The House of the Seven Gables by Nathanial Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables
by Nathanial Hawthorne
(Audio)
After visiting the House of the Seven Gables in Salem last month, I decided I should probably read the book! I'd rather liked The Scarlet Letter when I read it junior year of high school, but had never read this one of Hawthorne's.
I must admit, I didn't see the "a romance" subtitle or hear a preface that would set it up to be a romance. Nowadays, romance means something different from what this book turned out to be. This book was, from what I could tell, all about social relations (like a well-written soap opera) and had no plot. I kept waiting for the plot to begin. And then, when something looked a little like it could be a plot, the book was over almost immediately after that. No plot! Fearing I had missed something crucial, I went online to read a summary and realized that in those days, romances were not novels. Novels had plots. Romances had themes and characters and interesting situations, but no real plot like the kind I was expecting in a story! So I didn't miss anything while reading--what I was looking for didn't exist! So that was surprising and unexpected for me. I will know better now when reading works from that time period.
The book involves a set of characters, but it centers around a house with seven gables on it. The land and property change hands under debatable circumstances, leading to the jilted party placing a curse over the other party (before being hanged for witchcraft). “God", said the dying man, pointing his finger, with a ghastly look, at the undismayed countenance of his enemy, "God will give him blood to drink!” This curse seems to follow the family through generations until the point where the book begins. We meet Hepzibah and her simple brother Clifford, who live in the house now and are shunned by society. Hepzibah opens a cent shop and her young cousin, Phoebe, comes and ends up working there and befriending Clifford. Then there's Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon who keeps hanging around, making idle threats and scheming for something we don't learn about until well through disc 8 of 11, at which point there's a glimmer of hope for a plot. There's also Holgrave, a daguerreotypist (who I kept imagining as a typesetter or a secretary until I learned that means he's like an early version of a photographer), who lodges in the house and seems to be the only one with enough sense to actually figure out what the Judge is trying to get but who spends far too much time alternating exposition with his political views. It all ends abruptly and with the happiest of endings possible.
While the lack of plot was confusing, I enjoyed the characters and had no trouble following their movements, apart from one part when I was driving and exhausted and almost nodded off and had to switch to music instead of the book for a while.
What really caught my attention, though, was the beautiful way Hawthorne crafts each sentence. Instead of just saying "There were thirteen chairs in the room and only one comfortable enough to actually sit in" he says, instead: Half a dozen chairs stood about the room, straight and stiff, and so ingeniously contrived for the discomfort of the human person that they were irksome even to sight, and conveyed the ugliest possible idea of the state of society to which they could have been adapted. One exception there was, however, in a very antique elbow-chair, with a high back, carved elaborately in oak, and a roomy depth within its arms, that made up, by its spacious comprehensiveness, for the lack of any of those artistic curves which abound in a modern chair. How gorgeous is that? Every sentence is like a treat! They are so delightful!
I enjoyed earreading this, now that I'd been to the house and could picture the penny store and the extra rooms for the lodger, etc. I know what a gable is now, which is also helpful. LOL I enjoyed reading it, I just wish I'd known going in not to expect a plot like the kind I'm used to! :-)