The Scarlet Letterby Nathaniel Hawthorne “The Custom House” was added to the novel after it was completed in order to expand the length and make it more appropriate for nineteenth-century publication standards. Sections from “The Custom House,” Hawthorne’s account of the artist’s need for a special atmosphere for writing a romance and his account of finding the scarlet letter, can be read and discussed as an introduction to the narrative technique and the thematic purpose of the novel. Hawthorne’s explanation of his symbolic method—the meeting of the Actual and the Imaginary—should be examined and discussed.
