The House of the Seven Gables

Summary

The House of the Seven Gables is a romance of a New England family weighed down by an ancestor's crime. In the first chapter Hawthorne tells how Colonel Pyncheon, a stern Puritan, coveted the garden plot of the humble Matthew Maule and joined in the cry that sent Maule to the gallows as a wizard during the witchcraft delusion of 1692; on the scaffold Maule declared that God would give him blood to drink. The Colonel built his many-gabled mansion on Maule's ground, employing Maule's son as carpenter, and was found dead in his great chair on the day of the housewarming, his ruff stained with blood. A lost Indian deed to vast eastern lands in Maine haunts the family thereafter. Nearly two centuries later, around 1850, the decaying house is held by Hepzibah Pyncheon, a poor, nearsighted, scowling old maid who must swallow her gentility and open a cent-shop in the front gable to wait for her brother. Her first customer is the urchin Ned Higgins, and her lodger is Holgrave, a young daguerreotypist and reformer of no fixed calling. Her country cousin Phoebe arrives, cheerful and practical, and brightens the shop, the garden and the house. Then Clifford returns: Hepzibah's beloved brother, a man of delicate, beauty-loving temperament broken by thirty years' imprisonment for the supposed murder of their uncle. Their cousin Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, wealthy, smiling and respected, the living image of the old Colonel, presses to see Clifford. Holgrave reads Phoebe his story of Alice Pyncheon, in which an earlier Matthew Maule, grandson of the wizard, mesmerizes a proud Pyncheon daughter in exchange for the deed and holds her in his power until her death; Holgrave himself almost casts the same spell over Phoebe and refrains. While Phoebe is away, the Judge demands that Clifford reveal where the family's hidden wealth lies, threatening to have him confined in an asylum. Seated in the ancestral chair to wait, the Judge dies as the Colonel did. Clifford and Hepzibah flee by railway train, Clifford talking wildly of progress, before returning home. Holgrave reveals that the Pyncheon deaths come from a hereditary physical tendency, that Jaffrey had arranged the evidence against Clifford thirty years before, and that he himself is a descendant of the Maules. He and Phoebe declare their love. The Judge's only son dies of cholera, the family wealth passes to Hepzibah, Clifford and Phoebe, the useless deed is found behind the Colonel's portrait, and the household leaves the old house for the Judge's country home, taking old Uncle Venner with them. Ticknor, Reed and Fields published the book in Boston in 1851.

Plot or Argument

• Preface and Chapter I: The Old Pyncheon Family

  Hawthorne defines his Romance and its moral, then narrates Maule's execution for witchcraft, his curse, the building of the house on his land, the Colonel's death at the housewarming, the lost deed, and the later history of the family, including Clifford's conviction thirty years before.

• Chapters II–IV: The Little Shop-Window

  Hepzibah opens her cent-shop in shame and terror, sells a gingerbread figure to Ned Higgins, quarrels gently with Holgrave about being a lady, and bears the snubs of passers-by and the friendly talk of Uncle Venner.

• Chapters V–VI: Phoebe and Maule's Well

  Phoebe arrives from the country and quickly masters the shop; in the garden she meets Holgrave, who shows her a daguerreotype that reveals a hard character beneath a public smile.

• Chapters VII–XI: The Guest

  Clifford returns, faded and childlike in his love of beauty; Judge Pyncheon appears and is turned away; Phoebe cares for Clifford, who sits in the garden and at the arched window watching the street and once nearly throws himself from it toward a passing procession.

• Chapters XII–XIII: The Daguerreotypist and Alice Pyncheon

  Holgrave argues that the dead past should be buried and reads Phoebe his tale of Alice Pyncheon, mesmerized and humiliated by the carpenter Matthew Maule; finding Phoebe half under the same spell, he releases her.

• Chapters XIV–XVI: The Scowl and Smile

  Phoebe goes home for a visit; the Judge forces his way in, claims Clifford knows the secret of their uncle's wealth, and threatens an asylum, sending Hepzibah to fetch her brother.

• Chapters XVII–XVIII: The Flight of Two Owls and Governor Pyncheon

  Clifford and Hepzibah flee on the railway, Clifford holding forth to a stranger about progress as an ascending spiral; meanwhile the narrator mockingly addresses the Judge, dead in the ancestral chair, as the hours of his busy day go by.

