In 1850 Nathaniel
Hawthorne published an American romance known as “The Scarlet
Letter”. This piece of Hawthorne''''s work is generally considered
to be his magnum opus. Set in Puritanical Boston in the seventeenth
century, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after
committing adultery, refuses to name the father, and struggles to
create a new life of
repentance and dignity. Throughout the novel,
Hawthorne explores the issues of grace, legalism, sin, and guilt.
The Scarlet
Letter is framed by a preface (called "The Custom-House") in which
the narrator, a surveyor in the Custom House, claims to have found
documents and papers that substantiate the evidence concerning Prynne
and her situation. The narrator says that when he touched the letter
it gave off a "burning heat...as if the letter were not of red
cloth, but red hot iron." Among these documents, the narrator
claims to have found the death certificate of Anne Hutchinson,
previously believed to have been destroyed by the Puritan church
leaders as they tried to cover up her brutal murder two years
earlier. The manuscript, the work of a past surveyor, Jonathan Pue,
detailed the events of the trials of Hutchinson''''s alleged murderers.
When the narrator lost his post, he decided to write a fictional
account of the events recorded in the manuscript. The Scarlet Letter
is the final product.
Historically,
Nathaniel Hawthorne worked in the Custom House in Salem,
Massachusetts for several years, eventually losing his job as a
result of an administration change. To the best of my knowledge there
is no factual basis for the documents described in the book, however,
and the preface is properly read as a literary device. In fact, these
kinds of introductions, which justify the fantastic content to come,
were a typical device in the romance stories of day.
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