In a rather prophetic statement about a doomed family residing in an ancestral home, where the curse of the father becomes the curse of the children, Hawthorne writes in The House of the Seven Gables, “Ambition is a more powerful talisman than witchcraft” (209). For this second novel, Hawthorne shifts from puritanical to mesmeric, a detour from the evils of religion to the effects of greed that takes the reader on a journey into the darkness of human nature. The dust collected on the Puritan lifestyle is swept away for a more promising Christian ideal. In his previous novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne contrasted Puritan ideas of sin and redemption. Such a concept had bleak undertones in the Puritan context of the past. In his second novel, he chose to address a happier outcome on a larger scale of several generations, albeit through a much darker story of the Fall and salvation. The beginning of the curse began out of greed with the old Colonel, the founder of the Pyncheon family, who died due to a curse. His descendants would also depart from this life by the same end, because the patriarchs of the family would betray anyone, even their own family members, to increase the riches that only damned their souls. The family's curse is its own ambition, curable only through the rectification of the past. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThe Pyncheon family inherited its fate even though the living members of the family had not been there to witness the fall. Thus it is that all the Old Colonel's lineage must suffer for his folly, which was the wrenching of his new family inheritance from the cold, dead hands of his enemy's ancient birthright: “He was going to build his house on a grave restless. His house would include the house of the dead and buried magician, and would therefore grant the latter's ghost a sort of privilege of haunting his new apartments, and the chambers into which future grooms would lead their brides, and where their children of the wizard Should Pynceon's blood be born” (Hawthorne 4). Colonel Pyncheon did this to defy fate and any ruin that would befall him for his evil act, deeming himself above even God. However, with the final nail driven into the "castle" of his newfound legacy, the fate of the magician Maule: “God will give him blood to drink” (3). Hawthorne suggests that Maule had foreknowledge of the Pyncheons' illness that would bring them all down if they were subjected to some mental hardship or thrown into a fit of rage. Both of these states can be necessitated by the stress and problems caused by acquiring and maintaining great wealth. From Colonel Pyncheon to Judge Pyncheon, all suffered this fate because of the vast tract of Indian land in the East forever denied them. It was this ambition that killed them. Maule's curse becomes God's curse. Colonel Pyncheon had a reason to be cursed by God, as would any man of high and respectable position who corrupts basic Christian principles for his own gain (at least in a godly culture). Men in his position were supposed to be the ones who corrected the corruption and, presumably, did not hide it in their black hearts. The novel records the Colonel's life as that of a man of honor on the outside, who held high positions and admiration in the public eye, but had a secret that future patriarchs would also keep, being tiedto the austere House of Seven Gables. . “And under the guise of a marble palace, that pool of stagnant water, stained with many impurities, and, perhaps, tinged with blood – that secret abomination, over which, perhaps, he can say his prayers, without remember it – it is this miserable soul of man!” (176). This fate follows the Colonel until his untimely death and extends to all those of his lineage who live in the cursed house, both for the family and the house are cursed. Those specifically condemned, of whom Hawthorne writes, are the judge, Hepzibah, and her brother Clifford in the modern tale; Alice and her father in the daguerreotypist's tale; and the chief of the Pyncheon who a century earlier had created a shop in a corner of his house. The Colonel, of course, cast the original curse because he wanted to “start a family!” (141). Who could plant a family with such lofty ambitions as the Colonel's without also planting the weeds of poverty? To plant you need to have fertile soil, not corrupt soil saturated with the blood of the dead. The seeds of ruin were planted with the ambitious desire to be on par with Old World European families through the Colonel's new found status as a landed aristocracy of rapid wealth. All of this was not acquired through honest labor, such as the land for his house, the house itself, and many of his titles and positions. A barren land, choked with the weeds of a doomed fate, is no place to plant a family legacy. This cursed land was to be the basis of his land empire as he acquired the immense wealth promised him through the Indian deeds in acres upon acres of rich eastern land. This same action and desire for easy wealth would lead other future descendants to the same fate. The act was Alice's true undoing because her father would sacrifice his soul for the act, and in the past century, the chief of the Pyncheon even inherited the destiny through his quest for the eastern lands. Since money was in short supply, however, "it seemed to be his doom to spend eternity in a vain attempt to make his ends meet" (20), hence the store that was opened out of his greedy desire to squeeze out every penny he could in his tight pockets. The modern Pyncheons of this tale would also have suffered the same fate if they had followed the same rebellious path of ambition and greed, but through the grace of redemption they were saved from such ruin. Clifford's downfall occurred directly due to the Judge's greed for more wealth than he already possessed. His suffering for a crime he did not commit at the hands of his ambitious brother has left this artist's life banal and devoid of beauty. Once released from prison, Clifford still had to free himself from the chains of his family heritage but he could not do so within the confines of the cursed house, since, having found freedom, he locked himself again in an even darker cell. This echoes his own words upon his return to the House of the Seven Gables: “'I want my happiness!' he finally murmured, his voice hoarse and indistinct, almost formulating the words. 