The House of the Seven Gables

“The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not only of outward norm and sunshine, but expressive also of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying vicissitudes, that have passed within.”

The narrator’s description of the house as affecting him “like a human countenance” and his insistence that it is “expressive” of “mortal life” and the “accompanying vicissitudes” that have taken place within its walls emphasizes the symbolic important of the house: It is not just a physical setting, but an embodiment of the complicated human behaviors and emotions that have shaped it (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“The mode of his death, too, affects the mind differently, in our day, from what it did a century and a half ago. It was a death that blasted with strange horror the humble name of the dweller in the cottage, and made it seem almost a religious act to drive the plough over the little area of his habitation, and obliterate his place and memory from among men.”

The narrator exists in the present moment of the narrative, attempting at the same time to understand, without excusing, the killing of Matthew Maule. Maule is executed after being accused of witchcraft in the midst of the Salem witch trials, and the narrator links the execution of Maule directly to the clearing of Maule’s land, which Colonel Pyncheon then seizes. This foundational act of violence introduces The Legacy of Violence into the narrative.

“And now—in a very humble way, as will be seen—we proceed to open our narrative.”

The first chapter focuses exclusively on the history of the house, presenting this history as a prerequisite for any understanding of the characters who follow in subsequent chapters. This historical framing suggests The Influence of the Past on the Present, as the house’s history will have a direct impact on the lives and actions of its present-day inhabitants.

“Life is made up of marble and mud.”

Hepzibah constantly looks at the miniature portrait of her brother, Clifford, remembering better times, before they were both traumatized by his unjust imprisonment. She prepares, with dread, to open the shop so that she can make money to support them both, remembering with nostalgia, the “marble” of these better times as she prepares for the “mud” of facing the public and attempting to survive.

“Any ordinary customer, indeed, would have turned his back, and fled. And yet there was nothing fierce in Hepzibah’s poor heart; nor had she, at the moment, a single bitter thought against the world at large, or one individual man or woman. She wished them all well, but wished, too, that she herself were done with them, and in her quiet grave.”

Hepzibah’s appearance is sometimes frightening because of her scowl, which is only the result of squinting due to her poor vision. Appearances are thus deceptive: While Hepzibah appears angry or sullen, she is actually tender-hearted and humane, unlike her violent ancestor. Hepzibah does not have the energy to be angry and is exhausted by the Pyncheon greed that has destroyed her life.

“‘These things are not to be learnt; they depend upon a knack that comes, I suppose,’ added she smiling, ‘with one’s mother’s blood. You shall see that I am as nice a little saleswoman, as I am a housewife!’”

Hepzibah initially attributes Phoebe’s facility with housekeeping to her maternal inheritance rather than her paternal Pyncheon inheritance—as a “knack” that comes via “blood” instead of deliberate skill development. Hepzibah’s attribution of some traits or skills to inheritance reflects the novel’s preoccupation with inheritance more generally, in both literal and figurative senses.

“So long estranged from what was lovely, as Clifford had been, she rejoiced—rejoiced, though with a present sigh, and a secret purpose to shed tears in her own chamber—that he had brighter objects now before his eyes, than her aged and uncomely features. They never possessed a charm; and if they had, the canker of her grief for him would long since have destroyed it.”

Clifford longs to be surrounded by beauty after so many years in prison, and he prefers Phoebe’s young, charming presence to Hepzibah’s old, plain one. While this pains Hepzibah, she is also relieved that Phoebe is there to calm Clifford with her good nature and beauty. The passage reflects Hepzibah’s lack of vanity and selflessness, emphasizing her loving kindness and understanding toward others.

“Then, all at once, it struck Phoebe, that this very Judge Pyncheon was the original of the miniature, which the Daguerreotypist had shown her in the garden, and that the hard, stern relentless look, now on his face, was the same that the sun had so inflexibly persisted in bringing out.”