• Chapters XIX–XX: Alice's Posies and The Flower of Eden

  The neighborhood notices the shuttered house; Phoebe returns, and Holgrave, who has discovered the body, explains the hereditary death and Clifford's innocence; the two declare their love before Hepzibah and Clifford come back.

• Chapter XXI: The Departure

  The Judge's son dies of cholera abroad; the inheritance falls to the three cousins; the deed is found behind the portrait; Holgrave confesses he is a Maule, and the household departs for the country with Uncle Venner.

Characters

• Hepzibah Pyncheon, protagonist

  An impoverished, nearsighted, proud old gentlewoman whose permanent scowl hides a devoted heart, forced to keep a cent-shop.

• Clifford Pyncheon, Hepzibah's brother

  A sensitive lover of beauty released after thirty years' imprisonment for a crime he did not commit.

• Phoebe Pyncheon, country cousin

  A bright, practical young woman from the country who brings order and cheer to the house and marries Holgrave.

• Holgrave, lodger

  A young daguerreotypist and reformer who has tried many trades, writes stories, and proves to be a descendant of Matthew Maule.

• Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, antagonist

  A rich, smiling, publicly admired cousin, likeness of the old Colonel, who arranged the evidence against Clifford.

• Colonel Pyncheon, founder

  The Puritan who helped bring Maule to the gallows, built the house on his land, and died on the day it was opened.

• Matthew Maule, the wizard

  A poor settler executed for witchcraft in 1692, whose dying words become the family curse.

• Alice Pyncheon, figure in Holgrave's tale

  A proud eighteenth-century Pyncheon daughter held in mesmeric bondage by the younger Matthew Maule.

• Uncle Venner, neighbor

  A patched, cheerful old odd-job man who talks of retiring to his farm, the workhouse.

• Ned Higgins, Hepzibah's first customer

  A hungry small boy who buys gingerbread figures from the shop window.

Lessons

• The wrong that outlives the wrongdoer

  Hawthorne's preface states the moral outright: the wrong-doing of one generation lives into later ones. Colonel Pyncheon's seizure of Maule's land produces a lost deed, a hereditary greed, a family pride that cripples Hepzibah, and a cousin who repeats the Colonel's crime. The novel asks how much of a family's character is inheritance and how much is choice.

  • In what ways does Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon repeat the life and death of the old Colonel?
  • Is Hawthorne describing a curse, a hereditary tendency, or a moral pattern of greed? Which explanation does the book prefer?
  • What would it take, in the story, to end the inheritance of wrong?

• Gentility and honest work

  Hepzibah believes that a lady's hand is soiled by working for bread, and opening the cent-shop feels to her like a public disgrace. Holgrave tells her that being a true woman is better than being a lady, and Phoebe shows how cheerful competence can make trade gracious. The book treats the passing of old gentility with both sympathy and gentle comedy.

  • Why is opening the shop so painful for Hepzibah?
  • How does Phoebe's way of keeping shop differ from Hepzibah's?
  • What does Holgrave mean when he contrasts a lady with a true woman?

• The surface and the secret character

  Judge Pyncheon's warm public smile hides a hard and grasping heart, while Hepzibah's scowl is only nearsightedness covering a loving nature. Holgrave's daguerreotypes, made by sunlight, reveal the Judge's hidden sternness. The contrast trains readers to judge character by deeds rather than by reputation.

  • What does Holgrave's daguerreotype of the Judge show that the town does not see?
  • Why does Hepzibah look fierce when she is not?
  • How do the Judge's actions finally reveal what his smile hides?

• Reverence for persons

  In Holgrave's tale the younger Maule uses mesmerism to take possession of Alice Pyncheon's will, and she dies of the humiliation. Holgrave, finding Phoebe falling under a similar influence as he reads, refuses to use it. Hawthorne presents this restraint as the turning point in Holgrave's character and the beginning of his love for Phoebe.

  • What does the younger Matthew Maule do to Alice, and why?
  • Why is Holgrave's refusal to take control of Phoebe's mind important to the ending?

Context

The novel is set in a Massachusetts town modeled on Salem around 1850, with a long backward look to the witchcraft trials of 1692. Hawthorne's own ancestor John Hathorne had been a magistrate in those trials, and his family history included claims to land in Maine. The present-day action belongs to the age of railways, telegraphs, daguerreotypes, mesmerism lectures, temperance and reform societies, and the cholera epidemics of the period, and Holgrave's restless radicalism and Clifford's railway talk reflect the era's debates over progress. The many-gabled Turner-Ingersoll house in Salem, which belonged to Hawthorne's cousin Susanna Ingersoll, has long been associated with the book, though Hawthorne's preface insists his house and street are imaginary.

