The House of the Seven Gables (1851) is novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne that explores fallout from the Salem Witch Trials, amid class issues and deteriorating residences. The house has some kind of evil curse.
The title comes from an actual 1668 colonial mansion built in Salem and held for three generations in real life by the same Turner family.
Its genre is Gothic, and it has a longer-than-average length at 108,616 words, [1] or 344 pages long. The author considers this to be a romance because it is so fanciful, without having a probable existence in reality (see Preface below).
The initial sales of this book exceeded that of The Scarlet Letter, although during the 20th century liberals promoted The Scarlet Letter more and thus it outpaced The House of the Seven Gables in sales. Both books have language disfavored today by liberals, particularly by feminists, such as Hawthorne's repeated use (64 times) of the term "lady" in The House of the Seven Gables. Statements in this book like this would be offensive to many feminists today: "No lady, now, but simply Hepzibah Pyncheon, a forlorn old maid, and keeper of a cent-shop!"[2] Repeated references to "Jim Crow" cookies are also politically incorrect today.
Preservation
It is a real house, and it has been preserved to this day for visitors and courses.[3]
Opening
The opening paragraph is this:
| “ | Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm. On my occasional visits to the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down Pyncheon Street, for the sake of passing through the shadow of these two antiquities,—the great elm-tree and the weather-beaten edifice.[4] | ” |
Structure
This book has a four-paragraph Preface by its author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, followed by 21 chapters of the story itself.
The brief Preface is a priceless discussion by Hawthorne of the difference between a Romance and a Novel, and how this tale is a Romance.
Plot
The house was majestically built by "the Puritan soldier and magistrate" Colonel Pyncheon, as "a family mansion—spacious, ponderously framed of oaken timber, and calculated to endure for many generations of his posterity over the spot first covered by the log-built hut of Matthew Maule," the executed, reputed witch. The master builder of this house -- "the head carpenter -- was the son of the executed witch, whose name was Thomas Maule, known as "was the best workman of his time."
This novel mentions, typically with an unfavorable connotation, Puritan 33 times, as in "stalwart Puritan," "Puritan soldier and magistrate," and "iron-hearted Puritan."
Characters
- Colonel Pyncheon
- Matthew Maule
- "Thomas Maule became the architect of the House of the Seven Gables, and performed his duty so faithfully that the timber framework fastened by his hands still holds together."
- Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon
- Mr. Holgrave
Jim Crow
"Jim Crow" is a stereotype of an African American character that is considered offensive today. Yet "Jim Crow" cookies are referenced a dozen times in this book, including this: "The little schoolboy, aided by the impish figure of the negro dancer [Jim Crow] ...."[5]
Great quotes
| “ | Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for the crime of witchcraft. | ” |
| “ | In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point. | ” |
| “ | Nevertheless, if we look through all the heroic fortunes of mankind, we shall find this same entanglement of something mean and trivial with whatever is noblest in joy or sorrow. Life is made up of marble and mud. | ” |