On meeting Judge Pyncheon for the first time, Phoebe realizes that she is seeing, in the flesh, the person represented in Holgrave’s daguerreotype. The “hard” look that she glimpses for a moment on the judge’s face is fleeting and quickly vanishes from the surface of his face, but the daguerreotype is presented as “bringing [it] out,” as if this hardness is internal to the judge and not a superficial or fleeting expression.

“Yet, it must be said, her petals sometimes drooped a little, in consequence of the heavy atmosphere about her.”

Phoebe, though always cheerful, loses some of her intense brightness while living in the house, reflecting The Complications of Home. The house’s “heavy atmosphere” seems to infect her, just as it has infected Hepzibah and Clifford with isolation and sadness. However, the equation of Phoebe with natural imagery—“her petals”—suggest that Phoebe will still manage to be a force of renewal and beauty in the lives of the Pyncheon clan, just the garden she feels drawn to.

“No groveling jealousy was in her heart.”

Hepzibah becomes increasingly grateful that Phoebe is living with her and Clifford. Unlike her cousin, Judge Pyncheon, her heart does not desire more for herself but, instead, is happy that Phoebe is able to help Clifford. She does not covet, as Judge Pyncheon does, representing an important break with The Legacy of Violence.

“If a tear—a maiden’s sunshiny tear, over imaginary woe—dropt upon some melancholy page, Clifford either took it as a token of actual calamity, or else grew peevish, and angrily motioned her to close the volume. And wisely, too! Is not the world sad enough, in genuine earnest, without making a pastime of mock-sorrows?”

The narrator describes Clifford’s antipathy to any melancholy and then moves into their own antipathy regarding the representation of sorrow in literature, arguing that fictional sorrow only adds to the real sorrow of the world. The narrator seems to disagree with the author, who has explained in the preface that the text will take artistic license so that it can represent the truths of experience, including sorrow, through fictional means.

“‘Give me a rose, that I may press its thorns and prove myself awake, by the sharp touch of pain!’—Evidently, he desired this prick of a trifling anguish, in order to assure himself, by that quality which he best knew to be real, that the garden, and the seven weather-beaten gables, and Hepzibah’s scowl and Phoebe’s smile, were real, likewise.”

Clifford becomes grateful not only for Phoebe’s beauty but also for Hepzibah’s scowl, reflecting his gradual reconnection with the world. Clifford has trauma, and he induces the experience of pain, with which he is familiar, so that he can assure himself that his current experience of love is as real as his pain. The garden, as a place of renewal and beauty, also helps Clifford to heal (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“If not the thing itself, it is marvelously like it, and the more so for that ethereal and intangible quality, which causes it all to vanish, at too close an introspection. Take it, therefore, while you may. Murmur not—question not—but make the most of it!”

The narrator speaks to the reader, here insisting that something “like” “the thing itself” should not be discounted but valued. Something “like” happiness is not to be dismissed but cultivated, so that out of something resembling happiness true happiness may be created.

“‘It cannot be, Hepzibah!—it is too late,’ said Clifford with deep sadness.—’We are ghosts! We have no right among human beings—no right anywhere, but in this old house, which has a curse on it, and which therefore we are doomed to haunt.’”

Clifford longs to go to church after Phoebe leaves for a brief visit with her mother. Though he and Hepzibah try to go, they feel the weight of the world as they attempt to leave and return to the interior security of the house. Clifford’s despairing insistence here that they are destined to be confined to “this old house” and its “curse,” and that they are “ghosts” who must “haunt” it, alludes to both The Legacy of Violence and The Complications of Home they must face.

“To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in every half-century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its ancestors.”

Holgrave insists that ancestral homes only breed a worshiping of “The Past” and “The Dead.” Families should not be “planted” and then grown within an ancestral home but, instead, should be uprooted each generation and replanted so that the history of the family does not interfere with individual freedom, and life can be lived entirely in the present. Holgrave’s resistance to permanent places and lineages reflects his own strained relationship with The Complications of Home.

