^^^^^^^^^^
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE:  THE AUTHOR AND
HIS TIMES 

  In our late teens, many of us have to make career decisions.
Will we prepare to be engineers, ballet dancers, composers,
professional athletes, fashion designers?  Nathaniel Hawthorne
at age 17 was at that very crossroads of his life. 

  In a letter to his mother, written in 1821, Hawthorne ruled
out joining the clergy ("Oh, no, mother, I was not born to
vegetate forever in one place and to live and die as calm and
tranquil as a puddle of water").  Becoming a lawyer didn't seem
to be a wise choice either ("...one half of them are in a state
of actual starvation").  And as to medicine, Hawthorne could not
contemplate making a living "by the diseases and infirmities of
my fellow creatures." Instead, he tentatively suggested, "What
do you think of my becoming an author and relying for support
upon my pen?" 

  We don't know how his mother responded, but the millions of
readers who have enjoyed Hawthorne's work are pleased, no doubt,
that he pursued his goal, ultimately taking his place as one of
the leading figures in all of American literature.  In addition,
Hawthorne is seen today as a writer of great influence on
subsequent generations of storytellers.  The effect of
Hawthorne's creation of isolated and withdrawn characters, and
his probing of the psychology that led to their alienation, may
now be seen in the novels of such various writers as Henry
James, William Faulkner, Albert Camus, and Robert Penn Warren. 

  Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts,
a city already infamous in American history for its campaign in
the 1690s against "witches." In The House of the Seven Gables,
Hawthorne uses references to Salem witchcraft in his examination
of the forces that motivated some of the characters in his
novel. 

  Young Hawthorne had a slight limp that hindered him enough to
keep him from engaging in sports, and so he turned to
reading--showing a special fondness for William Shakespeare, the
English poet John Milton, and the novels of the French writer
and philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau.  This interest in
literature later led to his rejection of other possible
professions in favor of becoming a full-time writer. 

  After graduating from Bowdoin College, in Maine, at the age
of twenty-one, Hawthorne returned to Salem, and for the next
twelve years he lived there in relative seclusion.  He had made
a personal commitment to the literary life and spent that famous
hibernation time developing his craft.  Hawthorne had no regrets
about investing that much time in honing his skills:  "If I had
sooner made my escape into the world, I should have grown hard
and rough...  and my heart might have become callous by rude
encounters with the multitude.  But living in solitude till the
fullness of time was come, I still kept the dew of youth with
the freshness of my heart." 

  Hawthorne was drawn out of his long isolation when he fell in
love with Sophia Amelia Peabody, of Salem.  Before they were
married in 1842, he spent six months at Brook Farm, a commune
outside Boston that attracted people who were in search of a
utopian society.  There he talked with such intellectuals as
Henry David Thoreau (both men had a great deal in common since
they enjoyed solitude and simplicity) and Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

  Brook Farm was just one expression of the liberal spirit of
the times.  Under Emerson, The Transcendentalist Movement tried
to change the way people thought about themselves.  The
Transcendentalists believed that people are basically good and
ultimately perfectible.  They believed communion with nature,
reading literary classics, and studying Eastern religions were
important elements in elevating the human condition.  Thoreau,
also a Transcendentalist, chronicled his own experiment in
returning to nature at Walden Pond. 

  Following his marriage, it became important for Hawthorne to
earn a living.  He used political influence to get a job as the
surveyor for the port of Salem, but lost his position in the
Customs House there when the Democrats were voted out of power
in 1849.  At the time, the mood in America was generally liberal
and optimistic.  Railroads and the telegraph reached widely,
effectively shrinking the size of the country.  Momentum was
building in the Abolitionist movement to free the slaves.
People looked to the future with excitement. 

  Hawthorne, however, was preoccupied with the past.  In one
way, at least, he was closer to the Puritans in spirit.  Instead
of believing that man was perfectible, he felt that evil would
exist as long as the human heart existed.  And so it was
difficult for him to share in the expectations of a "new" world
when what he saw was the past visiting its sins upon the
present. 

  In 1850, Hawthorne's classic tale of sin and retribution, The
Scarlet Letter, was published and met with great success.  The
story of Hester Prynne, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and
Roger Chillingworth was set in the gloomy atmosphere of Puritan
New England and was embellished with dark, psychological
overtones.  The vision of the haunted young Hester on the
scaffold with the scarlet "A"--standing for adulteress--on her
breast is among the most memorable portraits in all
literature. 

  When Hawthorne began to write The House of the Seven Gables
the following year, he was already an acclaimed writer.  Unlike
The Scarlet Letter, which is about events in the seventeenth
century, The House of the Seven Gables is set in Hawthorne's own
era, in 1850.  But its main theme is how the past weighs on the
present.  Hawthorne's ancestor, John Hathorne (Nathaniel added
the "w" to his last name), had been one of three judges in the
notorious Salem witchcraft trials in 1692, and Hawthorne may
have been trying to rid his family of that shame when, at the
beginning of The House of the Seven Gables, he wrote so
eloquently of that terrible time. 

  About his own work, Hawthorne said, "The House of the Seven
Gables, in my opinion, is better than The Scarlet Letter but I
should not wonder if I had refined upon the principal character
a little too much for the public appreciation; nor if the
romance of the book should be found somewhat at odds with the
humble and familiar scenery in which I invested it." 

  The poet James Russell Lowell called The House of the Seven
Gables "the most valuable contribution to New England history
that has been made," and Sophia Hawthorne, in a letter to her
mother, said about the novel, "How you will enjoy the book, its
depth of wisdom, its high tone, the flowers of Paradise
scattered over all the dark places." 

  The House of the Seven Gables had been written in the
Berkshire Mountains where the Hawthornes had a home in Lenox,
Massachusetts.  While there, Hawthorne was visited by an
admirer, Herman Melville, who lived in nearby Pittsfield and was
writing Moby-Dick at that time.  Melville thought so much of his
shy friend that he dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne. 

  Melville was greatly impressed with The House of the Seven
Gables, telling Hawthorne that he "spent almost an hour in each
separate gable." And Henry James, a consummate writer himself,
honored Hawthorne as "the first great writer of the tradition of
psychological, subjective fiction in American literature." James
added that Hawthorne "had a cat-like faculty of seeing in the
dark," referring to Hawthorne's genius for illuminating the dark
corners of those people who lead lives of quiet desperation. 

  Others who came to see Hawthorne often remarked about his
physical attractiveness.  The British novelist Anthony Trollope
called him "the handsomest of all Yankees," and Julia Ward Howe,
the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," described him
in this manner:  "The beauty of his countenance was remarkable.
Crayon portraits and photographs preserve the fine outline of
his head and face but fail to give his vivid coloring and
varying expression.  His eyes, fringed with dark lashes, gleamed
like tremulous sapphires." 

  With The Blithedale Romance in 1852, a novel about his Brook
Farm experiences, a very prolific period in Hawthorne's life
came to an end.  He had produced three novels in three years and
was regarded as an important literary figure.  When his college
friend Franklin Pierce was elected President of the United
States in 1852, Hawthorne was rewarded with an appointment as
U.S.  consul in Liverpool, England.  It enabled him to travel on
the European continent and to fill his notebooks with material
for future short stories and novels.  But he had written himself
out, it seemed, because none of his later stories came up to the
level of his earlier classics such as "The Great Stone Face,"
"Rappacini's Daughter," and "Young Goodman Brown." His last
novel, The Marble Faun, written in 1860, lacked the power of his
great books. 

  Hawthorne died quietly in 1864, just before his sixtieth
birthday.  Sophia and their three children survived him.
Hawthorne left us a small treasury of significant and
entertaining works, and an enduring reputation.  One of his
critics, Hyatt Waggoner, rightly pointed out that "few 19th
century American writers seem so likely to reward rereading as
Hawthorne." 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  THE PLOT 

  When the prominent Colonel Pyncheon is found dead during a
housewarming party at his new mansion, the official cause of
death is given as a stroke.  The townspeople suspect something
different. 

  Colonel Pyncheon acquired the land for his new homestead only
after its owner, a poor man named Matthew Maule, was hanged
during the Salem witchhunts in 1692, for allegedly practicing
witchcraft.  Until the end, the innocent man suspected Colonel
Pyncheon of encouraging the persecution in order to obtain the
Maule property.  With the hangman's noose around his neck, Maule
cursed the Colonel.  The townspeople remembered the words of the
wizard:  "God will give him blood to drink!" 

  For some one hundred and sixty years, a long line of
Pyncheons struggle to settle their claim to a vast territory in
Maine and to preserve their dynasty against as long a line of
Maules suspected of inheriting the wizard's powers.  The
Pyncheon's real struggle, though, is against the sins of their
forebears--sins that hang over them like the portrait of their
ancestor, the Colonel.  The Pyncheons are hobbled by a pride
that isolates them from the world.  They are undone by a greed
that leads to the mysterious sacrifice of a beautiful young
woman, Alice Pyncheon, and the framing of young Clifford
Pyncheon for murder. 

  The house of the seven gables, which stands on the site once
owned by the Maules, is inhabited by an aging spinster, Hepzibah
Pyncheon.  Weatherbeaten and crumbling, the house has lost all
its former grandeur and presents a dismal appearance. 

  Seventeen-year-old Phoebe Pyncheon, who comes from the
country to live in the house of the seven gables, is like a ray
of sunshine flooding a dark corner.  The pretty young woman
shares the house with her two elderly cousins and a boarder, the
young artist Holgrave.  Her cousin Hepzibah has recently been
forced to abandon her delusions of aristocracy and open a shop
to keep from starving; Hepzibah's brother, Clifford, has just
been released from prison after serving thirty years for the
alleged murder of his uncle--a crime he didn't commit.  Holgrave
is an attractive young man who, unknown to the others, is a
descendant of the wizard Matthew Maule. 

  A frequent visitor is another cousin, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon.
Jaffrey inherited everything when Clifford went to prison for
their uncle's murder.  His greed knows no bounds.  He will not
rest until he is allowed to speak with his broken cousin,
Clifford, who, he believes, alone knows the secret of hidden
Pyncheon wealth.  Clifford has long since forgotten the secret,
but the painting of the Colonel which still hangs upon the wall
will play a role in the unraveling of the mystery. 

  When Jaffrey dies suddenly at the gabled house, of an
apparent stroke, just as his uncle and the Colonel before him
did, Hepzibah and Clifford flee.  Clifford thinks that he may
again be accused of murder.  Hepzibah doesn't know what to
think.  Alone in the house with Jaffrey's body, Phoebe and
Holgrave are drawn together by this morbid secret.  At this
unlikely moment the young people discover that they share more
than the knowledge of Jaffrey's death--they have fallen deeply
in love. 

  Jaffrey's death is found to be the result of natural causes.
This discovery helps clear Clifford of their uncle's alleged
"murder," for which he had been framed by Jaffrey himself.
Phoebe agrees to marry Holgrave, who discloses his identity as a
descendant of Matthew Maule.  And the secret of the portrait is
explained at last.  A hidden spring releases the frame and
reveals a hiding place where the now useless deed to the
territory in Maine has been for two hundred years.  Hepzibah,
Clifford, Phoebe, and Holgrave decide to leave the house of the
seven gables and live in the country estate they inherited from
Jaffrey. 

  It seems like a happy ending.  The two families and the two
classes are reconciled.  A Pyncheon and a Maule have learned to
love each other, and as the feuding families unite and abandon
the gabled house, the curse is lifted.  But look again.  Are
Phoebe and Holgrave really starting a new life?  They inherit
the Pyncheon wealth and go to live in yet another Pyncheon
house.  Are they destined to repeat the curse that has been the
family's downfall for generations? 

  Let's look at the tale a little more closely.  Then you can
make your own judgments. 

  The important thing to consider when studying the characters
in The House of the Seven Gables is the way Hawthorne develops
them in relation to each other.  Each character is defined
through contrasts with others as Hawthorne develops his themes.
Hepzibah and Jaffrey are compared, for example, in Hawthorne's
conception of appearance vs.  reality.  Clifford and Holgrave
are contrasted in the theme of isolation. 

  This technique stresses the psychological aspects of the
characters.  Because no character is defined in absolute terms,
you are invited to make up your own mind about each one.  This
kind of ambiguity puts Hawthorne close to modern fiction writers
in sensibility. 

  Here is a sketch of each of the main characters.  Before you
make up your mind, though, review the many possibilities
Hawthorne offers in the text for the interpretation of each
character. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  CLIFFORD 

  Clifford is not much more than the ghost of a man.
Everything about him is shadowy.  His steps are muffled.  His
speech is a vague murmur.  His eyes are clouded.  His memory is
dim. 

  There is nothing to him but his love of beauty, a pure
sensibility.  But his is a frail sensibility.  Clifford is the
"porcelain vase, with already a crack in it" that was thrown
against the "granite column" that is Jaffrey.  But what is this
crack?  What is the source of his powerlessness?  And what is it
that has made this Pyncheon man so different from the other? 

  His life is a symbol for isolation brought to an extreme.
And it is only when he runs from the house and out into the
world that he is "startled into manhood and intelligence." But
he cannot sustain the energy required to become a man of action.
It is too late for Clifford.  As the narrator tells him, he has
no future. 

  Clifford and Holgrave have a great deal in common.  Listen to
their speeches.  What is it they both are saying?  How is it
that both have arrived at this philosophy?  What does it mean
that a Pyncheon and a Maule share these thoughts?  And how is it
that Phoebe is so important to both of them? 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  HEPZIBAH 

  In her rusty black silks and her hideous turban, the
sixty-year-old spinster could strike fear into any heart.
Afflicted with poor eyesight, Hepzibah wears a chronic squint
that twists her face into a scowl. 

  Proud, lonely, and without talent for practical matters, she
is the symbol of decaying gentility.  For twenty-five years she
has lived alone in the house of the seven gables, grieving for
her unjustly imprisoned brother, Clifford.  Like the house
itself, she is a symbol of the ruin brought by isolation.  And
when she is forced to open a small variety shop to support
herself.  Hepzibah is unable to reconnect with the world. 

  What is it that makes you so fond of Hepzibah, one of the
most endearing characters in literature?  What saves her in your
estimation is what saves her from complete ruin:  her fierce
love and loyalty.  Her suffering on Clifford's behalf "enriches"
and "elevates" her life. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  HOLGRAVE 

  What does Holgrave represent?  Is he the voice of the future,
whose message is the rise of the common man and the demise of
the past with its aristocracy?  Or is he an echo of the
past--descended from Wizard Maule, and invested with all his
powers?  Or is he, simply, an artist whose agent is sunlight,
and whose work is revealing the true nature of people? 

  You see Holgrave almost exclusively through the eyes of
Hepzibah and Phoebe, but neither woman understands him.
Hepzibah, trapped by the past, cannot understand his new-fangled
notions.  Even when she takes his advice, she doesn't completely
trust him.  Conservative Phoebe is threatened by his
irreverence, by his clinical view of life, and by her attraction
for him, as well.  In some ways, Holgrave has much more in
common with Clifford.  The views he preaches to Phoebe in the
garden are not far from those Clifford espouses on the train.
But whereas Clifford is a dreamer, Holgrave is a man of
action. 

  The character of Holgrave is a puzzling one, and nowhere is
it more puzzling than at the end of the novel.  After reading
his story entitled "Alice Pyncheon," Holgrave breaks the spell
he has unwittingly cast over Phoebe.  Unlike a Maule before him,
he refuses to exploit the spirit of a young Pyncheon woman.
This incident seems to suggest that change is possible, that we
are not doomed forever to repeat past sins. 

  But by the end of the novel, Holgrave--like all the other
characters--undergoes an inversion.  In the cases of the others,
the inversion is a setting straight, a triumph of reality over
appearance.  Clifford is shown to be innocent, for example, and
the Judge is revealed as an evil man.  But in the case of
Holgrave, the inversion is completely baffling.  In a complete
turnaround of his earlier views, he willingly accepts Phoebe's
Pyncheon fortune and goes off to live in a Pyncheon house,
complaining all the while about its lack of permanence.  This is
not the same Holgrave whose beliefs have helped to bring about
so many other changes for the better. 

  What can this change in him mean?  And what does it say about
Hawthorne's theme? 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  JUDGE JAFFREY
PYNCHEON 

  When Jaffrey Pyncheon steps into the cent-shop one morning,
Phoebe--who has never met the man--is filled with horror.  For a
moment she mistakes him for her ancestor, Colonel Pyncheon,
risen from the dead.  With his full beard trimmed into a pair of
grizzled whiskers, his sable and velvet cloak changed for a suit
and tie, and his sword traded in for a gold-headed cane, the
"original Puritan" seems to step forward across two centuries. 

  The similarities between the two men go beyond the physical.
As the Colonel is remembered as greedy, the Judge is now known
to be tightfisted.  What was seen as the "grim kindliness" of
the Colonel lives on, now, in what the townspeople see as the
benevolent smile of the Judge.  Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon is, as
the Colonel was before him, the model of respectability. 

  But a second glance shows that the Judge is not as beefy as
the Colonel, nor does he have the ruddy complexion of his
English ancestor.  And there is a nervous quality about him:
His face changes rapidly and lacks the Colonel's steady
expression.  Is this merely the difference between an American
and an Englishman, or is it something more?  In a book so
concerned with the repetition of the past in the present, what
can these differences mean? 

  And what of the face revealed in Holgrave's daguerreotypes?
The forced smile creates a stifling and sultry atmosphere.  It
is a smile that can barely mask the anger and displeasure
lurking just below its surface. 

  One of the great themes of The House of the Seven Gables is
the difference between appearance and reality, and the character
of the Judge is central to stating that theme. 

  Hawthorne developed his characters in relation to one
another, and he developed the character of Jaffrey in relation
to both Hepzibah and Clifford. 

  When you compare Jaffrey to Hepzibah (especially in the
chapter entitled "The Scowl and Smile"), you discover that
Jaffrey's smile is as meaningless as her scowl.  She is not
fierce, and he is not benevolent.  Jaffrey's life is full of
enough "splendid rubbish" to cover up a more active conscience
than his.  Jaffrey is the palace built over the stinking,
"half-decayed, and still decaying" corpse. 

