The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Plot Summary
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At length, just as an elderly gentleman of very dignified presence happened tobe passing, a large bubble sailed majestically down, and burst right againsthis nose! He looked up,—at first with a stern, keen glance, whichpenetrated at once into the obscurity behind the arched window,—then witha smile which might be conceived as diffusing a dog-day sultriness for thespace of several yards about him. It was the Sabbath morning; one of those bright, calm Sabbaths, with its ownhallowed atmosphere, when Heaven seems to diffuse itself over the earth’sface in a solemn smile, no less sweet than solemn. On such a Sabbath morn, werewe pure enough to be its medium, we should be conscious of the earth’snatural worship ascending through our frames, on whatever spot of ground westood. The church-bells, with various tones, but all in harmony, were callingout and responding to one another,—“It is the Sabbath!
A Day Behind the Counter
Phœbe went accordingly, but perplexed herself, meanwhile, with queries as tothe purport of the scene which she had just witnessed, and also whether judges,clergymen, and other characters of that eminent stamp and respectability, couldreally, in any single instance, be otherwise than just and upright men. A doubtof this nature has a most disturbing influence, and, if shown to be a fact,comes with fearful and startling effect on minds of the trim, orderly, andlimit-loving class, in which we find our little country-girl. Dispositions moreboldly speculative may derive a stern enjoyment from the discovery, since theremust be evil in the world, that a high man is as likely to grasp his share ofit as a low one.
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Maule’s Well
In the late 17th century, Colonel Jaffrey Pyncheon falsely accused a poor carpenter, Matthew Maule, of witchcraft. The family has lived during the next 160 years desperately afraid of the "Maule curse". The House of the Seven Gables is a 1940 Gothic drama film based on the 1851 novel of the same name by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It stars George Sanders, Margaret Lindsay, and Vincent Price, and tells the story of a family consumed by greed in which one brother frames another for murder. It is a remake of the 1910 film of the same name, which starred Mary Fuller.
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Alice Pyncheon
They pulled open the front door,and stepped across the threshold, and felt, both of them, as if they werestanding in the presence of the whole world, and with mankind’s great andterrible eye on them alone. The eye of their Father seemed to be withdrawn, andgave them no encouragement. The warm sunny air of the street made them shiver.Their hearts quaked within them at the idea of taking one step farther. He shuddered; he grew pale; he threw an appealinglook at Hepzibah and Phœbe, who were with him at the window. They comprehendednothing of his emotions, and supposed him merely disturbed by the unaccustomedtumult.
The personages ofthe tale—though they give themselves out to be of ancient stability andconsiderable prominence—are really of the author’s own making, orat all events, of his own mixing; their virtues can shed no lustre, nor theirdefects redound, in the remotest degree, to the discredit of the venerable townof which they profess to be inhabitants. He would be glad, therefore,if—especially in the quarter to which he alludes—the book may beread strictly as a Romance, having a great deal more to do with the cloudsoverhead than with any portion of the actual soil of the County of Essex. The men wheeled about, accordingly, and retraced their steps up the street.
Publication history and response
It hadbeen taken up with the careless alacrity of an adventurer, who had his bread toearn. It would be thrown aside as carelessly, whenever he should choose to earnhis bread by some other equally digressive means. It was impossible to know Holgravewithout recognizing this to be the fact. Phœbe soon sawit likewise, and gave him the sort of confidence which such a certaintyinspires. She was startled, however, and sometimes repelled,—not by anydoubt of his integrity to whatever law he acknowledged, but by a sense that hislaw differed from her own. He made her uneasy, and seemed to unsettleeverything around her, by his lack of reverence for what was fixed, unless, ata moment’s warning, it could establish its right to hold its ground.
The daguerreotypist had found thesebeans in a garret, over one of the seven gables, treasured up in an old chestof drawers by some horticultural Pyncheon of days gone by, who doubtless meantto sow them the next summer, but was himself first sown in Death’sgarden-ground. By way of testing whether there were still a living germ in suchancient seeds, Holgrave had planted some of them; and the result of hisexperiment was a splendid row of bean-vines, clambering, early, to the fullheight of the poles, and arraying them, from top to bottom, in a spiralprofusion of red blossoms. And, ever since the unfolding of the first bud, amultitude of humming-birds had been attracted thither. At times, it seemed asif for every one of the hundred blossoms there was one of these tiniest fowlsof the air,—a thumb’s bigness of burnished plumage, hovering andvibrating about the bean-poles. It was with indescribable interest, and evenmore than childish delight, that Clifford watched the humming-birds.
