In late September, I embarked on a tour of the House of the Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts. Our guide, a young man who was both knowledgeable and entertainingly wry, regaled us with tales of two additions made to the house. After the woman who purchased it decided to transform it into a tourist attraction, a room was added to emulate Hepzibah’s little shop, and a secret stairway not mentioned in the text was constructed. This stairway, our guide claimed, was the means by which Clifford could suddenly appear as he does. The latter addition intrigued me greatly, as I couldn't recall anything of the sort from my previous reading. This led me to decide upon a reread of the book.

As I delved deeper into the text, I realized that only the beginning seemed familiar. I began to wonder if perhaps I hadn't actually finished the book the first time around, although that didn't seem quite right either. It occurred to me that perhaps the beginning, with its captivating legend of the Pyncheons and the Maules, and the vivid description of poor Hepzibah setting up shop, were simply the most memorable scenes. The middle of the book, on the other hand, seemed to be a rather lengthy setup for what ultimately felt like an anticlimactic denouement. The explanations provided were somewhat perfunctory, and some of them were apparently known through the use of mesmerism. I could understand why I had remembered liking the book more the first time I read it, as there were moments when I felt that same thrilling sense of 'gothic-ness' that I had experienced while reading Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Our guide had mentioned that he had read the book numerous times, and in a hushed tone, he added that it wasn't all that great. When I told him that I had read it, he apologized. I think I also reread this book with the intention of proving him wrong, but unfortunately, I was unable to do so. The main feeling that I took away from this reread was that Hawthorne seemed to struggle with the concept of inherited guilt, perhaps due to the actions of his ancestor, a 'hanging' judge who had presided over the 'witch' trials. This theme was particularly evident in that brilliant beginning.

And what of Clifford's mysterious appearances? There was really only one significant instance, but it was an important one. Later in the book, there was also a mention of another relative having had "secret access" to their uncle's room, which satisfied my curiosity. As I read my old paperback copy, the edges of both the front and back covers began to shed pieces. (My 1985 edition had a picture of the house on the front cover; however, that cover seems to have been removed from Goodreads, even though it was there not too long ago.) Last night, as I settled in to finish the book, the back cover completely fell off the spine. And if I count in a certain way the spaces left behind from the triangles that fell from the front cover, they number seven.

4 stars for first read; 3.5 for second

This is my second encounter with a book by Hawthorne. The first one I read was The Scarlet Letter, and in my opinion, it was the superior of the two. Both The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables have a slow start, and initially, they seem to wander aimlessly. However, in hindsight, it becomes clear that the foundation of the story, just like that of a house, must be laid first, otherwise, there is no support. Hawthorne has a remarkable command of language. Although it can be a challenging read for me, there are times when his words are truly exceptional, especially when you take a few minutes to fully absorb them.

The two best chapters in The House of the Seven Gables were (13. Alice Pyncheon and 18. Governor Pyncheon). These chapters truly展现 the greatness of the book. In fact, both chapters could function as independent short stories. The chapter on Governor Pyncheon, in particular, is an excellent description of death, painting a vivid and haunting picture that lingers in the reader's mind.

The thread running through the book is a dispute over the appropriation of a plot of land. So far, the true motives that led to the confrontation between Colonel Pyncheon and the old Matthew Maule remain unknown, as the narrator affirms: "The existence of any written account of this dispute is unknown. Our knowledge of the whole affair is derived from popular wisdom." Colonel Pyncheon, an energetic and determined type with personal influence, launched an attack against Matthew Maule, who was stubborn in his defense. "Pyncheon Street formerly had the more humble name of Maule’s Lane, after the surname of the original occupant of the land, whose farm was at the end of a cow path." Due to Pyncheon's excessive demand, the old Matthew Maule was executed for the crime of witchcraft, one of the worst accusations in Salem.

In short, the old Matthew Maule was executed for the crime of witchcraft. He was one of the martyrs of that terrible deception that should teach us, among other lessons, that the influential classes and those who believe they have the right to rise as leaders of the people are completely exposed to the intense injustice so characteristic of the most frenzied mob. Clergymen, judges, and statesmen - the wisest and most peaceful people of their time - were in the closest circle to the gallows, they were the ones who applauded the bloody act with the greatest fervor and were the last to admit, lamentably, that they were wrong.

