I read the “Classics Illustrated” version when I was about 12. One of the best days of my life was when I finally visited the house about 20 years ago.
Matthew: You did such a great job describing the place through your eyes. You opened the door and invited us in. I have this book in my “maybe will read” list and your video motivated me to actually read it. Thank you so much.
OK well there's one thing that was really getting to me while reading the early to middle chapters. It's where Hawthorne gets very descriptive about HOW Hepzibah and the rest interact with customers coming from the outside, and how these people see the house FROM the outside. It's also the way Hawthorne describes these events as taking place. Now when you SEE the house and how it's positioned so that the address is technically Turner Street. The house is at THE END of Turner street, and that's a dead end to the water! I can't see how the descriptions of the outside world in the way these people came across the house (and the shop Hepzibah opens) would be viable with the actual location of the house? When I was reading and trying to physically visualize the scenes, I had to see the house AS IF the Turner street entrance was turned 90deg counter clockwise so that the actual front address was on DERBY street. THAT makes more sense. I mean it even gets better for my imagination of I move the house further down Derby street toward Derby wharf, but not necessary. And I'm sure the image Hawthorne had of the house and the surrounding streets looked far different in his day. But the problem STILL remains with the direction of the house that far down to the edge of the water on Turner street. Maybe if I hadn't ever seen the place and wasn't so familiar with that area having bee there many times every year I could imagine these scenes with no problem, not really knowing what the location actually looks like, but I'm too familiar with it so I did have to alter it's geographical positioning in order to "get" what he was illustrating to us. My question would be then that if Hawthorne was so familiar with the area, did he in fact imagine the house as I had to--when he was writing the book? has anyone ever considered this? That Hawthorne may have been imagining the house situated on Derby street in the same way the front entrance sits on Turner street. Any time you visit the house you obviously have to go in from the back/side entrance through the gardens, and even that is recessed deeply past the parking lot area which is ON Derby street about a quarter mile easterly from Derby wharf. But if you go up to the actual "front" entrance you have to go down the side road on Turner street and THAT entrance isn't technically used for visitors to use as the actual entrance--and the rest of the area has a fence around it up to the water. you'll also see how it sits right at the end of the road going into the water! If you've never been there it's kind of surprising because it looks funny how it's stuffed at the dead end like that. What's weird too is that once you're in the garden it almost feels like the house IS NOT facing that direction, but you do have a great view of the harbor from the back yard area and you'll see how the house looks as if it was planted sideways when looking at it from that direction. I wondered of anyone who knows the house maybe as well as I'm describing had noticed this when reading? ~JSV
It's a book I read only during autumn or Halloween. Been reading it since about 2014. Thanks for mentioning the character who sleeps after breakfast. I've forgotten about him, but I remember I used to feel sleepy after breakfast several times.
Mayberry... I'm curious to know your thoughts on the treatment of the women in this book? trying to better understand for a class paper... thoughts..💭?
Glad to hear that it picks up. I'm halfway through and wondering if I can get through the tedium. Is it just me or did Hawthorne invent the idea of the Disney princess?
Ah, thank you for this overview! I watched this just before I read the book for my Literature course. I absolutely loved the book, the beautifully intricate descriptions of each character was very endearing and the discussion that is brings up in the reader of the consequences of our ancestor's sins was intriguing. Definitely a relevant novel even in 2021, thanks for your review!
I love Nathaniel Hawthorne and really want to reread The House of Seven Gables. I loved the ending. I couldn't put it down I was so engrossed and so wondering how it would end. Wonderful review! I hated Hawthorne in high school too! But I rediscovered him in adulthood and now he's one of my top favorites.
I am really impressed with this book! And I want to reread The Scarlett Letter to see how much my impression will change. I think it will be a big difference! Thank you!
