num_pages: 326
description: This enduring novel of crime and retribution vividly reflects the social and moral values of New England in the 1840s. Nathaniel Hawthorne's gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man's curse until their house is finally exorcised by love. Hawthorne, by birth and education, was instilled with the Puritan belief in America's limitless promise. Yet - in part because of blemishes on his own family history - he also saw the darker side of the young nation. Like his twentieth-century heirs William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hawthorne peered behind propriety's façade and exposed the true human condition.
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: 38877
places: Salem, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, New England
publisher: Penguin USA