The House of the Seven Gables (Modern Library Classics)
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Read in January, 2008
(My full review of this book is much larger than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)
The CCLaP 100: In which I read 100 supposed "classics" for the first time, then write reports on whether or not I think they deserve the label
Book #2: House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The story in a nutshell:
Like any good horror story, the spooky House of the Seven Gables ...more
The CCLaP 100: In which I read 100 supposed "classics" for the first time, then write reports on whether or not I think they deserve the label
Book #2: House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The story in a nutshell:
Like any good horror story, the spooky House of the Seven Gables ...more
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Read in January, 2002
Although is have been over 5 years since I have read this book (the last time was a tragic affair in high school that quite possibly permanently scarred me as a Hawthorne disliker/hater), I retain the feeling that if I read this novel again, now that my tastes are both more evolved and more refined, I would have extreme difficulty in getting through the story. Although some would argue that Hawthorne is a master of imagery, with this piece being second only to the Scarlet Letter, I found the bo...more
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Read in January, 2008
Home ownership remains an enduring symbol of the ideal of America as a land of opportunity, but as Hawthorne depicts, the American dream has long been sullied by the inequities of wealth and power in a capitalistic society. Houses and property became ornaments of wealth and symbols of power, a way of making one’s socioeconomic class apparent to friends, family and foes. As such, the acquisition of real estate, the accumulation of excessive wealth, became sport for the powerful, as with ...more
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Read in January, 2007
I finally got around to reading this last year. Slower moving but good study of characters. One paragraph towards the end jumped out at me, it refers to Hepzibah, a lonely, mistreated women ....
"Returning to the arched window, she lifted her eyes-scowling, poor, dim-sighted Hepzibah, in the face of heaven!-and strove hard to send up a prayer through the dense gray pavement of clouds. Those mists had gathered,as if to symbolize a great, brooding mass of human trouble, doubt, confusion,...more
"Returning to the arched window, she lifted her eyes-scowling, poor, dim-sighted Hepzibah, in the face of heaven!-and strove hard to send up a prayer through the dense gray pavement of clouds. Those mists had gathered,as if to symbolize a great, brooding mass of human trouble, doubt, confusion,...more
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Read in January, 2000
i think it says something that, looking at other readers' reviews on here, people who hated it had lots to say, and people who loved it didn't have much to say at all in the way of reasons. i have read 3 things by hawthorne, now, and all of them are melodramatic writing about absolutely nothing at all happening. the only thing i'll say for this book is that it's hilarious, if read in the right mindset - hilarious because it's so over the top about everything. also, i wasn't certain if it was ...more
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Read in February, 2008
recommended to Andrea by:
the house itself
I did it, DTA!!! And I can almost feel the handsome Mr. Hawthorne smiling down on me as I type. :-)
After touring the house in July 2007, I felt the least I could do was to read the book that made the house famous. While I'm not generally a fan of 19th century American literature (give me Dickens any day!), I ended up enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would. By the 3rd chapter, Hawthorne's language had drawn me into the story, but it was his occasional flights of slyly sarcastic humor t...more
After touring the house in July 2007, I felt the least I could do was to read the book that made the house famous. While I'm not generally a fan of 19th century American literature (give me Dickens any day!), I ended up enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would. By the 3rd chapter, Hawthorne's language had drawn me into the story, but it was his occasional flights of slyly sarcastic humor t...more
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Read in July, 2007
It took me TEN MONTHS to get through this book and it's only 400 short pages. I just kept putting it down and reading another. I feel like maybe I didn't put my all into it, but really I think it was just dry and slow and boring and the point it made could have been made in a short essay. I really don't know why he bothered developing anything because I didn't learn anything from the developments of character or plot. The only things I did learn came from little tangents he went off on. And...more
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Read in September, 2003
recommends it for:
Literary readers, classics readers
While still preoccupied with human strife, Hawthorne cuts more quickly to its causes and ends, rather than the angst and depressive run-ons in The Scarlet Letter. House of Seven Gables shows more interest in technology, moving into a theme of a culture moving ahead, out of the time of its author's Puritan ancestors. There is also more diversity of action and characterization in the book, as not every is sad in their helplessness when they are helpless, and there is not nearly as mu...more
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I read this last weekend. I was sick, knew I'd be cooped up and drugged up, and decided to drown myself in some escape fiction (hey, I don't do sci-fi or fantasy, so something engrossing counts as escape for me). I think I had read this twice before, though once was when I was too young to fully appreciate it. I remember enjoying the book, so I was surprised to find it a bit dryer than I remember. And at the risk of sounding elitist, the writing wasn't as good as The Scarlet Letter. I don't...more
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This mysterious novel about a cursed family and its mansion is one of Hawthorne's few works with a happy ending. Perhaps Hawthorne, when he wrote it, had come to some degree of peace with the curse that was rumored to have been placed upon his own family. The novel is interesting, and it contains some profound insights. It boasts one of Hawthorne's "reformer" characters, Holgrave. Hawthorne did not seem to have much faith in reform and reformers, but Holgrave is a more sympathetic c...more
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Read in February, 2007
