In a rather prophetic statement about a doomed family residing in an ancestral home, where the curse of the father becomes the curse of the children, Hawthorne writes in The House of the Seven Gables: “Ambition is a more powerful talisman than witchcraft” (209). For this second novel, Hawthorne moves from the Puritan to the Mesmeric, a deviation from the evils of religion to the effects of greed that guides the reader on a journey into the darkness of human nature. The dust accumulated on the Puritan way of life is swept away in favor of a more promising Christian ideal. In his earlier novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne contrasted Puritan ideas of sin and redemption. Such a concept had dark connotations in the Puritan context of the past. In his second novel, he chose to deal with a happier outcome on a larger scale of several generations, albeit through a much darker story of the Fall and salvation. The beginning of the curse started out of greed with the old Colonel, the ancestor of the Pyncheon family, dying from a curse. His descendants would also leave this life with the same fate, as the family patriarchs would betray anyone, even their own family members, to increase the riches that only damned their souls. The family's curse is its own ambition, which can only be cured by rectifying the past. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The Pyncheon family inherited its loss even though living family members were not there to witness the fall. This is how the Old Colonel's entire lineage must suffer from his folly, which consisted of wresting his new family inheritance from the cold, dead hands of his enemy's ancient birthright: "He was about to build his house on a disturbing grave. His house would include the house of the dead and buried sorcerer, and would thus give the latter's ghost a sort of privilege to haunt his new apartments and the rooms to which the bride and groom were to take their wives and where the sorcerer's children. The Pyncheon blood had to be born” (Hawthorne 4). Colonel Pyncheon did this to defy fate and any fate that might befall him for his evil act, considering himself above even God. However, as the final nail is driven into the "castle" of his newly established inheritance, the fate of the sorcerer Maule is evoked: "God will give him blood to drink" (3). It is suggested by Hawthorne that Maule had foreknowledge of the Pyncheons' illness which would weaken them all if they subjected themselves to a difficult mental situation or were thrown into a fit of rage. Both of these states can be necessitated by the stress and problems caused by acquiring and maintaining great wealth. From Colonel Pyncheon to Judge Pyncheon, all suffered this fate on the vast expanse of Eastern Indian lands that was forever denied to them. It was such ambition that killed them. Maule's curse becomes God's curse. Colonel Pyncheon had a reason to be cursed by God, as would any man in a high and proper position who corrupts basic Christian principles for his own gain (at least in a godly culture). Men in his position had to be the ones to correct corruption and not hide it, supposedly, in their own black hearts. The novel recounts the colonel's life as that of an honorable man on the outside, holding high positions and admired in the public eye, but he had a secret that future patriarchs would also hold, beinglinked to the austere House of the Seven Gables. . “And under the appearance of a marble palace, this pool of stagnant water, stained with many impurities and perhaps tinged with blood, this secret abomination above which he can perhaps say his prayers without question. 'in remembrance, is this the wretched soul of man! (176). This fate follows the colonel until his premature death and extends to all those of his lineage who live in the cursed house, both for the two men and for the others. The family and the house are cursed. Those specifically condemned, of whom Hawthorne speaks, are the judge, Hepzibah and her brother Clifford in the modern tale; Alice and her father in the tale of the daguerreotypist; and the chief of Pyncheon, a century before, who had set up a shop in the side of his house. The Colonel, of course, cast the initial curse because he wanted to “start a family!” » (141). Who could found a family with ambitions as high as that of the colonel without also sowing the weeds of poverty? To plant, you must have fertile soil, and not corrupted soil saturated with the blood of the dead. The seeds of misfortune were sown with the ambitious desire to be on par with old world European families through the Colonel's new landed aristocracy status and rapid wealth. Not all of this was acquired through honest labor, such as the land for his house, the house itself, and many of his titles and positions. An infertile land choked with the weeds of a doomed destiny is no place to plant a family heirloom. This cursed land was to be the basis of his land empire when he acquired the immense wealth promised to him by Indian deeds over acres and acres of rich eastern lands. This same act and desire for easy wealth would lead other future descendants to the same fate. This act was Alice's very downfall because her father would sacrifice his soul for this act, and over the past century, the Pyncheon leader has even inherited destiny through his pursuit of the Eastern Lands. However, because money was lacking, "he seemed doomed to spend eternity in a vain effort to balance his books" (20), hence the store was opened for his own greedy desire to put in every cent he could. 'he could in his account. tight pockets. The modern Pyncheons of this tale were to suffer the same fate if they had followed the same wayward path of ambition and greed, but through the grace of redemption they were saved from such a fate. Clifford's fate is brought about directly because of the Judge's greed for more wealth than he already possessed. His suffering for a crime he did not commit at the hands of his ambitious brother has left this artist's life mundane and devoid of any beauty. Upon his release from prison, Clifford still had to throw off the shackles of his family heritage, but could not do so within the confines of the cursed house, for after regaining his freedom, he once again locked himself in an even more cell dark. This echoes his own words upon his return to the House of the Seven Gables: "'I want my happiness!' Finally, he murmured, in a hoarse and indistinct voice, with difficulty in formulating the words. “I’ve been waiting for this for many, many years!” It's late!' » (119). Late indeed. Happiness was not to be found in such a dark and corrupt house. So just living in the house condemns Hepzibah just as much. The scowl printed on her face, probably due to living in such a dark and dilapidated house, devoid of good light, is proof enough of her fate in the curse. “How miserably upset I look!” » she must have often whispered in her ear; and finally, she imagined herself like this, by afeeling of inevitable doom” (24). The ultimate conclusion, which will be proven later, is that the