Critical Essays On Hawthorne S The House Of The Seven Gables

Assembles a range of criticism on THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES from its earliest reception to contemporary times

Includes criticism of "Roger Malvin's burial," "The artist of the beautiful," "The custom house," "The scarlet letter," "The house of the seven gables," "The Blithedale romance," and "The marble faun."

Provides a collection of critical essays on Hawthorne's The house of the seven gables.

Offers critical entries on Hawthorne's novels, short stories, travel writing, criticism, and other works, as well as portraits of characters, including Hester Prynne and Roger Chillingworth. This reference also provides entries on Hawthorne's family, friends - ranging from Herman Melville to President Franklin Pierce - publishers, and critics.

The House of the Seven Gables is a Gothic novel which follows the story of a New England family and their ancestral home. In this book, Hawthorne explores themes of guilt, retribution, and atonement and colors the tale with suggestions of the supernatural and witchcraft. The setting for the book was inspired by a gabled house in Salem belonging to Hawthorne's cousin Susanna Ingersoll and by ancestors of Hawthorne who had played a part in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. American novelist and short story writer Nathaniel Hawthorne's (1804-1864) writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered to be part of the Dark romanticism. His themes often centre on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity.

"It was not love, although her rich beauty was a madness to him; nor horror, even while he fancied her spirit to be imbued with the same baneful essence that seemed to pervade her physical frame; but a wild offspring of both love and horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered like the other. Giovanni knew not what to dread; still less did be know what to hope; yet hope and dread kept a continual warfare in his breast, alternately vanquishing one another and starting up afresh to renew the content. Blessed are ail simple emotions, be they dark or bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions." These four spellbinding stories are variations on the struggle between good and evil; prefigurations, one might say, of The Scarlet Letter. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in the historically rich and guilt-ridden city of Salem; one of his ancestors did indeed persecute the Salem witches. After a first novel in 1828, be devoted himself to increasingly successful short stories. In 1850, The Scarlet Letter brought him fame at last.

About six months after the publication of The Scarlet Letter on March 16, 1850, Hawthorne began writing The House of the Seven Gables. On January 12, 1851, it was finished, and Hawthorne said he preferred it to the earlier romance. However, neither the general reading public nor the literary critics, it has turned out, agreed with him. The Scarlet Letter has, almost from the beginning, outsold The House of the Seven Gables and has evoked a massive number of critical essays that the latter will probably never approach. Nevertheless, The House of the Seven Gables has continued to hold a fascination for both readers and critics because of its richness.The variety of ways in which The House of the Seven Gables has been interpreted by perceptive critics is a clue to that richness. The novel has been read as a parable on the nature and effects of Original Sin. It has been read as a more nearly complete working out of the theme of Hawthorne's short story "Lady Eleanor's Mantle" - that is, that pride and death are inseparable companions: They sit together in the darkening room that is at once the heart of the old Pyncheon house and the tomb of Judge Jaffrey's ambitions. The novel has been read as the most impressive artistic statement of Hawthorne's democratic beliefs; according to this reading, the aristocratic Pyncheons discover that death and suffering are no respecters of persons and that they, the Pyncheons, must give up their pretensions to superiority and mingle with "the common people" and, in particular, the "common" Maules. The House of the Seven Gables has been read as a statement of the archetypal theme of withdrawal and return, which Hawthorne interpreted as isolation and redemptive reunion. It has also been read as Hawthorne's maturest statement on man's relationship to the past, considered as determinative for the future, and on whether, or how, man can escape from the bondage which the past imposes. It has also been read as a piece of charmingly poetic realism, a sort of forerunner of the "local color" tales of old New England that were so popular after the Civil War.The House of the Seven Gables can engage the reader successfully either in its love story, its picturesque Salem history, its Yankee humor, its romantic legend, its modern realism, its melodrama, or even its few moments of gothic terror.In order to take a sufficiently inclusive view of The House of the Seven Gables, we must both examine and look beyond even Hawthorne's own surface emphasis; the author does mean what he says about his characters and their doings, but his deeper hints of characterization, his imagery, and the direction of his plot all bespeak an overriding concern with something of importance for all of us who read the novel.

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Hamburg (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Nathaniel Hawthorne and American History, language: English, abstract: Nathaniel Hawthorne may be best known for his first novel, "The Scarlett Letter", which is also considered to be the author’s masterpiece. Hawthorne’s second novel, in contrast, has often raised heated debates among critics. Unlike its literary forerunner, "The House of the Seven Gables" provides the reader with a rather cheerful ending. Soon after its first publication, most readers responded positively to the novel’s closure, since they were “already accustomed to the conventions of the domestic novel” (Gallagher 1989: 10). Sophia Hawthorne clearly favoured her husband’s second novel and praised the tale’s ending for its deep-seated “home-loveliness”. Some years later, however, the reviews became less enthusiastic. Many critics began to complain about its rather optimistic and conservative closure. It was often argued that the novel’s cheerful ending “[...] fails to offer a resolution to the social problems” (Goddu 1991:119), which the author so anxiously denounces beforehand. Some modern reviews also accuse Hawthorne of re-establishing hereditary rights in his novel’s ending – and thereby affirming the power of the wealthy. The following paper will examine the social and domestic values offered in the "The House of the Seven Gables", in order to re-evaluate Hawthorne’s narrative in the context of its time. Since the novel’s historical dimension cannot be ignored, this work will also review the importance of the house in antebellum America with regard to its public and private function.