  When you compare him to Clifford, you see two men who were
both attractive in their youth.  Clifford's beauty still shows
through his frail spirit and his old age.  Jaffrey's couldn't be
guessed at under his portly body and heavy face.  Clifford,
imprisoned for a murder he didn't commit, has missed out on a
lifetime while Jaffrey, who framed him, has had it all--a wife,
a son, a career as a public figure, a good reputation, and the
Pyncheon inheritance that was meant for Clifford.  Clifford
appeared responsible for the death of his uncle.  In reality it
was Jaffrey who brought the death about and covered his
tracks. 

  The two men, both Pyncheons, could not be more different.
And in an unforgettable image, Hawthorne likens the relationship
between Clifford and Jaffrey to a porcelain vase being thrown
against a granite column. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  PHOEBE 

  Phoebe is a pet name that Nathaniel Hawthorne reserved for
his wife, Sophia, the woman who drew him out of his long
isolation.  It has long been thought that he modelled his
character on Sophia as a tribute to her influence in his life. 

  The name "Phoebe" comes from a Greek word meaning "radiant"
and the Phoebe of The House of the Seven Gables is always
described in images that are sunny, bright, and cheerful.  She
dislikes anything that is obscure--a riddle, a mystery, or the
darkness. 

  When she comes from the country to live with her elderly
cousins at the house of the seven gables, she comes like
sunlight to a dark corner.  The hearts of those isolated people
and the house itself are purified by her influence.  And when
she leaves for a few days, the house and its inhabitants fall
again into darkness and decay. 

  Phoebe is not a complicated character, but she has been
called "a special kind of reformer." In chapter after chapter
you see her influencing the other characters in the novel.  For
all of them she holds some redemptive power. 

  In the chapter entitled "May and November" Phoebe is compared
to Hepzibah.  They are both women, but their ages, classes,
attitudes, and figures are very different.  The aristocrat
meets--and learns from--the plebian.  And yet they are both
Pyncheons.  How is it that Phoebe has escaped Hepzibah's fate? 

  In "Clifford and Phoebe" you see her simple character
contrasted with the complex Clifford.  In her naturalness, her
femininity, and her beauty, she is a symbol to Clifford of what
he lacked on earth. 

  And in "Maule's Well," "The Daguerreotypist," "Phoebe's Good
Bye," and in "The Flower of Eden," you see her with Holgrave.
His radical spirit is tempered and finally tamed by the kind and
simple young woman.  And when, in the end, Phoebe and Holgrave
marry, it is not merely the union of a Pyncheon and a Maule, but
the union of heart and head. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  SETTING 

  The opening pages of The House of the Seven Gables chronicle
the life of the house for almost two hundred years, and begin in
the 1690s--a time of witchhunts.  The main action of the story
starts in the 1850s, and takes place over the course of one
summer, or about three months. 

  Most of the action occurs in a house on a side street of a
coastal New England town.  The house has seven gables, all of
which point in different directions.  (For an explanation of a
gable, see the first note in the section of this book on chapter
I.) Most of the rooms are occupied by Hepzibah Pyncheon, who has
a shop with its own entrance in the front gable.  One of the
other gables is rented to a boarder.  The house also has an
enclosed garden. 

  Hawthorne describes the house using human characteristics:
it shows signs of age like a human face; the projecting upper
story gives it a brooding look; the clustered chimney in the
dark-chambered place is like a human heart with a life of its
own. 

  The interior and the exterior could not be more different or
distinct.  The interior, which includes the enclosed garden, is
a place of darkness, shadow, isolation, and decay.  It
symbolizes the hearts of the two who isolate themselves there:
Hepzibah and Clifford.  Their hearts, as well as the interior of
the house, are purged and illuminated by the presence of Phoebe,
who arrives from the country.  The exterior, which includes the
street and the train, represents the real world.  It is
fast-paced and bright, and as massive as the terrible Judge
Pyncheon himself. 

  In between is the cent-shop, a threshold to the world, a
transitional place where the world is admitted to the house.
The scenes that take place there symbolize meetings between the
darkness of the house and the light brought in by customers like
Holgrave or reflected by other buildings. 

  Neither a life lived in the house (Hepzibah's) nor a life
lived on the outside (Jaffrey's) is ideal.  Neither character
can exist in the other's world.  Hepzibah is driven back to the
house on the two occasions she tries to go out.  And when Judge
Pyncheon finally reaches the interior of the house, he becomes
another shadow, indistinguishable by evening from the others.  A
healthy balance of the two worlds, achieved by Phoebe and
Holgrave, is desired. 

  Throughout the book, the setting is so closely identified
with both characters and themes that many readers have
considered the setting a major symbol within the book. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  THEMES 

  The following are important themes in The House of the Seven
Gables. 

  1.  THE SINS OF THE FATHERS... 

  The wrong done by one generation of a family is visited upon
the generations that follow.  The greed that drove Colonel
Pyncheon to encourage the persecution of Maule, and then to
seize Maule's land for his homestead, brings down a curse upon
all of the Colonel's descendants. 

  The past weighs on the present like the corpse of a giant.
It influences everything the living do.  Hawthorne appears to
say that we are forever struggling against what has been passed
down to us; therefore, we should not be so eager to impose
ourselves upon future generations. 

  For "...no great mistake, whether acted or endured...  is
ever really set right." We can never hope to undo what has been
done, but we must strive to break the pattern, to remove
ourselves from the circle in which we are destined to repeat our
mistakes. 

  2.  ISOLATION 

  Hawthorne lived in the nineteenth century, at a time when the
Romantic poets stressed the importance of individualism and
celebrated the differences between people.  But Hawthorne had
experienced the isolation of individualism and had found no
happiness in his many years of solitude.  He believed strongly
that a man finds happiness not in his differences from other men
but in what he shares with them, in his sense of community with
them. 

  In their isolation, Hepzibah and Clifford might as well be
dead.  The only strength Hepzibah has is that which she derives
from her love for her brother.  It is only in the cent-shop--the
setting that puts her in contact with the outside world--that
she has the courage to stand up to her cousin Jaffrey.  It is
only when Clifford tries to rejoin the humanity in a pulsing
crowd or on a crowded train that he comes alive.  Phoebe and
Holgrave, on the other hand, are part of the world in which they
live.  Their integration into human society, as well as their
love for each other, gives them an opportunity to break the
curse. 

  3.  ARISTOCRACY VS.  DEMOCRACY 

  Evil cuts across social class lines in The House of the Seven
Gables, but in his characters Hawthorne presents a clear
argument for the triumph of democracy over aristocracy.
Hepzibah, Clifford, and Jaffrey depend on a past founded on sin
to elevate them to social prominence.  On the other hand,
Holgrave, the modern man, preaches social reform to both
Hepzibah and Phoebe.  What were once the privileges of class are
now its restrictions.  To live without battling necessity is to
let the blood chill in our veins.  Hawthorne leads us to believe
that the struggle of mankind should be a united one. 

  4.  APPEARANCE VS.  REALITY 

  Hawthorne's fascination with this theme is apparent
throughout The House of the Seven Gables.  Hepzibah wears a
scowl that the world sees as a sign of her wickedness, but she
squints only from poor eyesight, and is really a good woman at
heart.  Judge Pyncheon, on the other hand, wears a beatific
smile, which the townspeople take as a sign of benevolence and
goodness.  Yet this man has framed his cousin for murder and has
taken what didn't belong to him. 

  The contrast between appearance and reality is most
pronounced in the development of these two characters, but it
underlies other parts of the book as well.  It begins with the
discrepancy between what Matthew Maule was and what the
townspeople thought he was.  For other examples, think of the
following discrepancies:  between the natural deaths of the
Pyncheons and the murders the townspeople suspect; between
Clifford's part in Jaffrey's death and Hepzibah's suspicion of
Clifford's part in Jaffrey's death; and between the person
everyone thinks Holgrave is, and who he actually is. 

  5.  HEART VS.  HEAD 

  In a letter to his wife, Hawthorne wrote, "...we are not
endowed with real life...  till the heart be touched.  That
touch creates us,--then we begin to be..." 

  You first see the theme of the heart vs.  the head in the
relationships between Hepzibah and Clifford, and between Phoebe
and her two elderly cousins.  Hepzibah is a groaning wreck until
Clifford returns from prison, at which point she springs to life
to help him.  When Phoebe brings her love and sunny disposition
to the house, she warms the lives of her brooding cousins like a
small fire. 

  But it is in the relationship between Phoebe and Holgrave
that this theme receives the most attention.  Phoebe is the
heart of the house of the seven gables.  She warms it and brings
it life.  Holgrave, an intellectual, is the head.  He is the
bearer of ideas in the romance his entire life is concerned with
philosophies of life.  When Phoebe and Holgrave fall in love,
heart and head are brought together to form a union that may end
the curse forever.  Such a union of heart and head, according to
one critic, is "as modern as psychoanalysis." 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  STYLE 

  Hawthorne's style has been described as "slightly
old-fashioned even when he wrote it," and in this regard he is
definitely a product of the nineteenth century.  For the most
part, his formal, careful, well-organized development of ideas
are stylistic elements you might think better suited to the
essay than to the novel. 

  Hawthorne relies heavily on the use of symbols in his work,
and often includes references to classical and biblical
mythology.  But he rarely relies on stylistic devices alone
(images, symbols, etc.) to present his point of view.  Instead,
Hawthorne explicitly states his meanings to you.  For example,
even though his descriptions of the hens clearly draw a parallel
to the Pyncheons, Hawthorne has Holgrave say that the hens
"betokened the oddities of the Pyncheon family, and...  the
chicken itself was a symbol of the life of the old house." 

  Hawthorne employs an interesting stylistic device in The
House of the Seven Gables in an attempt to involve you in his
story.  He begins Chapter II by telling you what happened that
morning, and he uses the past tense (Hepzibah "awoke," and
"arose," and "began" to dress).  He then switches to the present
tense, and comments on her actions as they happen (she "prays,"
she "is almost ready," she "is probably looking at a certain
miniature," and she "is standing" before the mirror).  His use
of the present tense here makes you feel as if you are here as
the story unfolds, and gives you the sense of a story so
immediate that not even its author knows what might happen
next. 

  Hawthorne repeats this technique at the end of Chapter X,
"The Pyncheon-Garden," after Clifford calls out for his
happiness.  The narrator answers Clifford, saying "You are
old....  You are partly crazy....  Fate has no happiness in
store for you." Again, you feel that you and the narrator can
see and hear the characters, but they can't see you. 

  In Chapter XVIII, "Governor Pyncheon," Hawthorne uses this
device to great effect, as he writes the entire chapter in the
present tense.  Through this rather lengthy chapter you examine
Jaffrey's body and keep a vigil with the narrator throughout the
night.  Some readers think this chapter is too long, too silly,
or overwritten.  Others consider it one of the greatest scenes
in American literature.  What's your opinion? 

  As you think about the style of The House of the Seven
Gables, try to remember that Hawthorne wrote before a more
"modern" style of fiction was introduced--the personal, relaxed,
and image-oriented writing with which you are familiar.  With
this in mind, you will be able to appreciate the fact that--as
serious as his writing is--it never lacks a sense of humor or
the touches of irony that make his work seem so relevant even
today. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  POINT OF VIEW 

  In his cool and critical preface to The House of the Seven
Gables, Hawthorne refers to himself as if he were talking about
someone else.  He strikes this pose throughout the book,
whenever he refers to himself as its author. 

  In the first chapter, which provides background material for
his tale, Hawthorne uses the first-person singular ("I").
Hearing the narrator talk about his personal experience of the
town and house in question gives you a sense that he is familiar
with his subject and is, therefore, a voice to be trusted. 

  When the story actually begins in the second chapter,
Hawthorne settles down to the first-person plural.  When he says
"we," he means "you and I" (the reader and the narrator).  You
are drawn into the story and you become--with the narrator--what
he calls the "disembodied listener." You are not only with him
at the telling of the tale, you are on the threshold of the
story as it happens.  You hear what he hears; you see what he
sees. 

  You sometimes hear Hepzibah's thoughts, and sometimes
Phoebe's.  Sometimes you hear the narrator's own thoughts as the
story unfolds.  He answers Clifford when Clifford cries out for
his happiness; he calls to Judge Pyncheon to rise from the elbow
chair and get on with his day as planned; he asks your
indulgence when describing life in the Pyncheon garden.  This
involvement of the storyteller in the story has earned Hawthorne
a reputation as "the most intrusive of authors." 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  FORM AND
STRUCTURE 

  In his preface to the novel, Hawthorne described his work as
a romance rather than a novel.  He called it a "prolonged
legend" that connects the past and the present in a "legendary
mist." A romance is a story that contains scenes that you would
not expect to find in ordinary life.  In establishing his work
as a romance, Hawthorne found license to use such devices as a
disappearing skeleton hand and a ghost who plays the
harpsichord.  He says in his preface, however, that an author
would be "wise...  to make very moderate use of the privileges"
and offer the "Marvellous" as a flavoring rather than as the
whole meal. 

  Among Hawthorne's readers there is a great deal of
disagreement about the book's structure.  Some say that it has
none, that it is merely a series of episodes.  Others say that
it has a beginning and an end, like two halves of a short story
with no middle, but a number of character sketches that add
nothing to the plot.  Then there are readers who see the book as
a series of progressions--not in a linear motion--but in an
ascending spiral, returning again and again to the same sins and
the same themes in one generation after another.  Still others
view the structure of the work as a series of contrasts (Phoebe
vs.  Hepzibah, The Scowl and the Smile, for example) that help
to develop its themes. 

  When Hawthorne corresponded with his publisher as he was
writing The House of the Seven Gables, he often spoke as if he
were a carpenter building a house.  Many readers have seized
this metaphor as a fitting one for the book's structure.  To
some the book is a single room, and its elements are
furnishings.  Others regard the book as a whole house and each
chapter as a different room.  This is an interesting view.
There is, for example, a chapter named for the cent-shop, one
for the garden, one for the arched window at the top of the
stairs, and one for Clifford's room--all distinct areas of the
house of the seven gables.  Several of the other chapters also
take place in different parts of the house. 

  You can argue in favor of each of these theories.  Keep them
in mind as you read, and then decide for yourself which one best
describes the structure of the book. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  PREFACE 

  The preface to The House of the Seven Gables sounds as if it
were written by someone other than Hawthorne, so indirect is he
in introducing his work.  The preface has three functions.  The
first is to characterize the work as a romance as opposed to a
novel.  The second is to state the moral of the story.  The
third is to point out the legendary origins of the romance. 

  A novel, says Hawthorne, aims at a faithful representation of
the ordinary events of life.  In a romance, on the other hand,
an author has "a certain latitude." He can stray from the
ordinary and the real; he can manipulate the elements of his
story to create an effect; he can flavor his tale with a touch
of the "Marvellous." 

  The moral of the story is this:  "...that the wrong-doing of
one generation lives into the successive ones, and...  becomes a
pure and uncontrollable mischief." In his romance, Hawthorne
seeks to "...convince mankind (or, indeed, any one man) of the
folly of tumbling down an avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or real
estate, on the heads of an unfortunate posterity, thereby to
maim and crush them, until the accumulated mass shall be
scattered abroad in its original atoms." 

  The preface ends with a disclaimer.  Hawthorne knows that his
readers will recognize the town as Salem, but he insists that
the street, the house, and the people in his story are his own
inventions. 

  NOTE:  In revolutionary times, there was a resident of Salem
named Judge Pynchon.  When The House of the Seven Gables was
published, descendants of this man complained of the bad light
in which their family name had been cast.  In a letter to his
publisher, Hawthorne denied any connection between this person
and his character, and called these Pynchons "jackasses." 

  I.  THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY 

  Toward the end of this section, entitled "The Old Pyncheon
Family," Hawthorne refers to it as a "preliminary chapter,"
meaning that it comes before and leads up to the main action of
the book.  The stories told in this chapter occur almost two
hundred years before the action of the rest of the book begins,
and they furnish the background you need in order to understand
The House of the Seven Gables. 

  The chapter begins in front of an old wooden house on a side
street in an unnamed New England town.  The house has some
unusual features:  seven gables pointing in as many directions,
a clustered central chimney, and a large elm in front of the
main door.  The street, the house, and the elm are all named for
the Pyncheon family, whose home this has been for almost two
hundred years. 

  NOTE:  In order to visualize the house of the seven gables,
and the action in and around it, you should know what a gable
is.  The word gable comes from a root that means head.  In the
strictest sense of the word, a gable is the triangular top of a
wall at one end of a house under a double-sloping roof.  It also
refers to the triangular-topped structure under a section of
such a roof.  In a house with more than one level (such as the
house in this story) the gable extends from the roof to the
ground and often has its own windows as well as its own
entrance. 

  Like a human face, this house shows signs of age and of the
changing fortunes of its life, which have been considerable.
All the stories this house has to tell would fill a very large
book.  Instead, a brief history of the house and its occupants
brings you up to the point where the tale begins. 

  What is now called Pyncheon-street was once called Maule's
Lane.  Where the house of the seven gables now stands there once
was another house--a log hut, really--built by Matthew Maule.
The presence of a fresh, clear spring on this property (an
unusual feature on land projecting far into the sea) made it a
desirable spot for a home and garden, despite its distance from
the center of town.  As the years passed and the borders of the
town crept closer to Maule's land, the property came to the
attention of a well-known and powerful man--Colonel Pyncheon. 

  Colonel Pyncheon is described as a man of iron will and
determination, and as a prominent citizen of his day.  Matthew
Maule is described as stubborn when defending his rights, and as
a rather obscure man.  Legend has it that Colonel Pyncheon
claimed Maule's property, saying that it belonged to a part of a
larger parcel granted to him by the legislature.  (In the early
years of this country the government gave pieces of unsettled
land to persons of position.) There is no written record of the
dispute between the two men, but tradition has preserved their
story.  You may well wonder how legitimate the Colonel's claim
was if he was unable to settle it for years, especially
considering that he was a prominent person and Maule was a
nobody.  In Colonel Pyncheon's day, personal influence swayed
many decisions. 

  The death of Matthew Maule finally did settle the dispute.
But his was no ordinary death:  Maule was accused of practicing
witchcraft.  He was tried, found guilty, and hanged. 

  NOTE:  SALEM WITCH TRIALS In 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts,
about four hundred people were accused of practicing witchcraft.
Twenty were found guilty and were put to death. 

  Hawthorne's ancestor, John Hathorne, was one of the three
judges at the witchcraft trials.  This caused Nathaniel
Hawthorne great shame.  You sense his strong feelings when he
says of Matthew Maule, "He was one of the martyrs to that
terrible delusion which should teach us, among other morals,
that the influential classes, and those who take upon themselves
to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the
passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob." 