'Many, many years I have waited for this! It's late!'” (119). Really late. Happiness could not be found in such a dark and corrupt house. So, simply living in the house condemns Hepzibah just as much. The frown etched on his face, probably due to living in such a dark and dilapidated house, devoid of good light, is proof enough of his fate in the curse. "'How miserably angry I seem!' she must have often whispered to herself; and in the end she imagined herself as such, out of a sense of inevitable ruin” (24). The ultimate conclusion, which will be demonstrated later, is that the only way to be happy is to break upbehind him the house and the ruin. The house is the modern curse and ruin of the family (120). The past is linked to the present. What happened in the past will happen in the present due to the original curse. This is brought together through the old portrait of the austere colonel who looms over the lives of the current Pyncheon family, a constant reminder of the source of their downfall. And with the judge reaching a similar age as the old colonel, many may see the resemblance between the two. There is a sense that the two ends of the circle of fate were converging on the house at this time. Perhaps the judge would place a new curse on the unfortunate family or put an end to the old one. The old portrait constantly monitored all family affairs and was sure to control events and inner destiny. Thus, both he and the house are intertwined in the curse, because the old colonel is the house, his spirit has inhabited it. “The image of the Puritan colonel trembled on the wall. The house itself trembled, from every attic of its seven gables to the great kitchen fireplace, which served all the better as an emblem of the heart of the home, because, though built for heat, it was so desolate and empty” (171-72 ). Events come to a close as Judge Jaffrey attempts to blackmail his cousin Clifford as the Colonel blackmailed Maule out of his small acreage of land upon which to establish his damned inheritance. “Alas, Cousin Jaffrey, this hard and greedy spirit has run in our blood for two hundred years. You are simply doing again, in another form, what your ancestor did before you, and passing on to your posterity the curse inherited from him” (182). If the judge had listened to his cousin at this time and repented, perhaps he could have avoided the fate God chose for him of dying a horrible death in the dark confines of his coffin. Salvation comes to those who seek it first, and no one needed it more than Phoebe and Clifford. How is it possible that a fallen family can free itself from such a deeply entrenched destiny when there is no way to separate an aristocratic lady from the comforts of her family's home? In the case of the ever-elusive eastern land, the modern Pyncheon family had fallen into deep poverty, although the judge had amassed immense wealth thanks to his corruption as a public official. Having to deal with this new twist of fate, Hepzibah opened the penny shop already built by her ancestor a century earlier. Swallowing her pride, the old maid destroys her last vestiges of aristocracy by working with her own hands and serving those of lower rank than her. What distinguished her from her thrifty ancestor was her charitable nature towards her customers, offering many of them free goods. Not only this but also through her growing humility, she too recognized the idle nature of the aristocracy and its woes by saying of a certain prosperous maiden, "Must the whole world toil that the palms of her hands may be kept white and delicate?" (40). Nothing better could have happened to the old spinster, because in the end she manages to overcome fate by helping herself without the help of greed or ambition. He must struggle for the common need for survival. Although he saw this lowering of his status level as the fulfillment of Maule's curse on his family, it was, in reality, the implementation of the end of the curse. It is further illustrated that the house is the curse when Clifford and Hepzibah flee from the judge's corpse, and Clifford feels the weight of family ruin lifted from him with the death of a family member. Talking to a skeptical old man on the train, Clifford explainsthe very fate that kept him and his family trapped: "The greatest possible obstacles on the path to happiness and human improvement are these piles of bricks and stones [. . . ] which men laboriously devise for their own torment, and the they call home and hearth! The soul needs a wide range and frequent replacement of it. There is no atmosphere so unhealthy as that of an old house, made poisonous by one's deceased ancestors and relatives" (200). Several pages later he also states that he builds himself a house in order to die and with which to curse his posterity. An understandable statement considering how far he and Hepzibah ran to escape such a fate, even without money or a plan for where to go once the modern patriarch of the curse died. Holgrave adds at this point his speech to Phoebe about necessity for temporariness. Halfway through the novel he concludes that the solid past is transferred to descendants, as is the case of the House of the Seven Gables, and if houses and society were built on less permanent foundations, no one would escape the toil of others but would reform their own future from the mistakes of the past. He knows what must be done for the Pyncheons to bury the curse, being a descendant of the wizard Maule. They must abandon the very house from which the root of the curse comes: the greed and ambition of its founder. It is, in fact, this descendant of the wizard Maul who holds the key to the punishment of his own family and the liberation of the enemies of his ancestors from the terrible grip of fate. There is a connection between the modern Holgrave and Phoebe and the earlier Alice and Mathew that should be noted. There has been dissatisfaction among critics about the love between Holgrave and Phoebe, "that the love between Phoebe and Holgrave comes too early and is, therefore, underdeveloped and untrustworthy" (Current 102-3). This marriage can be seen in a different light than the previous “courtship” of Alice Pyncheon and Mathew Maule. Mathew, being of a lower class, can only win Alice through moments of mesmerism. This fashionable practice in the 18th century derives from Franz Anton Mesmer who, as the American Heritage Dictionary states, “during very fashionable healing sessions in Paris caused his patients to have reactions ranging from sleep or dancing to convulsions. These reactions were actually caused by hypnotic powers that Mesmer did not know he possessed” (“Mesmerism”). Through a hypnotic ritual, common to mesmerism, Mathew manages to gain control over Alice's will and further extract his revenge on the rapists of her estate. Holgrave also does the same because the Maule were believed to “inherit mysterious attributes; the family eye was said to possess a strange power” (Hawthorne 17). Through the use of mesmerism, Holgrave is able to blind Phoebe to her true intentions of watching her ancestors' enemies struggle against the ruin inflicted upon them. At first, he may not have been entirely sincere in his motives towards her, but in the end, his genuine feelings emerge when Phoebe also hypnotizes him with her purity and beauty. Morbid? YES! Even Holgrave admits this (167). Perhaps because of his ancestors deeply linked to "witchcraft" and mesmerism, he cannot do without it. But his sudden love for Phoebe breaks the ties that bind him to his past and allows him freedom for a better future. There is such a need to connect the two warring spiritual families of the past with the spiritually united family of the present that destiny takes control. Through their new love, the curse can be broken and peace can be brought to their prosperity once and for all. Because everyone can see that. 1992.