The inauguration of the house had a high cost, which was replicated with the death of Colonel Pyncheon himself. When the silence of the host was felt among the multitude of guests, they noticed his absence and discovered that he was lying dead. A death that gave rise to many interpretations of the causes of death, reaching the conclusion: "The examining magistrate approached the corpse, and, being a judicious man, pronounced an irrefutable verdict: 'Sudden death!'". But also a death that had a certain nuance that among the people was linked to Maule.

In order to appropriate the lot, he argued convincing reasons to the owner of the same and an adjacent stretch of land, alleging that he was the possessor of a legal permit. Colonel Pyncheon, the applicant, as we have deduced thanks to the descriptions that have been preserved of him, was known for an energetic and iron determination. Matthew Maule, on the other hand, although a somewhat unclear man, was stubborn in the defense of what he considered his own right.

It should be noted that to this day the house still stands. Three generations of the Turner family lived in the mansion by the sea before it was sold to Captain Samuel Ingersoll in 1782. An active captain during the Great Age of Sail, Ingersoll died at sea. Finally, the property was left in the hands of his daughter, Susanna, a cousin of the famous author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is attributed to Hawthorne's visits to his cousin's house that inspired the setting and title of his novel. Today, one can pay $20 to tour it.

It is an excellent text where the narrator allows the reader to be part of the story, but there are moments when he steps aside and from a corner observes the events. A reading without many complications where the author's imagination involves you in reconstructing a fiction through the gaps that reality offers us to create a past that is scattered through the pages of the popular gossip. After reading the author's The Scarlet Letter, I believe The House of the Seven Gables has a better construction, clearly without detracting from the merit of the former.

Note, March 17, 2018: I edited this again slightly, just to change the formatting of a long quotation.

Note, May 14, 2016: I edited this review just now to make a slight factual correction.

During the Salem witch hysteria of 1692, when real-life accused witch Sarah Good was about to be hanged, she pointed at one of the witch hunters, Rev. Nathaniel Noyes, who was looking on approvingly, and shouted, "I'm no more a witch than you are, and if you murder me, God will give you blood to drink!" (an allusion to Revelation 16:6). Years later, Noyes suffered a throat aneurism and did die literally drinking his own blood - a fact that wasn't lost on the keepers of New England's traditions.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born and raised in Salem (and lived there much of his adult life). He was a descendant of Judge Hathorne, who was one of the judges in the witch trials and the only one who never repented later. (The author added the 'w' to his own name to disassociate himself from the judge and other ancestors who persecuted Quakers, etc.) His family heritage and the intellectual debates in New England during his formative years over the region's inherited Calvinist orthodoxy led him to seriously consider questions of predestination, original sin, and inherited guilt. The House of the Seven Gables can be seen as his most direct literary exploration of these themes. It begins with a recap of the scene described above, but with the names (and, in the case of the "witch," the gender) changed. Then it telescopes time, so that Col. Pyncheon dies of a throat aneurism soon afterwards - on the day of the planned house-warming for the great, seven-gabled mansion he built on the land he railroaded Matthew Maule to execution to steal. (That house is a real structure in Salem and still stands today, though the Pyncheons are fictitious.) Hawthorne then skips to his own time, noting that the intervening generations of Pyncheons have shared their ancestor's nasty personality and often his mode of death; bloody aneurisms have run in the family. But not all Pyncheons share the family's legacy of greedy selfishness. Clifford, Hephzibah, and Phoebe are decent people, despite being Pyncheons, because they've made their own choices in life as to what kind of people they'd become. For them, inheritance wasn't destiny, and this is Hawthorne's major point. Like Hawthorne himself - an Arminian Christian who repudiated the moral outrages his family once stood for - they've exercised their free will to choose good over evil. Not everybody does that, but everybody can do it and has a moral responsibility to do it, a view totally opposite to both Calvinist predestinarianism and modern chemical/social determinism. In his narrative voice, Hawthorne addresses Judge Pyncheon with the clear language of personal moral responsibility and choice:

"Rise up, thou subtle, worldly, selfish, ironhearted hypocrite, and make thy choice whether still to be subtle, worldly, selfish, ironhearted, and hypocritical, or to tear these sins out of thy nature, though they bring the lifeblood with them! The Avenger is upon thee! Rise up, before it is too late!"