  When the commotion, surrounding the witchhunts died down,
some of the townspeople remembered that Colonel Pyncheon had
been among those most anxious to rid the area of witches and
wizards, especially Matthew Maule.  It was said that Colonel
Pyncheon watched from horseback as Maule was executed.  Claiming
that he had been persecuted so Pyncheon could seize his land,
Maule is said to have stood on the scaffold with the hangman's
noose around his neck, cursing Pyncheon, saying, "God will give
him blood to drink!" 

  Pyncheon did take the land when Maule died.  But when he
decided to build his family mansion on the very spot where Maule
had had his little hut, the villagers gossiped apprehensively.
Pyncheon, they said, was building his house over an "unquiet
grave," giving the ghost of Matthew Maule the privilege of
haunting its rooms.  Colonel Pyncheon, however, was not the sort
of person to let his behavior be influenced by the threat of
evil spirits.  He dug his cellar and laid his foundation on the
land Maule had cleared forty years before.  When the water in
the spring became murky and foul, many of the townspeople
interpreted it as a bad sign. 

  Head carpenter on the building of the Pyncheon mansion was
the son of Matthew Maule.  In one of the many asides he makes in
the book, Hawthorne notes that at that time it was not unusual
for a person to earn his living from his father's worst enemy.
in any event, it is to Thomas Maule's credit that the house of
the seven gables still stands today. 

  It is hard to believe that the house of the seven gables was
ever new, but at one time it was not only new but unlike any
house that had ever been built in that town.  In shape it was
rather top-heavy.  Each story or upper level of the house jutted
out over the one below it.  The seven gables pointed sharply in
as many directions.  And there was a great cluster of chimneys
toward the center of the roof.  Little figures decorated the
outside of the house, drawn in a plaster made of lime, pebbles,
and bits of glass.  The windows were covered with lattices
having small diamond-shaped panes, and the projecting upper
stories of the house cast shadows into its lower rooms.  On the
gable that faced the street there was a sundial.  The front
door--in the angle between the two front gables--was covered by
an open porch furnished with benches.  When the house was
finished, wood chips, shavings, bricks, and shingles were
scattered over the bare ground. 

  When the place was ready, Colonel Pyncheon hosted an enormous
housewarming to which all the townspeople were invited.  As they
passed through the front door of the house, the guests were met
by two butlers who showed them into either the front rooms or
the kitchen area depending on their rank in society, which was
easily distinguished by their mode of dress. 

  NOTE:  Here you see that class distinctions go far back in
Pyncheon family tradition. 

  Several of the guests were annoyed that their host was not in
the front hall himself to greet them.  Finally, in a climactic
scene, the Colonel failed to appear in order to greet the
Lieutenant Governor, one of the area's highest officials.  The
county sheriff, embarrassed by the Colonel's absence, advised
one of the servants to fetch his master immediately.  The
servant refused, saying that he had strict orders not to disturb
his master.  Hearing this, the Lieutenant Governor told the
sheriff not to worry, that he would deal with the problem
himself.  With much ceremony, the Lieutenant Governor went to
the door of Colonel Pyncheon's study and knocked loudly, smiling
at the guests who looked on.  There was no answer.  Using the
hilt--or handle--of his sword, he knocked again, making a racket
that could have wakened the dead.  Again there was no answer.
The Lieutenant Governor then tried the door.  It opened easily,
practically thrown open by a gust of wind that rushed through
every corner of the house.  The guests crowded to the door of
Colonel Pyncheon's study, pushing the Lieutenant Governor into
the room ahead of them.  At first, nothing seemed amiss.  The
Colonel frowned at them from where he sat at his desk below a
portrait of himself.  The Colonel's young grandson pushed
through the crowd and rushed toward his grandfather.  Halfway
there he stopped and began to scream.  It was then that the
crowd noticed that all was not right with the Colonel--his gaze
was distorted, his collar and beard soaked with blood.  From
somewhere in the crowd came a voice, not unlike Matthew Maule's,
saying, "God hath given him blood to drink!" 

  Several rumors circulated about the incident afterwards.
Some said the Colonel had bloody fingerprints on his neck, some
that his beard was in disarray and had obviously been pulled.
Another story had it that a man was seen climbing out of the
study window just moments before the Colonel's body was
discovered.  The Lieutenant Governor claimed to have seen a
skeleton hand at the Colonel's throat, and said the hand
disappeared as he got closer to the body.  (This detail will
surface later in the book, so you should keep it in mind.) Local
doctors attributed the Colonel's sudden death to a stroke.
There was no real suspicion of murder. 

  The Colonel's huge estate and a claim to a very large and
unexplored territory in what is now the state of Maine went to
the Pyncheon family.  Had Colonel Pyncheon lived a little
longer, he might have settled this claim through his political
influence and connections.  However, over the next hundred years
the Pyncheons failed to secure the property or even to find the
documents proving it was theirs.  The land was granted to "more
favored individuals" and occupied by settlers.  The Pyncheons,
however, clung to the hope of regaining what they thought had
been theirs.  For most of them, this hope did little but
perpetuate delusions of importance, and increase their
tendencies to be lazy and dependent as they waited for their
dreams to come true. 

  In almost every generation, there was one Pyncheon who took
after the Colonel, restoring the house when family fortunes had
declined.  At least some of the inheritors of the place had
doubts about their moral, if not legal, right to the house.  It
may be that the owners who felt guilty and did nothing about it
committed the same crime as did their ancestor, the Colonel.  In
this sense, the Pyncheon family may have inherited not a great
fortune, but a great misfortune. 

  A large dim mirror used to hang in one of the rooms in the
house.  Legend has it that this mirror contained all the shapes
that had ever been reflected in it.  It is said that the Maules
had some power over the mirror and could make the deceased
Colonel and his family come to life inside it, reliving times of
tragedy and wrongdoing.  Both the mirror as a symbol, and the
idea of one person's having magical power over another, are
repeated throughout the book. 

  NOTE:  Here you come upon the term mesmeric process.
Mesmerism is another name for hypnotism, a power that some
people have to induce a hypnotic state in others through their
animal magnetism or influence.  The word comes from the name of
Anton Mesmer, an Austrian physician and hypnotist (1734-1815). 

  The story of the Pyncheons, the Maules, and the curse was
embellished over the years until it was generally believed that
the curse put on Pyncheon by Maule would be inherited by each
generation of Pyncheons.  If any Pyncheon even gurgled, a
villager would say--only half-joking--"He has Maule's blood to
drink!" After a hundred years, one of the Pyncheons died
suddenly in much the same way as the Colonel.  His death only
reinforced the popular suspicion. 

  According to a provision of his will, the Colonel's portrait
remained on the wall of the study where he died.  It seemed to
cast an evil influence on the room. 

  NOTE:  Here you find a reference to Hawthorne's main theme:
".the ghost of a dead progenitor--perhaps as a part of his
punishment--is often doomed to become the Evil Genius of his
family." You first heard this theme in the preface, where
Hawthorne says,...  "the wrongdoing of one generation lives into
the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary
advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief..." 

  The Pyncheons were products of their time:  They were
thrifty, discreet, orderly, and narrow-minded.  They were all
homebodies.  Generations of the family had lived uneventful
lives for almost two hundred years.  There had been only one
noteworthy event--the sudden death of a relative, later judged a
murder.  The victim was a wealthy old bachelor who, after
sifting through family records, had decided that Matthew Maule
and his family had been wronged.  Among the Pyncheon family,
there was a great deal of concern that the old man might give up
the old house to the Maules or leave it to them in his will.
Before the man could do anything, however, he died.  Some of the
circumstances surrounding his death led people to believe that
he had died violently.  A nephew was tried for his murder, found
guilty, and has served thirty years of his prison sentence by
the time the story begins. 

  There have been rumors that the prisoner might soon be freed,
to return to the house of the seven gables to live with his
spinster sister, who is too poor to maintain the house properly.
When the story opens, the only other surviving Pyncheons are a
cousin who inherited everything except the house at the time of
the uncle's death and promptly became a model citizen and judge;
his son, traveling in Europe; and a pretty seventeen-year-old
cousin whose late father was a Pyncheon and whose mother has
remarried. 

  Maule's descendants, on the other hand, were known as honest,
quiet, poor, and diligent workers.  They always seemed set apart
from others, and their isolation only fueled rumors that they
had inherited Wizard Maule's powers and had influence over
people's dreams.  The family may have settled elsewhere, but for
thirty years there has been no sign of them in this town. 

  Pyncheon-street has ceased to be a fashionable section of
town.  The more modern houses that were built around the house
of the seven gables are small, wooden, and all similar to each
other.  They have none of the "picturesqueness...  that attracts
the imagination." The house of the seven gables, on the other
hand, seems to be keeping secrets.  "So much of mankind's
experience had passed there that the very timbers were oozy,
like a great human heart." 

  The Pyncheon elm, nearly one hundred years old, is gigantic.
It casts a shadow from one side of the street to the other and
sweeps over the roof of the house.  It makes the house seem part
of nature.  Through the fence is a grassy yard, and beyond the
house are the remains of a garden.  Moss grows over the windows
and on the sloping roof, and a cluster of flowers grow in a
crevice between two gables.  These flowers are called "Alice's
Posies" for Alice Pyncheon, who threw seeds up onto the roof in
play.  From the dust and dirt on the roof, the flowers have
grown long after Alice's death. 

  One other aspect of the house mars the picturesque image a
bit.  In the front gable is a shop door with a window in the
top.  This shop door causes great embarrassment to Hepzibah, the
dignified resident of the house, as it did to some of her
ancestors.  A hundred years ago, a Pyncheon found himself in
need of money.  Rather than seek office or try to settle his
family's claim to the Maine territory in a gentlemanly fashion,
he cut a shop door through the side of the house and operated a
store, much like a person of a lower class.  When he died, the
shop door was locked, bolted, and barred, and has never been
opened again.  The shop has remained exactly as it was in his
day; some say that his ghost--wearing an apron and with his
ruffled cuffs turned back--can be seen through the window poring
over his ledger, trying to make his accounts balance. 

  Now the tale begins. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  II.  THE LITTLE
SHOP WINDOW 

  When the chapter begins a half-hour before sunrise on a
midsummer morning, sixty-year-old Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon has
just gotten out of bed.  She is alone in the house of the seven
gables except for a young man, who for three months has been
renting a room in the gable farthest from Miss Hepzibah's own
quarters, and who earns his living making daguerreotypes. 

  NOTE:  A daguerreotype was a forerunner of the photograph.
The process of making a daguerreotype involved exposing a
treated silver or silver-covered copper plate to sunlight for
several hours, during which time an impression was made on the
plate.  Prints could then be made.  The process was named for
its inventor, the French painter Louis Daguerre (1789-1851). 

  You stand with the narrator at the threshold to Miss
Hepzibah's bedroom.  Together with the narrator, you are a
"disembodied listener" watching Hepzibah's actions as she,
prepares to face the day.  For twenty-five years, Hepzibah has
lived in seclusion, avoiding the world and its activity whenever
possible.  Yet there is something in her movements today, in the
seriousness of her prayers, in her sighing, and in the length of
time that she spends dressing, that leads you to believe that
today will not be an ordinary day in the life of this recluse.
She pauses once more before leaving her room and takes a
miniature from a secret drawer in her desk.  For several minutes
she gazes at the portrait of a young man in a dressing gown (a
robe usually worn while dressing or resting).  He has beautiful,
expressive eyes and full lips.  But who is he?  Is he a former
lover?  No, Hepzibah has never been in love.  She puts the
miniature down and checks her appearance once more in the
mirror, wiping away tears.  Then she steps into the dark
hallway, a tall, nearsighted figure dressed in black, feeling
her way toward the stairs. 

  NOTE:  A miniature is a very small portrait, originally
painted with a red substance called minium, from which the
English word is derived.  Use of the word miniature to mean
something very small comes from the fact that these portraits
were so small. 

  The room Hepzibah steps into at the bottom of the stairs has
a low, beamed ceiling, dark wood paneling, and a faded carpet on
the floor.  There are two tables, six straight-backed chairs,
and an antique armchair.  Two framed items hang on the walls.
One is an old map of the much-disputed Pyncheon territory in
Maine, absurdly illustrated with Indians and wild beasts
(including a lion).  The other is the portrait of old Colonel
Pyncheon wearing a skull cap and a grizzly beard, holding a
Bible in one hand and a sword in the other.  Hepzibah pauses
before the portrait, looking at it with her famous
scowl--something that has always been taken as an expression of
anger but which is only a squint caused by her nearsightedness.
Because of this scowl, Miss Hepzibah has a reputation as an
ill-tempered spinster when she is actually a very kind and
good-hearted person. 

  Until a few days ago, the shop in the front gable had been
untouched since the death of its operator a hundred years ago.
Dust covered the shelves and counters, and had filled a pair of
scales as if the dust itself were being weighed.  But now the
shop has changed.  The shelves and counters are clean, the floor
is covered with fresh blue sand, and the scales have been
scoured in an attempt to remove the rust.  Barrels of flour,
apples, and cornmeal, boxes of soap and candles, a stock of
brown sugar, white beans, and split peas line the walls.
Someone, it seems, is about to reopen the shop. 

  In a frenzy, Hepzibah enters the shop and busies herself
straightening and arranging the merchandise.  There is something
sad in the contrast between the tragic old figure and the silly
work she is doing, setting up playthings and cookies.  You are
watching Hepzibah at the moment when she must step down from her
imagined position as a member of an aristocracy in which people
do not work for a living.  After years of clinging to the hope
that the land in Maine would be found to be rightfully hers,
Miss Hepzibah has faced the truth--that she must either work for
a living or starve.  What else could she do?  She cannot be a
seamstress--she is too clumsy and nearsighted.  While she
considered opening a school for young children, her intolerance
of them made that unlikely.  There was little choice for her but
to open a cent-shop. 

  NOTE:  In Europe, a person's position had a great deal to do
with heredity, and couldn't vanish with the loss of money.  But
in the United States, where position depends more on money, a
person's fortunes can change daily.  In the setting up of the
cent-shop you find another of the themes of this tale--decaying
gentility and the rising and falling tides of fortune. 

  Hepzibah takes down the bar from the shop door, preparing to
admit the world--something she has not done in twenty-five
years.  In her misery at the realization of her new life, she
runs back into the parlor where she throws herself into the
armchair and weeps. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  III.  THE FIRST
CUSTOMER 

  The ringing shop bell signaling the entrance of her first
customer rouses Hepzibah from her despair.  As she rushes to
meet the customer, she appears like someone who expects to meet
a burglar.  Her fierce appearance--enough to frighten anyone who
does not know her--disguises the fear she feels in her heart. 

  The person entering the shop brings some of the morning
sunlight with him.  He is a young man of twenty-one or
twenty-two, slim, with a thin brown beard and a short moustache.
His facial expression combines cheerfulness, seriousness, and
energy. 

  Hepzibah's first customer is Holgrave, the young man who for
three months has been boarding in a far gable of the house.  He
has come to make sure that Hepzibah hasn't backed out of her
enterprise, to ask if there is anything he can do to help her,
and to wish her luck in her business venture. 

  Here Hawthorne notes that a person who is very upset seems
able to survive any amount of nastiness from other people, but
goes to pieces the moment someone shows some kindness.  If you
have ever felt this way, you will understand why, at Holgrave's
goodness, Hepzibah at first starts to laugh and then bursts into
tears. 

  When she collects herself, Hepzibah confides her misgivings
to her friend.  The young man tries to calm her and says that
the things we fear lose their substance as soon as we meet them
face-to-face.  When Hepzibah bemoans her fallen state and the
fact that she is no longer a lady but merely a woman, Holgrave
will not sympathize with her.  Instead he tells her that what
she considers a day of misfortune is actually one of the
greatest days of her life.  Instead of sitting aloof in her
circle of gentility, she will be battling with necessity.  He
assures her that joining the struggle of mankind will give her a
sense of purpose that she has never had before. 

  Holgrave admits that--because he was not born a gentleman--he
cannot sympathize with Hepzibah's dismay at leaving the
aristocracy.  He goes on to tell her that while the words
"gentleman" and "lady" once had meaning and conferred
privileges, they now imply restriction.  When Hepzibah refuses
to accept this new-fangled idea, Holgrave leaves her to wonder
if it is not better to be a true woman than a lady, and adds
that if the Pyncheons had always acted as nobly as Hepzibah is
acting today, Maule's curse would have had no power over them.
In what you will later see as an ironic statement, Hepzibah
replies that if Maule's ghost or one of his descendants could
see her now, he would be happy at last.  Relishing the pleasure
of being her first customer, Holgrave chooses some biscuits for
his breakfast.  Hepzibah smiles and insists she will be a lady a
little longer; she refuses to accept his money. 

  Although initially cheered by Holgrave's presence, Hepzibah
finds that his visit has no long-lasting effect on her mood.
She listens to the footsteps of people in the street, some
pausing in front of her shop window to look at her display.  At
one point, two laborers stop just outside the door and comment
on how surprised they are that she has opened a cent-shop.  One
man says that his wife lost five dollars when her cent-shop
failed.  Hepzibah, they say, is not likely to attract customers
with her scowl and bad temper.  The conversation makes a great
impression on Hepzibah, who wonders how she--a born lady--will
succeed in business when a vulgar woman of a lower class had
failed. 

  She is shaken from horrible fantasies by the ringing of the
shop bell.  The door opens and a messy little boy carrying a
schoolbook and slate comes into view.  He has come for the Jim
Crow gingerbread figure.  Hepzibah hands it to him but declines
the coin he holds out in payment, and the surprised little boy
leaves without shutting the door.  No sooner has Hepzibah
replaced the figure in the window when the bell rings again and
the door jerks open.  When Hepzibah sees that it is the same
little urchin with crumbs still around his mouth, she says,
"What is it now, child?  Did you come back to shut the door?" He
has come to get another Jim Crow.  Realizing that she will never
be rid of him as long as she gives away gingerbread, Hepzibah
charges him for this one. 

  NOTE:  Jim Crow is a stereotype name for a black person in a
nineteenth-century song-and-dance act.  It later came to mean
discrimination against blacks by legal enforcement.  In this
case it is the shape of a gingerbread man. 

  Hepzibah drops her first earnings into her money box, feeling
as if the coin has stained her palm forever.  In her mind, the
schoolboy and the gingerbread figure have broken her link with
her ancestry.  She might as well turn her family portraits so
they face the wall and use the map of their eastward territory
as kindling. 

