The House of the Seven Gables (1851) is a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne about a Salem family, the Pyncheons, haunted by a curse laid on their ancestor two hundred years before. Hawthorne himself thought it a better book than The Scarlet Letter.
The story
In the seventeenth century, Colonel Pyncheon had a poor man, Matthew Maule, condemned for witchcraft in order to seize his land, and built his great house on it. On the scaffold, Maule cursed him: God would give him blood to drink.
In the 1850s the house belongs to the impoverished Hepzibah Pyncheon, who has to open a little shop, and to her brother Clifford, just out of prison. Their young cousin Phoebe and a lodger, the photographer Holgrave, bring light into the gloomy house.
The real house
The novel was inspired by a house in Salem built in 1668, the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion, which belonged to Hawthorne's cousin Susanna Ingersoll and which he visited. It is now a museum known as The House of the Seven Gables.
Hawthorne wrote the book in Lenox, in the Berkshire mountains, in 1850, where he became friends with Herman Melville.
Themes
The novel deals with inherited guilt, the weight of the past on the present and the new world of railways, mesmerism and photography.
Hawthorne called it a 'romance', allowing a mixture of the real and the marvellous, as he explained in his preface.
Anecdotes
Judge Hathorne
The curse of the novel echoes Hawthorne's own family history: his ancestor John Hathorne was a judge at the Salem witch trials of 1692. According to legend, one of the accused cursed the judges in similar words.
A Moby-Dick dedication
Herman Melville, who admired Hawthorne, dedicated Moby-Dick to him in 1851, the year of The House of the Seven Gables.
Frequently asked questions
Is the House of the Seven Gables real?
Yes. The Turner-Ingersoll Mansion in Salem, built in 1668, is associated with the novel and open to visitors.
What is the Pyncheon curse?
Matthew Maule, executed as a wizard after Colonel Pyncheon took his land, cursed the colonel and his descendants.
When was the novel published?
In April 1851, a year after The Scarlet Letter.