The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Plot Summary
Table Of Content
To him, and to the venerable House ofthe Seven Gables, does our story now betake itself, like an owl, bewildered inthe daylight, and hastening back to his hollow tree. Then it was a strange sight to behold how the man of conventionalities shookthe powder out of his periwig; how the reserved and stately gentleman forgothis dignity; how the gold-embroidered waistcoat flickered and glistened in thefirelight with the convulsion of rage, terror, and sorrow in the human heartthat was beating under it. Mr. Pyncheon took her hand, and pressed it with the earnestness of startledemotion. He kissed her, with so great a heart-throb in the kiss, that hethought she must needs feel it.
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But, at this instant, the shop-bell, right over her head, tinkled as if it werebewitched. The old gentlewoman’s heart seemed to be attached to the samesteel spring, for it went through a series of sharp jerks, in unison with thesound. The door was thrust open, although no human form was perceptible on theother side of the half-window. Hepzibah, nevertheless, stood at a gaze, withher hands clasped, looking very much as if she had summoned up an evil spirit,and were afraid, yet resolved, to hazard the encounter. We must linger a moment on this unfortunate expression of poor Hepzibah’sbrow. ” she must often have whispered to herself; and ultimately havefancied herself so, by a sense of inevitable doom.
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To the guest,—to Hepzibah’s brother,—or Cousin Clifford, asPhœbe now began to call him,—she was especially necessary. Not that hecould ever be said to converse with her, or often manifest, in any other verydefinite mode, his sense of a charm in her society. But if she were a longwhile absent he became pettish and nervously restless, pacing the room to andfro with the uncertainty that characterized all his movements; or else wouldsit broodingly in his great chair, resting his head on his hands, and evincinglife only by an electric sparkle of ill-humor, whenever Hepzibah endeavored toarouse him. Phœbe’s presence, and the contiguity of her fresh life tohis blighted one, was usually all that he required.
A Day Behind the Counter
Hepzibah discovers that Holgrave is making these noises, and evicts him from the house despite the protests of Phoebe (who is in love with him). A worried Hepzibah then searches Holgrave's room and discovers he is really Matthew Maule. She warns Clifford, who admits that he has known all along who Holgrave is and that Holgrave is part of his plan to clear his name. Very soon after their change of fortune, Clifford, Hepzibah, and little Phœbe,with the approval of the artist, concluded to remove from the dismal old Houseof the Seven Gables, and take up their abode, for the present, at the elegantcountry-seat of the late Judge Pyncheon. Chanticleer and his family had alreadybeen transported thither, where the two hens had forthwith begun anindefatigable process of egg-laying, with an evident design, as a matter ofduty and conscience, to continue their illustrious breed under better auspicesthan for a century past. On the day set for their departure, the principalpersonages of our story, including good Uncle Venner, were assembled in theparlor.
The House of the Seven Gables: Characters
Where the old land surveyor had put down woods, lakes, and rivers,they marked out the cleared spaces, and dotted the villages and towns, andcalculated the progressively increasing value of the territory, as if therewere yet a prospect of its ultimately forming a princedom for themselves. Two or three times, and more, Hepzibah repeated his name, without result; till,thinking her brother’s sleep unwontedly profound, she undid the door, andentering, found the chamber vacant. Was it possible that, in spite of the stormy day, andworn out with the irksomeness within doors he had betaken himself to hiscustomary haunt in the garden, and was now shivering under the cheerlessshelter of the summer-house? She hastily threw up a window, thrust forth herturbaned head and the half of her gaunt figure, and searched the whole gardenthrough, as completely as her dim vision would allow. She could see theinterior of the summer-house, and its circular seat, kept moist by thedroppings of the roof. Clifford was not thereabouts;unless, indeed, he had crept for concealment (as, for a moment, Hepzibahfancied might be the case) into a great, wet mass of tangled and broad-leavedshadow, where the squash-vines were clambering tumultuously upon an old woodenframework, set casually aslant against the fence.
The anxiety and misgivings which had tormented her, whether asleep or inmelancholy day-dreams, ever since her project began to take an aspect ofsolidity, had now vanished quite away. She felt the novelty of her position,indeed, but no longer with disturbance or affright. It was the invigorating breath of a freshoutward atmosphere, after the long torpor and monotonous seclusion of her life.So wholesome is effort! It was as potent, andperhaps endowed with the same kind of efficacy, as a galvanic ring!