  Yet, as Holgrave had predicted, Hepzibah grows calm and for a
while seems to almost enjoy her new position.  The atmosphere is
refreshing after her long seclusion, and she feels healthier now
that she is helping herself.  But she is encouraged only to the
point of being able to continue.  Her despondency always
threatens to return. 

  Among the customers who trickle through her shop are a little
girl whose mother sends her to match thread and who returns with
Hepzibah's choice, saying it will not do and is rotten; the
worn-out wife of a drunk and the mother of nine to whom Hepzibah
gives flour without accepting payment; and a man reeking of
alcohol who buys a pipe and curses the shopkeeper for having no
tobacco.  Five people leave angrily when they find she has no
ginger or root beer, and one housewife dooms her shop to failure
because she has no yeast. 

  Hepzibah is offended by the cross-section of humanity she
sees.  She hates the rude people who treat her like an equal.
Even more, she hates those who know of her fallen state.  When
some voice their regrets at what she has been forced to do,
Hepzibah suspects them of coming only to gawk.  It is not long
before she finds herself struggling against a great bitterness
toward the idle rich--the aristocracy to which she has until now
belonged.  When a well-dressed and perfumed lady passes through
Pyncheon-street, Hepzibah wonders if the whole world must work
so this woman's hands may be kept white and delicate. 

  NOTE:  From the visit with Holgrave to the trade with her
first customers, Hepzibah is struggling with her change of
class.  She has given up the hope of wealth that isolated her
for so long, and has joined the "united struggle of mankind."
What do her mixed feelings here suggest about isolation and
class distinctions?  Do you feel any special sympathy for her?
Why? 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  IV.  A DAY BEHIND
THE COUNTER 

  When this chapter opens, it is noon on the same day and
Hepzibah is looking out of the shop.  On the side of the street
opposite the house of the seven gables, a large but dignified
older man is walking.  He stops in the shadow of the
Pyncheon-elm and looks with great interest first at the house
and then at the shop window. 

  This character, described as "as well worth looking at as the
house" is the model of respectability.  Both his clothing and
gold-headed cane make him seem a person of authority and
influence.  Although he was probably thought handsome in his
youth, his face now is jowly, and a host to shifting
expressions. 

  As he looks up at the house, he first smiles and then frowns.
Through gold-rimmed spectacles, he studies the shop window and
smiles--first harshly and then benevolently--when he spots
Hepzibah looking out. 

  This person has a considerable effect on Hepzibah.  She
wonders aloud what he thinks of her enterprise.  "Take it as you
like, Cousin Jaffrey!" snarls Hepzibah once he is gone, and you
discover that this gentleman is Jaffrey Pyncheon, the wealthy
judge and cousin of Hepzibah and her imprisoned brother. 

  Returning to the parlor, Hepzibah tries to knit but soon
tosses the stocking aside and paces, pausing under the portrait
of her Puritan ancestor, Colonel Pyncheon.  As the likeness has
faded into the canvas over the years, the character of the man
has grown more prominent, as if the artist's true feelings for
the man have been hidden under paint that is now wearing away.
The resemblance between Colonel Pyncheon and the man Hepzibah
has just seen on the street is striking.  "This is the very
man!" she mutters. 

  Hepzibah loses herself so completely in her thoughts that
when the shop bell rings it sounds as if it comes from another
world.  In the shop she finds a neighbor, an old man known as
Uncle Venner.  He is a familiar sight in Pyncheon-street
where--toothless and in patched clothing--he does chores for
many families and gathers scraps for his Pig.  For his lack of
ambition, Uncle Venner had a reputation as a dimwit.  But what
seemed vulgar in him when he was younger seems charming in his
old age.  He is pleased to find that Hepzibah has begun trade
but predicts that something better will happen to Hepzibah, and
that she will never end up at the work-house (the poorhouse,
which he calls his farm).  Hepzibah fantasizes about how her
fortune might change.  An uncle who sailed for India fifty years
ago and who has not been heard from since might come back and
adopt her.  The head of the English Pyncheons--a member of
Parliament--might invite her to live in England.  Relatives in
Virginia might hear of her poverty and send her a small fortune
in yearly income.  Or the claim to the eastward territory might
still be settled in her family's favor. 

  Motioning for Hepzibah to come closer to him, Uncle Venner
asks, "When do you expect him home?" Hepzibah turns white and
wonders who he could mean, but Uncle Venner cannot be put off.
He says there is word of it all over town. 

  For the rest of the day, Hepzibah moves mechanically, as if
she were in a trance.  It is as if her spirit is in the past,
and her body has been left to deal with the present.  As luck
would have it, customers pour into the shop all afternoon and
Hepzibah blunders along, confusing her goods and miscounting her
change.  In her first day she has cleared only six cents, but in
spite of the slim profit, Hepzibah is happy that the day is
over. 

  As she is locking up, a carriage stops next to the elm, and
Hepzibah's heart stands still.  Could this be the guest from the
past that Uncle Venner referred to?  A slender young girl jumps
down to the sidewalk and goes to the front door of the Pyncheon
house, where the porter has left her things.  Thinking that the
girl must have the wrong house, Hepzibah peers out the window at
the young, cheerful face.  The contrast between the fresh, young
girl and everything around her is striking.  Her presence at the
door is like a ray of sunshine falling into a dark corner.
Hepzibah unlocks the door and shoves back the bolt.  It occurs
to her that this might be Phoebe, the country cousin whose
father has died and whose mother has remarried.  Hepzibah thinks
to herself that it is just like a country cousin to lack the
sophistication to write ahead of her intended visit.  Little
does Hepzibah know that Phoebe's letter to her has been in the
postman's pocket for days.  As she opens the door, Hepzibah vows
that Phoebe will stay only one night, thinking that her presence
might upset Clifford. 

  V.  MAY AND NOVEMBER 

  Phoebe awakens in the early morning in a room that faces east
and looks out over the garden.  After saying her prayers and
dressing, she hurries down to the garden, where she picks some
white roses that she had seen from her window. 

  Phoebe has a talent for arranging a room so that it looks
homey and inviting.  With her natural touch, the dark and dreary
bedroom becomes a cozy apartment.  The previous night it could
have been compared to Hepzibah's heart.  It lacked sunshine and
fire, and its only guests were ghosts.  Now, though,
something--perhaps the bunch of flowers?--makes the room
unmistakably that of a young woman. 

  When Hepzibah tells Phoebe that she cannot afford to keep
her, Phoebe replies cheerfully that she intends to earn her own
living and thinks the two of them will get along quite well.
Hepzibah tries everything to discourage Phoebe:  she points out
the unwholesome condition of the house, and tells stories of her
own bad temper and low spirits.  But Phoebe will not be daunted.
Finally Hepzibah concludes that she does not, in fact, have the
last word--that the master of the house will be returning
soon. 

  Surprised, Phoebe asks if Judge Pyncheon is the master of the
house.  Angrily, Hepzibah says no, and adds that the Judge will
never cross the threshold while she is alive.  When asked again
about the master of the house, Hepzibah brings out the miniature
you saw when she was dressing.  Phoebe admires the face, calling
it "as sweet a face as a man's can be, or ought to be," and asks
her cousin who it is.  Bending toward her, Hepzibah wonders in a
whisper if she has never heard of Clifford Pyncheon.  Phoebe has
only a dim recollection of the name, and seems to remember that
Clifford has been dead a long time.  Hepzibah laughs a warning
that in old houses like the house of the seven gables, people
are always apt to come back again. 

  Hepzibah brings out some family silver and a china tea set
brought to the colony by Phoebe's
great-great-great-great-grandmother.  When Phoebe washes the
things with great care, Hepzibah compliments her on her work.
She says Phoebe must take after her mother, because no Pyncheon
ever had her talents. 

  The shop bell rings before the women sit down to breakfast,
and Hepzibah puts down her teacup with a look of despair.  The
sound is almost more than she can bear as she sits with the
silver and china remnants of her gentility.  She is surprised
once again when Phoebe, claiming experience in shopping and
selling at country fairs, announces that she will tend the shop
today.  Hepzibah watches from the passageway to see how she
conducts herself, and is impressed when Phoebe bargains well
with a difficult old woman who trades yarn. 

  Hepzibah's admiration for Phoebe includes no desire to
imitate her.  Although Phoebe may be competent to manage the
shop and make yeast, brew beer, and bake spice cake, she is not
and will never be a lady.  No lady would ever possess Phoebe's
talents--they would be unnecessary.  This is not to say that
Phoebe is not ladylike.  She is tasteful and well groomed, but
she is not elegant.  She is petite and her tan, freckled face is
framed by brown curls.  She has an upturned nose and deep eyes.
She is pretty and graceful the way a bird is.  Phoebe is as much
a representative of the new Plebeianism as Hepzibah is of Old
Gentility, and the contrast between the two is great. 

  NOTE:  Phoebe is May to Hepzibah's November.  She is young
and hopeful whereas her cousin is old and despairing.  Phoebe is
from a lower social class than Hepzibah, but she is more
competent and more talented.  What does this say about the
contrast between Plebeianism and Old Gentility Hawthorne
presents here? 

  The light of Phoebe's personality must shine through the
windows of the old house.  There is no other explanation for the
speed with which the neighbors learn of her presence.  Business
quickly picks up.  At the end of their first day together,
Hepzibah puts on a pair of silk gloves and tallies the change in
the money box. 

  On a tour of the house Hepzibah recounts the history of each
article in it, hinting at Pyncheon fortunes still awaiting
discovery.  She tells Phoebe that the house is said to be
haunted by the ghost of the beautiful and talented Alice
Pyncheon, who wasted away from some mysterious ailment a hundred
years earlier.  Alice can still be heard playing softly on her
harpsichord, Hepzibah says, just before the death of one of the
Pyncheons. 

  Rounding out the grand tour, Hepzibah tells Phoebe about her
boarder, the daguerreotypist, who lives in one of the gables.
She explains that although she first considered Mr.  Holgrave an
orderly young man, she now does not know what to think.  His
friends, with their long beards and fashionable clothing, are
unlike any people she has ever known.  Holgrave has been accused
in a recent newspaper article of making a rebellious speech at a
meeting of his friends.  Hepzibah suspects him of practicing
animal magnetism and black magic in his room. 

  Horrified at Hepzibah's description of the young man, Phoebe
wonders why she allows him to stay.  Hepzibah excuses her
tolerance of him, saying, "I suppose he has a law of his own." 

  NOTE:  Animal magnetism is the personal influence or power
that one creature exerts over another.  Black magic is another
term for witchcraft. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  VI.  MAULE'S WELL 

  After one day away from the country, Phoebe feels the need to
spend time in the garden.  She finds it in better shape than she
had supposed it to be.  While the signs of long neglect are
apparent, it also seems that some of the fruit trees have been
recently tended and pruned.  There is also a small vegetable
garden almost ready to be harvested.  Phoebe wonders for a
moment who the gardener is, quickly rejecting the possibility
that it might be Hepzibah. 

  It seems to Phoebe that the eye of heaven must smile down
onto the garden, happy to see Nature surviving somewhere in the
dusty town.  In the garden's center, surrounded by mossy stones,
is a fountain that spouts water into the air.  In the corner is
a hen coop that houses one rooster, two hens, and a single
chicken.  They are all of an unusual breed--an heirloom of the
Pyncheon family for generations.  At their peak, the fowls had
been the size of turkeys, laying eggs the size of ostrich eggs.
But the hens are now no larger than pigeons.  Their withered
look and stiff movements show their degeneration over the years
in spite of--or perhaps because of--the purity of the breed.
Phoebe is disturbed to find that the crest, the distinguishing
feature of the birds, reminds her of Hepzibah's turban. 

  When Phoebe calls to the birds, they seem to recognize the
sound, and the chicken runs to her.  When he flies up and lands
on her shoulder to be fed, a voice behind her remarks with
surprise how familiar the birds are with her.  Turning, Phoebe
finds a young man with a hoe, who has come into the garden from
another gable.  The young man says that Hepzibah would explain
the bird's behavior by saying that Phoebe is a Pyncheon.  Phoebe
replies that it is merely because she has learned how to talk
with chickens and hens. 

  Phoebe realizes that this must be the
daguerreotypist--Holgrave--and she behaves toward him in a
manner more reserved than is natural for her.  He explains that
gardening is a refreshing pastime for him and that his real
occupation is "making pictures out of sunshine." When Phoebe
says that daguerreotypes are disagreeable-looking, Holgrave
counters that they are disagreeable only when their subjects are
disagreeable.  He contends that sunshine has greater insight
than humans have into a person's character. 

  Handing Phoebe a miniature in a leather case, Holgrave
explains that while most people think of this man as having a
pleasant face, he himself has never been able to achieve an
image other than sternness.  Phoebe thinks she recognizes the
face of her Puritan ancestor, the Colonel, without his cap,
beard, or old-fashioned clothing.  Holgrave laughs at her
mistake, assuring her that the subject of the miniature is very
much alive, and that she will certainly meet him one day.  He
marvels at the difference between the actual face, seen by most
people as benevolent, kind, open-hearted, and good humored, but
pictured here as "sly, subtle, hard, imperious, and cold as
ice." Refusing to look again at Holgrave's picture, Phoebe
mentions a miniature that Hepzibah has shown her, and challenges
the sun to make that face look fierce and tough.  Holgrave's
extreme interest in Hepzibah's miniature puzzles and embarrasses
Phoebe.  When Holgrave asks if there is anything sinister or
criminal in the man's looks, Phoebe suggests that he ask
Hepzibah to show it to him.  Holgrave would rather see the
original, he says, and adds that the character of the man has
been judged already.  Phoebe does not have a clue that the
person in Hepzibah's miniature is Hepzibah's brother Clifford,
who has been imprisoned for thirty years for murder. 

  Phoebe isn't sure she likes Holgrave.  While his manner is
polite, she resents the magnetic aspect of his personality.
When the garden is in shadow, Holgrave suggests that they stop
for the day; he invites Phoebe to come to his studio some time
when the sun is shining, so he can make a daguerreotype of her.
Before retreating into his gable, he warns Phoebe not to drink
or wash her face at the fountain, called Maule's Well, for it is
said to be bewitched. 

  NOTE:  When Phoebe and Holgrave meet, she isn't sure she
likes him.  If you look closely, you will see that it is not the
young man that Phoebe dislikes, but her attraction to him. 

  What does Phoebe's reaction tell you about her, and how does
it affect your impression of her character?  Does it influence
your feelings toward Holgrave at all?  How does it foreshadow
the story of Alice Pyncheon? 

  When Phoebe returns to Hepzibah's part of the house, she
finds it so dark she is unable to see.  She can just make out
Hepzibah's figure in a straight-backed chair, and asks if she
may light a lamp.  Hepzibah's voice in answer sounds strange to
Phoebe.  While she is lighting the lamp she thinks she hears
Hepzibah say something to her, and cries, "Just a minute!" She
expects to hear Hepzibah's voice in reply, but instead hears an
unfamiliar murmur.  The sound is so indistinct that after a
while she decides she must have imagined it. 

  In the lamplight from the passageway Hepzibah becomes a bit
more visible, but the rest of the room remains as dark as
before.  When Phoebe asks Hepzibah if she has just spoken to
her, Hepzibah says no in a melancholy voice.  After sitting
still for a moment, Phoebe becomes aware of irregular breathing
in one of the dark corners of the room.  Reluctantly, she asks
Hepzibah if there is someone in the room with them.  Hepzibah
reminds Phoebe of how busy she has been and how tired she must
be, and suggests that she get some sleep.  When Hepzibah rises
and embraces her, Phoebe feels Hepzibah's wildly beating heart
and wonders at the overflow of emotion. 

  Phoebe retires to her room, but she does not fall asleep
right away or stay asleep for very long.  In the night she hears
footsteps on the stairs and Hepzibah's voice rising with the
footsteps.  In response to Hepzibah's voice, Phoebe again hears
the strange murmur, a shadow of a voice.  The chapter ends here,
with Phoebe's suspicion that there is someone else in the house.
You must wait until the next chapter to learn if her suspicions
are well founded. 

  NOTE:  Notice how Hawthorne ends the chapter on a suspenseful
note.  He leaves you hanging, eager to press on and discover the
identity of the presence on the stairs.  But when you begin the
next chapter, you don't find the answer right away.  Instead,
Hawthorne trades on this suspense as he describes the mechanics
of preparing breakfast. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  VII.  THE GUEST 

  After her fitful night, Phoebe awakens to the sound of
movement from downstairs.  When she investigates, she finds
Hepzibah at a kitchen window with her nose in a cookbook.  With
a sigh, Hepzibah asks Phoebe to see if Speckle (one of the hens)
has laid an egg.  Just as Phoebe returns empty-handed, they hear
the fisherman blow his conch (seashell).  Hepzibah calls him to
the house and buys a fat mackerel. 

  Hepzibah's breakfast feast promises to be a very cheerful
one.  The aroma of fish, coffee, Indian cakes, and
clover-blossom butter spreads through the dark-paneled parlor,
and the china and family silver sit proudly on the table.  Only
the face of the Colonel seems out of place.  Phoebe arranges
some cut flowers in a pitcher, and everything is ready.  But who
will be their guest this morning?  The table is set for three. 

  All morning, Hepzibah has seemed both jumpy and moody.  One
moment she is ecstatically happy, the next she is in tears.
When their work in the kitchen is finished and Phoebe asks what
has happened, Hepzibah quickly wipes her eyes and tells Phoebe
to be quiet.  "He is coming!" Drawing the curtain to achieve a
perfect mix of sun and shade, she murmurs that he always liked
bright faces and never could stand tears...  "poor Clifford." 

  Just then a step is heard at the head of the stairs, followed
by a very slow and halting descent.  It is the same step Phoebe
heard climbing the stairs in what she thought was a dream the
night before.  After a long pause at the threshold of the
parlor, someone on the other side of the door grasps the knob
and then, without opening the door, lets it go. 

  Unable to endure the suspense, Hepzibah throws open the door
and leads an elderly man, with very long, white hair and in an
old-fashioned dressing gown, into the room.  He seems to lack
not the physical strength to walk freely, but the spirit to do
so.  His expression wavers on his face.  When, with a slight and
graceful movement, he acknowledges the bright and cheerful
Phoebe, Hepzibah introduces her as his cousin. 

