CliffsNotes on Hawthorne's the House of the Seven Gables by Darlene B Morris

Author:Darlene B Morris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Analysis

With Phoebe gone, an easterly storm sets in. Meanwhile, Hepzibah seems to be very much like the gray and sullen weather; the east wind itself, Hawthorne tells us, seemed to be wearing a rusty black silk gown and a turban of cloud wreaths on its head. Hepzibah tries to warm her life a bit by making a fire in the parlor, but a “stormdemon” seems to keep watch above and, whenever a flame is kindled, the smoke is driven back again, choking the chimney’s “sooty throat with its own breath.” The hearth, of course, has already been compared to the heart of the old house, and in this scene we find the chimney choking within its own throat in the same way that the Pyncheons have choked, both physically and psychologically. This is one of the best instances of Hawthorne’s yoking together the parallel personifications of the Pyncheon house and its inhabitants.

Clifford, after a struggle, finally takes to his bed in despair, and not long afterward, the judge arrives, trying to disguise himself with a kindly, fraudulent countenance. When he reveals the purpose for wanting to see Clifford, “the very frown of the old Puritan” darkens the room as he speaks. Hepzibah looks deeply into the soul of Judge Pyncheon “at this moment [sensing] some black purpose.”

Few share Hepzibah’s dark opinion of her kinsman, but the judge’s own conscience is at rest, Hawthorne tells us, for men of his kind often delude themselves. The “splendid [material] rubbish” of the judge’s life should be compared at this point to his “smile of broad benevolence”; on the surface, he seems to have no “darker traits.” Yet when he is defied by Hepzibah, his true self is revealed, and he tries to enforce his demand to see Clifford with a “harsh frown,” while his brow grows “almost a black purple in the shadow of the room.”

At this particular moment, the house has never seemed so dismal to poor Hepzibah as when she goes to summon Clifford to come and speak with the judge. The legends of the Pyncheons, “which had heretofore been kept warm in her remembrance by the chimney-corner glow,” now recur to her, “somber and ghastly cold.” Gazing from the arched window, Hepzibah lifts her eyes, scowling, trying valiantly to send up a prayer through the “dense, gray pavement of clouds.” The clouds have gathered “as if to symbolize a great, brooding mass of human trouble, doubt, confusion, and chill indifference, between earth and the better regions.”

Unable to find her brother, she wonders if he has strayed outside and perhaps taken refuge in the summer house. Finally, in desperation, she turns back to the waiting judge. But because of the shade of the branches across the windows, the smoke-blackened ceiling, and the dark oak-paneling of the walls, Hepzibah’s imperfect sight can barely distinguish the judge’s figure. Thus, ironically, he duplicates in his death the emptiness of Clifford when he first, shadow-like, appeared to Phoebe’s eyes in the same room. Clifford himself

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.