I enjoyed this book for its simplicity. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, that is repeated textually by Hawthorne EVER is a coincidence. Every reoccurance of a color or a sound or the flowing of water means something and he uses these things to guide the reader through the story from one decade to the next. I have found it both masterful and heavy-handed at the same time. Hepzibah is such an unlikely hero; it's just great. I especially like how everyone thinks she's bitter and hateful because she is ...more
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Read in January, 2008
I thought that I would have a hard time getting through this book, its been sitting on my bookshelf for awhile waiting to get read. However, the book read pretty easily, and there is actually an interesting story at the core. Hawthorne's prose can be a little dense, and there are passages that move slowly, and lots of tangents! What I found most interesting in this book was the way early New England, and really American, ideals come through in the characters that Hawthorne presents in this bo...more
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I'm so glad you're dead, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
So this is a classic horror novel in which nothing at all happens for a few hundred pages except the description of some house, an old hag selling oatmeal, and some guy who may or may not have hypnotized the other chick who's boarding there. There might be something scary but I was too busy falling asleep to notice. If Hawthorne were alive, he'd be a zombie, which I'd totally be okay with because then he could get shot in the head by zombie expe...more
So this is a classic horror novel in which nothing at all happens for a few hundred pages except the description of some house, an old hag selling oatmeal, and some guy who may or may not have hypnotized the other chick who's boarding there. There might be something scary but I was too busy falling asleep to notice. If Hawthorne were alive, he'd be a zombie, which I'd totally be okay with because then he could get shot in the head by zombie expe...more
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Read in July, 2007
How can you not love a ghost story? Even better, a ghost story that unravels to reveal how superstition can obscure truth (in this case, science.) I have read Hawthorne before and should not have been suprised, but I was, regardless, surprised by Hawthorne's sharp criticism of superstition. Hawthorne's language (quaint) belies the modernity of his resolution.
He also has an obvious fondness for quirky characters, which is sweet.
You do have to push youy way past a certain point in reading ...more
He also has an obvious fondness for quirky characters, which is sweet.
You do have to push youy way past a certain point in reading ...more
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Read in January, 1961
recommended to Stephy by:
It was in the family library as a child.recommends it for: fans of literary criticism
I liked this book a lot more as a child, I'm afraid. But I still re-read childhood favorites from time to time, and this was a quarter at the Friends of the Library book sale.
I'm not a big fan of literary criticism in the "what this book or these books tell us" variety. Maybe life looks different from 58 that it does from ten or so. My parents took me to see the house of seven gables when I was young, and it enchanted me, all that magic, in one place!
Of my Dickens collection, ...more
I'm not a big fan of literary criticism in the "what this book or these books tell us" variety. Maybe life looks different from 58 that it does from ten or so. My parents took me to see the house of seven gables when I was young, and it enchanted me, all that magic, in one place!
Of my Dickens collection, ...more
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There's a line in Scorcese's latest film where one of the characters quotes Hawthorne, "Families are always rising and falling in America." that I love so I thought I'd reread some Hawthorne. I remember learning that his home life was jacked up and inspired his writing. After just two days of holidays with my own fallen American family I thought, "Well, why not?"
Wow! Hawthorne really loved describing stuff. I'd forgotten that. The book was entertaining. Not what I r...more
Wow! Hawthorne really loved describing stuff. I'd forgotten that. The book was entertaining. Not what I r...more
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Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
fans of Hawthorne and James
The revelation of the final mysteries at the center of the story is almost beside the point. Henry James was right to see Hawthorne as a precursor to the kind of writing he did. The drama here is all in the narrator's description of character, his slow and (at times) humorous unpacking of the basic situation. The shades of moral discrimination on display here aren't as fine as in some of the other writing, but the ironies at work are perhaps stronger as a result. Not essential Hawthorne like...more
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Read in January, 2004
recommends it for:
everyone
All of the elements of a Victorian ghost story are here: the gloomy old house, the pinch-faced spinster, a black-hearted ancestor, a curse on the family, and the fresh young thing, who serves as a counterpoint to all of the grey-faced relations surrounding her. The story is interesting, and Hawthorne is a master of vividly depicting the environment through which his characters move. In places, the story is so dreary, it is hard to read. All in all, though, this is a fine book, honestly illust...more
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This book was publish in the 1840s. Hawthorne is a very descriptive writer who tries to help the reader feel the society of 1820-1830. He does a good job but I stopped reading because he would have sentences that would be a paragraph long. Or paragraphs that would be a page long. It became very fatiguing to continue reading, so I quit after about 100 pages. If I were very interested in that period of time I would probably pick that book up again and slog through it. It would have to be a...more
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Read in March, 2006
Like all of Hawthorne works, this novel examines the typical American puritanical morality and how the past influences the present. It is novel that grips the reader on the first pages, then preach its ideas on the middle and tie the knot on the end, like a journalist on a deadline.
I admire Hawthorne's body of work, especially his short stories i.e. Young Goodman Brown. But I only complain that his novels are too formulaic and there are always sense of dread on and between his paragraphs.
...more
I admire Hawthorne's body of work, especially his short stories i.e. Young Goodman Brown. But I only complain that his novels are too formulaic and there are always sense of dread on and between his paragraphs.
...more
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