  At his assigned place in the parlor, Clifford looks around
the room as if trying to be certain of where he is.  His spirit
still seems to waver; as it flickers in his eyes, Phoebe
recognizes him as the man in Hepzibah's miniature.  He wears the
same dressing gown, now old and faded.  His worn face and body
are evidence that he has suffered a terrible wrong.  Every once
in a while an expression of refinement and imagination flashes
through the decay and ruin that separate him from the world,
showing that whatever has happened has not destroyed him
completely.  As if talking to himself, he asks if this is
Hepzibah and why she scowls so.  Is she angry? 

  At Hepzibah's reply that he is at home where he is loved,
Clifford responds with a feeble but charming smile.  When his
smile fades, it is replaced by a look of hunger.  When he eats,
he is so completely absorbed in the mindless enjoyment of the
food that Phoebe is repulsed and must look away. 

  The flowers, the open window, and Phoebe's pretty face all
seem to Clifford suddenly like a dream masking the four walls of
a prison.  His face darkens at the thought.  Phoebe, in an
attempt to cheer him, shows him a rosebud from the garden.  It
is, by chance, a flower Clifford loved long ago, and he thanks
her.  While enjoying the rose and the memories it evokes,
Clifford notices the portrait of the Colonel and starts out of
his chair in alarm.  Hepzibah reminds him that, according to the
Colonel's will, the portrait must stay in the house, but offers
to cover it with some cloth. 

  While Clifford is dozing, the shop bell rings.  Hepzibah
explains that she has opened a cent-shop, and wonders if
Clifford is ashamed of her.  Asking how Hepzibah could speak of
shame to him, Clifford bursts into tears. 

  When Clifford finally falls asleep, Hepzibah sits and studies
his aged and ruined face, and moans in sorrow.  She lowers the
curtain on the sunny window and leaves Clifford asleep in the
parlor. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  VIII.  THE PYNCHEON
OF TODAY 

  In the shop Phoebe finds the eater of Jim Crow, little Ned
Higgins.  Having no money of his own left, he is getting eggs
and raisins for his mother.  When she hands him his package,
Phoebe slips him a gingerbread whale which he devours.  With the
food still in his mouth, the boy asks on his mother's behalf how
Hepzibah's brother is doing.  Phoebe does not answer, but is
surprised to find out who Clifford is. 

  As the boy leaves the shop, a man comes in.  He is portly,
wears a black suit, a white necktie, and polished boots, and
carries a gold-headed cane.  With its shaggy eyebrows and fat
chin, his face would look nasty if he were not smiling so
deliberately.  A careful observer would conclude that his
expression of good humor and kindness is not quite real, but in
any event, it intensifies as he enters the shop.  When the man
asks if she is Hepzibah's assistant, Phoebe says that she is,
and is also her cousin.  At this the man exclaims that she must
be his cousin as well, and introduces himself as Judge Jaffrey
Pyncheon. 

  NOTE:  In this introduction of Jaffrey, the narrator looks
carefully enough to notice the difference between the Judge's
appearance and the reality of his disposition.  Compare this
description to the description of Hepzibah, and the difference
between her appearance and her reality. 

  Just as the Judge bends over the counter to kiss her, Phoebe
steps aside, leaving him stupidly kissing the air.  While he
seemed pleasant enough from across the street or across the
room, Phoebe does not want his fat, rough face to touch her.
She blushes at the thought and when she looks again, his face
seems to be covered by a thundercloud.  Suddenly it occurs to
Phoebe that this is the face in Holgrave's daguerreotype, and
that the nastiness she is witnessing now is identical to what
the sunlight has seen.  The strong resemblance between his
expression and that of the Colonel might almost imply that more
than physical characteristics are passed down from one
generation to the next. 

  The Judge tries to regain his composure and pride by saying
that Phoebe is a good girl for being so cautious.  Still, Phoebe
finds herself unable to warm up to him and can't shake the idea
that the old Puritan has just stepped into the shop.  There are
differences between the two men:  As heavy as the Judge is, he
is not as heavy as his ancestor, and he does not have the
Colonel's ruddy English complexion.  But in their character,
integrity, and courage they are the same.  In addition, both are
greedy and both pretend to be kind. 

  Phoebe does not know enough about her family history to
recognize any of the less obvious parallels, but she has heard
of Maule's curse.  Thus, when Judge Pyncheon clears his throat
with a gurgling sound, she jumps.  For a moment the two men blur
in her mind. 

  When the Judge asks Phoebe what she is afraid of, Phoebe
offers to call Hepzibah for him.  He detains her a moment longer
to ask about Clifford's return.  After Phoebe describes Clifford
as a gentle but weak-minded man, the Judge seems pleased and
expresses his hope that Clifford has enough intellect to repent
of his past sins.  When she answers that no one could have fewer
sins than Clifford, it becomes clear to the Judge that Phoebe
knows nothing of Clifford's history.  He urges her to think the
best she can of "unfortunate" Clifford. 

  As the Judge tries to enter the house unannounced,
Phoebe--unsure that she is doing the right thing--blocks his
way.  Claiming great familiarity with the house and its
occupants, the Judge pushes her aside just as Hepzibah appears,
looking like the dragon that guards over beauties in fairy
tales.  At this moment her scowl is unrelated to her
nearsightedness.  Shooing him away, she plants herself in the
doorway.  The Judge offers her his hand and another of his warm
smiles.  He says he has come to assist in making Clifford
comfortable, and asks if he may enter.  He seems hurt when
Hepzibah replies that Clifford cannot see visitors. 

  Jaffrey then offers to be the host, and invites Hepzibah and
Clifford to his luxurious house in the country.  Phoebe is
startled when Hepzibah coldly rejects his offer.  When the Judge
tries to force his way past Hepzibah so that he might see
Clifford, she again blocks the doorway.  A weak and defenseless
voice from inside the house begs Hepzibah not to let the Judge
inside.  No matter how he might smile later, the flash of anger
in the Judge's eyes at the sound of Clifford's voice is a sight
no one could ever forget.  The Judge claims that Hepzibah does
him a great wrong.  With a bow and a nod he leaves the shop and
goes, smiling, down the street. 

  When he is gone, Hepzibah--white as a sheet--calls him the
horror of her life and asks if she will ever have the courage to
tell him what he is.  It seems unlikely to Phoebe that a
judge--a man of a respectable position--could be anything other
than upright and good.  Unwilling to face the disorder that
would follow in her mind if anything else were true, she rejects
her suspicion that the Judge is an evil man and dismisses
Hepzibah's declarations as bad feelings created by a family
feud. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  IX.  CLIFFORD AND
PHOEBE 

  NOTE:  Some readers complain about this chapter, saying that
it lacks action, that nothing happens to develop or enhance the
plot.  The chapter is uneventful.  It considers the characters
of Clifford and Phoebe and the relationship that develops
between them.  Why do you think Hawthorne included this chapter?
What can you point to as its strength? 

  Several days pass after Clifford's arrival, and the three
Pyncheons work out a routine that suits them all.  Hepzibah, who
has never asked for anything for herself, wants nothing more
than to make her shattered brother happy.  But she wears hideous
clothing; her voice croaks; she is clumsy and ugly.  Her efforts
only offend her brother, and she knows it.  She turns to Phoebe
for help. 

  Again and again you are told how fragile Clifford is.  His
only pleasure (for he has no purpose) is the appreciation of
beauty.  In Phoebe he finds much to appreciate.  Her purifying
influence purges the house of its shadows.  Her movements remind
him of a fountain.  She sings like a bird.  Clifford becomes
more youthful in her presence--his face glows and shows traces
of its former beauty.  He never talks to Phoebe or says that he
enjoys her company, but when she wanders out of sight or earshot
he grows restless and irritable. 

  Clifford is aware of Phoebe as a beautiful woman.  But his
attraction to her is neither sexual nor paternal.  In her
physical beauty, her simplicity, and her natural grace, Phoebe
is a symbol of what Clifford will never have.  Hers is the kind
of beauty with which Clifford should have lived all his life.
After years in prison imagining what a woman is, Phoebe is just
what Clifford needs to bring him back to the real world. 

  NOTE:  CLIFFORD Hawthorne says that Phoebe does not really
know what to make of Clifford.  To explain this, he uses a
wonderful image, saying that Phoebe has no more understanding of
Clifford than a fire has of the faces it illuminates.  This is a
perfect image to describe the relationship between them.
Phoebe, in her cheerfulness and warmth, is always described in
images of fire and sunshine.  The old and gloomy Clifford is
drawn to her warmth.  In her fire he sees a number of images.
When she goes away, Clifford feels as if a fire has gone out or
the sun has gone behind a cloud. 

  Phoebe is drawn to Clifford, not by his exotic nature, but by
his need for her.  Like the fire or the sun, she does not
reflect his gloom but generates her own heat and light.  This is
not to say that life in the house does not take its toll on
Phoebe's nature.  With so much to think about, she does grow
more thoughtful, but she never tries to discover what Clifford
has endured.  Their relationship develops in complete ignorance
on Phoebe's part.  In her innocence, she judges Clifford by her
own standards--and when she finally learns his story, she knows
him too well to be influenced by it. 

  X.  THE PYNCHEON GARDEN 

  At Phoebe's urging, Clifford spends time in the garden, where
she reads to him and where he delights in the natural world of
flowers, insects, and birds, as well as the Pyncheon hens and
Maule's Well. 

  Clifford prefers Phoebe's chatter about the flowers, insects,
and birds in the garden to her reading aloud to him.  It helps
him focus on the present.  He loves the flowers, and he studies
each one not just for its fragrance, color, or form, but for its
life and individuality. 

  Hepzibah, whose role is both mother and sister to Clifford
now, watches him with both sadness and pleasure.  His childlike
happiness contrasts sharply with his actual state of aged ruin.
His present lies between a terrible past and a blank future.
And if you study Clifford's present closely, you see that it is
a deep void.  He knows this, for he has looked into the "mirror
of his deeper consciousness," and has seen that he is always at
odds with the world.  He has learned so well how to be unhappy
that he can no longer understand how to be happy.  Pain is most
real to him, and often his experience of pain--the prick of a
thorn or a pinch--is what tells him that he is not dreaming. 

  At Clifford's request, the Pyncheon fowls are allowed to roam
freely in the enclosed garden.  They are the oddest birds
imaginable, both in appearance and behavior.  When one of the
hens finally lays an egg (which might hatch into a hen and
continue the breed), Hepzibah serves it to Clifford for
breakfast.  Hawthorne's use of the withered birds as a symbol of
the Pyncheons is very obvious here.  Holgrave muses that the
chicken's odd markings are like the odd traits of the Pyncheons
and that the chicken is a symbol of life in the old house.  It
is yet another restatement of the theme of decaying
aristocracy. 

  The hens sit on the edge of Maule's Well and savor the water
that people find so foul.  Clifford sees a changing display of
figures in the fountain's dancing water--beautiful faces that
symbolize his character, and dark ones that symbolize his
fate. 

  On Sundays, after Phoebe returns from church, the three
Pyncheons are joined in the garden by Holgrave and Uncle Venner.
Clifford likes Uncle Venner:  the fallen gentleman is most at
ease with a member of the lower class.  Uncle Venner's extreme
old age makes Clifford feel young, and sometimes Clifford
forgets that he does not have a lifetime ahead of him.  Holgrave
tries to draw Clifford into conversation; his interest in
Clifford seems at times to be greater than any a stranger might
have in the old man.  On these sunny afternoons, Clifford
becomes animated and even speaks his mind, but when the sun goes
down the excitement fades from his eyes.  "I want my happiness,"
he says at one point, and the narrator answers him, saying that
he is too old, that fate has no happiness in store for him, and
that he should make the most of the life he has. 

  NOTE:  Readers often point to this passage when accusing
Hawthorne of being an "intrusive" author.  He answers Clifford's
remark as if he can see and hear the characters as their story
unfolds, but he is invisible to them. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  XI.  THE ARCHED
WINDOW 

  Over the porch of the front gable is a very large arched
window that opens onto what was once a balcony with a railing.
As a change of scenery, Phoebe and Clifford--shaded from view by
large red curtains--look down onto the street and watch the
world go by. 

  There is always something for Clifford to look at.  After so
many years in isolation, the world and its ways are strange and
infinitely interesting.  What pleases him most are sights and
sounds that are either familiar or beautiful.  He misses
stagecoaches on the street, but when a scissors grinder sets up
his wheel under the Pyncheon elm, Clifford is ecstatic at
hearing a sound from his childhood. 

  While life on Pyncheon-street can be monotonous, it is often
quite lively.  One day an Italian organ grinder and his monkey
pause on Pyncheon-street to play.  Spying Phoebe and Clifford in
the arched window, the organ grinder stands below them so they
can hear his music.  The monkey bows and begs for money while
the organ grinder plays a tune on his organ, where, at the turn
of a crank, a collection of little figures dances to his tune.
A lady fans herself, a soldier waves his sword, a milkmaid milks
a cow.  When the dance is finished, each little character is in
exactly the same position as before it began.  The cobbler has
not finished his shoe and the miser has no money in his
strong-box.  Delighted at first by the music and the little
figures, Clifford is struck by the ugliness of the monkey and
bursts into tears. 

  NOTE:  The organ grinder and his organ become symbolic here.
As all the little figures--from all walks of life--dance to the
same tune, they accomplish nothing.  These symbols seem to favor
the pursuit of individuality. 

  When, on another day, a political parade passes through the
street, the sight is too much for Clifford.  A parade is silly
when seen up close, when each individual is discernible.  But
from where Clifford sits, the parade streams through the street
like a "river of life," a human tide that pulls him into its
undertow.  Hepzibah and Phoebe do not understand the look
Clifford gives them, and think only that he is disturbed by so
much commotion.  Moved either by the magnetic force of the
parade or by the terror that pushes people over the edge,
Clifford tries to join the humanity below him.  He steps onto
the window sill and struggles to reach the balcony--from where
it is a two-story drop to the crowd below. 

  Hepzibah and Phoebe grab him by his clothes and pull him
back.  Phoebe bursts into tears and Hepzibah screams at
Clifford, asking if he is crazy.  He answers that he doesn't
know.  But if he had taken the plunge and survived, he adds, the
shock would have made him another man.  It might have restored
him to the world. 

  NOTE:  Considering what you know of Hawthorne and his ideas
about individualism vs.  the tide of humanity, how is this scene
a comment on his own time? 

  Clifford's desire to be part of humanity returns one Sunday
morning as he and his sister watch from the arched window as
their neighbors are going to church.  Phoebe steps out of the
house, looks up at them, and waves.  She wears clothes that seem
never to have been worn before.  She looks to Hepzibah and
Clifford like a "religion in herself," a "spirit capable of
heaven." Moved by the way the spirit of the day seems to
transform even their unspiritual neighbors.  Clifford says that
if he were to go to church he thinks he would be able to pray
once more. 

  Hepzibah and Clifford, dressed in their damp, moldy,
old-fashioned clothes, offer quite a contrast to Phoebe.  They
open the front door and step out, feeling as if all the world is
looking at them.  Saying they are but ghosts among the living,
Clifford finds himself unable to take another step.  They
retreat, defeated, into the house.  After their breath of fresh
air, though, the house is ten times as dismal as it had been.
There is, it seems, no prison as dark as a person's own heart. 

  It would be wrong to represent Clifford as always miserable.
Unlike most people, Clifford has none of the worries that come
with responsibilities.  In this, he is like a child.  Even in
his dreams, he always appears as a child or a young man.  In his
own "lingering near childhood," he loves the sound of children's
voices and the sight of them at play. 

  One afternoon, Clifford indulges his desire to blow soap
bubbles out the arched window, an amusement he loved in
childhood.  The people on the street below exhibit a number of
reactions.  Some stop; some look up angrily; others break the
bubbles with their fingers.  One bubble bursts on the nose of an
elderly gentleman.  He looks up sternly and then smiles, saying,
"Aha, Cousin Clifford, still blowing soap bubbles?" At the sound
of Judge Pyncheon's sarcastic tone, Clifford is paralyzed by
fear.  Weakness feels only horror when faced with such massive
strength. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  XII.  THE
DAGUERREOTYPIST 

  By mid-afternoon, Clifford is usually worn out from his
mental activity and Phoebe has a little time to herself.  Though
in some ways she seems to be immune to the dreariness of the
house, she needs to escape from its damp, rotting atmosphere and
the sickly spirits of her cousins.  Already she seems less
girlish than when she arrived:  Her eyes look larger, darker,
and deeper.  Without occasional walks by the ocean, shopping
trips, or lectures, she will grow shy and unwholesome. 

  The only young person Phoebe sees often is Holgrave.  Though
they are both New Englanders, they could not be less alike.  If
they had met each other under different circumstances, they
probably would not have given each other another thought.  From
the start, Phoebe has hung back from Holgrave.  She's not sure
if she likes him or even if she knows him well enough to trust
him. 

  Little by little Phoebe learns about Holgrave's past.  His
family background is humble; he has had almost no formal
education.  Almost twenty-two, he has supported himself since he
was a boy.  His former positions include schoolmaster, salesman,
newspaper editor, perfume peddler, and dentist.  He has traveled
to Italy, France, and Germany, and has spent several months in a
utopian socialist community.  Recently, he delivered a lecture
on mesmerism.  He confides to Phoebe that he has great powers of
mesmerism, and to prove it he puts the rooster to sleep.
Daguerreotypy is simply his latest occupation, a way of earning
a living. 

  Despite constantly changing environments and occupations,
Holgrave has managed to retain his identity, to "carry his
conscience along with him." Although this quality inspires
confidence, his lack of respect for tradition and Phoebe's sense
that his laws differ from hers make her nervous. 

  Holgrave always observes a situation without becoming
emotionally involved in it.  He is attentive to the three
Pyncheons, but doesn't seem to become more deeply involved with
them as he gets to know them better.  He remains more interested
than involved.  To Phoebe he seems especially interested in
Clifford, but she is not forthcoming in response to his
questions about the old man.  Phoebe tells Holgrave that when
Clifford is cheerful, when the "sun shines into his mind," she
looks only at what the light illuminates.  She tells Holgrave
that Clifford has a "great sorrow" and that where its shadow
falls is holy ground.  When she questions Holgrave's interest in
Clifford, Holgrave replies that he suspects that "a man's
bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom." 