@@MayberryBookclub I think Hawthorne is terrific for his short stories in school, but the longer novellas and particularly because as students we used to get them as reading lists on a deadline that made his longer prosaic diction feel like a chore. But upon rereading under less stressful and tight completion deadlines, just wow! How much difference the circumstances and conditions of reading make them different experiences altogether. Scarlet Letter in high school was hard, in college engaging, but afterwards just a sheer haunting reminder of how much of the same impulses existed around me and my own writing halfway across the world definitely centuries away. I recently rediscovered House of Seven Gables trying to finis the complete comic-book works of William Marston, and came across this rather post-modern reappeaeance of the house in an issue of Wonder Woman (Comic Cavcade #1, Dec 1942), whence the feminist superheroine addresses how Nazi saboteurs exploit and radicalise the poverty-stricken youths of America into becoming Fifth Columnists (how prescient a theme for modern readers witnessing neo-fascists radicalising impressionable youths even today) -- when suddenly the climax of the story takes place in Hawthorne's described House of Seven Gables. Intertext as ever!
Enjoyed your review of this book. You've described it in a way that makes me want to leave my single-gabled house (after 3 years) and go outside and buy a copy and read it for myself. Life is creepy, and I guess that is as good a theme for a literary work as any. (Passing time is creepy... Life, and the sins of Life, are creepy... I'm creeping myself to the limit with all this creepiness)... Thanks for the well-worded review.
Great video Matthew, good explanation of what we can find inside this book. Thanks to you, I finally decided to buy a copy of this novel and I’m planning on reading it at the beginning of the next year. I’m a big fan of The Scarlet Letter, and for me, Wakefield is my favorite tale among any tales I’ve read in my life so far. So, I really have high expectations of this one; besides, I’m into Hawthorne’s descriptions, I can’t explain why, but I just love how this author writes. ☺️ Greetings from Mexico! 👋
I’m reading this now in my mfa program at SDSU. Great talk. I wish you lived on every block big every city because you’ve such a natural and eager interest in narratives. Eager to finish and to hear your thoughts on future novels! Great work.
Just sampled another slice of the Hawthorne book chapter 8...loved the urchin Jim Crow who is likened to an biblical Jonah in reverse consuming the whale ( cookie🍪) and also likened to all destroying old father Time with" all- devouring appetite"consuming a "caravan" of cookie creatures while remaining looking" almost as youthful as if he had just been made"...a very tasty slice!
I still haven't read anything by Hawthorne yet. Not long ago I got The Scarlet Letter, I should be reading it this month, seeing your and Steve's videos about him made me exited to read it. Thanks for the videos.
So glad you enjoyed Hawthorne this time around. You did a great job describing the strange static charge of his prose. I hope you continue exploring his stuff. The Scarlett Letter is of course great, but also the Blithedale Romance, which may be even weirder than House of the Seven Gables. And he is one of my favorite short story writers as well.
Thank you, yes I will definitely be reading more Hawthorne. I want to read The Scarlett Letter first and then more on to the short stories. And I will have to look up The Blithedale Romance, thank you!
Inspired by your video I read chapter 9 of this book ... I often start books in the oddest places my rule being a good writer like a good cake should taste good no matter where you slice a piece of it off...only the very best can achieve this. Hawthorne did not disappoint.. no wonder Melville dedicated Moby Dick (the greatest novel written in English) to him...chapter 9 being a masterful x-ray of Clifford's and Phoebe's and Hepzibah's relationship...not at all creepy or gothic but spot on real breathing living people...a true genius at work ...an absolute pleasure to read ...later bro ☮️
That's great! I am happy to hear you picked it up and enjoyed what you read. I think the haunting atmosphere is something that builds up pressure throughout the novel. The claustrophobic feeling of being in this house with these people becomes increasingly more intense. If you decide to read the whole thing, please let me know how you like it! Best regards,
Apparently the book is exactly like the review. A bunch of detail that leads you to believe somethings going to happen but when it does it’s very underwhelming Edit: learn a lesson from hawthorn and put down the thesaurus and just get to meat and potatoes. No one needs 15 words in 10 paragraphs to describe how creepy and suspenseful something is, just tell us what the lesson is. When I studied this, it was more about time and how the precise recording of time was a new concept when this book was written and how it effected society. This is like a Lord of the Rings analysis that only looks at geography. Yes, JRR would write several pages about some random field but that’s far from the point of the story. This is a commentary about time; written when the very concept of a time was changing from people judging the sun in the sky to people seeing numbers on a clock and associating that with time and how huge of a change that was. It was so big that it changed the way we think and it’s why we look at this book and think the description of setting more unsettling than the concept of time. Edit 2: most people forget this book was written 200 years ago. Edit 3: because this was written during a transition period in world history. When society was changing from what set of rules to another. It’s hard to analyze this book because no one is alive who can understand the transition period hawthorn wrote in because both the before and after no longer exist,; we only feel the echos of the lessons without fulling being able to understand the context in which they were wrote. As a result of not being able to relate, modern analysis tends to focus on the prose rather than the actual themes because they are so unrelatable to the modern audience.