A distant relative, the lively and pretty young Phoebe arrives and quickly becomes invaluable, charming customers and rousing Clifford from depression. A delicate romance grows between Phoebe and the mysterious attic lodger Holgrave, who is writing a history of the Pyncheon family. It was now far too late in Clifford’s life for the good opinion ofsociety to be worth the trouble and anguish of a formal vindication. What heneeded was the love of a very few; not the admiration, or even the respect, ofthe unknown many.
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
In its centre was agrass-plat, surrounding a ruinous little structure, which showed just enough ofits original design to indicate that it had once been a summer-house. Ahop-vine, springing from last year’s root, was beginning to clamber overit, but would be long in covering the roof with its green mantle. Three of theseven gables either fronted or looked sideways, with a dark solemnity ofaspect, down into the garden. Uncle Venner’s eulogium, if it appear rather too high-strained for theperson and occasion, had, nevertheless, a sense in which it was both subtileand true. The life ofthe long and busy day—spent in occupations that might so easily havetaken a squalid and ugly aspect—had been made pleasant, and even lovely,by the spontaneous grace with which these homely duties seemed to bloom out ofher character; so that labor, while she dealt with it, had the easy andflexible charm of play.
Thesebeing hastily gobbled up, the chicken spread its wings, and alighted close byPhœbe on the window-sill, where it looked gravely into her face and vented itsemotions in a croak. Phœbe bade it be a good old chicken during her absence,and promised to bring it a little bag of buckwheat. He took a certain kind of interest in Hepzibah and her brother, andPhœbe herself. He studied them attentively, and allowed no slightestcircumstance of their individualities to escape him.
The little boy only put his thumb to his broad snub-nose, with that look ofshrewdness which a child, spending much of his time in the street, so soonlearns to throw over his features, however unintelligent in themselves. Then asPhœbe continued to gaze at him, without answering his mother’s message,he took his departure. Turning quickly, she was surprised at sight of a young man, who had foundaccess into the garden by a door opening out of another gable than that whenceshe had emerged. He held a hoe in his hand, and, while Phœbe was gone in questof the crumbs, had begun to busy himself with drawing up fresh earth about theroots of the tomatoes. Phœbe wondered whose care and toil it could have been that had planted thesevegetables, and kept the soil so clean and orderly. Not surely her cousinHepzibah’s, who had no taste nor spirits for the lady-like employment ofcultivating flowers, and—with her recluse habits, and tendency to shelterherself within the dismal shadow of the house—would hardly have comeforth under the speck of open sky to weed and hoe among the fraternity of beansand squashes.
It is perhaps remarkable, considering her temperament, that Phœbe oftenerchose a strain of pathos than of gayety. But the young and happy are not illpleased to temper their life with a transparent shadow. Therefore, it was wellthat Phœbe so often chose sad themes, and not amiss that they ceased to be sosad while she was singing them. A nature like Phœbe’s has invariably its due influence, but is seldomregarded with due honor. Its spiritual force, however, may be partiallyestimated by the fact of her having found a place for herself, amidcircumstances so stern as those which surrounded the mistress of the house; andalso by the effect which she produced on a character of so much more mass thanher own. For the gaunt, bony frame and limbs of Hepzibah, as compared with thetiny lightsomeness of Phœbe’s figure, were perhaps in some fitproportion with the moral weight and substance, respectively, of the woman andthe girl.
And, finally, hergreat life-trial seems to be, that, after sixty years of idleness, she finds itconvenient to earn comfortable bread by setting up a shop in a small way.Nevertheless, if we look through all the heroic fortunes of mankind, we shallfind this same entanglement of something mean and trivial with whatever isnoblest in joy or sorrow. And, without allthe deeper trust in a comprehensive sympathy above us, we might hence be led tosuspect the insult of a sneer, as well as an immitigable frown, on the ironcountenance of fate. What is called poetic insight is the gift of discerning,in this sphere of strangely mingled elements, the beauty and the majesty whichare compelled to assume a garb so sordid. In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life,somebody is always at the drowning-point. The tragedy is enacted with ascontinual a repetition as that of a popular drama on a holiday, and,nevertheless, is felt as deeply, perhaps, as when an hereditary noble sinksbelow his order. More deeply; since, with us, rank is the grosser substance ofwealth and a splendid establishment, and has no spiritual existence after thedeath of these, but dies hopelessly along with them.
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