The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

To make a short story long . . . 
Describe. Describe. Describe. When in doubt, heap on the adjective clauses. That’s the strategy Nathaniel Hawthorne employs in the writing of his novel The House of the Seven Gables, originally published in 1851.

The opening chapter promises a multi-generational drama with Gothic undertones, like an American Wuthering Heights. Unfortunately, the novel doesn’t deliver on that promise. Instead of penning an epic that spans centuries, Hawthorne chooses to focus on minutiae. He revels in the minute description of the titular house—every piece of its furniture, every plant in its garden, every crack in its woodwork. He is equally adept at depicting humanity, in both its exterior appearance and interior psychology. The result, however, is a book populated by vividly drawn characters that don’t do much of anything.

The house in question belongs to the Pyncheons, a once prominent, aristocratic New England family whose glory has faded and whose membership has dwindled. Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, the family’s most notable and prosperous surviving constituent, is the absentee landlord of the place. His cousin, the elderly Hepzibah Pyncheon, inhabits the house. She is joined by Phoebe, her beautiful young niece from the country; Holgrave, a photographer who rents one of the gables; and Hepzibah’s aged and feeble brother Clifford Pyncheon, who has just been released from prison after a decades-long sentence for murder. Though the story revolves around crimes, both past and present, Hawthorne avoids talking about said crimes as much as possible, instead concentrating on the lives of the four people in the house—their habits, their eccentricities, and their relationships with one another. Hawthorne concentrates so intently on every breath and movement that it takes half a chapter just for a character to walk across a room. The atmosphere is so thick you could cut it with a knife, but it leaves little room for activity. When things finally start happening in chapter 16 (out of 20!), it's too little, too late. Despite the macabre events taking place, the pace is still so slow it could put even James Fenimore Cooper to sleep.

The House of the Seven Gables is a book better quoted than read. You can pluck almost any paragraph from this novel and hold it up as an exemplar of English language prose, beautifully poetic in its descriptive elegance. But the sum total of all these perfect passages is one tedious, disappointing book. There were moments in some of the better chapters when the writing reminded me a bit of Balzac, yet Hawthorne could have learned a thing or two from his French contemporary. Balzac excelled at both atmosphere and action, and could juggle the two expertly. Perhaps that’s why his books still feel as fresh, insightful, and entertaining as the day they were written, while Hawthorne’s novel seems just as musty and cobwebbed as the house it so intricately depicts.
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