Domestisity in The House of Seven Gables
The development of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s reputation elaborates how shifting critical assumptions have influenced assessment of Hawthorne’s work. A similar change in interpretive conventions explains the shifting critical views of The House of the Seven Gables. Nineteenth-century critics greatly admired his word, and in the 1920s and 1930s, it was the most popular novel of Hawthorne canon. Yet twentieth-century readers often view The House of the Seven Gables as Hawthorne’s least successful work and claim that the novel’s sedimentary and cheerful ending are strained and inconsistent. However, read within the framework of the cult of domesticity and the particular conventions of the domestic novel, The House of the Seven Gables gains new coherence. Its plot, characters, …show more content…
Hawthorne fears that the unique personal interactions prompted by the need to gather at the hearth will be lost. Instead of one central fire, the Old Manse now has three separate stoves in different rooms. Hawthorne Envisions the domestic happiness of the previous owner with his central fireplace: “At eventide, probably, the study was peopled with the clergyman’s wife and family: and children tumbled themselves upon the hearth-rug, and grave Puss sat with her back at the fire” This scene of human love and interaction, he fears, will not exist in the future: “There will be nothing to attract these poor children to one centre… Domestic life-- if may still be termed domestic-- will seek its separate corners,and never gather itself into groups” (p. 146). Conversation, jokes, even creative reflection, will all cease without the influence of the domestic fire. Let alone in today's world were domestic values are at an all time low with the ease of technology further distracting us from human
The development of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s reputation elaborates how shifting critical assumptions have influenced assessment of Hawthorne’s work. A similar change in interpretive conventions explains the shifting critical views of The House of the Seven Gables. Nineteenth-century critics greatly admired his word, and in the 1920s and 1930s, it was the most popular novel of Hawthorne canon. Yet twentieth-century readers often view The House of the Seven Gables as Hawthorne’s least successful work and claim that the novel’s sedimentary and cheerful ending are strained and inconsistent. However, read within the framework of the cult of domesticity and the particular conventions of the domestic novel, The House of the Seven Gables gains new coherence. Its plot, characters, …show more content…
Hawthorne fears that the unique personal interactions prompted by the need to gather at the hearth will be lost. Instead of one central fire, the Old Manse now has three separate stoves in different rooms. Hawthorne Envisions the domestic happiness of the previous owner with his central fireplace: “At eventide, probably, the study was peopled with the clergyman’s wife and family: and children tumbled themselves upon the hearth-rug, and grave Puss sat with her back at the fire” This scene of human love and interaction, he fears, will not exist in the future: “There will be nothing to attract these poor children to one centre… Domestic life-- if may still be termed domestic-- will seek its separate corners,and never gather itself into groups” (p. 146). Conversation, jokes, even creative reflection, will all cease without the influence of the domestic fire. Let alone in today's world were domestic values are at an all time low with the ease of technology further distracting us from human