My suggestion to readers is to side-step the conventional wisdom, interpretation and muck you will encounter about this book (especially in classrooms). The obvious themes will come to you anyway. Instead I encourage you to read the book with a different eye. When I was first forced to read The Custom-House in high school, I'm sure I nearly dropped of boredom. But the second time I encountered it, I felt sorry for Hawthorne rather than myself. What was it like for an artist like Hawthorne to work in an tight and narrow institution like a Customs-House? What becomes of an artist surrounded by structure and rules, hemmed in at every side? I don't think Hawthorne enjoyed working for the man.
While The Custom-House serves its purpose as a literary device to frame the story, I wonder if it stands for more, and I cannot help but think that Nathaniel Hawthorne himself was immeasurably happier and more satisfied with his life as a writer than he was with his life as a clerk. That experience, of shaking off the conventional life of 'quiet desperation' in favor of the fluid life of an artist outside of the normal bounds of society surely made a mark on the man. I think it is no small coincidence that the characters that prosper and blossom in The Scarlet Letter are the ones that are able to do the same; even if their path is accidentally acquired rather than sought. Perhaps the freedom one can enjoy on the outside is more important than how it comes about. What would have become of Hawthorne had he stayed a clerk, would he have withered under the burden?
VIII. The Elf-child and the Minister
XVII. The Pastor and His Parishioner
XIV. The Child at the Brook-Side
XXIII. The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter