In the opening autobiographical sketch of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne details the years he served as Surveyor of the Salem Custom-House, a political appointment he held for three years. It could have been a cushy gig for the rest of his career if he played his cards right, but he was soon removed after angering the wrong people in a new administration.
The conceit of this sketch is that the outline of the novel (and indeed the artifact of the scarlet letter itself) came to him in a bundle of papers found in what amounted to the Custom-House archives. In the unfinished attic there were bundles of papers from the years of invoices, manifests, and shipping lists that were processed by the officials there. Hawthorne is aware that his port is past its prime - the heaps of papers are evidence of a once bustling trade done in Salem that has since moved on to other ports of entry closer to the growing cities. He is indeed one of the only young men who works in the Custom House. Most of his colleagues (who he senses have a mild resentment at his being their superior) spent their vigorous years at sea as captains or mates. They’ve seen magnificent port cities abroad and ridden forty foot swells. Now though, they live with sedentary bodies and their minds must feast on the past for nourishment.
This sense of boredom in a boring job is a blessing and a curse. Hawthorne is aware of the generous compensation for the amount of work required. An endnote gives his official daily responsibilities as 3.5 hours of work (almost shocking to our 9-5 culture) but we sense it doesn’t even fill these scanty hours. His retrospect seems torn between the ease of what was essentially a sinecure and his now having to hustle about writing and selling stories to make a living.
His unease with the whole situation is displayed in his unflattering portrait of his predecessors at the helm of the Custom House. He has much to say about their personal faults and lack of character. While the retired sea captains at least have a life of hard going sea work behind them to bolster their image, the previous surveyor was only a glutton. His God was his belly and nothing else.
His love for food is such that when not actually eating his only available topic of conversation is recollections of past meals. He recounts in vivid detail the smallest morsels that pleased his palate in meals past as if he is savoring them once again. Everyone here might live in the past, but at least the seamen have a past worth speaking of. They have done real work, even if now they just shepherd papers from ship’s clerks to their resting place in the attic.
Perhaps it is this aura of nostalgia (and his more than average interest in the written word) that piques the younger Surveyor’s interest in the piles of papers unceremoniously housed in the garrett. Sifting through them leads only to dismay, however. They are nothing but the effluence of a functionary office. The literal pro forma detritus of an administrative state he is now a small part of.
He recognizes that perhaps the records are of some historical interest (how many hogshead of sugar passed the docks of Salem in a given year) as a record of human activity, but that as a matter of human creativity they are utterly dull. Reading them, he understands that the enterprise of the Custom House and his post contribute nothing to his personal development.
His depictions of his colleagues past and present at first seems snarky and even cruel, but really they are motivated by fear. Fear that he will become one of these functionaries in the mechanics of commerce, which to him is a diminishment of his humanity. All the while, he struggles with his desire for a secure income in an undemanding job (remember, dear reader, 3.5 hours a day!).
This illustrates why the discovery of a scrap of narrative and a handmade artifact are so arresting. What could this human accessory, and one we later learn is beautifully wrought, be doing in an archive otherwise devoid of human interest? Why would such a thing be saved, and in the Custom House of all places?
Discovering the narrative outline accompanying it sets his imagination moving. The fragment isn’t enough to understand the full story, but it sketches a bare outline. Just enough for him to begin to glimpse the shape of it and to start giving it full form. Hawthorne’s true passion as a writer of stories is instantly rekindled and he cannot stop considering this story. His obsession increases as he tries to fill in the details and make a complete tale out of it.
He quickly finds challenges. Fleshing out (or “bodying forth” in one of Malcolm Guite’s favorite phrases) the story while working the tedium of his functionary job in an unfunctioning port has stunted his ability to create. The details are dim, the narrative arc does not come easily. Though he takes his usual long walks and sits at his desk he finds his mind dulled and resistant to imaginative work.
He senses that his hours in the Custom House are diminishing his formerly prodigious technique. Gracefully, he doesn’t have to find the wherewithal to resign his post, the incoming administration does it for him (he was also less than able at politics it seems).
After returning to civilian life his mental acuity returns only gradually. Through walking, reading, and attempts at writing (and now with the urgency of bills due) he slowly reignites his imagination until he can finally give form to the novel that follows.
In a 2015 book, David Graber proposed the concept of Bullshit Jobs (if one were to coin a less vulgar term I would appreciate it). I have not read the book (I suspect it is a book length blog post) but the idea is that our corporatized work-world has room for many workers who essentially do nothing of significance. Mere functionaries to organizational custom, machination, and short-term problem solving. Some of these are “email jobs,” which consist primarily of answering questions or providing information that could be answered in some other way, but it’s convenient for someone to just email you. Many are related to appearances or exist purely for redundancy. Even more onerous are the myriad jobs related only to managing compliance and liability.