Both of my Goodreads friends who've reviewed this novel consider it inferior to The Scarlet Letter. I'll concede that point; its plot doesn't have the dramatic tension of the latter (though it has some). It's not as strong in that regard as the author's less well-known novels The Blithedale Romance and The Marble Faun, either. But it has its appeal nonetheless; it's perhaps the most Gothic of Hawthorne's novels, and it's message-driven without losing sight of the very real, often poignant human story it's telling.

Hawthorne's ornate 19th-century diction isn't problematic to me, but will be a bane to many modern readers. That's a matter of misguided self-conditioning and prejudice in most cases, though, IMO. Contrary to what many modern readers automatically assume, expanding one's vocabulary and being able to decipher complex sentences doesn't take being born with some kind of genius-level IQ; it only takes patience, application, and motivation, and I think the pay-off is worth it.

Note #1: Joseph Schwartz's "Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804 - 1864: God and Man in New England," contained in American Classics Reconsidered: A Christian Appraisal provides an excellent treatment of Hawthorne's often misunderstood religious thought.

Note #2: The 1940 movie adaptation starring Vincent Price as Clifford does not follow the novel very closely (big surprise, coming from Hollywood - NOT!) Among other things, the scriptwriters made Hephzibah his love interest rather than his sister. :-(

Note #3: Though I've read this book at least twice (originally as a teen), I've never read it in the edition above. The one I own and most recently read has no supplementary material except a good short biography of Hawthorne and a brief Forward and Afterword, all by Andre Norton.

The author may have clothed it in romance, but this text could just as easily be called an exercise of a realist. The uncovering or destruction of the fourth wall, the excessive tendency towards explanation and clarification (to make the metaphor even more transparent!), repetition and exaggeration, personification and stereotyping, moralizing and stark portrayal of a portrait, pseudoscience (mesmerism, physiognomy, phrenology), the motif of a manuscript/story within a story (at the level of papal anecdotes), the force of descriptions...

The spirit of the past, the atmosphere of death, succession, colonization, inbreeding, degeneration, and simulacrum (the daguerreotype as a copy more faithful than the original) – good ingredients, bad mix! In the framework: a withered old maid, a condemned melancholic, a portraitist-peripatetic, a dropout-wanderer, gluttons-greedy people, a deflowered naïve.

"Is it a fact – or did I just dream it – that, thanks to electricity, the world of matter has become a great living being that trembles thousands of miles away in one barely conceivable moment? Indeed, the earth is a huge head, a mosaic, penetrated by reason! Or, let's say it this way, it is thought itself, nothing but thought, and not matter as was once believed!" Ah! Role-playing.

I am growing increasingly bored to death with the shrill voice (this being Joss audio) chattering on about the reasons and justifications without advancing the story.

If it is the same shrill female who narrates the actual tale, I will give up.

Later - it indeed is that same ear-splitting narrator.

Sorry, Mr Hawthorne, but if I continue, my ears will only make me feel guilty.

It seems that the shrillness of the voice is really grating on my nerves and preventing me from fully enjoying the story.

I had hoped for a more pleasant and engaging narration to bring your work to life.

Perhaps if the narrator had a different tone or style, I would have been able to immerse myself in the world of "The House of Seven Gables" more easily.

As it stands, however, the shrill voice is proving to be a major distraction.

I'm not sure if I will be able to persevere and get through the rest of the audiobook.

It's a shame, really, because I was looking forward to experiencing your classic novel in this format.

But for now, my ears are rebelling against the shrillness.

ETA: A VERY SHORT REVIEW

The book initially posed difficulties due to its dense language. However, as the story progressed, the language became lighter, allowing me to enjoy certain parts. Sadly, towards the end, it took a rapid downhill turn, adopting a slapstick style. I could have saved myself a significant amount of time by simply writing this as my review.