Composition

Hawthorne began the book in the autumn of 1850 at Lenox, Massachusetts, a few months after The Scarlet Letter, and finished it in January 1851. Ticknor, Reed and Fields published it in Boston in April 1851. In the preface Hawthorne distinguishes the Romance, which may present the truth of the human heart under circumstances of the writer's own choosing and mingle the marvelous lightly, from the Novel, which aims at minute fidelity to probable experience; he asks that the book be read as a Romance connecting a bygone time with the present.

Reception

The book sold well and was praised by contemporaries, including Herman Melville, who wrote Hawthorne an admiring letter about it in 1851. Hawthorne himself thought it more characteristic of his mind than The Scarlet Letter. Critics have long debated its ending, in which sudden wealth, a marriage and a move to the country resolve the family's fortunes; some read it as a hopeful close and others as deliberately ironic. The preface's definition of the Romance has become a standard text in discussions of American fiction.

Comparisons

• the-scarlet-letter

  Written months apart, both books return to Puritan Massachusetts and to concealed guilt, but the earlier book stays in the seventeenth century while this one follows a seventeenth-century wrong into the railway age.

• the-sketch-book

  Irving's Rip Van Winkle sleeps through a revolution and wakes to a changed world; Clifford, released after thirty years, meets the railway and the telegraph with a similar mixture of bewilderment and elation.

• wuthering-heights

  Both novels trace a wrong through two generations of linked families and end with a young couple who can break the pattern.

• the-hunchback-of-notre-dame

  Hugo makes a building the central presence of a romance twenty years earlier; Hawthorne's house, with its gables, elm and well, likewise stands as a character embodying its family's history.

• frankenstein

  Both romances ask what one generation owes the next and how a dark inheritance, whether a creature or a crime, follows its makers.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Maule's words on the scaffold in Chapter I, and every later moment when blood is heard in a Pyncheon throat.
• Hepzibah's scowl, and what the narrator says actually causes it.
• Holgrave's daguerreotype of the Judge in Chapter VI and the smile it fails to show.
• Holgrave's choice at the end of his story of Alice Pyncheon in Chapter XIII.
• The narrator's long address to the Judge in Chapter XVIII, and the portrait that falls in the last chapter.

Key terms and names

Romance

In Hawthorne's preface, a fiction free to present the truth of the heart under imagined circumstances, as distinct from the closely realistic Novel.

Cent-shop

A small store selling penny goods, which Hepzibah opens in the front gable to earn a living.

Daguerreotype

An early photograph made on a silvered plate; Holgrave's trade, and in the book a way that sunlight reveals hidden character.

Maule's curse

The prophecy that God would give the Colonel blood to drink, which seems to follow the Pyncheon line.

The Indian deed

The lost document granting the Pyncheons vast lands in Maine, found worthless behind the Colonel's portrait.

Mesmerism

A nineteenth-century practice of inducing trance; the younger Maule uses it on Alice Pyncheon and Holgrave refuses to use it on Phoebe.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How did Colonel Pyncheon gain the land on which the house stands, and what happened on the day of the housewarming?
2. Comprehension Why must Hepzibah open a shop, and why is Clifford returning home?
3. Comprehension What does the Judge want from Clifford, and how does he threaten him?
4. Interpretation Hepzibah scowls and the Judge smiles. How does Hawthorne use faces to mislead and then instruct the reader?
5. Interpretation Why does the narrator speak to the dead Judge for a whole chapter instead of simply reporting his death?
6. Interpretation Holgrave wants to bury the past but at the end wishes the Judge had built in stone. Has he betrayed his ideals or matured?
7. Big Question Can children inherit the guilt of their ancestors, or only its consequences?
8. Big Question Does the sudden inheritance at the end resolve the family's wrong or simply end the story?

Faith Connections

• Exodus 20:5-6 (Scripture)

  The visiting of iniquity to the third and fourth generation, joined to mercy unto thousands, frames Hawthorne's moral about wrong-doing that lives into successive generations.

• Ezekiel 18:20 (Scripture)

  The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father: Phoebe and Holgrave, descendants of both families, are shown free to choose differently from their ancestors.

