral catastrophe may soon strike.
Hester's lust, Arthur's pride, Roger's anger - Puritan Boston recognized each of these as sins, as each of the sinners eventually did. Their grand moral struggles make The Scarlet Letter classic. But the analogues to these sins that Hawthorne depicts in the gluttonous inspector, the decrepit general, and the clockwork man of business lack grandeur, because these men do not struggle against their deficiencies. Nineteenth Century America, with its prevailing morality of l'aissez faire individualism, could not even denominate appetite or freeloading or soullessness as sins. So though much had been gained between 1650 and 1850, according to Hawthorne, much had been lost as well.

III

And where are we today? In contemporary America the celebration of individual liberty has all but vanquished the asserted desirability of social control.¹⁵⁰ Though numerous examples from contemporary culture spring to mind - from the raunchiness of "shock jock" radio and the afternoon talk shows to the excesses of gangsta rap and performance art¹⁵¹ - a more apt illustration of how much further we have traveled along the path Hawthorne charted from 1650 to 1850 is the 1995 film version of The Scarlet Letter, which its creators have turned into a rant against all social attempts to thwart human desires.
The creative personnel responsible for the most recent film version of The Scarlet Letter hold an impressive collective resume. The producer-director, Roland Joffe, directed the widely acclaimed movies The Killing Fields and The Mission, and the film's writer, Douglas Day Stewart, also wrote the screenplay for An Officer and a Gentleman. Whatever one thinks of the acting ability of Demi Moore (the film's Hester), her costars - Gary Oldman (Dimmesdale) and Robert Duvall (Chillingworth) - possess enviable reputations as outstanding actors, as do such members of the

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supporting cast as Roy Dotrice, Edward Hardwicke, Joan Plowright, and Robert Prosky.
Despite all this talent, the film is an atrocity.¹⁵² Perhaps the opening credits, which indicate that the movie is "freely adapted" from Hawthorne's novel, should forewarn the viewer that he or she will experience vignettes the author never imagined: escalating interactions with hostile Indians, low political intrigue among the leaders of the colony, witchcraft trials (complete with a vaguely kinky interrogation scene involving those same leaders), and nude scenes for each of the film's major stars (even Robert Duvall!). There are also new characters - Mituba, a mute female slave who works for Hester, and a randy college dropout named Brewster Stonehall, both of whom Chillingworth kills gruesomely - but as this last fact suggests, it is the distortion of the novel's three main characters that makes the movie such a travesty.
Hester is portrayed as a freethinker from the moment she sets foot in Boston. She scandalizes the town with her forward behavior, choosing to live on her own on the outskirts of town as she waits for her husband's arrival, forcing her way into an auction of indentured servants that is otherwise all-male, spying on Dimmesdale as he swims naked, and then racing horses through the woods with him. Her language is equally rebellious: In an early conversation, Dimmesdale remarks, "Your tongue knows no rules, Mistress Prynne," to which Hester replies, "And if it did, Reverend, what purpose would it serve?"¹⁵³ These are hardly the words of a devout Puritan.
The attitude of the movie's Hester toward her own sexuality also mocks her supposed Puritanism. After realizing her passion for Arthur, she admires her nakedness in a mirror, and when he declares his similar feelings but asks, "Oh, God, have we lost our way?," her answer is a quick "No." After Dimmesdale insists that they avoid one another lest they fall into sin, she agrees, but later acknowledges that she had "prayed ... to be set free" from her husband so she could be with Arthur. So when Dimmesdale comes to her with news that her husband has been killed by the Indians, she gives thanks - and then quickly leads Arthur to her barn where they joyously fuck in a mound of harvested grain.¹⁵⁴

