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Therefore, the Italian boy wouldnot be discouraged by the heavy silence with which the old house seemedresolute to clog the vivacity of his instrument. He persisted in his melodiousappeals; he still looked upward, trusting that his dark, alien countenancewould soon be brightened by Phœbe’s sunny aspect. Neither could he bewilling to depart without again beholding Clifford, whose sensibility, likePhœbe’s smile, had talked a kind of heart’s language to theforeigner.
XIII: Alice Pyncheon
Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the threshold, and had nosooner entered than the door closed behind her. With these reflections, the old man was shutting the gate of the littleback-yard. Creaking on its hinges, however, like every other gate and doorabout the premises, the sound reached the ears of the occupant of the northerngable, one of the windows of which had a side-view towards the gate. Uncle Venner, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the earliest person stirring in theneighborhood the day after the storm.
Hawthorne's Shadow Audio Tour
Gerald's will gives all three children sizeable yearly incomes, but leaves the house to Hepzibah. Hepzibah throws Jaffrey out of the house and seals all the doors and windows so that no light can be admitted. The next day at the store, Judge Jaffrey meets Phoebe and insists that he see Clifford. He also attempts to kiss Phoebe, an action that she sternly refuses. Hepzibah refuses to allow Jaffrey access to Clifford, despite the Judge's offer to take Clifford off her hands. She dotes on him, for he needed so much love and had received so little.
The Scowl and Smile
Finances to close House of 7 Gables preschool; some parents dismayed - Wicked Local
Finances to close House of 7 Gables preschool; some parents dismayed.
Posted: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Not merely was it the shiver whichthis pitiless blast brought to her frame (although her feet and hands,especially, had never seemed so death-a-cold as now), but there was a moralsensation, mingling itself with the physical chill, and causing her to shakemore in spirit than in body. Such, indeed, is the impression which it makes on every newadventurer, even if he plunge into it while the warmest tide of life isbubbling through his veins. What, then, must it have been to Hepzibah andClifford,—so time-stricken as they were, yet so like children in theirinexperience,—as they left the doorstep, and passed from beneath the wideshelter of the Pyncheon Elm! They were wandering all abroad, on precisely sucha pilgrimage as a child often meditates, to the world’s end, with perhapsa sixpence and a biscuit in his pocket. In Hepzibah’s mind, there was thewretched consciousness of being adrift. She had lost the faculty ofself-guidance; but, in view of the difficulties around her, felt it hardlyworth an effort to regain it, and was, moreover, incapable of making one.
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
In this depth of grief and pity she felt that there was noirreverence in gazing at his altered, aged, faded, ruined face. But no soonerwas she a little relieved than her conscience smote her for gazing curiously athim, now that he was so changed; and, turning hastily away, Hepzibah let downthe curtain over the sunny window, and left Clifford to slumber there. The girl ran into the house to get some crumbs of bread, cold potatoes, andother such scraps as were suitable to the accommodating appetite of fowls.Returning, she gave a peculiar call, which they seemed to recognize. Thechicken crept through the pales of the coop and ran, with some show ofliveliness, to her feet; while Chanticleer and the ladies of his householdregarded her with queer, sidelong glances, and then croaked one to another, asif communicating their sage opinions of her character.
The Secret Garden
For the most part, the residents of the town seem to dislike Hepzibah. The narrator writes "they cared nothing for her dignity, and just as little for her degradation." She is an unattractive woman who has a perpetual scowl. Her rough and unapproachable exterior, however, hides a tender heart. She is deeply devoted to her brother and holds deep hatred and contempt for her cousin. The narrator writes "she had been enriched by poverty, developed by sorrow … and endowed with heroism, which never could have characterized her in what are called happier circumstances."
Phœbe’s Good-Bye
Clifford's sister (Hepzibah) remained living in the House of the Seven Gables, per her uncle's will. They long inhabited the town and were a "quiet, honest, well-meaning race of people, cherishing no malice done them," who were said to have the power to influence people's dreams. The House of the Seven Gables, published in 1851, is a Gothic novel by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne that delves into the dark secrets and curses haunting the Pyncheon family in their ancestral home. The story unfolds through generations, intertwining themes of guilt, redemption, and the weight of the past.
The Old Curiosity Shop
How could the bornlady—the recluse of half a lifetime, utterly unpractised in the world, atsixty years of age,—how could she ever dream of succeeding, when thehard, vulgar, keen, busy, hackneyed New England woman had lost five dollars onher little outlay! Success presented itself as an impossibility, and the hopeof it as a wild hallucination. There is one other feature, very essential to be noticed, but which, we greatlyfear, may damage any picturesque and romantic impression which we have beenwilling to throw over our sketch of this respectable edifice.
Pyncheon Street, in front of the House of the Seven Gables, was a farpleasanter scene than a by-lane, confined by shabby fences, and bordered withwooden dwellings of the meaner class, could reasonably be expected to present.Nature made sweet amends, that morning, for the five unkindly days which hadpreceded it. It would have been enough to live for, merely to look up at thewide benediction of the sky, or as much of it as was visible between thehouses, genial once more with sunshine. Every object was agreeable, whether tobe gazed at in the breadth, or examined more minutely. Such, for example, werethe well-washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk; even the sky-reflectingpools in the centre of the street; and the grass, now freshly verdant, thatcrept along the base of the fences, on the other side of which, if one peepedover, was seen the multifarious growth of gardens.
