The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 3 January 2011
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
This classic American story has long been regarded as one of this country's most famous ghost stories. Adaptations in popular media have always emphasized the haunted nature of this centuries-old house in New England, and the spooky spectres that lurk in its history and that menace its current occupants. In fact, the novel itself is a lot more than that. It can hardly be described as a ghost story at all. We meet spinster Hepzibah Pyncheon, the descendant of a long line of declining Massachusetts gentry. She lives in the massive and ancient House of the Seven Gables, alone with a young boarder, Holgrave, who makes daguerreotypes. Hepzibah has fallen on ever-harder times, while righteously refusing the largesse of her rich cousin Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon. So, she finds herself opening a penny shop beneath one of the gables, finally giving in to poverty, and clinging to what little pride remains after such a lowering experience. The house and the family have a long dark history, which began when a Colonel Pyncheon usurped the land the house stands upon from a much poorer man by the name of Maule. The Colonel had Maule convicted of witchcraft and hanged, whereupon Maule cursed Pyncheon and his progeny (perhaps he really was a sorcerer). For many generations, that curse has hung over the family, most significantly in the disappearance of a valuable deed that gives the family title over vast tracts of countryside in Maine. The Colonel died in mysterious circumstances, and so did one of his great grandchildren, the uncle of Hepzibah and Jaffrey, and also of Clifford Pyncheon, who was convicted of the uncle's murder on the strength of Jaffrey's testimony. All of this history hangs over the family. Hawthorne beautifully evokes the darkness of their circumstances in the way he almost anthropomorphizes the house and its environs. Along the way, he gives us sprawling and often very witty observations of life in early 19th century New England. The book reminds this reader of some of Proust's detailed evocations of place, emotion and history. Hawthorne's expository style is dense and acute. His descriptions of the ghostly character of the house are given as theoretical, and, in one passage, as merely the imaginings of a young writer. These by no means make this a ghost story in the conventional sense, but represent the personalizing of one family's tragic history. When young and bright Phoebe Pyncheon arrives, she triggers a Renaissance in the family, as well as witnesses its most critical crisis, when supposed murderer Clifford confronts his tormentor, Jaffrey. The ending is a bit of a romantic cop-out, not really living up to the sharp social and historical document that precedes it, but that can be excused by the excellence of the work, and the brilliant writing that Hawthorne brings to this classic tale.