I'm about 40% into this book and I'm looking for a reason to keep reading. I understand story setup and character development but this is too slow and too detailed in dead-end places. He writes about the lineage of the breed of chicken but that doesn't advance the story, just a waste of time. They are finally talking about ghosts and visitors but I have lost interest and don't care about the characters by now. I visited the actual house a couple months ago while in Selem for Halloween. NH should have tied more of the actual history of the area into this story. If I set it aside and it decides to finally get to the point I will be sad, but I just can't turn another page without something moving forward in some sort of a plot.
I read the “Classics Illustrated” version when I was about 12. One of the best days of my life was when I finally visited the house about 20 years ago.
"Not much happens for a lot of the book" So true.
You can get the unabridged version at Barnes & Nobel. This will attack the problem in a more graphic sense.
Matthew: You did such a great job describing the place through your eyes. You opened the door and invited us in. I have this book in my “maybe will read” list and your video motivated me to actually read it. Thank you so much.
Delcia, thank you so much! If you get to it, please let me know how you like it! Warm regards,
OK well there's one thing that was really getting to me while reading the early to middle chapters. It's where Hawthorne gets very descriptive about HOW Hepzibah and the rest interact with customers coming from the outside, and how these people see the house FROM the outside. It's also the way Hawthorne describes these events as taking place. Now when you SEE the house and how it's positioned so that the address is technically Turner Street. The house is at THE END of Turner street, and that's a dead end to the water! I can't see how the descriptions of the outside world in the way these people came across the house (and the shop Hepzibah opens) would be viable with the actual location of the house?
When I was reading and trying to physically visualize the scenes, I had to see the house AS IF the Turner street entrance was turned 90deg counter clockwise so that the actual front address was on DERBY street. THAT makes more sense. I mean it even gets better for my imagination of I move the house further down Derby street toward Derby wharf, but not necessary. And I'm sure the image Hawthorne had of the house and the surrounding streets looked far different in his day. But the problem STILL remains with the direction of the house that far down to the edge of the water on Turner street.
Maybe if I hadn't ever seen the place and wasn't so familiar with that area having bee there many times every year I could imagine these scenes with no problem, not really knowing what the location actually looks like, but I'm too familiar with it so I did have to alter it's geographical positioning in order to "get" what he was illustrating to us. My question would be then that if Hawthorne was so familiar with the area, did he in fact imagine the house as I had to--when he was writing the book? has anyone ever considered this? That Hawthorne may have been imagining the house situated on Derby street in the same way the front entrance sits on Turner street. Any time you visit the house you obviously have to go in from the back/side entrance through the gardens, and even that is recessed deeply past the parking lot area which is ON Derby street about a quarter mile easterly from Derby wharf. But if you go up to the actual "front" entrance you have to go down the side road on Turner street and THAT entrance isn't technically used for visitors to use as the actual entrance--and the rest of the area has a fence around it up to the water. you'll also see how it sits right at the end of the road going into the water! If you've never been there it's kind of surprising because it looks funny how it's stuffed at the dead end like that. What's weird too is that once you're in the garden it almost feels like the house IS NOT facing that direction, but you do have a great view of the harbor from the back yard area and you'll see how the house looks as if it was planted sideways when looking at it from that direction.
I wondered of anyone who knows the house maybe as well as I'm describing had noticed this when reading?
