Sexuality and Free Will in “The Custom House” and The Scarlet Letter
Hawthorne provides the reader with opposing views of the men in the Custom House– the figures of their youth, “ancient sea captains… standing sturdily against life’s tempestuous blast” (10) and their present aged state, “gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bedridden” (10). The image of “ancient sea captains” recalls the image of the sailors in the marketplace celebrating the election of the new governor toward the end of the novel, virile men “with immensity of beard… belts clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife… or sword… [with gleaming] eyes [that] had a kind of animal ferocity” (206). The gouty and rheumatic state of the ancient sea captains is not the natural result of aging, however, as Hawthorne depicts aged figures such as the seventy-year-old inspector “with his florid cheek… [and] brisk and vigorous step” (13). Further, the old inspector is animalistic, like the young sailors, “so earthly and sensuous… with no higher moral responsibilities than the beasts of the field” (15). Thus, the decrepit state of the old Custom House officials results instead from the burden of moral responsibility. Further, the sailors in the marketplace are free of the confines of man’s law, “[having] been guilty… of depredations of the Spanish commerce such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice, [but] the sea… swelled and foamed, very much at its own will… with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law” (212). Hawthorne has at play here ideas of wildness and virile sexuality tied in with moral and legal codes.
Comparing Hawthorne’s depiction of Hester Prynne to the young sailors and the old officials somewhat untangles the interplay of sexuality and morality in The Scarlet Letter. Hester, as the creator of the letter on her chest, is sometimes identified with it, as it is “modeled after her own fancy, [seeming] to express the attitude of her spirit [and] the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity” (46). She designs it with “so much fertility” and wears it upon her bosom (46). Hester’s physical appearance parallels the young sailors and the old inspector. Her hair “is dark and abundant” (46, 177) like the sailor’s beards and her complexion is marked by “richness” (46) that recalls the inspector’s “florid cheek.” As the young sailors are marked by their long swords, Hester is frequently referred to in terms of her “bosom” throughout the novel, which “burns with the heat of [the] red hot” (23) scarlet letter.
Hester and the sailor’s sexuality ties in with their free will and their positions within and outside of the patriarchal structure. Hester emerges from the jail “repel[ling]” the town beadle, “with a sword by his side and a staff in his hand… by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and step[s] into the open air, as if by her own free will” (46). While the sailors and the beadle are both identified with their swords, they differ in their positions in relation to the political structure of the colony. The sailors are lively and their belts are plated with gold, whereas the beadle is “grim and grisly” (45) and “represent[s] in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code.” Hester, as a woman and an outlaw, is more like the sailors, who live according to their own free will on the open sea. Despite her similarity to the sailors, however, Hester’s sexuality is distinctly feminine and she lives within the Puritan community while the sailors live outside of it. Hawthorne’s depiction of his heroine in her old age marks her lack of burden with Puritanic morality as it parallels the regard of the old inspector and simultaneously opposes the decrepit officials. Hester is remembered in the papers the narrator finds as “a very old, but not decrepit woman, of a stately and solemn aspect” (28).
Hester does not exist outside of the Patriarchal Puritan structure as she is subject to the laws thereof, however her position as outlaw is empowering to her and subversive to the structure. As an outlaw, Hester is free to remain an emblem of unbridled sexuality and free will. Moreover, Hester is free to leave the colony when she is released from prison, yet she chooses to remain. Even when she leaves with Pearl at the end of the story, she eventually returns alone as “here had been her sin; here her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence” (239). Like Hester, the narrator chooses to remain within the bosom of his native soil, as “the long connection of a family with one spot, as its place of birth and burial, creates a kindred between the human being and the locality, quite independent of any moral circumstances that surround him” (8). He is a writer and therefore an outlaw in the eyes of his ancestors, bureaucrats like the Custom House officials (7). However, the appearance of the old officials is likely a result of “leaning on the mighty arm of the Republic, [their] own proper strength depart[ed]. [They lost] the capability of self support” (34). On the other hand, the vitality of youth in the old Hester results from her free will and determination to sew her own mode of existence. She “[warms the vixen breast of the cold and unforgiving]” (3) Custom House eagle by her choice to exist within the community that marginalizes her. As a “flung off nestling” (3) Hester tenaciously rejects rejection by remaining within the nest that has rejected her.
Work Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Signet Classics, 1999.
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