• 1 Kings 21 (Scripture)

  Ahab covets Naboth's vineyard and has him condemned on false charges; Colonel Pyncheon's seizure of Maule's garden ground follows the same pattern, and Elijah's prophecy of blood is echoed in Maule's curse.

• Augustine, Confessions (Great Conversation)

  Augustine's account of how habit becomes a chain illuminates the Judge, who repeats his ancestor's greed until it consumes him.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Wrong-doing does not stay in the generation that commits it: greed and pride, once rooted in a family, reproduce themselves in later lives until someone refuses them; therefore the past must be honestly reckoned and laid to rest, not merely escaped.

Rhetorical device: apostrophe. In Chapter XVIII, Governor Pyncheon, the narrator addresses the dead Judge directly, reminding him of every appointment he is missing, a sustained irony that turns his ambitions into judgment.

Debate: Resolved: that Holgrave's change of views in the last chapter is a betrayal of his earlier ideals.

Memory Work

the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief

Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?

Writing Prompts

Essay: Is the Pyncheon curse supernatural, hereditary, or moral? Using Chapters I and XX and the Judge's death, argue which explanation Hawthorne finally favors.

Comparison with The Scarlet Letter: Compare Judge Pyncheon and Arthur Dimmesdale as respected public men hiding private wrongs: how does each book expose them, and to what end?

Medical Lens

Hawthorne gives the family curse a double explanation, supernatural and medical. In Chapter I the physicians dispute over the Colonel's body, the eminent Dr. John Swinnerton calling it apoplexy, and the coroner's jury returns a verdict of sudden death; in Chapter XX Holgrave explains that this mode of death, with blood in the throat, has been a hereditary peculiarity of the Pyncheons striking men of the Judge's age in moments of passion, and that Maule's prophecy probably rested on knowledge of it. That pairing reflects mid-nineteenth-century interest in inherited constitutional tendencies. Mesmerism, then the subject of popular lectures in New England, appears in Holgrave's past as a lecturer and in the tale of Alice Pyncheon, where the carpenter's influence over her will reads as an account of induced trance and domination; Hawthorne's own letters show his wariness of mesmerism. Clifford's state after thirty years in prison, childlike, hypersensitive, given to sudden impulses such as the near leap from the arched window, is described in moral and aesthetic terms rather than diagnostic ones, and modern readings of it as institutional trauma are interpretations. The Judge's threat to commit Clifford to a public asylum on the evidence of neighbors' testimony shows how confinement for supposed insanity could be used as a family weapon in the period. The Judge's son dies of cholera, the epidemic disease of those decades.

• Chapter I, The Old Pyncheon Family

  The physicians' dispute over the Colonel's death, Dr. Swinnerton's verdict of apoplexy, and the coroner's jury.

  Physicians Doctors Death Dying Heredity Degeneration
• Chapter XIII, Alice Pyncheon

  Holgrave's tale of the younger Matthew Maule placing Alice in a mesmeric trance and controlling her will thereafter; Phoebe nearly enters the same state while listening.

  Altered States
• Chapter XV, The Scowl and Smile

  Judge Pyncheon threatens Hepzibah that Clifford will be confined for life in a public asylum unless he reveals the family secret.

  Asylum Institution
• Chapters VII–XI

  Clifford's altered state after long imprisonment: his craving for beauty, his fears, his torpor and the impulse at the arched window.

  Neurosis Anxiety
• Chapter XX, The Flower of Eden

  Holgrave's explanation of the Pyncheon deaths as a hereditary predisposition rather than a curse.

  Heredity Degeneration

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Hawthorne's preface claims the latitude of a Romance. Choose two places where the book mingles the marvelous with the realistic and explain what each gains.

• Fiction

  Write the Judge's busy day as he planned it in his memorandum book, then the same hours as they actually passed in the ancestral chair.

• Classroom

  Draw the house with its seven gables, shop window, arched window, garden, elm and well, and label each with the scene and character connected to it.

Further Reading

• The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

  The romance Hawthorne finished just before beginning this one.

• Hawthorne: A Life, Brenda Wineapple

  A full modern biography.

• Hawthorne, Henry James

  James's 1879 critical study, with an early appraisal of the novel.

• The Salem Witch Trials Reader, Frances Hill

  Documents from the 1692 trials that lie behind Matthew Maule's story.