The House of the Seven Gables: Reading the Romance of America

Abstract

The House of the Seven Gables contains a contradiction that seems inherent in the form of the romance as Hawthorne defined it. While Hawthorne uses the form to shape a vision of the future by treating the possible, not the probable, he acknowledges that vision as a product of his imagination and thus undercuts its authority to represent an actual world. The romance we call America seems to contain a similar contradiction. The American dream, to shape an alternative society based on the vision of a possible world, rests on documents that declare self-evident truths and claim the authority of natural law. But Hawthorne's romance suggests that the foundation of authority for both his romance and his country is not natural but rhetorical. To explore this contradiction and the possibility of transcending it, I propose a social reading of Hawthorne's romance and a rhetorical reading of the American social system.