Celebrated for its summer colony of intellectuals and writers, the area attracted such literary figures as James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Fannie Kemble. Not far away, in Pittsfield, Herman Melville had his permanent home. Hart has degrees in English and creative writing and is the author of several books. In this essay, Hart explores Hawthorne's use of environment to emphasize the psychological state of his characters. The point of view is clumsily managed, for the novel professes to be narrated by an "I" who presently passes into "we." … The mind of no character is consistently used.… He never really gains by his liberties of omniscient commentator.
The Judge’s volume of muscle could hardly bethe same as the Colonel’s; there was undoubtedly less beef in him. Then theJudge’s face had lost the ruddy English hue that showed its warmththrough all the duskiness of the Colonel’s weather-beaten cheek, and hadtaken a sallow shade, the established complexion of his countrymen. If wemistake not, moreover, a certain quality of nervousness had become more or lessmanifest, even in so solid a specimen of Puritan descent as the gentleman nowunder discussion.
It was an ugly, little, venomous serpent of a noise, as everdid petty violence to human ears. But Clifford listened with rapturous delight.The sound, however disagreeable, had very brisk life in it, and, together withthe circle of curious children watching the revolutions of the wheel, appearedto give him a more vivid sense of active, bustling, and sunshiny existence thanhe had attained in almost any other way. Nevertheless, its charm lay chiefly inthe past; for the scissor-grinder’s wheel had hissed in his childishears. Truly was there something high, generous, and noble in the native compositionof our poor old Hepzibah! Or else,—and it was quite as probably thecase,—she had been enriched by poverty, developed by sorrow, elevated bythe strong and solitary affection of her life, and thus endowed with heroism,which never could have characterized her in what are called happiercircumstances. Through dreary years Hepzibah had looked forward—for themost part despairingly, never with any confidence of hope, but always with thefeeling that it was her brightest possibility—to the very position inwhich she now found herself.
Clifford finds all of the new inventions strange, including the omnibus, the water-cart, the cab, and the railroad steam-devil. He prefers the things of his past, like the butcher's cart, the fish-cart, and the scissor-grinder. While the greedy monkey plies the crowd for money, the organ player turns the crank, which plays music and also sets a host of small figures into action.
So long estranged from whatwas lovely as Clifford had been, she rejoiced—rejoiced, though with apresent sigh, and a secret purpose to shed tears in her own chamber that he hadbrighter objects now before his eyes than her aged and uncomely features. Theynever possessed a charm; and if they had, the canker of her grief for him wouldlong since have destroyed it. It still lacked half an hour of sunrise, when Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon—wewill not say awoke, it being doubtful whether the poor lady had so much asclosed her eyes during the brief night of midsummer—but, at all events,arose from her solitary pillow, and began what it would be mockery to term theadornment of her person.
Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was proper to Phœbe’ssweet and order-loving character, at thus finding herself at issue withsociety, and brought in contact with an event that transcended ordinary rules.Neither was he in haste, like her, to betake himself within the precincts ofcommon life. On the contrary, he gathered a wild enjoyment,—as it were, aflower of strange beauty, growing in a desolate spot, and blossoming in thewind,—such a flower of momentary happiness he gathered from his presentposition. It separated Phœbe and himself from the world, and bound them toeach other, by their exclusive knowledge of Judge Pyncheon’s mysteriousdeath, and the counsel which they were forced to hold respecting it. Thesecret, so long as it should continue such, kept them within the circle of aspell, a solitude in the midst of men, a remoteness as entire as that of anisland in mid-ocean; once divulged, the ocean would flow betwixt them, standingon its widely sundered shores. Meanwhile, all the circumstances of theirsituation seemed to draw them together; they were like two children who go handin hand, pressing closely to one another’s side, through a shadow-hauntedpassage.
She said that it had alwaysbeen thus with Clifford when the humming-birds came,—always, from hisbabyhood,—and that his delight in them had been one of the earliesttokens by which he showed his love for beautiful things. And it was a wonderfulcoincidence, the good lady thought, that the artist should have planted thesescarlet-flowering beans—which the humming-birds sought far and wide, andwhich had not grown in the Pyncheon garden before for forty years—on thevery summer of Clifford’s return. When the bean-vines began to flower on the poles, there was one particularvariety which bore a vivid scarlet blossom. The daguerreotypist had found thesebeans in a garret, over one of the seven gables, treasured up in an old chestof drawers by some horticultural Pyncheon of days gone by, who doubtless meantto sow them the next summer, but was himself first sown in Death’sgarden-ground. By way of testing whether there were still a living germ in suchancient seeds, Holgrave had planted some of them; and the result of hisexperiment was a splendid row of bean-vines, clambering, early, to the fullheight of the poles, and arraying them, from top to bottom, in a spiralprofusion of red blossoms.
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