Its life was linked with that of the proud house whose visible mansion was founded on property wrested from the old martyr to superstition. For Colonel Pyncheon had shown acrimonious zeal in the witchcraft persecutions, and unbecoming speed in seizing on the wizard’s little plot of ground with its spring of soft and pleasant water. Inseparable as substance and shadow, wherever there was a Pyncheon there was also a Maule. An endless chain of dark events depended from that crime of witchcraft days. On the scaffold the condemned wizard prophesied concerning his accuser: ‘God will give him blood to drink.’ Men shook their heads when Colonel Pyncheon built the House of the Seven Gables, on the site of Matthew Maule’s hut. They had not long to wait for the fulfilment of the prophecy. The spring became bitter, and on the day when the stately dwelling was first opened to guests Colonel Pyncheon was found dead in his study, with blood-bedabbled ruff and beard. Against this tragedy of old colonial days as a background Hawthorne projects the later story of The House of the Seven Gables.
In its simplest aspect the narrative concerns the persecution of an unfortunate and weak representative of the Pyncheon family by a powerful and unscrupulous representative. At intervals through the centuries the spirit of the great Puritan ancestor made its appearance in the flesh, as if the Colonel ‘had been gifted with a sort of intermittent immortality.’ Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon stands as a modern reincarnation of the old persecutor of witches. Clifford, his cousin, is a victim of the law at one of those moments when the law seems to operate almost automatically. Suspected of murder, he might have been cleared had Jaffrey but told what he knew, the real manner of their uncle’s death. This were to disclose certain of his own moral delinquencies, and Jaffrey keeps silent. And thus it happens that, both being in their young manhood, the one is incarcerated and the other enters on a path leading to influence, wealth, and good repute.
To the ‘somber dignity of an inherited curse’ the Pyncheons added yet another dignity in the form of a shadowy claim to an almost princely tract of land in the North. The connecting link, some parchment signed with Indian hieroglyphics, had been lost when the Colonel died; but the poorest of his race felt an accession of pride as he contemplated that possible inheritance. And the richest of modern Pyncheons, the Judge, was not proof against ambitious dreams excited by the same thought.
Affecting to believe that Clifford knows where the lost document is hidden, the Judge tries to force himself on his victim, who, made almost an imbecile by long imprisonment, is now, after his release, harbored in the House of the Seven Gables and cared for by his aged sister Hepzibah and his fair young cousin Phœbe. And while the Judge is waiting, watch in hand, for the terror-stricken Clifford to come to him, Death comes instead. Maule’s curse is fulfilled in yet another generation. The suspicion that would have fallen anew on Clifford is averted by Holgrave. But Holgrave, as he chooses to call himself, is the last living representative of the family of Maule the wizard. And it was for one of the persecuted race to save the unhappiest member of the family by which his own had suffered. Holgrave marries Phœbe Pyncheon and the blood of the two families is united.
Holgrave’s sole inheritance from his wizard ancestor, as he laughingly explained, was a knowledge of the hiding-place of the now worthless Indian deed. For this secret a Pyncheon had bartered his daughter’s life and happiness in former years.
The Judge Pyncheon of the story has been pronounced ‘somewhat of a stage villain, a puppet.’ This may possibly be due less to Hawthorne’s handling of the character than to the inherent weakness of the hypocrite as presented in fiction or drama. The patrician old woman turned shop-keeper is so perfect a study that praise of the delineation is almost an impertinence. And there is the great silent but living and breathing House of the Seven Gables, in the creation of which Hawthorne expended the wealth of his powers. It will always be a question whether in the spiritual significance he attaches to or draws from some physical fact this great literary artist does not show his highest power. And many a time one finishes the reading of this particular book with the feeling that the House of the Seven Gables is the real protagonist of the drama.
In respect that it is a beautiful example of Hawthorne’s art The Blithedale Romance is deserving of all the praise lavished upon it; in respect that it is a picture of Brook Farm it is naught. The author himself freely admitted that he chose the socialist community merely as a theatre where the creatures of his brain might ‘play their phantas-magorical antics’ without their being exposed to the rigid test of ‘too close a comparison with the actual events of real lives.’
The antics played are such as we witness daily when human puppets are swayed by various passions of love, jealousy, self-will, pride, humility, the instinct for art, or the instinct for reform. The bearded Hollingsworth, whose ‘dark shaggy face looked really beautiful with its expression of thoughtful benevolence,’ was, without being conscious of it, a brutal egoist, capable of bending all people and all things to the accomplishment of his idea. He illustrates the weakness of strength, as Priscilla, so frail, nervous, and impressionable, illustrates the strength of weakness.
That Hawthorne intended to show in Coverdale the insufficiency of the profession of minor poet to make anything of a man, we shall not pretend; but his distrust of the worth of literature is well known. Coverdale’s failure was no greater than Hollingsworth’s, and he at least never played with hearts.
Zenobia is at once the most human, the most attractive, and the most pathetic figure in the drama. ‘But yet a woman,’ and too much woman, so that her imperial beauty and grace, her wealth, her skill to command, her magnetic charm, and her intellectual gifts were insufficient to save her. No less regal in endowment than was Hester Prynne, she sank under a burden infinitely lighter than Hester’s. Her nature was strong but impulsive, and impulsiveness was Zenobia’s ruin.