Jesse’s Reviews > The House of the Seven Gables > Status Update

Fifty pages and we introduce one new character (even if we spend a bit more time with the obvious villain): Clifford, Hepzibah’s brother, once an artistic and dainty youth but now an infirm old man. this book is fine when it is depicting Hawthorne’s sort of melodramatic scenes but the broad swathes of generalized descriptions of the life of the household go ON and ON

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.

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).