The House Of Seven Gables

11 Pages 2711 Words

ults, though not as tainted with
evil as Jeffrey. Hepzibah would rather think herself better than society rather than be an
actual, participating member. She let her youth and whatever beauty she had slip away in
the dark recesses of the dusty old house, all the while clinging to the notion that she was
a member of the long-dead aristocracy. She also dreamed of the vast fortune she was
bound to receive from the “Pyncheon territory”, a “delusion of family importance” each
Pyncheon has clung to “from generation to generation. She lived in solitude for the better part of thirty years, remaining an “old maid” who “never had a lover”. When her finances become dependent on actual labor, she felt that she had “brought an irretrievable disgrace” for having to work. Her selfish desire to remain in the past, in the time when she would not have to soil her hands with the disgrace of actual labor, is something to which she clings desperately.


The feeble-minded Clifford suffers from a childish need to always be surro...