  NOTE:  As our knowledge increases, it sometimes takes the
greatest intelligence to realize how much we do not know.
Hawthorne's age was marked by great discovery and progress, one
in which the ability to admit bewilderment was important. 

  Holgrave believes that his own lifetime will see a golden
age.  While he is right in thinking that better times are
coming, he is wrong in thinking that any change would be
complete in his lifetime, or that the change would even come in
his lifetime. 

  Although Holgrave has read little, he nonetheless considers
himself a thinker.  He has an inner resource, his youthful
enthusiasm.  His ambition may take him far, but it is hard to
say in which direction he will go. 

  Inadvertently, Phoebe makes the house more like a home to
Holgrave.  He is charmed by her though he considers her
transparent and accessible.  He speaks openly and reveals his
dreams to her.  When Phoebe asks how he became acquainted with
Hepzibah, Holgrave speaks of the influence of the past, saying
"Shall we never, never get rid of this Past!  It lies upon the
present like a giant's dead body!" He says that we are slaves to
death, that our lives are determined and ruled by dead men, and
that we must be dead ourselves before we influence our world, by
which time it belongs to somebody else.  Predicting that he will
live to see the day when "no man shall build his house for
posterity," Holgrave says he doubts that even the public
buildings should be made of anything as permanent as brick or
stone.  Even the house of the seven gables comes under
Holgrave's fire when he claims to love nothing moldy, and calls
it an unwholesome place that should be purified. 

  When Phoebe asks him why he lives there, Holgrave says he
dwells in the past to learn how to hate it.  He claims to
believe the story of Maule's curse, not as a superstition, but
as a proven theory.  He feels that the Puritans' desire to
"plant a family" is at the bottom of the wrong and mischief that
men do, and he suggests that every family merge with the masses
every fifty years and forget its ancestors.  Human blood, to be
fresh, must run in hidden streams.  When he portrays the
Pyncheons as lunatics, Phoebe doesn't know whether or not to
take offense.  Holgrave defends his thoughts as the truth, and
suggests that the original offender--the Puritan Colonel--has
perpetuated himself in an image that still walks the streets in
the body of Jaffrey and will probably bequeath the same
inheritance.  When she asks if this lunacy that he speaks of is
contagious, Holgrave is embarrassed and explains that he has
become absorbed in the subject since moving into the house.  He
has even written a story, he says, about one incident in
Pyncheon family history.  Surprised that Phoebe doesn't know
that he writes for magazines, Holgrave first brags about his
accomplishments and then offers to read his story to her.
Phoebe agrees to listen if the story is not too long or too
dull. 

  NOTE:  Hawthorne believed that family pride was at the root
of much of the world's evil.  He states this belief here, in
Holgrave's theory.  In view of his theme of the wrongdoing of
one generation living on in subsequent generations, is merging
with the masses ever possible? 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  XIII.  ALICE
PYNCHEON 

  This chapter consists of the story that Holgrave reads to
Phoebe.  It is a flashback to an earlier time in Pyncheon family
history and supplies some information you haven't heard before,
as well as reminders of details you may have forgotten. 

  The story takes place thirty-seven years after the death of
Colonel Pyncheon in the house built by Thomas Maule.  The three
main characters include two Pyncheons and one Maule.  One
Pyncheon is the Colonel's grandson Gervayse, who as a boy
discovered the Colonel dead in his study.  Now a handsome,
middle-aged man, he occupies the house of the seven gables with
his large family.  The other Pyncheon is Alice, his daughter,
who is beautiful and exotic.  Alice has just returned from
Europe where she was educated and where she learned to play the
harpsichord.  As proud as she is beautiful, Alice manages to
combine cold dignity with womanly tenderness.  The third
character is young Matthew Maule, a carpenter, whose father,
Thomas, built the house of the seven gables.  His
grandfather--also named Matthew Maule--was the wizard who
originally owned the Pyncheon homestead. 

  Physically, young Matthew Maule is a very attractive young
man, but he is not popular in the town.  Although he has never
done anything to make people dislike him, their dislike seems a
result of his standoffishness and of their suspicions of
inherited evil.  For example, he is suspected of having control
over people's dreams, of having Maule's Eye (which reads
people's minds), and of having the Evil Eye (which gives him
power over everything from crops to babies).  His naturally
withdrawn nature and the fact that he doesn't attend church feed
these suspicions. 

  Young Maule is bitter about the Pyncheon property, which he
believes was rightfully his family's.  He refuses to be treated
like a second-class citizen by the Pyncheons.  Thus, when he is
summoned to the house at the beginning of Holgrave's story, he
arrives at the front door rather than at the back or side doors,
where servants and craftsmen usually enter.  When Pyncheon's
servant goes to fetch his master, Maule tells him to give his
regards to Alice.  The servant is outraged that a carpenter
would pretend such familiarity with a lady. 

  It is plain to young Maule that Pyncheon has not called him
to make any repairs to the house:  the place is in fine
condition.  The house is said to be haunted by young Maule's
grandfather's ghost, but no carpenter can keep spirits out of a
house.  Gervayse's parlor is furnished with articles from
Europe, as well as with the portrait of the Colonel and the map
of the eastward land that the Pyncheons still hope to claim.
Pyncheon has asked to see young Maule about this claim.  When
the young man asks what a carpenter can have to do with this
matter, Pyncheon explains.  He says that his grandfather was on
the verge of settling the claim at the time of his death, and
that he suspects there was a document or deed behind his
grandfather's confidence in such a settlement.  It was commonly
said that the wizard, Matthew Maule, had gotten the better of
the old Puritan, that he had gotten possession of the huge
territory in exchange for an acre or two of homesite.  It was
also said that miles of Pyncheon land had been shoveled into
Maule's grave, and that the deed would only be found in Maule's
skeleton hand.  In desperation, Pyncheon lawyers had Maule's
grave searched.  Not only was there no deed, but the right hand
of the skeleton was missing.  Many of the rumors can be traced
to Thomas Maule, the builder of the house; and Gervayse
remembers that either on the day the Colonel died or the day
before, Thomas had come to the house to do a small job in the
Colonel's study, where "certain papers" were spread on the desk.
Matthew objects to this insinuation that his father may have
lifted the documents.  Gervayse disregards his objection and
offers him great sums of money for information leading to the
lost documents. 

  After rejecting many offers, young Maule asks if he could
have the house of the seven gables and its grounds as a reward
for return of the deed.  At this point, the portrait of the
Colonel is said to have frowned and appeared as though it might
descend from its frame.  Gervayse, who is not so attached to the
house, considers the deal for a moment.  The house does not
compare to a vast territory.  He draws up a written agreement to
Maule's terms.  But before Maule will say a word about the
missing deed, he insists upon seeing Alice and speaking with
her.  This stipulation shocks Pyncheon more than the idea of
giving up his house and grounds.  Maule indicates that his only
chance of discovering the deed is through the mind of a virgin
such as Alice, and Pyncheon finally agrees that he may see
her. 

  Alice comes when she is called.  The moment she lays eyes on
young Matthew Maule it is apparent that she finds him
attractive.  It would have thrilled other men to be looked at in
such a way by the beautiful Alice, but young Maule feels that he
is being appraised like an animal.  He is infuriated.  Gervayse
explains to Alice that she is to follow Maule's instructions,
and that he will remain in the room with her.  Gervayse turns
away and seems to study a painting, but is really worried about
all he has heard about the Maules and their wizardry. 

  When he catches a glimpse of Maule in a mirror, gesturing as
if he were lowering a weight on Alice, Gervayse tries to halt
the proceedings, but Alice urges him not to interrupt Maule's
"harmless efforts." Rationalizing that an increase in the
family's fortune would benefit Alice most of all, her father
allows Maule to continue, and does not interrupt even when he
hears his daughter moan.  In a gesture of triumph, Maule points
to Alice, who sits quite still with her eyes downcast, leaning a
little in his direction.  Nothing Gervayse does can rouse Alice
from this trance.  He shouts at her, shakes her, kisses her--but
nothing works.  Losing control of himself, he demands that Maule
restore his daughter to him.  Maule answers that Alice is now
his, and proves his control by making her stand and sit with a
wave of his hand. 

  When Maule tries to make Alice reveal the location of the
deed, he has no luck.  She describes three figures, easily
recognizable as the Colonel, Matthew Maule, and Thomas Maule.
The Colonel has the deed, but the two Maules prevent him from
giving it up or saying anything about it to his family.  When he
tries to speak, the Colonel seems to choke on his secret.  Young
Maule explains the imagery of Alice's vision, saying that
keeping the secret is the Colonel's punishment.  He tells
Gervayse to keep the house.  When Gervayse tries to speak, his
fear produces a gurgling sound in his throat.  Young Matthew
repeats the curse:  Gervayse has old Maule's blood to drink. 

  With a gesture from Maule, Alice awakens from her trance and
remembers nothing of it.  Maule leaves Alice with her father, no
closer to the missing deed.  From then on, Alice is never the
same.  A martyr to her father's greed, she remains under the
spell of young Matthew Maule.  Wherever he is, he has only to
wave his hand and Alice, wherever she is, laughs, cries, or
dances at his bidding.  She is left with no self-control and,
therefore, with no dignity.  One night Maule calls Alice out
into the rain and mud to wait on a laborer's daughter who is
about to become his bride.  Wearing only a sheer dress and satin
slippers, Alice obeys.  From the exposure she develops a cold
and fever.  She plays her harpsichord, happy because she knows
she will no longer be humiliated.  Days later, as her funeral
procession goes by, the saddest of all is Matthew Maule, who
meant only to humble Alice, not to kill her. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  XIV.  PHOEBE'S
GOOD-BYE 

  Holgrave's dramatic reading of the story is complete with
gestures showing how young Matthew Maule hypnotized Alice.  As
he reads, he notices that Phoebe herself is becoming drowsy.
With her eyes downcast, she leans a little toward him and seems
aware only of him.  Slowly it dawns on Holgrave that he has cast
a spell over Phoebe and that--with a wave of his hand--he could
control her spirit as completely as Matthew Maule mastered
Alice's. 

  Nothing is as tempting or seductive to Holgrave as the
prospect of power over another human spirit.  Yet Holgrave makes
a slight upward gesture with his hand, freeing Phoebe and
resisting temptation.  He has an uncommon respect for her
individuality.  When he teases her for dozing during his
reading, she has no idea what he means. 

  Both Phoebe and Holgrave fall under the spell of the
beautiful moonlit evening that has stolen over the garden during
the reading of the story.  In a melancholy voice, Phoebe admits
that she feels older than she did before she met her cousins.
She says that because she has given them her sunshine, she
cannot keep it for herself.  Holgrave says reassuringly that she
has lost nothing that was worth keeping.  He encourages her with
a description of a person's second youth, which he says is the
state of being in love. 

  Phoebe reveals that she plans to travel to the country in a
few days to visit her mother.  She says she will return to the
house of the seven gables, where she feels wanted and needed.
Holgrave credits her with the health, comfort, and natural life
of the household.  He says that Hepzibah, in her isolation from
society, is as good as dead, and that Clifford, too, is dead and
buried.  Without Phoebe, he adds, they both may become piles of
dust. 

  NOTE:  In Holgrave's remarks about Hepzibah and Clifford, you
find the most emphatic statement yet of Hawthorne's theme of
isolation and its effect on the human spirit. 

  Phoebe protests that she can't tell if Holgrave wishes them
well or not.  He then tries to explain how different his mind is
from hers.  His impulse, he says, is to analyze rather than to
help or hinder.  Phoebe puzzles at his words and at his
unattached, spectator attitude.  She uses a metaphor--that the
house is a theater.  She says the play costs the performers too
much and the audience is too coldhearted.  Holgrave has
mentioned that he feels that the family drama is coming to an
end, but when Phoebe asks him to explain, he will not.  He says
only that he has no secrets but his own and questions Judge
Pyncheon's motives in ruining Clifford's life.  Extending
Phoebe's theater metaphor, he wonders if destiny is "arranging
the fifth act for a catastrophe." Phoebe, already described as
being as hostile to mystery as the sunshine is to a dark corner,
bids Holgrave both good-night and good-bye. 

  A couple of days later she prepares to leave.  As she says
good-bye to Clifford and Hepzibah, she wonders how in just a few
weeks she has become so attached to these people and this place.
Everything she sees or touches responds to her thoughts as if
driven by a human heart.  Clifford calls her close to him and
looks into her face.  After an inspection that makes her blush,
he announces that she has developed from the prettiest girl he
has ever seen into a beautiful woman. 

  On her way out of the shop, she meets little Ned Higgins on
the doorstep and gives him either a gingerbread rabbit or
hippopotamus (she cannot see which it is through her tears) as a
gift.  Uncle Venner, seeing her in the street, says they will
miss her at their Sunday garden party, and marvels at how
quickly she has become familiar to him.  He urges Phoebe to
return soon--not only for his sake, but for the sake of the poor
souls who will never be able to do without her.  When he
compares her to an angel, Phoebe replies that she is no angel
but agrees that she feels most like one when doing what good she
can.  For that reason, she says, she will return soon. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  XV.  THE SCOWL AND
THE SMILE 

  Phoebe's absence coincides with an easterly storm, and for
days the house is filled with gloom. 

  Without the sun or Phoebe, Clifford is cut off from all
enjoyment.  Looking like the east wind herself, Hepzibah seems
only another phase of the weather in her black dress and cloud
of a turban.  Business falls off in the shop, for none of the
customers can face dealing with Hepzibah.  Of course, she is
never ill-tempered with Clifford, although her efforts to please
him invariably fail.  Sometimes she just sits, darkening the
room with her presence.  At other times she tries to kindle a
fire, but the wind drives the smoke back into the room.
Clifford sits wrapped in his cloak for the first four days of
the storm.  On the fifth, he announces feebly that he does not
plan to get out of bed, but that afternoon Hepzibah hears music
coming from Alice's harpsichord and assumes that he has gotten
up to amuse himself.  Legend has it that this music always
foretells a death in the Pyncheon family, but at the strumming
of the chords Hepzibah decides that a human is definitely
playing the harpsichord. 

  No sooner does the sound of the harpsichord stop when the
shop bell rings and a shoe is heard scraping the threshold.  At
the sound of a deep cough or choke, Hepzibah rushes forward in
alarm and anger.  It is as she suspected.  Judge Pyncheon smiles
and asks how the weather is affecting her and Clifford, saying
he has come once more to ask if there is anything he can do for
them.  Hepzibah rejects his offer, saying that she devotes
herself to Clifford.  The Judge argues that Clifford is too
secluded, that he needs family and old friends.  He asks if he
may see Clifford.  Hepzibah refuses, claiming that Clifford is
ill.  The Judge starts in alarm.  Fearing that Clifford may be
near death, he insists that he be allowed to see him.  When
Hepzibah indicates that Clifford has not death but only Judge
Pyncheon to fear, the Judge gushes in defense of himself.
Hepzibah is infuriated and her anger gives her courage.  She
tells the Judge that she knows how he hates Clifford, that she
believes he is plotting against her brother even now, and that
he will be sorry if he ever pretends to care for Clifford
again. 

  Except for Holgrave, Hepzibah is alone in her impression of
Judge Pyncheon.  Everyone else considers him a model citizen.
Even the Judge believes he is an honorable man.  Like those to
whom appearances are everything, the Judge has come to believe
in his own facade. 

  As an image for man's character, Hawthorne describes a grand
palace with a closet in its cellar.  The door is bolted and the
key has been thrown away.  In this closet is a decaying corpse,
which fills the palace with its odor.  The inhabitant no longer
smells it, though, for he has been breathing the same air for so
long.  The inhabitant who no longer smells the death scent is a
man whose soul is paralyzed. 

  NOTE:  In this metaphor, the character of Jaffrey is closely
identified with the character of his ancestor, Colonel Pyncheon.
Both men built their fortunes and their homes over the graves of
others--the Colonel literally over the grave of Wizard Maule,
the Judge figuratively over the ruin of his cousin Clifford.
Both men illustrate the theme that the sins of the past are
visited upon the present. 

  At Hepzibah's outburst, the Judge grows as stern as his
Puritan ancestor to whom he bears an amazing resemblance.  The
two argue fiercely about whether or not the Judge should be
allowed to see Clifford.  All the while the Judge claims to be
Clifford's only friend and the man who set him free.  He says
that thirty years ago, when their uncle's estate was tallied,
only a small portion of what he was thought to own had come to
light.  As the entire estate (except for the right to occupy the
house) was left to Judge Jaffrey, he is here now to ask Clifford
what may have happened to the rest.  Hepzibah thinks the Judge
is crazy and says so.  But the Judge replies that before their
uncle's death Clifford had boasted of knowing the secret of
untold wealth.  The Judge, who has thought about it all these
years, is certain that Clifford knows where the remainder of
their uncle's estate is hidden, but that Clifford refuses to
tell him out of a sense of revenge. 

  Judge Pyncheon tells Hepzibah that he has had people watching
the house and reporting on Clifford's behavior.  He has the
power to send Clifford back to prison if he should decide that
Clifford is unfit to remain at large, and he will decide so if
Clifford does not cooperate in revealing the hidden estate. 

  Mournfully, Hepzibah tells her cousin that it is he, not
Clifford, who has the diseased mind.  She accuses him of
repeating the mistake of the Colonel and of passing on the
curse.  Jaffrey is not moved to change his position, however.
He urges that Clifford decide immediately whether to share the
secret or to suffer the consequences. 

  Begging him to be merciful with her brother, Hepzibah admits
Jaffrey to the house, where he flings himself into the elbow
chair in the parlor, like so many Pyncheons before him have
done.  Perhaps none of them had ever been more tired than
Jaffrey is now.  Taking his watch from his pocket and holding it
in his hand, he begins counting the minutes to Clifford's
arrival. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  XVI.  CLIFFORD'S
CHAMBER 

  On her way to get Clifford, Hepzibah is rattled by the scene
she has just endured with Jaffrey.  Stories of good and evil
Pyncheons flood her mind; taken together, they repeat the same
disaster, generation after generation.  She thinks that she, the
Judge, and Clifford are about to add another chapter to the
story.  For a moment, while it is still in the present, their
story seems more tragic to her than the preceding ones. 

  Hepzibah is unable to shake the feeling that something--the
likes of which has never happened before--is about to occur.
She cannot bear to think of hurting Clifford, of bringing him
face to face with his evil destiny, the Judge.  It would be like
"flinging a porcelain vase, already with a crack in it, against
a granite column." Since Jaffrey wants something that Clifford
almost certainly does not have, Clifford is doomed to fall and
perish.  For a moment she wonders if Clifford does know
something of the uncle's vanished estate.  She thinks that if
she had it, she would gladly trade it all for Clifford's
freedom.  But she believes he does not know. 

