Curse of the Pyncheons in The House of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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The House of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne chronicles the generations of a Puritan family and the curse which haunts their fates. Although the Pyncheons are a respected family in their small Massachusetts town, their past is riddled with secrets, mysterious deaths, and the curse of a dying man. Few in the family ever believed in the curse, giving the generational disasters of the family the name of coincidental misfortunes, the simple results of human action. And, while the author attempts to explain away these coincidences with logic and science, he also conveys mysterious hints as to the supernatural phenomena existing within the house of the seven gables. Because of the secrecy surrounding the story, we, as readers, are tempted to believe in Maule’s curse, even though it is possible to interpret the misfortunes of the family as the result of a different curse which perverts the world even today.
The mysterious deaths of the patriarchal Pyncheons seem to be a consequence of the Colonel’s original sin, but the evil intentions which surround them seem to suggest a more judgmental cause. The first death attributed to the Maule curse was that of Colonel Pyncheon himself. Found dead with blood on his ruffled collar, the Colonel was said to have partaken of that beverage which was Matthew Maule’s parting gift. The accused’s final words, “God will give him blood to drink!” were given to Colonel Pyncheon as recompense for his murderous deeds. After his death, the superstitious Pyncheons believed the ill-gotten house had been cursed with him and so his descendants. This seemed to hold true when, two generations later, Gervayse Pyncheon, the Colonel’s grandson, in an attempt to gain wealth, submitted his only daughter, Alice, to...

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...the novel, the Pyncheons have been characterized by their discontent and greed, but the protagonists of our story depart happily, in spite of the Pyncheon “curse.”
The House of the Seven Gables is often characterized as a horror story, because of the presence of the family curse. The mysterious family deaths, the misfortune and decline of the Pyncheon name are attributed to the dying man’s words. Even so, the disastrous streak is broken, by a few who were willing to face adversity with faith, love and joy. A few occurrences, such as Alice Pyncheon’s plague, cannot be explained as the result of her own avarice. However, while the author makes several hypothetical references to the supernatural, we are inclined to believe that the “curse” of the Pyncheons is not paranormal but a result of the wickedness of human nature that characterizes each and every man on earth.

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