“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.”

Here is the house Hawthorne is referring to: https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/the-house-of-the-seven-gables-salem?select=8l-8djqmPH0SB3XyD4uyKg.

It is The House of Seven Gables. This house still exists today in Salem, Massachusetts, having been built in 1668 by sea captain and merchant John Turner. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864) lived in Salem. His cousin, Susanna Ingersoll, was the owner of the house at that time, and Hawthorne visited her there. Hawthorne imagined a fictional family, the Pyncheons, and wove a gothic story about them, their lives, and this house. In the tale, Colonel Pyncheon has the house built by carpenter Matthew Maule. A legal dispute arises, deeds are lost, and gruesome deaths and talk of the supernatural follow. Who has the right to live there? This information sets the stage. Only then does the story truly begin - two centuries later, in the 1850s.

We meet five Pyncheon descendants, Hepzibah, Phoebe, Clifford, Venner, and Judge Jaffrey, as well as Holgrave the daguerrotypist and Ned Higgins, a child fond of gingerbread cookies. Through flashbacks, we learn about the interim years and encounter Alice and Gervayse Pyncheon, as well as the grandson of Matthew Maule.

The introductory section, consisting of the first six chapters, lacks vitality; we are merely told of previous events. These chapters serve as the background to the story that is about to unfold in the 1850s. The author is our narrator, interrupting, explaining, and voicing his opinion on events. He is philosophical, with a message to convey. However, he can be longwinded, and the views expressed are sometimes difficult to penetrate - perplexing, abstruse, wordy, and overblown. As the story gains momentum, humor, dialogues, and lines of lyrical beauty make the prose lighter and more accessible. Here are three examples of lines I liked:

“...and I love to watch how the day, tired as it is, lags away reluctantly, and hates to be called yesterday so soon.”

“…the summer eve might be fancied as sprinkling dews and liquid moonlight.”

which contrasts with

“the clamor of the wind through the lonely house.”

Hawthorne has a talent for creating the feeling of a place and the prevailing atmosphere. Humor centers around the family's chickens and that child in love with gingerbread cookies. I even found myself enjoying some of the shorter lines of a philosophical nature:

“A man’s bewilderment is a measure of his wisdom.”

“Life is made up of marble and mud.”

“Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay, than this loss or suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed things, and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment.”

“Ambition is a more powerful talisman than witchcraft.”

Being very much a Gothic novel, a sense of gloom and disaster begins to pervade the tone. A sense of impending doom builds, tied to the unrelenting way in which the wrongdoings of one generation inevitably shape the actions of the next. This is what is truly scary. In Hawthorne's words:

“The past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy of the present and the future.”

“What slaves we are to bygone times!”

He asks:

“Shall we never get rid of the past?”

Then he remonstrates:

“We are not doomed to creep on in the old ways.”

Clearly, Hawthorne is suggesting that we must break free from the past. The question is whether the characters will have the strength to do so. This is what the book explores.

Many claim that it is challenging to read Hawthorne's prose. In parts, it is indeed wordy, but not throughout. This is why I have included quotes as proof.

I came to like the prose style when it lightened up a bit, once the story picked up after the tedious start.

But then came the ending, which I absolutely loathed. It ruined everything for me. So annoyingly gimmicky, so chaotic. I have to admit that many Gothic novels do end in such a fashion, but I was mistakenly thinking - wow, here is a great Gothic novel that showcases discernment and intelligence. Dear Hawthorne, it is not always necessary to end with a big splash! The hiding place of the deed, that silly spring on the portrait, the need to clear Clifford's name, and the rush to solve everything in a hurry, to slap on a sweet and tidy ending - all of this made the entire book seem worthless to me. I do not recommend it to anyone. Read The Scarlet Letter instead.

The audiobook is superbly narrated by Anthony Heald. I believe that a really good narrator can make difficult, abstruse prose understandable. If you do decide to pick this up, I highly recommend listening to it. Make sure to listen to the audiobook narrated by Anthony Heald.