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Nervously—in a sort of frenzy, we might almost say—she began tobusy herself in arranging some children’s playthings, and other littlewares, on the shelves and at the shop-window. In the aspect of thisdark-arrayed, pale-faced, ladylike old figure there was a deeply tragiccharacter that contrasted irreconcilably with the ludicrous pettiness of heremployment. It seemed a queer anomaly, that so gaunt and dismal a personageshould take a toy in hand; a miracle, that the toy did not vanish in her grasp;a miserably absurd idea, that she should go on perplexing her stiff and sombreintellect with the question how to tempt little boys into her premises! Now she places a gingerbread elephant againstthe window, but with so tremulous a touch that it tumbles upon the floor, withthe dismemberment of three legs and its trunk; it has ceased to be an elephant,and has become a few bits of musty gingerbread. There, again, she has upset atumbler of marbles, all of which roll different ways, and each individualmarble, devil-directed, into the most difficult obscurity that it can find.Heaven help our poor old Hepzibah, and forgive us for taking a ludicrous viewof her position! As her rigid and rusty frame goes down upon its hands andknees, in quest of the absconding marbles, we positively feel so much the moreinclined to shed tears of sympathy, from the very fact that we must needs turnaside and laugh at her.
In truth he had virtually pleadedguilty to the charge, by scarcely aiming at such success as other men seek, andby taking only that humble and modest part in the intercourse of life whichbelongs to the alleged deficiency. But now, in his extreme oldage,—whether it were that his long and hard experience had actuallybrightened him, or that his decaying judgment rendered him less capable offairly measuring himself,—the venerable man made pretensions to no littlewisdom, and really enjoyed the credit of it. There was likewise, at times, avein of something like poetry in him; it was the moss or wall-flower of hismind in its small dilapidation, and gave a charm to what might have been vulgarand commonplace in his earlier and middle life. Hepzibah had a regard for him,because his name was ancient in the town and had formerly been respectable. Itwas a still better reason for awarding him a species of familiar reverence thatUncle Venner was himself the most ancient existence, whether of man or thing,in Pyncheon Street, except the House of the Seven Gables, and perhaps the elmthat overshadowed it. Nevertheless, even while she paraded these ideas somewhat ostentatiouslythrough her mind, it is altogether surprising what a calmness had come overher.
Rosholt High School Drama to present 'The House of the Seven Gables' - Stevens Point News
Rosholt High School Drama to present 'The House of the Seven Gables'.
Posted: Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Was it,therefore, no momentary mood, but, however skilfully concealed, the settledtemper of his life? And not merely so, but was it hereditary in him, andtransmitted down, as a precious heirloom, from that bearded ancestor, in whosepicture both the expression and, to a singular degree, the features of themodern Judge were shown as by a kind of prophecy? A deeper philosopher thanPhœbe might have found something very terrible in this idea. It implied thatthe weaknesses and defects, the bad passions, the mean tendencies, and themoral diseases which lead to crime are handed down from one generation toanother, by a far surer process of transmission than human law has been able toestablish in respect to the riches and honors which it seeks to entail uponposterity. Her heart melted away in tears;her profoundest spirit sent forth a moaning voice, low, gentle, butinexpressibly sad. In this depth of grief and pity she felt that there was noirreverence in gazing at his altered, aged, faded, ruined face.
But, after all, what workedmost to the young carpenter’s disadvantage was, first, the reserve andsternness of his natural disposition, and next, the fact of his not being achurch-communicant, and the suspicion of his holding heretical tenets inmatters of religion and polity. Clifford sat at the window with Hepzibah, watching the neighbors as theystepped into the street. All of them, however unspiritual on other days, weretransfigured by the Sabbath influence; so that their verygarments—whether it were an old man’s decent coat well brushed forthe thousandth time, or a little boy’s first sack and trousers finishedyesterday by his mother’s needle—had somewhat of the quality ofascension-robes.
No less a portion of such homely witchcraft was requisite toreclaim, as it were, Phœbe’s waste, cheerless, and dusky chamber, whichhad been untenanted so long—except by spiders, and mice, and rats, andghosts—that it was all overgrown with the desolation which watches toobliterate every trace of man’s happier hours. She appeared to have nopreliminary design, but gave a touch here and another there; brought somearticles of furniture to light and dragged others into the shadow; looped up orlet down a window-curtain; and, in the course of half an hour, had fullysucceeded in throwing a kindly and hospitable smile over the apartment. Nolonger ago than the night before, it had resembled nothing so much as the oldmaid’s heart; for there was neither sunshine nor household fire in onenor the other, and, save for ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, formany years gone by, had entered the heart or the chamber.
As the child went down the steps, a gentleman ascended them, and made hisentrance into the shop. It was the portly, and, had it possessed the advantageof a little more height, would have been the stately figure of a manconsiderably in the decline of life, dressed in a black suit of some thinstuff, resembling broadcloth as closely as possible. A gold-headed cane, ofrare Oriental wood, added materially to the high respectability of his aspect,as did also a neckcloth of the utmost snowy purity, and the conscientiouspolish of his boots. His dark, square countenance, with its almost shaggy depthof eyebrows, was naturally impressive, and would, perhaps, have been ratherstern, had not the gentleman considerately taken upon himself to mitigate theharsh effect by a look of exceeding good-humor and benevolence. Owing, however,to a somewhat massive accumulation of animal substance about the lower regionof his face, the look was, perhaps, unctuous rather than spiritual, and had, soto speak, a kind of fleshly effulgence, not altogether so satisfactory as hedoubtless intended it to be.
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