  NOTE:  The metaphor of a porcelain vase is one of the most
memorable in the book.  The image of a porcelain vase suggests
extreme frailty.  The fact that the vase has a crack in it
suggests a fundamental weakness as well.  The vase (Clifford)
hasn't got a chance against the granite column (Jaffrey). 

  It seems impossible that, even surrounded by a city, there is
no help for them.  If Hepzibah were to call for help, however,
anyone answering would most certainly aid the Judge. 

  Wondering who might help them, she thinks first of Phoebe and
then of Holgrave as a possible champion of their cause.  She
unbolts the door that leads to Holgrave's gable, but he is not
home.  From among a number of daguerreotypes on his desk, the
face of Judge Pyncheon stares up at her.  For the first time in
all her years of seclusion, she feels isolated.  She is being
punished, she thinks, for having cut herself off from her
friends. 

  Back at the arched window, Hepzibah tries to pray to heaven
through the dense clouds, but her prayer, too heavy, falls back
to earth and to her heart.  She thinks Providence cares little
for the individual. 

  Finding no other way of stalling, and fearing the voice of
the Judge, she knocks at the door of her brother's room.  There
is no answer, for she has knocked so softly that Clifford could
never have heard her.  She knocks again--still no answer.  Once
again she knocks, slowly and insistently.  Clifford still does
not answer.  When she calls to him several times with no
response, she opens the door and finds the room empty.  She
looks out the window, but he is not in the garden.  Hepzibah is
horrified at the thought of Clifford, in his old-fashioned
clothing, being ridiculed by young boys passing by in the
street.  If Clifford has strayed from the house, he will not get
far, she thinks, for the town is almost completely surrounded by
the sea.  And at the thought of Clifford drowning, she hurries
to Jaffrey for help. 

  Crying that Clifford is gone and that harm may come to him,
Hepzibah opens the parlor door.  In the dim light she can hardly
make out the Judge's figure, sitting in the elbow chair in the
middle of the room.  He is looking out the window, and in spite
of his interest in finding Clifford, does not stir from his
position.  Hepzibah is still screaming at him to help her when,
from within the parlor, Clifford appears at the threshold. 

  Clifford is deadly white and his face wears a wild
expression.  From the threshold, he points back into the parlor
and shakes his finger slowly.  His look is one of joy or
excitement.  Hepzibah thinks he must be insane.  When she urges
Clifford to be quiet, he says she should let the Judge be quiet,
and that they should dance and sing.  "The weight is gone," he
says.  As he begins to dance, Hepzibah is seized with horror.
She pushes past Clifford into the parlor, but reappears
immediately, swallowing a scream. 

  Clifford orders her to hurry, saying they will leave the
house to their cousin.  Hepzibah notices that Clifford is
wearing his cloak and seems to be suggesting that they leave the
house.  She needs guidance now, and Clifford's will have to do.
Afraid of what she has seen, and of how it has happened, she
obeys without thinking, like a person in a dream. 

  She keeps wondering why she doesn't awaken.  None of this has
ever happened, she thinks.  But she does not awaken, not even
when Clifford steps to the parlor door and gestures at their
cousin, saying how ridiculous he looks.  Hepzibah and Clifford
leave the house, and the Judge's body remains. 

  NOTE:  JAFFREY'S DEATH What a difference in the reactions of
Clifford and Hepzibah!  Hepzibah is terrified.  She isn't sure
how Jaffrey died, and a part of her is afraid that Clifford may
have had something to do with it.  Clifford is her life, and her
fear for him paralyzes her. 

  Clifford, too, is afraid.  But he is afraid of injustice--of
being punished again for a death he did not cause.  Greater than
his fear, though, is his sense of freedom.  He says,
significantly, "The weight is gone," and you are reminded of how
the "past weighs on the present." The man who ruined Clifford's
life is dead, and Clifford now comes to life. 

  The sudden tension, the suspense, and the beautiful imagery
create an intense and effective climax to the story. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  XVII.  THE FLIGHT
OF TWO OWLS 

  Clifford and Hepzibah set off, out of the house and into the
east wind.  In their inexperience, they look like children.
Although it is summer, the wind and the chill Hepzibah feels
from what she has just seen make her colder than she has ever
been.  She is struck by the excitement that possesses her
brother, an effect similar to that which some people feel from
wine or from listening to fanciful music.  In Clifford's case,
it is excitement caused by music played on a cracked
instrument. 

  Before long, they find themselves in a large, smoky railroad
station, where a bell is ringing and an engine is puffing, ready
to leave.  Still the decisive one, Clifford helps Hepzibah into
one of the cars.  It begins to move almost immediately, drawing
the long-isolated pair into the current of human life.  When
Hepzibah, still haunted, asks Clifford if this is a dream, he
answers that he has never been more awake. 

  Outside the railroad car, the world rushes past.  Inside,
Clifford and Hepzibah are faced with almost fifty people--quite
a novelty after their long seclusion.  The passengers read,
play, sleep, study.  Familiar faces step off and new ones board
as the train stops and starts.  Clifford is dazzled by the
colorful scene; Hepzibah feels more isolated from humanity than
ever.  Clifford reproaches her for thinking about the house and
their cousin sitting in it alone.  He urges her to be happy with
him now that they find themselves in the midst of life.
Hepzibah thinks he is mad and that perhaps she is, too.  And
well she may be, clinging to one thought, one scene, especially
now when faced with so many distractions.  To Hepzibah, though,
the house of the seven gables seems to appear everywhere she
looks.  Unlike Clifford, her mind is unable to absorb new sights
at this moment.  She finds that their relationship has changed,
that Clifford--startled into manhood and intelligence has become
her guardian. 

  When the conductor asks for their tickets, Clifford hands him
money and asks to go as far as it will take them.  A fellow
passenger, commenting that they have chosen an unusual day for a
pleasure ride, asserts that the best place to be is at home by
the fire.  Clifford disagrees, and the two men converse briefly
about the merits of locomotion versus stale ideas of home.
Clifford suggests that although we think of ourselves as going
forward in a straight line, all human progress is circular--in
an ascending spiral curve.  We always return to something we
tried once and abandoned, but now have refined and perfected.
The past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy of the present and
future. 

  Because the railroad has made movement and change so easy,
Clifford wonders why anyone would create a prison (in other
words, a house) of wood, bricks, or stone rather than just live
"anywhere and nowhere." As he theorizes, he is transformed into
a youthful character.  The young girls on the train are
distracted from their game by his face.  They stand looking at
him, thinking how beautiful he must once have been. 

  When Clifford's new acquaintance says he would not call
living "anywhere and nowhere" an improvement, Clifford repeats
his idea that our obstacles to happiness are the houses we
build.  The human soul needs air, he says, not the influence of
a stagnant household.  Whenever he thinks of a certain
seven-gabled house that he knows well, he imagines an elderly
man inside, sitting dead in his chair with his eyes open,
poisoning the whole house with the scent of death.  Clifford
affirms that the farther away he gets from the house, the more
alive and youthful he feels.  He knows that he can never be
happy there. 

  Hepzibah tries to stifle Clifford's chatter, but he will not
be silenced now that he has finally articulated his thoughts.
He turns again to the embarrassed gentleman and continues his
train of thought, saying that "real estate--the solid ground to
build a house on--is the broad foundation on which nearly all
the guilt of the world rests....  A man will commit almost any
wrong...  only to build a great, gloomy, dark-chambered mansion
for himself to die in, and for his posterity to be miserable
in...." Clifford predicts that a better age is coming, and sees
"messengers of the spiritual world, knocking at the door of
substance." 

  Electricity, too, appears to be a sign of change, making the
world "one great nerve." The telegraph seems an "almost
spiritual medium." It should be used to serve the causes of love
and joy in carrying messages, not as an instrument to spread
news of fugitive bank robbers and murderers, as his fellow
passenger suggests.  As an illustration of the disadvantaged
position of the fugitive, Clifford describes his own
circumstances as if he were talking about someone else.  The
passenger calls Clifford strange and says he cannot see through
him, to which Clifford answers that he thinks himself as
transparent as the water in Maule's Well. 

  At this point, the train reaches a station where Clifford and
Hepzibah get off.  The train vanishes, as if it were the world
fleeing from them.  From the platform they see a decaying wooden
church and an apparently uninhabited farmhouse.  Clifford
shivers in the rain and wind, and tells his sister that she must
take charge now.  His mood has changed completely.  Hepzibah
kneels on the platform and prays to God to have mercy on them. 

  NOTE:  The railroad--the "Iron Horse"--was a controversial
subject in Hawthorne's time.  Thoreau, the Transcendentalist
writer, saw it not as a sign of progress, but as the ruin of the
natural landscape and a symbol of the evils of the Industrial
Revolution.  For Clifford and Hepzibah it is a world unto
itself, a traveling microcosm (little world) in which they
suddenly find themselves with their fellow men.  For them, it is
also an instrument of the future, as well as an escape from
their past. 

  You should notice two other points in this chapter.  The
first is how, once Clifford leaves the isolation of the house,
he is "startled into manhood and intelligence." The second is
how closely his ideas resemble those of Holgrave when he spoke
with Phoebe in the garden. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  XVIII.  GOVERNOR
PYNCHEON 

  Judge Pyncheon still sits in the parlor of the house of the
seven gables.  He has not stirred all this time--not even his
eyes have moved.  Although he still holds his watch in his hand,
you cannot see the time.  He appears to be meditating or
sleeping.  You would have to hold your own breath to be
completely sure that he is breathing at all.  Over the ticking
of his watch his breathing can't be heard. 

  How unusual it is for a man as busy as Judge Pyncheon to
linger so long in an empty house that he has never liked.
Although the elbow chair is comfortable enough, the wealthy
widower is more than welcome in many houses with better
chairs. 

  Just this morning he was making plans not only for today, but
for the next twenty-five years.  Today promised to be hectic,
beginning with the interview with Clifford, which should have
taken no longer than half an hour, but which has taken two hours
already.  Then he had a meeting with a broker about an
investment possibility. 

  It's now ten minutes before dinner time, however, and the
Judge has a very important dinner engagement this evening--a
gathering of his distinguished friends from around the state,
who plan to ask the Judge to be their candidate for governor of
Massachusetts.  Why, after half a lifetime spent pursuing this
goal, does he hesitate now? 

  As the cloudy evening mingles with the gloom of the house,
the parlor darkens and you can no longer make out the Judge.
You hear only the murmuring wind and the ticking of his watch.
The wind changes direction and the house creaks.  A door slams
upstairs.  First starlight and then moonbeams become visible in
the clearing sky. 

  Midnight strikes on a city clock.  The Judge does not believe
the legend that at midnight all the dead Pyncheons gather in
this parlor to see if the Puritan's portrait still hangs on the
wall.  The dancing of the moonbeams and shadows in the old
mirror makes it easy to imagine a parade of Pyncheons entering
from another world.  The Puritan (Colonel Pyncheon) comes first,
looks up at his portrait, and checks the frame.  All is well,
but the Colonel looks troubled.  Shaking his head, he turns away
and is followed by all the other dead Pyncheons.  Six
generations push each other along as they try to reach the
frame:  Old men, women, ministers, officers, the shopkeeper,
Alice, Gervayse, a mother and her baby.  One among them is
dressed in modern clothes.  It seems to be young Jaffrey, Judge
Pyncheon's son, who has been traveling in Europe.  If he is
dead, then the Pyncheon fortune will one day belong to Clifford,
Hepzibah, and Phoebe.  Another figure joins the procession--the
ghost of the Judge himself.  While his body still sits in the
chair, his ghost goes to the portrait and tries the frame, then
turns away frowning. 

  A mouse sits up near Judge Pyncheon's shoe, startled by a
large cat at the parlor window.  For the first time in five
years, the Judge's watch stops ticking.  The shadows fade, and
it is morning.  Will the Judge get up?  If he does, will his
seclusion have made him a better man?  Again the voice calls out
to him; again he does not answer.  A housefly lands on the
Judge's forehead, then travels across the bridge of his nose
toward his open eyes.  The shop bell rings, a reminder of the
living world. 

  NOTE:  Will the Judge, a man of the world and the opposite of
Clifford, benefit from a little isolation? 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  XIX.  ALICE'S
POSIES 

  When Uncle Venner ventures out shortly after sunrise the next
morning, he finds that, after five days, the storm has finally
passed.  Everything in Pyncheon-street looks clean and bright.
The Pyncheon elm has survived the wind.  Its leaves are a
perfect green except for one branch--always the first to
announce the coming of autumn--which has turned a bright gold. 

  NOTE:  The gold branch is a reference to the golden bough
that allows Aeneas to enter the world of the dead in Virgil's
epic poem The Aeneid.  There Aeneas meets the great men who will
be his descendants in the future. 

  Even the house of the seven gables looks inviting and as if
its history must have been a happy one.  Of all its interesting
aspects, one stands out:  The large clump of red-spotted flowers
called Alice's Posies that blooms in a crevice between two
gables.  They have grown from seeds brought from Italy by Alice
Pyncheon.  Last week they looked like a clump of weeds, but
now--in full bloom--they seem to symbolize the consummation of
something in the house. 

  With his wheelbarrow, Uncle Venner heads for the back door of
the house, where Hepzibah always leaves a large pan of scraps
for his pig.  He is disappointed when he finds nothing there,
but decides against knocking at such an early hour.  The
creaking of the gate on his way out attracts the attention of
Holgrave, who calls to him from his window and asks if there is
no one around. 

  The two men talk about the storm that has just passed, and
Holgrave comments that the wind was so fierce the night before
that it had sounded as if all the dead Pyncheons were gathered
in Hepzibah's rooms.  Uncle Venner guesses that either Hepzibah
has overslept or she and Clifford went to the country with the
Judge after his visit to the shop yesterday. 

  A fat woman hurries to the shop door, which will not open no
matter how hard she bangs on it.  As she struggles and the bell
rings furiously, a neighbor calls that it is no use, that
Hepzibah and Clifford left yesterday for the Judge's country
estate.  Ned Higgins, wanting a gingerbread elephant on his way
to school, tries the shop door unsuccessfully.  Through a part
in the curtains, he sees that the inner door leading to the
parlor is closed.  When he picks up a stone to throw through the
window, his arm is caught by one of two men passing by--the same
men whose conversation Hepzibah overheard on her first day of
business.  After sending Ned on his way, they speculate about
the disappearance of all the Pyncheons, saying that the
stablekeeper took the Judge's horse in yesterday and hasn't seen
him since.  The two men declare that the Judge will turn up, and
dismissing Hepzibah's absence as a flight from creditors, they
walk away.  Deliverymen try the shop door all day, with no
luck. 

  After a while, the sounds of music and a crowd of children
fill Pyncheon-street.  The Italian organ-grinder and his monkey
are back.  The organ grinder stops under the arched window and
plays, but the kind faces he remembers seeing there do not
appear.  His lighthearted popular tunes contrast sharply with
the dark secret of the house. 

  Hawthorne points out that many a troubled soul is forced,
nevertheless, to hear the music of the world's gaiety.  This
mingling of tragedy and mirth is an irony of our existence from
which there is no escape. 

  A passerby calls to the organ grinder to go somewhere else
with his music, for the Pyncheon family has troubles--Judge
Pyncheon has been murdered.  As the young musician packs up his
instruments on the doorstep, he spots a card that has been
covered by the newspaper engraved card belonging to the Judge.
The back lists the appointments he was to have had yesterday.
The same two men who stopped Ned from breaking the window wonder
if Clifford has been up to his old tricks or if Hepzibah has
murdered the Judge to get money for her shop.  They go off with
the card to the City Marshall's office.  The organ grinder
leaves and the children scatter, terrified by what they have
just overheard. 

  A half hour later, a cab stops in the street and Phoebe steps
out with a bag and a hat box.  She tries the shop door first,
but it doesn't open.  Finding the front door locked, she knocks.
The silence makes her think for a moment that she might have the
wrong house.  From down the street, Ned Higgins warns her not to
go in.  Expecting to find her cousins in the garden, Phoebe goes
there next.  Except for the hens and a cat prowling under the
parlor window, the garden is empty.  Her absence and the storm
have taken their toll on the garden, which now looks as if no
human has set foot in it for days.  The garden door, too, is
locked, but as she knocks, it opens enough to admit her.
Assuming Hepzibah has opened it, Phoebe steps across the
threshold, and the door closes behind her. 

  NOTE:  The suspense builds.  Notice the extreme difference
between appearance and reality--the house has been described as
looking as though its history has been a happy one, when in
reality nothing could be further from the truth.  Phoebe assumes
Hepzibah has opened the door.  Again, note the difference
between appearance and reality. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  XX.  THE FLOWER OF
EDEN 

  The darkness of the house blinds Phoebe.  When a hand
squeezes her arm in welcome, she knows instantly that it is
Holgrave who has let her in.  He leads her to a bright and empty
apartment in an unoccupied gable.  She senses that he has
something important to tell her. 

  Holgrave looks pale and thoughtful, but he smiles warmly at
Phoebe, as if he is seeing his closest friend after a long
absence.  When he says that he should not feel so happy that she
is there, Phoebe knows something is wrong.  She asks where
Hepzibah and Clifford are, and can't believe it when Holgrave
says they are gone.  When she tries to enter the parlor,
Holgrave restrains her.  He admits that something has happened,
but not to Hepzibah and Clifford. 

  Holgrave tells Phoebe that he is depending on her remarkable
strength and wisdom, for he is confused and needs her advice.
Although he cringes at the thought of exposing Phoebe to the
ugly truth, he has no choice.  Asking her if she remembers,
Holgrave hands her the daguerreotype he first showed her in the
garden.  When she asks how Judge Pyncheon is involved with the
disappearance of Clifford and Hepzibah, he shows her another,
more recent picture.  Phoebe turns white at the portrait of the
dead Judge. 

  Holgrave recounts the unearthly quiet of the house that
morning and the rumors of Judge Pyncheon's disappearance.  A
sense of catastrophe made him check this part of the house,
where he discovered Judge Pyncheon dead in the parlor, and
Hepzibah and Clifford vanished.  He claims to have taken the
picture of the dead man for Clifford's purposes as well as for
his own, and adds that he has family connections to the event. 