only way to be happy is to leave the house and the blight behind. The house is the modern curse and misfortune of the family (120). The past is linked to the present. What happened in the past will happen in the present because of the original curse. This is brought together through the old portrait of the austere Colonel that looms over the lives of the present-day Pyncheon family, a constant reminder of the source of their unhappiness. And as the judge reached a similar age to the former colonel, many could see the resemblance between the two. There is a sense that both ends of the circle of destiny were converging on home at that moment. Perhaps the Judge would bring a new curse on the unfortunate family or put an end to the old one. The old portrait constantly watched over all family affairs and was sure to control events and internal destiny. Thus, he and the house are involved in the curse, for the old colonel is the house, his spirit having inhabited it. “The photo of the Puritan colonel shuddered on the wall. The house itself shivered, from every attic of its seven gables to the great kitchen fireplace, which served all the better as an emblem of the heart of the manor, because, although built for warmth, it was so uncomfortable and empty. ). The circle comes full circle when Judge Jaffrey tries to blackmail his cousin Clifford while the Colonel blackmails Maule into evicting him from his little piece of land on which he would base his damn inheritance. “Alas, cousin Jaffrey, this harsh and greedy spirit has flowed in our blood for two hundred years. You are only repeating, in another form, what your ancestor did before you, and transmitting to your posterity the curse inherited from him” (182). If the judge had listened to his cousin at that time and changed his ways, perhaps he could have avoided the fate God had in store for him, that of dying a horrible death within the dark confines of his coffin. Salvation comes to those who seek it first, and none need it more than Phoebe and Clifford. How is it that a fallen family can break free from such a deeply rooted destiny when there is no way to separate an aristocratic lady from the comfort of her family home? By chance in the ever-elusive eastern lands, the modern Pyncheon family had been plunged into deep poverty, although the judge had acquired immense wealth through his own corruption as a public official. Faced with this new twist of fate, Hepzibah opened the coin store already built by her ancestor a century earlier. Swallowing her pride, the spinster destroys her last vestiges of aristocracy by working with her own hands and serving those lower in rank than her. What sets it apart from its thrifty ancestor is its own charitable nature towards its customers by offering many of them free products. Not only that, but also through her growing humility, she too recognized the lazy nature of the aristocracy and its evils by saying of a certain prosperous young girl: "Must the whole world work hard so that the palms of his hands remain white and delicate? (40). Nothing better could have happened to the spinster, as she ultimately manages to overcome misfortune by helping herself, without the help of greed or ambition. She must work hard for the common need of survival. Although she viewed this debasement of her status as the fulfillment of Maule's curse on her family, it was in fact the implementation of the end of the curse. It is further illustrated that the house is cursed when Clifford and Hepzibahflee. the judge's corpse, and Clifford feels the weight of family destiny lifted from him with such a death of a family member. Chatting with a skeptical old man on the train, Clifford explains the very fate that has kept him and his family trapped: "The greatest stumbling blocks on the path to human happiness and progress are these piles of bricks and stones [...]. ] which men painfully invent for their own torment, and call them house and hearth! The soul needs a wide range of morbid influences, of a thousand varieties, which gather around homes and pollute household life. There is no atmosphere so unhealthy as that of an old house, made poisoned by its deceased ancestors and relatives” (200). He even states a few pages later that one builds a house in which to die and with which to curse one's posterity. An understandable statement considering the lengths he and Hepzibah went to to escape such a fate, even without money or a plan to go once the modern patriarch of the curse was dead. Holgrave adds to this point in his speech to Phoebe about the need for temporaryness. He concludes in the middle of the novel that the solid past is pushed onto descendants, as in the case of the House of the Seven Gables, and if houses and society were built on less permanent foundations, no one would spare themselves the labor of others but would reform its own future based on the errors of the past. He knows what needs to be done for the Pyncheons to bury the curse, being a descendant of the sorcerer Maule. They must abandon the very house from which the source of the curse came: the greed and ambition of its founder. It is, in fact, this offspring of the sorcerer Maul who holds the key to the punishment of his own family and the liberation of his ancestor's enemies from the terrible grip of fate. There is a connection between the modern Holgrave and Phoebe and the earlier Alice and Mathew that is worth noting. There has been dissatisfaction among critics regarding the love between Holgrave and Phoebe, "that the love between Phoebe and Holgrave comes too soon and is, therefore, underdeveloped and not worth trusting" (Corrente 102-3). This marriage can be seen in a different light compared to the earlier "courtship" of Alice Pyncheon and Mathew Maule. Mathew being of a lower class can only win over Alice during periods of mesmerism. This fashionable 18th century practice comes from Franz Anton Mesmer who, as the American Heritage Dictionary states, "during curative sessions very fashionable in Paris, provoked in his patients reactions ranging from sleeping or dancing to convulsions . These reactions were in reality caused by hypnotic powers that Mesmer did not know he possessed” (“Mesmerism”). Through a hypnotic ritual, common to mesmerism, Mathew is able to take control of Alice's will and exact further revenge on the rapists of his heritage. Holgrave also does the same because the Maules “were believed to inherit mysterious attributes; The family eye was said to possess a strange power” (Hawthorne 17). Through the use of mesmerism, Holgrave is able to blind Phoebe to her true intentions of watching her ancestors' enemies fight against the fate imposed upon them. At first, he may not have been entirely true in his motives towards her, but in the end his genuine feelings emerge when Phoebe also fascinates him with her purity and beauty. Morbid? Yes! Even Holgrave admits this (167). Perhaps because of his ancestry deeply rooted in "witchcraft" and mesmerism, he can't help it. But his sudden love for Phoebe breaks the ties that bind him to his past and allows him to. 1992.