~JSV
It's a book I read only during autumn or Halloween. Been reading it since about 2014. Thanks for mentioning the character who sleeps after breakfast. I've forgotten about him, but I remember I used to feel sleepy after breakfast several times.
Mayberry... I'm curious to know your thoughts on the treatment of the women in this book? trying to better understand for a class paper... thoughts..💭?
Glad to hear that it picks up. I'm halfway through and wondering if I can get through the tedium.
Is it just me or did Hawthorne invent the idea of the Disney princess?
Thank you
Ah, thank you for this overview! I watched this just before I read the book for my Literature course. I absolutely loved the book, the beautifully intricate descriptions of each character was very endearing and the discussion that is brings up in the reader of the consequences of our ancestor's sins was intriguing. Definitely a relevant novel even in 2021, thanks for your review!
I love Nathaniel Hawthorne and really want to reread The House of Seven Gables. I loved the ending. I couldn't put it down I was so engrossed and so wondering how it would end. Wonderful review! I hated Hawthorne in high school too! But I rediscovered him in adulthood and now he's one of my top favorites.
I am really impressed with this book! And I want to reread The Scarlett Letter to see how much my impression will change. I think it will be a big difference! Thank you!
@@MayberryBookclub I think Hawthorne is terrific for his short stories in school, but the longer novellas and particularly because as students we used to get them as reading lists on a deadline that made his longer prosaic diction feel like a chore. But upon rereading under less stressful and tight completion deadlines, just wow! How much difference the circumstances and conditions of reading make them different experiences altogether. Scarlet Letter in high school was hard, in college engaging, but afterwards just a sheer haunting reminder of how much of the same impulses existed around me and my own writing halfway across the world definitely centuries away.
I recently rediscovered House of Seven Gables trying to finis the complete comic-book works of William Marston, and came across this rather post-modern reappeaeance of the house in an issue of Wonder Woman (Comic Cavcade #1, Dec 1942), whence the feminist superheroine addresses how Nazi saboteurs exploit and radicalise the poverty-stricken youths of America into becoming Fifth Columnists (how prescient a theme for modern readers witnessing neo-fascists radicalising impressionable youths even today) -- when suddenly the climax of the story takes place in Hawthorne's described House of Seven Gables.
Intertext as ever!
I love this story, Salem was always a spooky place, but I love the movie from Vincent price.
Enjoyed your review of this book. You've described it in a way that makes me want to leave my single-gabled house (after 3 years) and go outside and buy a copy and read it for myself. Life is creepy, and I guess that is as good a theme for a literary work as any. (Passing time is creepy... Life, and the sins of Life, are creepy... I'm creeping myself to the limit with all this creepiness)... Thanks for the well-worded review.
Thank you so much!
Great video Matthew, good explanation of what we can find inside this book. Thanks to you, I finally decided to buy a copy of this novel and I’m planning on reading it at the beginning of the next year.
I’m a big fan of The Scarlet Letter, and for me, Wakefield is my favorite tale among any tales I’ve read in my life so far. So, I really have high expectations of this one; besides, I’m into Hawthorne’s descriptions, I can’t explain why, but I just love how this author writes. ☺️
Greetings from Mexico! 👋
I’m reading this now in my mfa program at SDSU. Great talk. I wish you lived on every block big every city because you’ve such a natural and eager interest in narratives. Eager to finish and to hear your thoughts on future novels! Great work.
How are you liking the book? And thank you!
Just sampled another slice of the Hawthorne book chapter 8...loved the urchin Jim Crow who is likened to an biblical Jonah in reverse consuming the whale ( cookie🍪) and also likened to all destroying old father Time with" all- devouring appetite"consuming a "caravan" of cookie creatures while remaining looking" almost as youthful as if he had just been made"...a very tasty slice!
I'm going to give it a try
I still haven't read anything by Hawthorne yet. Not long ago I got The Scarlet Letter, I should be reading it this month, seeing your and Steve's videos about him made me exited to read it. Thanks for the videos.
Awesome! I hope you enjoy it!
