Status Updates From المنزل ذو الجمالونات السبعة

At this point this story is very low key. The enchanting Phoebe has arrived from the country and is enriching her aunt’s life by running the shop for her and cooking and other such things that the pseudo-noblewoman could not hope to succeed at. Hawthorne demonstrates a belief in the Puritan work ethic, tempered by the idea that such work must grow out of the worker rather than be coerced.

"There is something so massive, stable, and almost irresistibly imposing in the exterior presentment of established rank and great possessions, that their very existence seems to give them a right to exist; at least, so excellent a counterfeit of right, that few poor and humble men have moral force enough to question it, even in their secret minds"

On the one hand, Hawthorne sure loves to talk. On the other, I love that this story has the room to breathe. The Scarlet Letter moved in play-like acts and broad expository swathes. We are fifty pages in and just now getting to our first character, the elderly Hepzibah, working the 1850s version of a dollar store out of her family’s mansion (because of a 30 page history and a 10 page character sketch).

I can not stress enough how off putting a love confession with my dead uncle in the next room over would be

Well something finally happened, I know you were all on the edge of your seats waiting for me to find the plot.