'The House Of The Seven Gables'

First thing I had to do is find out what a "gable" is. Turns out, it's the triangle formed when two parts of the roof meet. I think.

Anyway, this house had seven of them. The house itself was modeled after the real House of the Seven Gables owned by Nathaniel Hawthorne's cousin. The real house was built in 1668 and had all seven gables. By the time Hawthorne rolled around, it had only three gables.

The book itself is about history, family, ghosts and redemption. Clearly, this is Hawthorne's comment on his own family and the very real Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon. Hawthorne's ancestors being huge parts of the Salem Witch Trials (where the real house is located) and he clearly had a lot of issues stemming from that.

It's part of the reason that The House of the Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter have similiar themes that look unremarkably upon judgement, religion and how the sins of the fathers affect the sons.

One theme I would like to address is the assumption that, in the story, a Pyncheon relative is actually "bewitched" by a member of the Maule family, which were victims of a faulty claim of witchcraft years before by a Pyncheon. This witchcraft resulted in the Pyncheon family member dying.

This is significant because as much as Hawthorne was attempting to make up for his family's past, he still made the innocent victim an actual witch.

I think that Hawthorne was actually pointing out that what is perceived as "witchcraft" is simple persuasion or the power of suggestion. It's the idea that witchcraft is not real, but it is "real" in the brains of the weak or those that want witchcraft to be "real."