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     The crucial conflict of the novel's Hester, between her passion and her religious morality,¹⁵⁵ is thus totally forgone by the film's Hester, who knows no controls but her own sense of right and wrong. At what looks suspiciously like a consciousness-raising session for some of the women of Boston, Hester announces religious ideas that she herself labels as "blasphemous." Shortly thereafter, when her pregnancy becomes known, she announces to the investigating Puritan leaders, "I fear not your punishment. I love and honor the man who has fathered this child ... . He is my true husband for life." And in a private conversation with Dimmesdale, she asks him incredulously, "Do you believe we have sinned?"
     So in the movie Hester enters her period of punishment with full-blown ideas that in the novel she only dimly perceives after years of penance. This change allows her first to question the society that punishes her - "I believe I have sinned in your eyes, but who's to know if God shares your views?" - and then to castigate it: She says of the Puritan leaders, "They are the pollution; they are the lie," and to them, "Satan is at work among you men." That Hester is here delivering the filmmakers' theme, one of moral agnosticism and l'aissez faire tolerance, is underscored by the movie's last line, a voiceover from a grown-up Pearl (who serves as the film's narrator), "Who is to say what is a sin in God's eyes?"
     For myself, I find nothing wrong with either moral agnosticism or l'aissez faire tolerance. But apotheosizing these values does a great disservice to Hawthorne's novel, which when read in light of its introduction, establishes a dramatic tension between individual liberty and social morality and recognizes the costs if either contending force gains too much sway over the other. Ironically, this disservice is itself one of those costs, for individualism has gained so much force in American society that any other message in a contemporary movie might prove too unpalatable to the ticket-buying public.
     Just as the film gets Hester Prynne wrong, so too does it misrepresent Arthur Dimmesdale. The movie's Arthur is far too robust; for example, once the pregnant Hester is imprisoned, he daily tries to force his way physically into her presence, but is pushed away by guards. In the novel Arthur's physical weakness is a sign of his moral weakness, but in the movie he has neither. He keeps Hester's secret not from fear of exposing

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his own sin, but apparently because she demands it, as she asserts "my right to stand up to this hypocrisy." So rather than being portrayed as a hypocrite himself, the movie's Arthur appears as a sensitive male willing to abide by his partner's choices.
     This transformation of Arthur's personality requires major surgery to the plot. Instead of Hester's waiting seven years to tell Dimmesdale that Chillingworth is her husband, she does so immediately, telling her lover to flee Boston without her, in order to avoid being hanged if Chillingworth learns that Arthur is Pearl's father. Unable to tear himself away from Hester, Arthur bravely refuses to go; however, as the witchcraft trials begin to implicate Hester, he pleads with her to leave with him, but Hester refuses, saying, "I cannot run." She must stand by the other members of her sisterhood being tried as witches. As Hester and the other accused witches are about to be hanged, Arthur rushes upon the scaffold, unrepentantly declares that he is Hester's husband (echoing her previous line with his own, "Who are we to condemn on God's behalf?"), and sticks his head in the noose that was meant for Hester. As he is about to be hanged, the Indians attack.
     This confusing muddle results from trying to present Dimmesdale as a hero, rather than as the weak man he is. As such, it loses all the power of Hawthorne's depiction of a hypocrite caught between appreciation of his own eminence and his understanding of how little he deserves it.¹⁵⁶ Again, one supposes that this choice was made because contemporary audiences, with little comprehension either of the inherent value of social eminence or of the toll of hypocrisy on the individual psyche, could never appreciate the character Hawthorne portrayed as torn by the demands of individual and society. So at the end of the movie, after surviving the Indian attack, Arthur Dimmesdale - who to Hawthorne could not survive without the moral structure that Puritanism provided¹⁵⁷ - jumps on the wagon Hester and Pearl are using to leave Boston, gives Hester a passionate public kiss, and rides off with her and their child to live together in "the Carolinas."
     If contemporary moviegoers are deemed incapable of understanding the flaws Hawthorne gave to Hester and Arthur, they would seem to be even more at a loss in trying to understand Roger Chillingworth, whose pursuit of vengeance renders him a sorrowful fiend.¹⁵⁸ The viewer either would not understand Roger's anger or would not understand why his anger brought self-condemnation, with both views springing from rejection

