A Comparison Of The Custom House In The Scarlet Letter By Hester Prynne

Throughout the novel, Hester Prynne has many aspects of a hero. Although Hester had committed a sin that everyone shamed her for, she still prioritized and cared deeply for Pearl and made sure that she would be raised well, “I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little Pearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man’s book too, and that with mine own blood!” (110). In addition, after a public shaming that miserable, it would be expected of Hester to move far away from the town and start a new life, however she decided to stay and live with the scarlet letter on her breast that was required to be worn at all times. Towards the end of the book, the people of the town started to give the scarlet letter a new meaning because Hester had …show more content…
A primary reason The Custom House is important is because it provides information on how the narrator believes how this story was created, “Prying further into the manuscript, I found the record of other doings and sufferings of this singular woman, for most of which the reader is referred to the story entitled The Scarlet Letter; and it should be borne carefully in mind, that the main facts of that story are authorized and authenticated by the document of Mr. Surveyor Pue.” (33). In addition, the narrator mentions stumbling across a capital letter “A”, “I happened to place it upon my breast. It seemed to me then that I experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat; and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron.”(32), the narrator may be foreshadowing that the scarlet letter A could mean something terrible, because according to him, it felt like a burning iron against his breast. Overall, the Custom House is an important part of the story because it gives the reader more details about the book and the