num_pages: 400
description: The wealthy Colonel Pyncheon covets the carpenter Mathew Maule's land. A few years later, during the witch hysteria in Salem, Maule is brought before a judge on witchcraft charges and is sentenced to death. Before his execution, Maule curses the Pyncheon family. The Colonel, undaunted, continues to build an extravagant house on Maule's property. After the house is finished, however, the Colonel is found dead, and the property deed is missing. More than 200 years later, we meet the family in its decaying, gabled mansion, still haunted by the presence of dead ancestors: Hepzibah, an elderly gentlewoman fallen on hard times; her ineffectual brother, Clifford; and young Phoebe, a country maiden who cheerfully takes it upon herself to care for her two doddering relations. There's also Holgrave, a free-spirited daguerreotypist, who makes a surprising transformation into conventional respectability. Hawthorne's masterful tales describe the brooding hold of the past over the present, twisting and turning through many generations of a venerable New England family.
language: English
title: The House of the Seven Gables
titlecomplete: The House of the Seven Gables
characters: Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, Venner Pyncheon, Matthew Maule, the younger, Gervayse Pyncheon, Hepzibah Pyncheon, Ned Higgins, Phoebe Pyncheon, Colonel Pyncheon, Clifford Pyncheon, Alice Pyncheon, Matthew Maule, Scipio (Pyncheon slave), Thomas Maule, Holgrave the daguerrotypist
genres: Fiction, American, Gothic, Classic Literature, Horror, Literature, Classics, Novels, 19th Century, Historical Fiction
ratings_count: 38848
places: Salem, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, New England
publisher: Waking Lion Press