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of the social morality that condemns infidelity on the one hand and private vengeance on the other. The movie's solution to this dilemma is to turn Chillingworth into a psychopathic killer - which contemporary audiences can understand all too easily.
     Chillingworth's history is changed from the novel to the movie. He is suspected (by Pearl as narrator) of being manipulative, and one young man in Boston who lusts after Hester (Brewster Stonehall) passes along the rumor that Hester's father married her off to Chillingworth in exchange for Chillingworth's paying off the father's debts. These negative qualities are magnified by Chillingworth's time in Indian captivity, during which he is brutalized in numerous ways. His resulting "unstable nature" - he is shown passing out at the end of an Indian ritual dance, with a bloody animal carcass over his head - becomes "terrifying even to the Indians," according to Pearl's narration, who decide to send him back to the white men.
     Under the assumed name of Chillingworth, Roger masks his mental imbalance from the leaders of the colony, but in private physically humiliates Hester and her slave Mituba. While trying to learn the identity of Hester's lover, Chillingworth gains influence among the Puritan leaders and uses it to foment the panic that leads to the witchcraft trials. At this point, the narrator Pearl notes that Chillingworth's "lust for revenge began to feed on itself." He lures Mituba to a private meeting, where he kills her, subsequently offering her disfigured body as evidence of a witch's crime. In the same trial he publicly labels Pearl a demon child because of a red birthmark on her belly. Finally convinced that Dimmesdale is Pearl's father, Chillingworth dons Indian garb, lies in wait at night on the road to Hester's house, ambushes a man riding back to town from the house, and scalps him while uttering Indian war whoops.
     Of course, it is the wrong man. The victim is Brewster Stonehall, who had just tried to rape Hester but was foiled when she stuck a lit candle in his eye. When Chillingworth learns of his error the next day, he conveniently hangs himself, just before Dimmesdale breaks his door down to confront him. The public furor over the scalping of Stonehall rather implausibly leads to a lynching party for all the alleged witches, which provides the setting for Dimmesdale's public declaration and the subsequent Indian attack.
     This ludicrous denouement, showing all three of the novel's protagonists far removed from the characters Hawthorne gave them, could well stand as an emblem for the entire film. The movie radically distorts the novel, for a reason that is illuminating. The novel's careful portrayal of the conflict between individual liberty and social morality simply would not play well at the turn of the Twenty-First Century, for the conflict is all

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but over, with individualism triumphant. There is much to be praised in this triumph, but there is much to bemoan as well. Hawthorne saw the latter consequence and used the introduction to his novel to underscore it. Thus "The Custom House" deepens our understanding of The Scarlet Letter and its relevance to what should be a continuing effort to balance the desirability of individual liberty against the need for social control.

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ENDNOTES

* Professor, Stetson University College of Law.

** A preliminary version of this essay was presented at the Law, Culture and Humanities Conference in Austin, Texas, on March 9, 2001. The author thanks the participants in his panel, particularly its chair Keith Bybee, for their thoughtful comments. Hollis Robbins, who presented a paper on "The Custom House" at the March 2000 Law, Culture and Humanities Conference in Washington, D.C., provided an extremely helpful bibliographical tip. Thanks also go to my Stetson colleagues Ann Piccard and Greg McCann for reviewing a draft. Remaining errors are of course solely the responsibility of the author. This essay was supported by a summer research grant from Stetson University College of Law.

1. See NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, THE SCARLET LETTER 1-46 (Washington Square Press ed., 1994) (1850).

2. See id. at 27-34.

3. See id. at 34-46.

4. See generally Paul John Eakin, Hawthorne's Imagination and the Structure of "The Custom-House," 43 AM. LIT. 346, 355-58 (1971); Dan McCall, The Design of Hawthorne's "Custom-House," 21 NINETEENTH CENTURY FICTION 349 (1967).

5. See HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 14-25. See infra text accompanying notes 20-38.

6. See HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at xxxiii-xxxiv.

7. See, e.g., id. at 101-20 (the leaders of the Puritan community consider removing Pearl from her mother's care, for the good of both, but demur). See infra text accompanying notes 48-68.

8. See infra text accompanying notes 110-11, 133, 149.

9. THE SCARLET LETTER (Cinergi Pictures Entertainment, Inc. 1995).

10. HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 1-2; see also id. at 27-33; see supra text accompanying note 2. The introduction's first two paragraphs indirectly warn the reader not to trust Hawthorne, by repeatedly drawing attention to himself as author and to the propensity of all authors, even autobiographers, to dissemble, to "still keep the inmost Me behind its veil." HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 2. Curiously, these pages also refer to The Scarlet Letter as if it were only one of several works included in the volume ("the most prolix among the tales that make up my volume") Id. at 2. A subsequent footnote indicates that this was Hawthorne's original plan, one "it has been thought advisable to defer." Id. at 44 n.1. If so, why not edit the introduction to reflect the change of plan? Hawthorne's failure to do so suggests he wanted the reader to be conscious of his role as author and thus to question his assertions - including his purported reasons for describing his coworkers at the custom house.