When I look back on this novel, I no longer understand how I could have liked it at all.

A Never-Ending Story


Hawthorne, in The House of the Seven Gables, aimed to convey that greed and dishonesty, when aided by established power to pursue selfish ends, can create a sense of guilt that extends over generations, initiating a never-ending cycle of vice, unease, and retribution. However, reading the novel soon felt like a futile attempt to emulate Sisyphos for me. I've always admired Hawthorne's short stories for their powerful language and ability to evoke a sense of the supernatural and unknown. So, despite remembering the seemingly endless hours spent grappling with The Scarlet Letter in university, I was persuaded to give The House of the Seven Gables a try. After reading some of his short stories post-Hester Prynne's agony, I concluded that I was too young to appreciate that novel and perhaps it was just me, not Hawthorne.


Now, The House of the Seven Gables taught me a different, somewhat soothing lesson: It was, after all, Hawthorne, and not me! The story of an old crime that divides two families, the wealthy and influential Pyncheons and the underdog Maules, rumored to practice witchcraft, and haunts their family histories for nearly two centuries is marred from the start by Hawthorne's tendency to drown his subject matter in what could be called a torrent of words. However, since a torrent usually implies swift movement that carries everything along, I'd rather describe his technique as dipping readers into a brine lake of words.


The novel begins interestingly enough with an overview of the Pyncheon family's history and the appropriation of the land for the House of the Seven Gables, followed by the mysterious death of the family patriarch. But already in the second chapter, we are given a detailed description of the little cent shop set up by old Hepzibah Pyncheon to support her brother Clifford, who is released from prison after a thirty-year sentence for murder. Further descriptions follow of the garden and even the fowl that inhabit it, and Hawthorne leaves no doubt about the symbolic potential of this poultry. The problem lies in the fact that nearly everything about the Pyncheon mansion has a symbolic meaning: the sickly well, the roses that look nice from afar but are covered in mildew up close, and Alice's Posies that conveniently bloom on a special occasion. While reading the endless paragraphs dedicated to these symbols, one can't help but feel annoyed with Hawthorne for spelling it out so neatly, like a self-important schoolmaster. I repeatedly asked myself, "Does the author take his readers for morons, or is he so pleased with his own symbolism that he has to rub it in over and over again?" Whichever it is, it leads to an uninspired, repetitive, and needless verbosity that made me conclude that Hawthorne is to American prose what Whitman is to American poetry: time-consuming, self-enamored, and enervating.


So, what made me persevere through the novel despite its length? To be fair, it's not all bad. Sometimes the dialogues capture the essence I know from Hawthorne's short stories, and there are curious ideas like the one expressed by Holgrave: "Shall we never, never get rid of this Past? It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body." These passages are few and far between, but they are like oases of green in an arid plain covered with - pardon the pun - hawthorn. Chapter 13, where Holgrave reads out the story of Alice Pyncheon to the bird-brained Phoebe, is another example of Hawthorne at his best, presenting a short story of atmospheric depth and haunting qualities. The death of the nasty old Judge and the events of the next morning, when people try to gain access to the House of the Seven Gables, are also skillfully realized. But then Hawthorne soon overdoes it, beating his idea to death, probably because he liked it so much, and using a million words where a thousand would have sufficed admirably.


Regarding those thousand words - I'm going to look in the mirror and end my review here because I think I've conveyed the general idea: This book has become a classic perhaps not because it is so clever and complex but because it is so unpleasant and boring to read that it attracts the average literary critic, who knows that few will be willing to follow him into the aridity of this text. So, why not apply the same principle as is commonly done with James Joyce's Ulysses and proclaim that a book with an idea that is beaten to death on a craggy plain of indigestible language, causing you pain in the ass, must be a classic? It's probably just the same attitude of intellectual snobbery that led Mr. Hawthorne to write The House of the Seven Gables in the first place.

A family, an old tradition, and a house soaked by the presence of all those who lived and died within it.

It is a classic American tale that is painted with the detailed descriptions of the cycle of life, the power that a house has over a person, but also simultaneously the inability to completely determine the future.

