The House of the Seven Gables (Norton Critical Edition)
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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recommends it for:
few
This book dares you to read it. I hadn't thought about putting it up here, because, in fact, I have never finished it. I have the distinction of having had the book assigned to me no less than three times in various college courses, and never once read the whole thing.
The problem is I do not care about a single character in this novel. A rich family is cursed because they screwed over a poor family? Great. Where's the conflict? I hate rich people, and didn't want to see them redeemed.
Th...more
The problem is I do not care about a single character in this novel. A rich family is cursed because they screwed over a poor family? Great. Where's the conflict? I hate rich people, and didn't want to see them redeemed.
Th...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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Aside from the fact that not many people like Nathaniel Hawthornes books. I absolutely loved 'House of Seven Gables'
The story is fantastic, its about a family who are so full of pride that they have pushed themselves into ruine. Until one member of the family comes back and teaches them how to save themselves and learn how to enjoy life.
They've spent their whole lives living in a world and wrapped around this curse from their ancester and the house they live in. When in truth their curse...more
The story is fantastic, its about a family who are so full of pride that they have pushed themselves into ruine. Until one member of the family comes back and teaches them how to save themselves and learn how to enjoy life.
They've spent their whole lives living in a world and wrapped around this curse from their ancester and the house they live in. When in truth their curse...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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recommended to Mindy by:
A traveling book salesman!
I have ten or so books from this "Best Loved Classics" series, which my mom bought for me (along with an encyclopaedia, a set of science books, and several children's readers) from a traveling salesman when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. So, here I was with all this bound knowledge but no one to help me figure it all out... I spent hours in my room writing "reports" on my own from the encyclopaedia. I tried to read the "Selected Essays" volume of this series but coul...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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I had a funny experience reading this book. I must have either bought my paperback at a used bookstore or, more likely, picked it up in a freebie bin, because it was in terrible shape. The glue holding things together had gone all sandy and as I finished each page, it detatched itself from the binding. I must have been in highschool because I remember this happening mostly on a bus to Washington D.C. I left pages of Hawthorne all along the route between our nation's capital and Knoxville, TN.
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Read in August, 2008
If Scarlet Letter was written like this, I no longer wonder that so few students seem to enjoy reading it in high school. The extremely heavy handed moralism was a little hard to take. Of course, there's romance so I guess that makes up for something, right? The extremely beautiful and good young woman who spreads light everywhere around her, the fat ugly rich man, the very ugly old lady, and the man crushed by misfortune seem very highly overwrought. He also displays again his strong sense ...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 November, 2007
recommends it for:
People who appreciate in depth character development and a command of the English language.
This book started very slowly but I gradually got drawn into it due to its incredible, in-depth characterizations plus my enjoyment of Hawthorne's wonderful use of the English language. Another factor for me was that, unexpectedly, I discovered in the person of Clifford many parallels to what I have been observing in my elderly mother's life. We do have links to people in the past, who are really just like us in a different setting. The influence of Christianity was apparent in the text whic...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 August, 2007
Sometimes it seems a mistake to force high school students to read 19th century literature. It does take patience to adjust to the "old fashioned" prose, but it's worth the effort. House of Seven Gables is an eerie ghost story based upon actual historical events. Hawthorne knew Salem and its history inside and out, and he also knew how to create a haunting atmosphere and a story that stays in the mind forever. He's one of the few authors who conveys a sense of Puritan fatalism and repr...more
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.47 (1798 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.31 (1340 ratings) number of reviews: 195popular shelves
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"Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and,
therefore, the more terrible."
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