The terror and ugliness of Maule’s crime,
and the wretchedness of his punishment, would darken the freshly
plastered walls, and infect them early with the scent of an old
and melancholy house.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Summary — Chapter 1: The Old Pyncheon Family
In the mid-1600s, the farmer Matthew
Maule builds a small house next to a lovely, clear spring in what
will become a small, well-to-do Massachusetts town. A local landowner
named Colonel Pyncheon, who wants the land for himself, accuses
Maule of witchcraft at a time of mass hysteria against witches.
Maule is convicted and hanged, but, before he dies, he warns that
God will give Pyncheon blood to drink. Undaunted by this curse,
Colonel Pyncheon builds a house with seven gables, vertical triangular
points on a house that run from the roof’s center to its edge. Maule’s
own son helps design and build the house, and on the day of its
opening, a great feast is held. When Colonel Pyncheon fails to greet
his distinguished guests, they charge into one of his rooms, only
to find him sitting dead at his desk. Blood coats his beard and
his shirt. There is no evidence of foul play, but no one knows how
he died, and rumors of strangulation persist. It is whispered that
a mysterious figure was seen fleeing the scene. The narrator goes
to great lengths to discount these rumors.
Future generations of the Pyncheon family continue to
occupy the house over the next century and a half, but they are
never able to claim one of the dead Colonel’s final acquisitions,
a gigantic tract of land in Maine. Generations of the family are
raised thinking the land is rightfully theirs, and they make unsuccessful
attempts to obtain it. The area where the Pyncheon house was built
falls out of fashion. Thirty years before the novel is set, a wealthy
Pyncheon is murdered by one of his nephews, another Pyncheon. The
killer is convicted and jailed for life, but the dead man’s other
nephew, an intelligent man who becomes known as Judge Pyncheon,
is successful and builds a large house just outside of town. The
sister of the jailed Pyncheon continues to live alone in the house
of the seven gables. The Maules, on the other hand, have not had
such a clear descent through history. Many of them have no knowledge
of Matthew Maule or his curse on Colonel Pyncheon, and some are
not even aware that they are of Maule descent. Nevertheless, many
still retain the Maules’ characteristic alienating reserve, and
some are believed by townspeople to have inherited mysterious powers
from their forefather.
The chapter ends with a few descriptions. Outside the
house of the seven gables stands a gigantic elm planted over eighty
years ago by one of the earliest Pyncheons. In a nook between two
of the gables grows a cluster of flowers known as Alice’s Posies,
named after an old legend that told of Alice Pyncheon flinging up
flower seeds for fun; the resulting flowers were said to thrive
in the dust and dirt collected on the roof. The house also contains
a door on the front gable, leading to a little shop where a Pyncheon
family member who found himself in dire financial straits once took
to being a merchant.
Summary — Chapter 2: The Little Shop-Window
Hepzibah Pyncheon, the old maid who inhabits the house
of the seven gables, awakens. A woman with a good heart but a permanent scowl
brought on by nearsightedness, Hepzibah spends quite a bit of time
on her appearance, pausing every now and then to sigh over the portrait
of a beautiful young man, who we are assured is not her lover. As
the sun begins to rise, Hepzibah grows increasingly agitated. She
heads downstairs, where we discover that her own financial difficulties
have led her to reopen the little shop with the door cut into the
front gable. The shop-tending offends her dignity as a member of
the aristocratic Pyncheon family line, but it is the only option
she has: she is too blind to sew and not educated enough to teach.
She has filled the little shop with many goods, such as gingerbread
men, children’s toys, and foodstuffs, but she is timid, and she knocks
things over as she sets up. Hepzibah delays opening the shop as
long as she can, but as the day goes on she can put it off no longer. She
opens the store window and quickly runs into the living room of the
house, crying.
Analysis — Chapters 1–2
Chapter 1 provides us with a lurid
history of the Pyncheon family rich in symbolic passages. The most
explicit of these symbols is Maule’s Well, the cheerful spring whose
waters turn brackish after Maule’s death and the arrival of the
Pyncheons, a very literal illustration of the land’s deep corruption.
It is indicative that the Maule rather than the Pyncheon well should
be the one spouting dirty water, as Maule’s curse will prove to
be tied to the ill-gotten land rather than to the Pyncheon family
itself. Pyncheons who leave the house appear to be the least affected
by the curse; some are not affected at all. The murder of old Jaffrey
Pyncheon by his nephew is also irrevocably tied to the house of
seven gables: after the crime, Judge Pyncheon moves away and soon
becomes happy, prosperous, and successful, although his return to
the house in later chapters will signify his downfall.
In Chapter 2, we are abruptly
pulled from the tabloid history of the Maules and the Pyncheons
and introduced to Hepzibah Pyncheon, who becomes a sudden embodiment
of all the misery narrated in the previous chapter. An old maid
who seems to wear a permanent scowl, she demonstrates the ruin and
shame of the life of a fallen aristocrat. At the same time, we begin
to see that Hepzibah may indeed have a good heart. Her haughty contempt
for her own store is coupled with a very real pain, and she goes
about setting up her shop with a rather touching timidity. In the
innocence of her preparations, Hepzibah robs the house of some of
the mystery the first chapter instilled in it. The house has been
presented as a place of great evil, where even the waters now run
black, but here we see its sole resident as a miserable but not
unbearable character, running around with a frenzy that is decidedly
human. Although the fact that Hepzibah’s face has been locked into
a frown suggests that she is unhappy at home, all her activities
give the place a sense of hope and renewal. As later chapters will
show, this paradox is a fitting introduction to the house of the
seven gables.