Amid the melancholy scene that Hawthorne weaves, there are always some rays of sunlight that manage to escape, reminding us of the contradictions that life has.

The meaning trickles through every reader and leaves them with a pleasant feeling.

This story not only explores the profound connection between a house and its inhabitants but also delves into the complex nature of human existence.

It makes us think about how our past experiences and the places we inhabit shape our present and future.

Hawthorne's masterful storytelling allows us to vividly imagine the scenes and emotions, making us feel as if we are part of this classic American myth.

Overall, it is a captivating and thought-provoking piece of literature that continues to resonate with readers even today.

I'm not sure if I can claim that the book disappointed me, because in a way, I knew what I was getting into from the moment I started it. I had heard countless times that the book was by no means light, that it had an excessive amount of unnecessary filler, endless descriptions of trivialities that add nothing to the plot, among other things. I think the problem lies, initially, in the fact that this is a gothic novel whose focus is on a family drama, but it cannot be fully defined as an entirely horror novel.

The gothic novel has several characteristics that often mislead the reader, making them forget the idea of "terror" during the reading. Some dark atmospheres indicate that the supernatural may occur, but it is also accompanied by a myriad of detailed descriptions about more irrelevant and everyday things for merely stylistic reasons that make one lose sight of some more significant topics. For example, at times we find pages full of detailed descriptions of chickens, among other trivialities. This happens because the gothic novel follows this line: that of making the reader delve into the plot from the details of some things that surround the protagonists, specific descriptions of the feelings and situations that they go through, the expressions used, comments that denote mundane conversations, among other elements that make the reader internalize the world of the protagonist in a more "personal" way. And of course, that doesn't mean that everything that is going to be narrated will be of interest to the reader, but part of gothic literature consists in having that immersive character that surrounds it and makes it part of the story in a certain way, and for this precisely it is necessary to tell things from scratch and with a high degree of detail.

Gothic stories are among my favorites, but with great pain in my heart, I must admit that "The House of the Seven Gables" was not what I expected. I don't want to go on much more about this, at least not in writing, but I will make a video about it on my channel for those who like to listen to my opinion about this novel. https://www.youtube.com/coosburton

It could be more adequately known that the soul of the man must have endured some truly miserable wrongs throughout its earthly experience.

There he appeared to be sitting, with a hazy veil of decay and ruin separating him from the world. However, at fleeting intervals, one could catch the same expression, so refined and softly imaginative, which Malbone, with bated breath and a bold yet happy touch, had bestowed upon the miniature.

There had been something so inherently characteristic in this look that all the dark years and the burden of inappropriate calamities that had befallen him were not sufficient to completely obliterate it.

Indeed, all the enjoyments of this period were capable of provoking tears. Arriving so late as it did, it was like an Indian summer, with a mist in its warmest sunshine and decay and death lurking within its most gaudy delight.

The more Clifford seemed to savor the happiness of a child, the sadder the difference became when recognized. With a mysterious and terrifying Past that had wiped out his memory and a blank Future stretching before him, he had only this visionary and intangible Now. And if one were to look closely at it, it was nothing.

But, as the sunlight departed from the peaks of the Seven Gables, so too did the excitement fade from Clifford's eyes. He gazed about him vaguely and mournfully, as if he was missing something precious, and the more drearily so because he didn't precisely know what it was. "I want my happiness!" he finally murmured hoarsely and indistinctly, scarcely forming the words. "Many, many years have I waited for it! It is late! It is late! I want my happiness!"

When I finally reached the end of this story, I discovered that it was extremely difficult for me to have any real concern for it.

Out of all of Hawthorne's works, this one is undoubtedly my least favorite. The characters within it were, for the most part, rather unlikable.

The plot, which plodded along at a sluggish pace, was padded out with numerous pages of description that seemed completely useless and added nothing of value to the overall narrative.

Finishing it was truly a relief. This accomplishment can only be attributed to my own stubborn determination not to stop reading once I had become engaged, regardless of how irritating the material might be. :o)

It does indeed feel rather disrespectful to be criticizing Nathaniel Hawthorne in this way. However, I firmly believe that one's time would be much better spent delving into his other masterpieces.