by Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

Another Classic ticked off my list. This one was written in 1851 and very definitely has the tone of that era of writing. Very verbose and slow moving, with no real interaction between characters.

 

The story is more about the house than the people, though it tells the story of several generations, mostly of the Maule and Pyncheon families. One of the Maule ancestors was accused of witchcraft and executed, and the house was taken and ended up in the hands of the Pyncheons, though the Maule relatives were the rightful inheritors.

 

There is a curse, a crime mystery and two centuries of superstition attached to the house. The plot was interesting, but I found it very slow reading. I never felt really involved with any of the characters because the style of writing kept them impersonal.

 

Still, I'm glad I read it. I've seen the house when I was on a trip to Boston and Cambridge in Massachusetts and I can see how it would inspire a story. It was actually built for the Turner family in 1668, so the story is completely fiction. This is one for those who really love 19th century stories.

Somehow I missed this during my omnivorous reading of the 19th century gothic in my undergraduate years. I read it now from the point of view of someone who distinctly resembles fractious, unsightly Hepzibah far more than the idealized "little woman" Phoebe (though perhaps I have always been more a Hepzibah than a Phoebe). In any case, the emphasis on Hepzibah's incapabilities and infirmities, and her constant scowl, was the one truly uncomfortable note for me in this otherwise delightful excursion into Hawthorne's extravagant and oratorical chessboard of symbols and motifs. I'm aware that Hepzibah's offputting scowl, which does not at all represent her actual mood or actual morals, is the counterpart of the Judge's false and beaming smile, and both are equally insisted upon beyond any reasonable requirement for description so as to force the careless reader to consider what they actually represent. But I must admit, at the umpteenth reference to the ugly Hepzibah scowl, I was provoked into growling, "oh just give it a rest, already, Nathaniel!" Subtlety - not his forte.

 

Chapter 18 is extraordinary writing. I started reading it in a slightly irritated mood, because it seemed that the author was going to take a simplistic trope (the narrator doesn't realize that Judge Pyncheon is dead) and just make a chapter out of it without doing much. Instead, it becomes an absolute symphony of rhetorical, imaginative expansion of the would-haves and could-haves surrounding the mundane fact of a nasty man dead of congenital heart failure in a decaying old house.

 

I have a very small and select folder on my Kindle called, "read but keeping". In goes The House of Seven Gables.

Please note that I gave this book half a star and rounded it to 1 star on Goodreads.

Bah. Bah a thousand times. I have no idea why I started reading this. I think for the Halloween Book Bingo and I ended up switching it out. This thing was painful to read. I don't even know what to tell you besides if you must read this, just pace yourself since trying to force read this thing was not fun at all. At least the last 10-15 pages were just about Project Gutenberg though. I am going to complain though that my library does not have this as an e-book to download, I had to read it via Overdrive which means I had to either read this via computer or my cell. I am so used to downloading my books to my Kindle for IPAD this was another reason why it took me so long to finish.

The long and short of it about this book is following a family and their ancestral home in New England taking place in the late 1800s. At first with describing the home and how the family (Pyncheon) came to own the land that the home was built on. At first I was intrigued since it sounded like something supernatural was taking place. But then the book jumps to the current resident of the home ( Hepzibah, say that 10 times fast) and I lost interest. There are additional characters here and there, but nothing really works. The best part of the book is when Hawthorne describes the grounds and house that sits there.

Other than the house, the whole book moves at a plodding pace.

We have the characters of Phoebe Pyncheon who moves in with her cousin Hepzibah and of course has all of the men falling for her.

I don't know what to say really besides the fact the flow was terrible throughout. Nothing happens and there's a lot of well maybe this is haunted (the colonel's chair) but nothing is really sad for certain.

I wish that the setting had come more alive for me while reading this book. I just couldn't picture things well at all and had to look up pictures of the house to get things more fixed in my mind while reading.

The ending was a big shrug from me. I am so glad I can finally stop seeing this thing on my currently reading list.

I picked up this book because I was visiting the house the story was based on. Sadly, the tour of the house was a lot more interesting than the story. It started out great, the history behind the house and Colonel Pyncheon's death drew me in, which is why I settled on 3 stars. Hawthorne wrote a good beginning, but failed to follow through with the middle and ending. If I had taken notes while reading, they would have looked like this:

 

Nothings happening.

Nothings happening.

Nothings happening.

Nothings happening.

Ooh, wait, this looks interesting.

Never mind.

Nothings happening.

Nothings happening.

Nothings happening.

Finally, now we're getting somewhere.

Wait, that's it?!

 

The 'good part' doesn't start until page 200 and is cleared up a chapter later. Plus, I had to read pages of what Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon would have been doing that day, if he hadn't fallen victim to the 'family curse.'

 

As for fulfilling the elements of being considered a gothic novel, it missed the most important one, an atmosphere of terror and mystery. I think I'll give any more works by Hawthorne a pass, life's too short to read about nothing.

• Books Read Today: Anne's House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery
• Pages Read Today: 125
• Hours Spent Reading Today: 2 hours
• Challenge(s) Completed Today: The Villain Mashup hosted by Bingeing On Books

 

• Total Books Read: 1
• Total Pages Read: 262
• Total Hours Spent Reading: 5.5 hours