Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Publisher:

Published: 2020-07-30

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13:

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables is, as the author notes in a short preface to the novel, a romance. The story thus, as Hawthorne states, includes fantastical occurrences, improbabilities, and attempts to connect the past with the present, sacrificing literal authenticity for more abstract truths. The connection between the past and the present is the most pressing of Hawthorne's concerns in The House of the Seven Gables, which begins with the checkered history of the eponymous house. The house was constructed during the Puritan era in New England by the prominent Colonel Pyncheon. He acquired the property through dubious means: the property on which the house was built was originally owned by Matthew Maule, a relatively obscure man who was often called a wizard. Soon after Matthew Maule refused to sell the property to Colonel Pyncheon, he was charged with witchcraft and burned; Colonel Pyncheon led the charge against him, and thus acquired the property. Years later, Colonel Pyncheon himself died suspiciously, with a bloody hand-print on his throat. The Pyncheon family seemed poised to remain prominent, yet the family steadily declined throughout the subsequent generations. However, every generation or so another Pyncheon appeared who seemed to possess Colonel Pyncheon's characteristics and would instill hope that the Pyncheons would return to their former glory once more. Yet the most recent notable occurrence in the family history was the murder of a Pyncheon by his nephew years before.