"Is the world, then, so narrow?"

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and its preface, "The Custom- House," the author himself and Pearl Prynne are characters who engage in travel, escaping the restrictiveness imposed onto them by their hometowns and finding greater creative freedom elsewhere. Their journey, however, is not necessarily physical but rather creative. Hawthorne and Pearl employ writing and imaginative thinking, respectively, in order to characterize Salem and Boston as foreign locations through which they may tour. The two are what Hawthorne calls "citizen[s] of somewhere else," although they have not departed from their homes yet. By considering how "The Custom-House" relates to The Scarlet Letter based on the themes of travel and home, a new interpretation arises about Hawthorne's book as well as his definition of the American romance, which posits that a person may use creativity in order to find his or her place both within and away from the community.