The House of the Seven Gables

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.

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.

This book is really good. Very deep mystery about a dying witch's curse. It's not a fast-moving thriller, by a slow and methodical one. Every word is chosen so carefully by Hawthorne, that it is fun to read and a challenge for the mind to find the hidden meaning. The novel starts with a discription of the house- the house with human attributes and ends with a lone cat watching the fulfillment of a witch's curse. Really excellent. There's plenty of characterization, hints of incest, and omenious surrounding to keep the reader entertained. Love love loved it, read it in a college American literature class.

The House of the Seven Gables was a very intersting book, full of suspense, surprises, and even a little humor. Here is the basic plot: The story starts in 1692, when a man named Matthew Maule is hung for witchcraft by a vicious member of the Pyncheon family. Before he dies, though, Matthew screams, "God will give him blood to drink!" After the death of Maule, his property is acquired by the same Pyncheon who saw him to the gallows. This Pyncheon dies mysteriously at his house-warming party, and the curse of Maule sticks with the Pyncheons. The previously mentioned Pyncheon had a house(incidentally, with seven gables), which was eventually possessed by the main character, Hepzibah Pyncheon. Hepzibah must set up a cent shop to buy her bread, and her main customer is a hungry, gingerbread-purchasing little boy. Her load lightens with the arrival of her young cousin, Phoebe, but the plot thickens when Hepzibah's brother Clifford comes to stay. Her other cousin, the vile Judge Pyncheon, acts very oddly toward Clifford from the moment Clifford arrives. I won't tell you how the book ends, but I sure liked it, and I feel it proves that the evils of a family can be thwarted by a few members.

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.