The House Of The Seven Gables Analysis

The House of the Seven Gables written by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a novel that engages the reader in an intricate love story that blends history and a fanciful ancestry. Hawthorne stays true to the Romantic era’s convections through his detailed development of the plot. Through his writing, the reader can capture the emotions, morality and motives of each character. Although Hawthorne writes in the romantic style, he does not fail to go against the social norms with the plot. He defines the normal roles of women and he emphasizes the role of wealth in society. Furthermore he asserts his opinions on issues that were prevent in that time, such as, racism, slave emancipation and Jim Crow. The story was not created to just provide a creative love

From the dialog and the events with the child, Hawthorne clearly shows his stance in the controversial issue of slavery and racism during that time. Of greater significance, the little boy who repeatedly comes into Hezephiah’s cent shop main purpose is to make a statement on race. The boy ravishes numerous Jim Crow cookies which asserted that he had an unquenchable appetite, a sort of fetish with the issue of slavery. Michele Bonnet wrote a literary criticism concluding this also stating, “The racially biased view lurking in these remarks comes to the foreground with Ned’s Jim Crow gingerbread figure, which emblematizes the black community with a stereotyped, grotesque character, as is further emphasized by the dancing posture whereby he is pictured as ‘executing his world-renowned dance’” (Bonnet 488). His demolishing of the cookies created tensions in the Pyncheon family which can be translated to the thoughts and feeling of Nathaniel Hawthorne and others of that time over the abolishing of racial inequalities. It is clear that Nathaniel Hawthorne did not want the emancipation of slaves and that he was in agreement with society’s claims on those who are of a different race. Bonnet develops the similar analysis stating, “ Hawthorne dramatizes it by making Ned incorporate—and thus dispose of and subdue—a number of objects whose common denominator is that they are associated with anxiety-generating situations: strife, warfare, material progress, and the question of emancipation….” (Bonnet 493). The young boy’s fetish with the Jim Crow cookies only reveal Nathaniel Hawthorns feelings and continuous frustrations with what was going on in society. This is truly one of the major political statements that he subtly develops throughout the