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Title details for The House of the Seven Gables (World Digital Library Edition) by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Available

The House of the Seven Gables (World Digital Library Edition)

by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Christopher Marc Treagus PhD.
ebook
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Published in 1851, The House of the Seven Gables was conceived by Nathaniel Hawthorne as a modern-day sequel to The Scarlet Letter, which had appeared the year before. Set in Salem, the story’s dramatic center revolves around two elderly characters, Hepzibah and Clifford Pyncheon, as they struggle to free themselves from a centuries-old family curse, ghostly forebears, and a crippling sense of hereditary guilt. They find themselves aided in their quest by their young cousin, Phoebe, and a mysterious daguerreotypist names Holgrave, who has taken up residence with them. Watching over this human drama, as if awaiting its outcome, is the brooding House of the Seven Gables, the Pyncheon ancestral home.

In this book Hawthorne hoped to dispel the gloom of the Puritan past that pervades The Scarlet Letter. Whether or not he succeeded has long been a matter of opinion. Hawthorne’s wife, Sophia, praised her husband’s new romance for its “dear home-loveliness and satisfaction,” while Herman Melville found it a damnably dark and subversive work: “[Hawthorne] says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes.”

Formats

  • Kindle Book
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Kindle restrictions

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Text Difficulty:9-12