The House of the Seven Gables (The Penguin American Library)

by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Maude Alice Cowles Nathaniel Hawthorne

Book Overview

A gloomy New England mansion provides the setting for this classic exploration of ancestral guilt and its expiation through the love and goodwill of succeeding generations. Nathaniel Hawthorne drew... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140390057
• ISBN13: 9780140390056
• Release Date: August 1981
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.7" x 0.8" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

The gloomy dignity of an inherited curse

In Hawthorne's times, wealth and power were vested in landownership. In this book, a conflict about landownership is solved in favour of a member of the powerful by incriminating of witchcraft and executing the poor owner of a hut. `Clergymen, judges, statesmen stood in the inner circle round about the gallows loudest to applaud the work of blood.' But the innocent victim utters a prophecy on the scaffold: `God would give them blood to drink.' The wrongdoing becomes a curse for all generations to come. They will be `slaves of bygone times.' The House of the Seven Gables, the expression of that odious Past, stands for `what we call real estate - the solid ground to build a house on it - is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of the world rests.' One of the main characters, the Judge, represents the respectability of Puritanism. But he is in fact a selfish, iron-hearted hypocrite, greedy of wealth. He is a member of the schemers: `practiced politicians skilled to adjust those measures which steal the people the power of choosing its own rulers.' As in `The Scarlet Letter', Nathaniel Hawthorne exposes in this book forcefully the Phariseism of the Puritans and the powerful. It culminates in a very surprising and highly dramatic end. Not to be missed.

Not for short attention spans

A slow, leisurely, and deep read. Hawthorne has a wonderful prose style that is uniquely him. He has a poetic way of taking things that seem small or insignificant and making them large and thoughtful. The plot does not move along quickly, but I found that the reading did. The characters seem to move in slow motion for a great majority of the book, and every movement has volumes of meaning. I feel this book is very representative of the emergence of american values of equality, of a disdain for the importance previously placed on pedigree or heritage and of course, of the emphasis on things like virtue, humility, etc. A delicious read.

A Beautiful Work of Art

It's very obvious from reading all of these reader reviews that The House of the Seven Gables is not for everyone. But, I urge you to determine if it is for you. If it is, you certainly don't want to miss it. This novel was not written with today's readers in mind. You cannot call it quick-paced, by any stretch of the imagination. The novel is however, a wonderful work of art. Every sentence, every word is carefully crafted, carefully chosen. This novel is meant to be read slowly, to be savored. The novel tells a fairly simple story--the story of the house, and its perhaps doomed family of inhabitants. Many years after a curse by a supposed warlock--there are only 4 members of the doomed family surviving. Is the house haunted? Maybe. Hawthorne is so clever--every time he tells us about a supposed ghost or haunting, he gives us a more "reasonable" explanation. Were they ghosts swirling around the house one evening, or was it just the wind. Is the family doomed? Maybe, but then there is young Pheobe who seems anything but. The House of Seven Gables is far superior to any contemporary gothic you can read. It is novel writing at its best. The characters have depth, the story is engaging, and even, at times, funny. But, you have to be ready for a novel written well over a hundred years ago. If you are, you are in for a treat.

In response to the negative reviews...

I must say that the negative reviews that I have read about Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables are sorely off the mark. The prevalent sentiments are that the plot is dull (or almost absent), the characters are flat, and the description is overwrought. But you who say this are simply missing the point, as well as taking Hawthorne's work out of context. You have to understand that this novel was written during a very transitional period in literature. Writers had shifted from the Enlightenment to Romanticism (the period in which Hawthorne writes), and as Hawthorne writes his novels, another movement is being made to Realism. Realism is what we are used to in modern fiction. It contains real characters and real events. But Hawthorne had not yet fully employed these new ideas, and he still hung on to the Romantic sentiments. Therefore, he was much more interested in ideas rather than character development (a modern technique). Hawthorne chooses to convey ideas, emotions, morals, etc. rather than fully developed the characters like they would be in a novel today. As for no plot, you have to keep in mind that Hawthorne still looks to the old tradition (not to mention his guilt of his heritage), so he uses his writing as a way to teach moral lessons, not necessarily to describe a highly detailed story and plot.Finally, I can't deny that there is plenty of narrative description, but most of it serves a great purpose, and for the parts that you think do not belong, just read and enjoy them for their poetic beauty and technical merit.Hawthorne is a fantastic writer, but to acknowledge this, the reader must not take his work out of its context.