11. Id. at 2.

12. Id.

13. Id. at 3-5. The introduction subsequently applies this overall characterization to "this old town of Salem" and to the history of Hawthorne's family there, with its "deep and aged roots" and "dim and dusky grandeur." Id. at 5-6. This leads to Hawthorne's famous invocation of his Puritan forebears, whose excesses cause him "shame," and led to his changing the spelling of his family name. Id. at 6-8; see generally Donald D. Kummings, Hawthorne's "The Custom House" and the Conditions of Fiction in America, CEA CRITIC, Fall 1971, at 15, 16. Even in this family context, Hawthorne emphasizes the deleterious effects of the passage of time, with his family declining from "two earnest and energetic men," through generations of the less illustrious but still industrious, to "an idler like myself." HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 8-10.

14. HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 5.

15. Id. at 6.

16. Id. at 5; see also id. at 13, 14. See McCall, supra note 4, at 351, for a discussion of the connection between "dilapidated" Salem and the "aged retainers in the Custom-House."

17. HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 11.

Two or three of their number, as I was assured, being gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bedridden, never dreamed of making their appearance at the Custom House during a large part of the year; but, after a torpid winter, would creep out into the warm sunshine of May or June, go lazily about what they termed duty, and, at their own leisure and convenience, betake themselves to bed again.

Id.

18. Id. at 13.

19. Id. at 12, 13. Despite his suspicions, Hawthorne claims to have discharged only a few of the worst of these officers, though he could easily have terminated them all, for their Whig affiliation, if nothing else. See id. at 11-14. He hesitated primarily because he "soon grew to like them all." Id. at 14. In this respect Hawthorne showed as little diligence in doing his job as his underlings did in doing theirs.

20. Id. at 15.

21. Id. at 15, 16. The only one of the inspector's appetites that Hawthorne dares to discuss in detail is his "gourmandism." Id. at 17. The inspector "devotes all his energies and ingenuities to subserve the delight and profit of his maw"; when he is not eating, he loves to invoke "the ghosts of bygone meals," by reminiscing "over dinners, every guest at which, except himself, had long been food for worms"; and "the chief tragic event of the old man's life" was not outliving his three wives and most of his twenty children, but a "mishap with a certain goose," which proved too tough to be eaten. Id. at 17, 18; see id. at 16.

22. Id. at 16.

23. Id. at 18. The paragraph containing this clause begins "But it is time to quit this sketch; on which, however, I should be glad to dwell at considerably more length ... ." Id.

24. Id. at 16. "He had no soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as I have already said, but instincts." Id. at 17.

25. Id. at 11.

26. Id. at 20-23.

27. Id. at 19, 22.

28. Id. at 22; see id. at 20-22.

29. For different readings of Hawthorne's treatment of General Miller;, see James M. Cox, The Scarlet Letter: Through the Old Manse and the Custom House, 51 VA. Q. REV. 432, 442-43 (1975); Eakin, supra note 4, at 351-52.

30. See HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 23-24.

31. Id. at 23.

32. Id.

33. Id. at 23-24.

34. Id. at 24.

35. Id.

36. Id.

37. See supra text accompanying note 24.

38. Hawthorne's self-depiction might add a fourth portrait to this collection. He is too weak to discharge those who are shortchanging their governmental employer, and his work prevents him from the "depth of feeling" necessary to write. See supra text accompanying note 3. See supra note 19 and accompanying text; see generally Frank MacShane, The House of the Dead: Hawthorne's Custom House and The Scarlet Letter, 33 N. ENG. Q. 93 (1962).

39. See HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 62, 63.

40. A female onlooker at Hester's public shaming argues, ""This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law for it? Truly, there is, both in Scripture and the statute-book... .'" Id. at 52; see generally Laura Hanft Korobkin, The Scarlet Letter of the Law: Hawthorne and Criminal Justice, 30 NOVEL 193, 196-99 (1997). Another suggests "a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead." HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 51.

41. See HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 54-55. The scaffold, standing "nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's earliest church," also accommodates a pillory, but Hester is spared this form of public shaming. See id. at 55-56.