So glad you enjoyed Hawthorne this time around. You did a great job describing the strange static charge of his prose. I hope you continue exploring his stuff. The Scarlett Letter is of course great, but also the Blithedale Romance, which may be even weirder than House of the Seven Gables. And he is one of my favorite short story writers as well.
Thank you, yes I will definitely be reading more Hawthorne. I want to read The Scarlett Letter first and then more on to the short stories. And I will have to look up The Blithedale Romance, thank you!
I might add his short stories are masterpieces in themselves...
Yes they are! Hawthorne's novels are so great, that often people overlook his masterful short stories.
Thank you for this excellent review. I haven't read The Seven Gables for a very, very long time. Thank you for reminding me to reread it again.
😊
Thanks so much for the video. I've had it on my shelf for a while but I have been undecided about reading it. Now, I'll definitely give it a shot
Awesome, if you pick it up please let me know how you like it!
thank u 4 making this vid. I have a test on it in 10 minutes and haven't even read the first page.
Was a very insightful review. Thank you for it!
Great review! It's probably been a good 40 years since I read the book, so I've forgotten it completely. I'm going to reread it!
Oh fun! I hope you enjoy it!
Inspired by your video I read chapter 9 of this book ... I often start books in the oddest places my rule being a good writer like a good cake should taste good no matter where you slice a piece of it off...only the very best can achieve this. Hawthorne did not disappoint.. no wonder Melville dedicated Moby Dick (the greatest novel written in English) to him...chapter 9 being a masterful x-ray of Clifford's and Phoebe's and Hepzibah's
relationship...not at all creepy or gothic but spot on real breathing living people...a true genius at work ...an absolute pleasure to read ...later bro ☮️
That's great! I am happy to hear you picked it up and enjoyed what you read. I think the haunting atmosphere is something that builds up pressure throughout the novel. The claustrophobic feeling of being in this house with these people becomes increasingly more intense. If you decide to read the whole thing, please let me know how you like it! Best regards,
Hello Matthew, yes, I read it!
We read it together!
@@MayberryBookclub I know, Matthew, I am not losing my marbles!
Apparently the book is exactly like the review. A bunch of detail that leads you to believe somethings going to happen but when it does it’s very underwhelming
Edit: learn a lesson from hawthorn and put down the thesaurus and just get to meat and potatoes. No one needs 15 words in 10 paragraphs to describe how creepy and suspenseful something is, just tell us what the lesson is. When I studied this, it was more about time and how the precise recording of time was a new concept when this book was written and how it effected society. This is like a Lord of the Rings analysis that only looks at geography. Yes, JRR would write several pages about some random field but that’s far from the point of the story.
This is a commentary about time; written when the very concept of a time was changing from people judging the sun in the sky to people seeing numbers on a clock and associating that with time and how huge of a change that was. It was so big that it changed the way we think and it’s why we look at this book and think the description of setting more unsettling than the concept of time.
Edit 2: most people forget this book was written 200 years ago.
Edit 3: because this was written during a transition period in world history. When society was changing from what set of rules to another. It’s hard to analyze this book because no one is alive who can understand the transition period hawthorn wrote in because both the before and after no longer exist,; we only feel the echos of the lessons without fulling being able to understand the context in which they were wrote. As a result of not being able to relate, modern analysis tends to focus on the prose rather than the actual themes because they are so unrelatable to the modern audience.
I'm about 40% into this book and I'm looking for a reason to keep reading. I understand story setup and character development but this is too slow and too detailed in dead-end places. He writes about the lineage of the breed of chicken but that doesn't advance the story, just a waste of time. They are finally talking about ghosts and visitors but I have lost interest and don't care about the characters by now.
I visited the actual house a couple months ago while in Selem for Halloween. NH should have tied more of the actual history of the area into this story. If I set it aside and it decides to finally get to the point I will be sad, but I just can't turn another page without something moving forward in some sort of a plot.
Ohhh ya, I hear you. And so many of the "mysteries" are not wrapped up until the last few pages. You got a long way to go. Hope you gave up.