The House of the Seven Gables

Description

The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is recommended to those who like gothic stories, slow reads and dense texts that offer a lot of food for thought.

The story of the book is not eventful and not complicated. It is about a family of four, the Pyncheons, who live in a house that has been allegedly cursed. Strange things happen in and around the house, but whenever something spooky happens, the narrator always provides a perfectly logical explanation of the event, thus creating an even denser atmosphere of suspense.

The curse itself is meant to be the punishment of the later generations of the family for a nasty deed of one of their ancestors – the Pyncheons settled on the land their house stands on back in the 17th century when Colonel Pyncheon came into the possession of it by having the previous owner of the estate, Matthew Maule, executed for witchcraft. Maule curses Pyncheon and all his descendants and the Colonel dies not long after the execution, in a way that makes everyone think the Pyncheon family is cursed, indeed.

Written and first published in the 1850’s, the novel does use highly ornate language that slows the reading even more, but the language is just the perfect match to the story that unfolds slowly as well. However, such slow pace favors rich and deep character descriptions – every character in the book is described lengthily and analyzed thoroughly, each of them adding one more, darker or brighter shade to the already gloomy story.

With its special atmosphere and masterfully crafted plot, The House of the Seven Gables caused sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, its popularity in England being compared to that of Jane Eyre. Today, the book is considered to be one of Hawthorne’s weirdest pieces and one that has influenced many writers since it was first published and that has been adapted to film several times.
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