42. See id. at 78-79. Hester has also been imprisoned for at least three months, though neither she nor her fellow citizens seem to reckon this as part of her punishment. See id. at 52.

43. Id. at 70.

44. Id. at 84-85.

45. Hester's explanation of her decision to remain in Boston - which she could have left, leaving the scarlet letter behind - shows the community's importance to her: "Here ... had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment ... ." Id. at 80. See also infra text accompanying notes 77-85.

46. Id. at 56-57. In the same chapter, Hawthorne draws another distinction between 1650 and 1850, finding that "morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre" in the women of the earlier period, qualities the author appears to appreciate. See id. at 50-51.

47. Id. at 57.

48. Id. at 101. See id. at 111 (regarding Pearl's age, and noting that Roger Chillingworth, who appeared in Boston on the day Hester stood upon the scaffold, has been in Boston "for two or three years past").

49. Id. at 101. The child's impetuous behavior causes even her mother to "question[] ... whether Pearl were a human child." Id. at 92.

50. Id. at 101-02.

51. Id. at 102. Hawthorne cites as evidence of this simplicity the fact that "a dispute concerning the right of property in a pig" consumed considerable legislative time during this period and altered legislative procedure. Id. See generally Korobkin, supra note 40, at 206-07.

52. HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 110-12.

53. Id. at 110-11.

54. Id. at 110-20, 180, 269.

55. Id. at 112.

56. Id. at 112-20.

57. Id. at 113.

58. Id. at 113, 115.

59. Id. at 115.

60. Id. at 116.

61. See infra text accompanying notes 111-33.

62. HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 116.

63. Id.

64. Id. at 116-17.

65. Id.

66. Id. at 117.

67. Id. at 117-18.

68. Id. at 118.

69. See generally Mark Van Doren, The Scarlet Letter, in NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, THE SCARLET LETTER 189 (Courage Books 1991) (citing MARK VAN DOREN, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1949)).

70. See supra text accompanying notes 40-42.

71. See supra text accompanying note 44. See also HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 86. "From first to last ... Hester Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture." Id.

72. HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 166. "She never battled with the public, but submitted, uncomplainingly, to its worst usage; she made no claim upon it, in requital for what she had suffered; she did not weigh upon its sympathies." Id.

73. Id. at 167. "Such helpfulness was found in her, - so much power to do, and power to sympathize, - that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength." Id.

74. Id. at 273-76.

75. Id. at 275. "She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness." Id.

76. Id. at 276.

77. Id. at 79.

78. Id. at 80.

79. Id.

80. Id.

81. Id.

82. Id.

83. Id. at 74-75.

84. Id. at 84.

85. Id. at 53. See infra note 88.

86. HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 90. See also id. at 83 ("The child's attire ... was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic ingenuity ... .").

87. See supra text accompanying notes 48-68.

88. HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 103; cf. id. at 53 (describing the scarlet letter, which also has "fantastic flourishes of gold thread").

89. Id.

90. Id. at 111-12.

91. Id. at 91.

92. See supra text accompanying note 86.

93. HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 92.

94. Id. at 165.

95. Id. at 168. See supra text accompanying note 73.

96. HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 170-71.

97. Id. at 172.

98. Id.

99. Id.

100. Id.

101. Id.

102. Id.

103. See id. at 76-77. Hester informs Chillingworth of her decision to speak to Arthur Dimmesdale, to which the doctor does not object, but she seems determined to violate her oath of secrecy whether Chillingworth agrees or not: ""I must reveal the secret,' answered Hester, firmly." Id. at 180-82.

104. See id. at 199-200.

105. Id. at 209.

106. Id. at 213. Hester puts it back on first to placate Pearl, who will not approach her mother and the minister in the forest until Hester reassumes the punishing adornment, and then while she arranges for their departure from Boston. See id. at 218-23.

