The House of the Seven Gables. Nathaniel Hawthorne

The House of the Seven Gables. 1851.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
New York: Literary Classics of the United States. 1983.

Novel/Romance. Hawthorne distinguishes between a novel in which fidelity to life and probability are expected and romance in which the author establishes the circumstances, with or without fidelity to life.

The pace of the story and its background in House of the Seven Gables are sharply different. The story of Hepzibah Pyncheon; Phoebe Pyncheon, the young country cousin; Holgrave, the young daguerreotypist who lives there as a boarder; and Clifford, Hepzibah's brother, back from thirty years in prison for a murder he did not commit, is glacial, almost like a somnolent summer afternoon in New England. The daily life of these characters moves from small crisis (Hepzibah's opening a "cent shop" in the House of the Seven Gables to forestall poverty) to small crisis.

The background is one of violence, a family curse leveled at Judge Pyncheon when he accused Matthew Maule of being a witch and had him hanged in order to take his land on which he built the House of the Seven Gables. At his execution, Maule cursed the judge by saying that God would give the judge blood to drink, which happened when the judge hemorrhaged.

The pace picks up when Hepzibah and Clifford leave the safety and comfort of the House of the Seven Gables to board a train, a modern and frightening innovation, to escape the clutches of Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, a descendant of the original Judge Pyncheon, who has cornered the Pyncheon fortune and committed the murder for which Clifford had been convicted. But when Judge Jaffrey dies, also of a hemorrhage, ("God shall give him blood to drink") and the judge's only son dies of a disease on a faraway shore, all is returned to normal at the House of the Seven Gables. Hepzibah and Clifford own the family fortune and Pheobe, the country cousin, and Holgrave, a descendant of the original Matthew Maule, marry to bring the Pyncheons and the Maules together and end the curse.

In reading this romance, readers have to adjust to the pace of the author. Hawthorne establishes the mood of the New England setting and the characters and the events need to be savored. Don't try to race through this book. In truth, Hawthorne in later years said that if he were asked to read his own books written by someone else, he probably wouldn't want to do it.

Still, if readers can savor the experience, become a part of the times, feel the mood and see the architecture of mid-nineteenth-century New England, identify with the feelings and motives of the characters, they will have enriched their spirits with what today is called a "virtual experience."

Interestingly, Holgrave expresses a prescient thought about old homes that house generations of a family: "But we shall live to see the day, I trust...when no man shall build his house for posterity." Welcome to the 21st century.

I enjoyed this book and Hawthorne's classic, The Scarlet Letter. But my favorite Hawthorne novel/romance was the Blithedale Romance, which was more contemporary and, in my opinion, established Hawthorne as a very relevant feminist.