During the covid shutdown there were a number of people who confessed (via anonymous accounts of course) that they did essentially no work for their full-time remote jobs. A reddit thread collected stories of those fully “employed” who talked about what they did all day. Log in, read blogs, watch YouTube. Whatever they want, as long as they could be contacted by a superior in the rare even they were assigned a task. One related that after having about 3 hours worth of work per day for a year, he was promoted to lead a team of himself and two other “workers.” He was not assigned any more tasks, so he did one hour of work himself and delegated the others to each of his “reports” (as the corporates love to call persons below them on the status ladder). As long as they kept their mouths shut, he admonished, they could all have a great life. Pick up some hobbies, enjoy the days, or even get another full-time job and double your income.
Though a few centuries early to the conversation, Hawthorne is describing his time in a BS job. The inclusion of this long, seemingly unrelated essay as formatter to one of the greatest novels is unusual. The essay is about the personal effects he suffered from taking one of these jobs. What does Hawthorne’s personal struggle with creativity have to do with the story that follows?
One of the themes of The Scarlet Letter is how we know others and who they really are. Surface-level judgement leads to the harsh treatment of Hester, who bears the undeniable outward sign of her sin and thus the outward branding of it as well, while Dimmesdale is able to manage his image to the townspeople to maintain approbation. His true character must be revealed by supernatural intervention.
Hawthorne hints at this theme in The Custom-House:
But, as thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil.
The quality of relationship we have with others determines the amount of ourselves we reveal. Hawthorne held his dusty old coworkers with some flavor of contempt, as indeed he held himself in this position as well. He felt like his inner life was struggling, but his relationships to those around him were also flawed. The circumstances of their relationship meant its quality would be poor.
Imagine the kind of relationships someone doing a remote email job has with her colleagues. Having never met any of them in person, primarily interacting through screen-based text, and avoiding actual work and interaction at all costs. And some admit to only doing this an hour or two a day. Can this even be called a relationship? Nothing of the self is revealed in this work, and it is the revelation of the self to others that we need for a flourishing life. This of course is best done in family and convivial settings, but having divorced our working life from all meaningful relationships must leave us with an impoverishment impossible even for Hawthorne to imagine. Maybe one of the reports to whom you send delegatory emails used to be a ship’s captain on the high seas. How would you even know?
This plays out in the book as well. Dimmesdale’s public relationship with the people of Massachusetts Bay means that his true self cannot be revealed without destroying his life and calling. Hidden sin, and therefore disrupted relationships, dominates his life. It is only in the secrecy of the forest and in the relief of confession that we ever hear from the real Arthur Dimmesdale. His job, though itself a noble calling, is rendered a BS job because of his unfitness for it by his inability to reveal himself to others. The plot to flee Massachusetts Bay and start a new life elsewhere would be destined to fail because he brings this secret with him wherever he goes.
Chillingworth’s secret identity (spoiler: he is Hester’s husband) places him permanently as an outsider. He hides himself behind his status as an alchemist, work regarded with suspicion, to make concealing his identity to the townsfolk easier. He knowingly takes advantage of the surfeit of puritan suspicion to avoid identification. His alchemy is a front to keep others at bay and to lure Dimmesdale, willing to seek relief anywhere, in to be tormented.
It is only Hester who lives with nothing to hide. She wears her A so all know what she has done, and its product, her wild daughter Pearl, is always alongside as further reminder. But because she has no secrets, she moves at ease with the people. She seems immune to their shaming because she has been truthful. Unlike all the men of the story, hiding the truth about herself was not an option available to her. (That she exercises this ability in not revealing her partner in this sin is another topic for another essay.)
But she has a further power to relate to the townsfolk: her work. However despised she may be, no one can deny the quality of her needlework. She does embroidery for the magistrates and wealthiest citizens, who, despite their sense of moral superiority, are happy to support her with their custom.
Hester is the only of the main characters whose work is not a front for something else. Dimmesdale covers his sin with public piety and position. Chillingsworth hides his identity and true purpose in alchemy. It is only Hester, who does good work with her hands, who can live at peace with others in a relationship unobscured by deceit.
And it is this skill she uses to adorn, by her own hand, her own fate in gold thread and flourishes: “On a field, sable, the letter A, gules.”