107. See LAWRENCE M. FRIEDMAN, THE REPUBLIC OF CHOICE: LAW, AUTHORITY, AND CULTURE 2-3, 142-43 (1990) [hereinafter FRIEDMAN, REPUBLIC] (contrasting premodern, nineteenth century, and twentieth century attitudes toward individualism); see also LAWRENCE M. FRIEDMAN, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY 12-14, 23-24, 54-55, 127-32 (1993) [hereinafter FRIEDMAN, CRIME] (same). As noted by Robert Bellah and his colleagues in their highly influential work Habits of the Heart, Tocqueville in Democracy in America, written fifteen years before The Scarlet Letter, celebrated the set of American habits he labeled "individualism." ROBERT N. BELLAH ET AL., HABITS OF THE HEART 147 (1985). Bellah and his colleagues contrasted this attitude with the mindset of the Puritans. See id. at 28-30.

108. HAWTHORNE supra note 1, at 172.

109. See infra text accompanying notes 122-33..

110. See supra text accompanying notes 20-24.

111. See supra text accompanying notes 25-29.

112. HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 67.

113. Dimmesdale sighs, ""Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman's heart!'" Id. at 69.

114. Id. at 146. See also id. at 147-48.

115. Id. at 136-37.

116. See id. at 148-49.

117. See id. at 152-54.

118. Id. at 158.

119. Id.

120. See id. at 162, 223-24, 268-69.

121. Id. at 204.

122. "In no state of society would he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it would always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron framework." Id. at 126-27.

123. See id. at 228-32.

124. "Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself, with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system." Id. at 233.

125. See id. at 238, 248-50.

126. See id. at 66-67, 116, 123-24.

127. See id. at 149-50, 270.

128. See id. at 124, 135, 173-74, 183-84 (Chillingworth's use of plants as the sources of medicine).

129. See id. at 260-69.

130. Id. at 269.

131. Id. at 226.

132. Id. at 226-27.

133. Id. at 272. On the connection between General Miller and Dimmesdale, Dan McCall notes that Hawthorne uses similar language to describe their ability to seem "remote" even though nearby. See McCall, supra note 4, at 351 n.6; compare HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 22 (the general by the hearth; see supra text accompanying note 29) with id. at 249 (Hester thinking of Arthur as he passes her in the Election Day procession).

134. See supra text accompanying notes 30-37.

135. HAWTHORNE, supra note 1, at 74. See id. at 71, 179-80; see also id. at 62 (describing Prynne as ""a learned man'").

136. Id. at 71. See id. at 61-62, 76.

137. Id. at 126. See id. at 122, 128-30.

138. Id. at 74-75.

139. Id.

140. See id. at 71-73.

141. Id. at 131.

142. Id. at 133.

143. See id. at 135-41; see also id. at 145-46 ("The victim was forever on the rack.").

144. Id. at 176, 177.

145. Id. at 180. See id. at 178-79.

146. See id. at 247, 265.

147. Id. at 268.

148. See id. at 272-73. Hester returns, apparently after Pearl's marriage, to be buried near Arthur. See id. at 273-76.

149. See supra text accompanying notes 12-19.

150. See FRIEDMAN, CRIME, supra note 107, at 435-48, 453-56, 464-65; FRIEDMAN, REPUBLIC, supra note 107, at 133-37, 141-45. See generally MARY ANN GLENDON, RIGHTS TALK (1991) (critiquing America's "hyperindividualism").

151. Cf. Amy Lewis Nutt, Ribald New World: These Days It's OK to Behave Badly, SARASOTA HERALD TRIB., Aug. 16, 2001, at 4E, 5E ("Hawthorne would have a hard time selling 'The Scarlet Letter' today. Chances are, had Hester Prynne actually existed, the fictional adulterer would be hawking "No Excuses' jeans and raking in the wages of her sins.").

152. See JAMIE BARLOWE, THE SCARLET MOB OF SCRIBBLERS 9, 80-120 (2000) (the only positive evaluation I could find of the movie; "This film ... re-envisions Prynne rather than sexualizing her ... ."). Barlowe acknowledges the overwhelmingly negative critical reaction to the film. See generally id.

153. This and all subsequent quotations from the film were transcribed by the author during multiple viewings of its videotape version.

154. I regret the word choice, but no other verb does justice to the action depicted. While I have often tried to imagine how Hawthorne would have described Hester and Arthur's sexual encounter, I doubt he would have included (as the movie does) Hester's undressing Arthur and groping his groin.

155. See supra text accompanying notes 77-109.

156. See supra text accompanying notes 111-32.

157. See supra note 122 and accompanying text.

158. See supra text accompanying notes 135-48.

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