Book Review: The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Centuries before our story opens, Colonel Pyncheon set his sights on land that was already occupied by another man, Matthew Maule. In order to get rid of his rival, he accused him of witchcraft.  During Maule's execution, Maule is said to have cursed Pyncheon and his line.  Pyncheon builds the house of seven gables on Maule's former property, employing the son of the rival as head carpenter.  As the years pass, the Pyncheon line is struck by many tradegies, until only an old spinster, Hepzibah, and three other relations still live.  A teen girl, Phoebe, is one these relations, and her sunny presence in the old, foreboding house seems to promise that the family curse will finally be lifted...

This is a twisted tale of greed and its consequences. Though the basic plot is engaging enough, Hawthorne is exceedingly loquacious, and even pauses at times to apologize for his tangents.  For example, after a pages long description of the activities of chickens in the seven gables garden, Hawthorne writes: "The author needs great faith in the reader's sympathy, else he must hesitate to give details so minute, and incidents apparently so trifling, as are essential to make up the idea of this garden life."  Indeed!

Hawthorne's prose is also very ornate.  I often would read a line or two aloud to Daniel, and then "translate" it into plain English.  Here's a line describing a boy eating a gingerbread whale, after having eaten quite a few other gingerbread animals in the days before: "The great fish, reversing his experience with the prophet of Nineveh, immediately began his progress down the same red pathway of fate whither so varied a caravan had preceded him."

While the journey was often arduous, and the ending wrapped events up rather predictibly (though I am still not 100% sure what happened to cousin Judge Pyncheon), I am glad I read it.  Not only because it is the first completed novel of my Classics Monthly Challenge, but also because my mother tried to get me to read it for years (even to the point that she sent it to me to Ecuador to read).