  Holgrave's calmness stuns Phoebe.  He seems to have absorbed
the fact of the Judge's death as if it had been inevitable.
When she asks why he has not called in witnesses, he begs her to
consider what is best for Clifford and Hepzibah.  They have
incriminated themselves in their flight from the house when, in
fact, the death of the Judge could actually help Clifford.  The
Judge has died as his uncle did thirty years ago.  Such sudden
deaths clearly run in the Pyncheon family.  Yet another
incidence of this can only emphasize Clifford's innocence in his
uncle's death.  Holgrave suspects that it was an "arrangement of
circumstances" that led to Clifford's conviction for murder.
Holgrave suspects this "arrangement" was the work of the
Judge. 

  Phoebe insists that they bring Judge Pyncheon's death to
light immediately.  Holgrave agrees, but he does not share her
horror at this gruesome event.  Instead he feels a kind of wild
enjoyment in being connected to Phoebe by their secret.  It
seems to encircle them and set them apart from the world.  When
Phoebe says they must not delay, Holgrave tells her that there
will never be another moment like this one, and that he feels
joy as well as terror.  At this unlikely moment, Holgrave admits
that he is in love with Phoebe. 

  Phoebe wonders how this can be true, and says she could not
possibly make him happy.  He argues that she is his only hope of
happiness.  But she fears he might lead her away from her own
path in life.  Claiming that such impulses belong only to
dissatisfied men, he vows that with her he would no longer be
dissatisfied.  Instead, he imagines himself building a house and
planting trees.  Phoebe admits that she is in love with him.
For a moment, they feel that there is no Death. 

  A sound at the street door brings the couple back to the grim
reality facing them.  Before they reach the door, they hear
footsteps in the passageway--the feeble steps of weary people.
When they hear the murmur of familiar voices, Phoebe and
Holgrave know that Hepzibah and Clifford have returned.  When
Phoebe runs to meet them, Hepzibah bursts into tears.  Clifford,
saying that he thought of them when he saw Alice's Posies in
bloom, smiles and seems to know instinctively what has happened
between Phoebe and Holgrave. 

  NOTE:  Phoebe's own path is the way of the heart, while
Holgrave's is the way of the head.  She recognizes him as an
intellectual and is afraid that he might try to change her.
Holgrave claims that he needs Phoebe and her ways in order to be
happy.  Thus, true happiness results only when the heart and the
head are brought together. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  XXI.  THE
DEPARTURE 

  "Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehood,"
Hawthorne observes at the beginning of this chapter.  Judge
Pyncheon's death--so similar to his uncle's death thirty years
ago--reopens discussion about the uncle's alleged murder.  At
the time a medical investigation had shown that he had died of
natural causes, but the fact that he had been robbed and that
his room was in disarray had suggested a more violent death.
When the authorities looked further, they had found a chain of
evidence that led to Clifford.  Out of the talk that follows
Judge Pyncheon's death, however, a new theory arises. 

  As a young man, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon was wild,
self-indulgent, and a reckless spendthrift.  His rich uncle grew
to dislike him intensely.  One night, young Jaffrey decided to
search his uncle's room, and was caught by his uncle (also named
Jaffrey).  The shock of finding his nephew going through his
things brought on one of the attacks to which the Pyncheons were
so susceptible.  Old Jaffrey fell, striking his head against the
corner of a table, and died instantly.  Continuing to search
among his uncle's papers, young Jaffrey found two wills:  a
recent one leaving everything to Clifford and an older one
leaving everything to him.  He destroyed the will naming
Clifford as heir and arranged the evidence so that the murder
would point clearly to his cousin.  His crime of misleading the
authorities brought with it the kind of guilt that a respectable
man often finds easy to forget.  Young Jaffrey had done nothing
to Clifford; he hadn't even lied during Clifford's trial. 

  A week after Judge Pyncheon's death, word comes from Europe
that the Judge's son has died of cholera.  Thus, his estate goes
to Clifford, Hepzibah, Phoebe, and--through her--to Holgrave
(the avowed enemy of wealth). 

  Clifford's murder trial is never reopened.  In his old age he
needs the love of a few people more than an unsullied
reputation.  Besides, as Hawthorne notes in yet another
statement of the theme of the sins of one generation being
visited on the next:  "After such wrong as he had suffered,
there is no reparation....  It is a truth (and it would be a
very sad one, but for the higher hope which it suggests) that no
great mistake, whether acted or endured, in our mortal sphere,
is ever really set right." Clifford never regains his faculties
completely, but free of the weight of Judge Pyncheon, he is
invigorated. 

  Hepzibah, Phoebe, Clifford, and Holgrave leave the house of
the seven gables to live at the Judge's country estate.  On the
day they plan to move, they gather with Uncle Venner in the
parlor.  Holgrave wonders why the Judge did not build his
country house of stone to give it more permanence.  Phoebe is
amazed by the complete change in Holgrave's thinking.  Is this
the same man who said that not even the public buildings should
be made of any permanent material?  When he first confessed his
love for Phoebe, Holgrave had predicted that he would become
more conservative in his views.  So he has, although it seems
particularly unlikely to him that he should say this in a house
of inherited misfortune and under the gaze of the Puritan
himself. 

  Looking at the Colonel's portrait, Clifford says the picture
holds a secret that he has forgotten.  Holgrave steps up to the
picture and puts his finger on a secret spring somewhere on its
frame.  At one time this spring must have made the portrait move
forward; at Holgrave's motion the picture crashes to the floor.
The exposed wall shows a small recess, a hiding place.  It
contains a parchment--the ancient and now worthless deed
granting the eastward territory to the Pyncheon family.  Yes,
says Clifford, this is what he was trying to remember all along.
As a boy he had discovered the spring and had bragged to his
cousin Jaffrey of finding hidden wealth.  Jaffrey remembered
this, and it had made him think Clifford knew of their uncle's
hidden estate. 

  When Phoebe asks Holgrave how he knows the secret of the
portrait, Holgrave asks her how she will like having Maule as a
last name.  Holgrave, it turns out, is a descendant of Matthew
Maule.  The secret of the portrait is his only inheritance.
Thomas Maule constructed the hiding place and hid the deed when
he built the house.  The rumors he had started were true--the
Pyncheons had traded their eastern territory for Maule's garden
plot. 

  When Uncle Venner supposes that the claim is worth less than
a share in his farm (the work-house) Phoebe forbids him to ever
speak of his farm again.  Their new garden includes a cottage,
which will be furnished just for him.  Clifford joins her in
urging the old man to come and live with them, calling Uncle
Venner the only philosopher he knows whose wisdom has not a drop
of bitter essence at the bottom." Uncle Venner agrees to join
them in a few days. 

  They pull away in a beautiful barouche, a four-wheeled
carriage for four.  A crowd of children gathers around the
carriage and horses.  Phoebe, spotting Ned Higgins among them,
gives him enough silver to keep him in gingerbread for a very
long time.  The same two men who have walked down
Pyncheon-street so often pass by as the barouche drives off.
One remarks to the other that his wife had her cent-shop for
three months and lost five dollars, but Hepzibah, who had one
for the same length of time, now has several hundred thousand
dollars. 

  Anyone watching the water spouting from Maule's Well would
have been able to foretell these events in its images.  Anyone
listening would have heard it whispered in the prophecies of the
Pyncheon elm.  As old Uncle Venner walks away, he thinks he
hears Alice Pyncheon touch her harpsichord one last time before
she floats up to heaven from the house of the seven gables. 

  NOTE:  The ending of The House of the Seven Gables has
created an enormous controversy among readers. 

  Some readers see it as the end of the curse.  The two
families and the two classes have reconciled.  The love of a
Maule and a Pyncheon will break the cycle of repeated sin. 

  Other readers maintain that having Phoebe and Holgrave leave
to start their life together in the house that Jaffrey built
with ill-gotten wealth condemns the couple to a life weighed
down by the past.  Hepzibah, freed from isolation and
aristocratic family pride by working in the cent-shop, gets what
she has always hoped for, but it is the last thing she needs:
Enormous wealth (which is ill-gotten).  Clifford, "startled into
intelligence" by his escape from the house of the seven gables
and the weight of Jaffrey, goes off to live in isolation in
another Pyncheon house.  These readers see the ending as a
denial of all the book's themes.  They suspect that Hawthorne
ended the book this way simply to satisfy the demand of his time
for happy endings. 

  Readers from both camps agree that Phoebe and Holgrave fall
in love too quickly, that their relationship is underdeveloped,
and that their marriage is too sudden.  What do you think?  What
evidence can you point to in support of your opinions? 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  GLOSSARY 

  AELOUS God of the winds in classical mythology. 

  ALARUM Obsolete form of the word alarm. 

  ANIMAL MAGNETISM Almost hypnotic power that some persons are
thought to have over others. 

  APOPLEXY Rupture or obstruction of a blood vessel to the
brain, causing a loss of consciousness and sometimes
paralysis. 

  BANSHEE In Gaelic folklore, female spirit whose wailing warns
a family of the approaching death of one of its members. 

  BY-STREET Side street. 

  CHANGE-HOURS Hours during which the Boston Merchants'
Exchange was open for business. 

  CHANTICLEER Name for a rooster, first found in medieval
fables. 

  CHIP-HAT Hat woven of straw or thin strips of wood. 

  COME-OUTERS Radicals or reformers. 

  CONCH-SHELL Large spiral seashell which, when used as a horn,
produces a deep sound. 

  COTTON MATHER Puritan clergyman and author from Boston
(1663-1728) who defended the Salem witchcraft trials in his
writings. 

  COUNTENANCE Face or expression. 

  DAGUERREOTYPE Forerunner of the photograph, produced by
exposing a treated metal plate to sunlight, then printing the
image made on the plate. 

  DAMASK Cloth bearing a reversible print. 

  DAMSON-TREES Asian plum trees. 

  DOMDANIEL CAVERN Cavern, described in some fables, where a
wizard meets with his apprentices. 

  ESCRITOIR Writing table or desk. 

  FAIN Pleased, inclined, willing. 

  FIFTY-SIX Standard of dry measure used in the nineteenth
century U.S.  Customs Houses, based on the fact that a U.S.
bushel of wheat weighed fifty-six pounds. 

  FOURIER French socialist and reformer (1772-1837). 

  FREE-SOILERS Nineteenth-century U.S.  political party that
opposed the extension of slavery into U.S.  territories. 

  GABLE Triangular part of a building under a double-sloping
roof. 

  GALVANIC RING Ring made of metals whose chemical interaction
was thought to produce an electrical current that was beneficial
for the wearer. 

  GIANT DESPAIR AND HOPEFUL Characters in The Pilgrim's
Progress by John Bunyan (1628-1688). 

  GIL BLAS French romance chronicling the adventures of a young
rogue in Spanish society. 

  GOTHIC Literary style characterized by violence, desolation,
and decay.  Also a style of architecture found in Western Europe
from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. 

  GRAHAM'S MAGAZINE and GODEY'S LADY'S BOOK Magazines that
published literary work in Hawthorne's time. 

  HERCULANEUM Ancient city in southern Italy, buried when Mt.
Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. 

  HYMETTUS Mountain in Greece, famous for its honey. 

  IXION In classical mythology, Ixion tried to seduce Hera.  He
was punished by Zeus, first with a cloud image of Hera and then
by being fixed to a revolving wheel. 

  JACOB In the Old Testament, Jacob wrestles with an angel all
night until the angel finally blesses him. 

  JIM CROW Stereotype of a black person in a song-and-dance
act, based on a folksong of that name in the early 1800s. 

  KING LOG In Aesop's Fables, king who does not exercise his
power. 

  KING WILLIAM William III, king of England from 1689 to
1702. 

  LAR In Roman and Etruscan myths, god who guards the house. 

  LUCIFER MATCHES Matches lit by friction. 

  MESMERISM Hypnotism, named for Anton Mesmer, an Austrian
physician (1734-1815) who believed in animal magnetism. 

  MALBONE, EDWARD GREENE Finest American painter of miniatures
(1777-1807). 

  MAMMON In John Milton's Paradise Lost, personification of
corrupting wealth, and the least of the fallen angels. 

  MINIATURE Very small portrait or painting. 

  MOCHA High-quality coffee. 

  MOLL PITCHER Psychic and fortune-teller in Massachusetts
during the late 1700s and early 1800s. 

  OAK HALL Men's clothing store in Boston where inexpensive,
ready-to-wear clothing was sold. 

  OMNIBUS Bus. 

  PAGANINI, NICCOLO Italian violinist, considered the greatest
violinist of all time (1782-1840). 

  PANDEMONIUM In Paradise Lost, capital of hell. 

  WILLIAM PHIPS Governor of Massachusetts during the Salem
witchcraft trials (1692). 

  PLEBEIAN Common person. 

  POPE, ALEXANDER English poet (1688-1744).  He is famous for
his satiric epic poem The Rape of the Lock. 

  RASSELAS History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia by Samuel
Johnson, eighteenth-century English writer and dictionary
compiler. 

  ROXBURY RUSSET Green apple, formerly grown for its keeping
powers. 

  RUN OF CUSTOM Customer, business patronage. 

  SYBARITE Person devoted to the gratification of sensual
appetites.  Sybaris, a Greek town in ancient Italy, was
notorious for its devotion to sensual pleasures. 

  THE TATLER Series of satiric essays (1709-1711) written by
Richard Steele (1672-1729) and Joseph Addison (1672-1719). 

  TITHE PIG Pig given instead of cash to satisfy a
parishioner's duty to support the church. 

  TOPER Drunkard. 

  TOPHET Hell. 

  VICISSITUDES Changes, as in nature or human life. 

  VISAGE Face. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  ON ORIGINALITY 

  "The Scarlet Letter," and "The House of the Seven Gables,"
contain mental qualities which insensibly lead some readers to
compare the author to other cherished literary names.  Thus we
have seen Hawthorne likened for this quality to Goldsmith, and
for that to Irving, and for still another to Dickens; and some
critics have given him the preference over all whom he seems to
resemble.  But the real cause for congratulation in the
appearance of an original genius like Hawthorne, is not that he
dethrones any established prince in literature, but that he
founds a new principality of his own. 

  -Edwin Percy Whipple, "The House of the Seven Gables:  Humor
and Pathos Combined," 1851 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  ON CHARACTERS 

  The end of an old race--this is the situation that Hawthorne
has depicted, and he has been admirably inspired in the choice
of the figures in whom he seeks to interest us.  They are all
figures rather than characters--they are all pictures rather
than persons.  But if their reality is light and vague, it is
sufficient, and it is in harmony with the low relief and dimness
of outline of the objects that surrounded them. 

  -Henry James, Hawthorne, 1879 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  ON HAWTHORNE AND
HIS AGE 

  The measure in which he intended The House of the Seven
Gables as a criticism of his own age is somewhat obscured by his
treatment of time.  Even while he was examining his changing New
England, he felt the past weighing heavily on the present's
back.  Unlike virtually all the other spokesmen for his day, he
could never feel that America was a new world.  Looking back
over the whole history of his province, he was more struck by
decay than by potentiality, by the broken ends to which the
Puritan effort had finally come, by the rigidity that had been
integral to its thought at its best, by modes of life in which
nothing beautiful had developed. 

  -F.  O.  Matthiessen, American Renaissance, 1941. 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  ON THE SIMPLICITY
OF HAWTHORNE'S WRITING 

  Hawthorne's writing is misleading in its simplicity, which is
genuine enough but tempts us to overlook what lies beneath.  In
the end, simplicity is one of his genuine charms--combined with
something else.  The essence of Hawthorne is, in fact, distilled
from the opposing elements of simplicity and complexity.  This
essence is a clear liquid, with no apparent cloudiness.
Hawthorne, together with Henry James, perhaps, is the only
American novelist who has been able to see life whole without,
in Thackeray's words, "roaring ai, ai, as loud as Prometheus,"
like Melville, Wolfe, and Faulkner; droning interminably an
account of its details, like Dreiser; or falling into a thin,
shrill irony, the batlike twittering of souls in Hades, like all
the sad young men....  He is a unique and wonderful combination
of light and darkness. 

  -Richard Harter Fogle, 

  Hawthorne's Fiction, 1952 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  ON HAWTHORNE AS A
MODERN WRITER 

  Since ours is an age that has found irony, ambiguity, and
paradox to be central not only in literature but in life, it is
not surprising that Hawthorne has seemed to us one of the most
modern of nineteenth-century American writers.  The bulk and
general excellence of the great outburst of Hawthorne criticism
of the past decade attest to his relevance for us.  It requires
no distortion of him to see him not only as foreshadowing Henry
James in his concern for "the deeper psychology" but as first
cousin to Faulkner and Robert Penn Warren....  Hawthorne's
themes, especially, link him with the writing and sensibility of
our time. 

  -Hyatt H.  Waggoner, 

  Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1962 

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES:  ON THE ACHIEVEMENT
OF THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES 

  The final chapter may be a disappointment, there may be other
weaknesses, but The House of the Seven Gables remains a
remarkable and puzzling novel--and remarkable, perhaps in part,
because it is so puzzling.  Its incidental pleasures are
numerous:  the style, with its beautifully equivocal mixture of
the colloquial and the elevated, the narrative easing itself
backwards and forwards in time, and that peculiar blend of
domestic detail and Gothic melodrama about which Hawthorne was,
at times, so nervous.  Then there are the greater achievements
of the book:  a narrator playing cunningly with different masks
and creating a consistent identity out of them, the complicated
series of figurative references which is given coherence and a
sense of meaning by the dominating presence of the house.  And,
above all perhaps, Hawthorne's agnosticism:  his willingness to
ask questions, and offer different sets of possibilities, in a
way that is at once sportive and deeply serious.  At his best,
indeed, which means in this novel most of the time, Hawthorne
makes a positive virtue out of what he sees as necessity and
turns uncertainty itself into an art; suspecting that any human
category is arbitrary and conjectural, he offers us a conflict
between different categories, various idioms and systems, which
is only resolved, if at all, by the reader.  What it comes down
to, in the end, is something very simple:  if the book strikes
us as a problem then, quite probably, it was meant to.  If the
old Pyncheon house seems at once intimate and mysterious, a home
and a place of imprisonment, then that perhaps is because the
man who built it, Nathaniel Hawthorne, saw the world in
precisely that way. 

  -Richard Gray, "'Hawthorne:  A Problem:' 

  The House of the Seven Gables," 1982 

  THE END