“Let us, therefore—whatever his defects of nature and education, and in spite of his scorn for creeds and institutions—concede to the Daguerreotypist the rare and high quality of reverence for another’s individuality.” 

After Holgrave concludes his story about the powers of mesmerism and hypnotism, he recognizes that he has these powers and could put the dozing Phoebe under his “spell” and is tempted to do so. He resists his own desire for control, however, unlike the character in his story, out of his creed of individual autonomy, an autonomy that he recognizes not only in himself but also in others. Holgrave’s strange ability to hypnotize reflects the old rumor that Maule’s descendants have supernatural or unusual powers, thus foreshadowing the eventual reveal of his real identity at the novel’s end.

“But, after all, was this unconquerable distrust of Judge Pyncheon’s integrity—and this utter denial, apparently, of his claim to stand in the ring of human sympathies—were they founded in any just perception of his character, or merely the offspring of a woman’s unreasoning prejudice, deduced from nothing?”

The narrator does not immediately present a firm interpretation of Judge Pyncheon’s character at this moment, but leaves this ambiguous for the time being, reflecting some of the literary techniques of Dark Romanticism (See: Background).

“What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb’s bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil, which were heaped into the other scale!”

The narrator asks this morally complex rhetorical question about the nature of evil and its “weight” in comparison to the goodness of “things not evil,” which often seem powerless in comparison to evil. The question reflects the novel’s preoccupation with The Legacy of Violence and greed.

“‘I set him free!’ re-affirmed Judge Pyncheon, with the calmest composure. ‘And I come hither now to decide whether he shall retain his freedom. It will depend upon himself. For this purpose, I must see him.’”

Judge Pyncheon presents himself as the liberator of Clifford when, in reality, his silence ensured Clifford’s imprisonment. Judge Pyncheon manipulates Hepzibah here in threatening to revoke Clifford’s freedom—an act of threatened injustice that once more mirrors his ancestor’s unjust framing of an innocent man centuries before.

“Anything that would take her out of the grievous present, and interpose human beings betwixt herself and what was nearest to her—whatever would defer, for an instant, the inevitable errand on which she was bound—all such impediments were welcome!”

Hepzibah, despite the relations she has nurtured with Phoebe, Holgrave, and Clifford, is once again in terrifying isolation. She is desperate for a barrier between herself and Judge Pyncheon’s violence and wishes that the larger human community could be called on for help, but it cannot, and she is forced to go on the terrifying “errand” of bringing Clifford to Judge Pyncheon.

“Was there no help in their extremity? It seemed strange that there should be none, with a city roundabout her.”

Hepzibah deeply feels her isolation. Unlike the beginning of the text, however, her isolation is not felt because she has retreated to the interior of the house and thus largely shut out the exterior world and its people. Instead, her isolation is now felt within that public world, which is all the more isolating. Hepzibah’s instinctive thought about “the city” outside and her longing for its assistance, however, emphasizes that her character has undergone some important changes since the novel’s start—Hepzibah is now more resistant to isolation and helplessness.

“The secret, so long as it should continue such, kept them within the circle of a spell, a solitude in the midst of men.”

Holgrave savors the secret knowledge he and Phoebe have of Judge Pyncheon’s death, as it bounds them together. Once again, the text replaces the supernatural “spell” with this natural, worldly “spell” of exclusive knowledge that immediately creates a unique and weighty relationship.

“I have a presentiment, that, hereafter, it will be my lot to set out trees, to make fences—perhaps, even, in due time, to build a house for another generation—in a word, to conform myself to laws, and the peaceful practice of society.”

Holgrave pledges to set aside his reformist energies and accept the status quo of society in order to be with Phoebe, who is not a radical thinker. He also rescinds his vehement argument against ancestral homes, anticipating building a house not for himself and Phoebe, but for a later generation, creating an inheritance for others. This inheritance, however, will be one based on deep mutual love and joy, creating a happy inheritance for their descendants and thereby resolving The Complications of Home for the characters.