Allegory is one of the primary literary devices used in The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne and, as in the

case of many other works by Hawthorne, it sets the tone for the story and communicates a number of messages to the reader. In his preface to The House of the Seven Gables,Nathaniel Hawthorne establishes that this work is a romance and not a novel in the traditional sense. In fact, in Chapter One of The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne goes to great lengths to define both the work and his relationship to it, stating that Were [the events] to be worthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest and instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity, which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement (Hawthorne 1). Whether the events are recounted worthily will be left to the readers judgment, but it is the instruction part of this introduction to The House of the Seven Gables that will become crucial to understanding the narrative form and structure of the text. The allegorical meaning of many of the symbols in The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne are often planted within the text at frequent intervals so that these aspects of allegory create more meaning in The House of Seven Gables than does the actual plot of The House of Seven Gables in many ways. According to one piece of literary criticism, The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne is an allegory, a narrative in which the agents, andthe setting, are personified concepts or character-types, and the plot represents a doctrine or thesis (Abrams & Greenblatt 2937). A closer examination of the Nathaniel Hawthornes The House of the Seven Gables yields evidence that there are many allegorical symbols in The House of the Seven Gables, and that the function of each is to reinforce the moral lessons of the narrative. The lessons, which are based upon Purtian beliefs, are that greed and selfishness are always destructive, and that the sins of one generation are visited upon the next. According to literary scholars and critics, Hawthorne was allegory-mad, infinitely too fond of allegory (Crowley 32, 149). Holetje, in his biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, states that from an early age, before he was even a writer, Hawthorne was enchanted with allegories (27); these apparently made an initial imprint on his young mind. Nathaniel Hawthornes entire body of work, particularly works such as The Scarlet Letter, The Birthmark, and The Ministers Black Veil, and similar texts such as Young Goodman Brown, critics observe, consists of allegorical tales that were intended to convey various Puritanical messages about the personal characteristics and actions constituted a proper moral existence. This fact should not be surprising, however, given that Hawthorne was a preacher and was undoubtedly fond of the greatest literary allegories in existence: the tales from the Bible (Chandler 68). Surely

these influenced Hawthornes writing style significantly. Like other Hawthorne texts, such as The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables instructed readers about how to live by showing them how not to make irrevocable moral blunders that would bring shame upon themselves and destruction and wrath upon their communities or society at large. Chandler identifies the basic ways in which allegory functions in The House of the Seven Gables, noting that the text appears to offer simple equations of meaning, stark contrasts between good and evil, and symbolic characters who represent a spectrum of human qualities (68). She goes on to observe that The rhetoric is that of a moral tale or sermon (Chandler 68). One of the most obvious and most important allegorical symbols, of course, is the sevengabled house itself. More than one scholar has observed that the house is a symbolic space (Chandler 68). As Tharpe points out, the house of the seven gables is consistent with Hawthornes frequent use of an enclosure or stage within which characters are contained. In these closed spaces, which are typically impervious to outside influences, the characters are forced to forge some kind of bond, however tenuous or dysfunctional it may be. In this theater of human action[where] universal drama[s] of greed, punishment, and redemption are played out, Nathaniel Hawthorne cautions the reader against moral decline either through the positive resolution of their conflicts or, more frequently, through their tragic scripted endings (Chandler 69). In The House of the Seven Gables the symbol and image of the house takes on multiple meanings. Chandler suggests that the house is like the body that houses the soul of a sinner (69). She adds that both the house and the sinners body are alike in that they are an ambiguous text, open to readers who are conscious of something deeper and yet are constrained to interpret these deeper things through the filters of their own innocence or guilt (Chandler 69). Chandler offers still more interpretations of the allegory and symbol of the seven gabled house. It is, she writes of this particular allegorical symbol in The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, an emblem of the psyche; a mirror of the human face and form, sharing genetic characteristics with its inhabitants (69). It is also a structural replica of the social institutions that shape national character (the church, the family, the government) (69), a text on which history is inscribed (69), a stage for a domestic morality play (69), and a vaultlike repository for guilty secrets; a prison, a tomb, and a womb harboring the seeds of its own renewal (69). How one reads the house and applies these possible interpretations depends upon ones own perspective and critical reading ability. A superficial reading of the house symbol in this allegory may simply observe the house as an old but important structure that mirrors society at large. Yet, as Chandler points out, there is a certain deceptive quality about the venerable edifice (Hawthorne 321) that everyone knows and recognizes.

The impressive architectural wonder of the house, albeit aged and in disrepair, is merely a faade that conceals the evil that infests the house and which cannot, seemingly, be eradicated (Chandler 69). Indeed, Hawthornes own narrator confirms this observation that alludes to the fact that the house is a symbol and represents part of the allegory in The House of Seven Gables, and explained that, in one of the important quotes from The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, A person of imaginative temperamentwould conceive the mansion to have been the residence of the stubborn old Puritan, Integrity. (Hawthorne 321). Here, Hawthorne explains both the allegorical symbol of the house and divulges the moral of his tale, stating that the spectator would assume that Integrity, in another of the important quotes from The House of the Seven Gables had left a blessing in all its rooms and chambers, the efficacy of which was to be seen in the religion, honesty, moderate competence, or upright poverty and solid happiness, of his descendants, to this day (Hawthorne 321322). Of course, it is the absence of integrity, religion, honesty, and moderate competence that plagues the houses inhabitants and their successive generations. Before moving on to an analysis of other images, it is also worth pointing out that the number seven, as in seven gables, is hardly to be considered a random choice on Hawthornes part. As religious scholar Dickson White explained almost a century ago, the number seven implies in agreement with this thesis statement for The House of the Seven Gables by the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, a vast mass of mysterious virtues (6) which are clearly important to theology. The number seven is considered to be a perfect number, representing as it does, the vast work of Gods creation having been contained to a mere seven days (White 50). As a result, the number seven gave rise to a sacred division of time and to much else (White 50), including the seven cardinal virtues and the seven deadly sins; in the seven liberal arts and the seven devilish arts, and, above all, in the seven sacraments. And as this proved in astrology that there could be only seven planets, so it proved in alchemy that there must be exactly seven metals (White 396). In short, seven is a number that has long represented ideal possibilities and potential. At the same time, it is vulnerable to corruption, as is the case in The House of the Seven Gables. In addition to the house, which is the narratives most important allegorical symbol, there is a number of other images that also relate directly to the development of the moral of The House of the Seven Gables. Images of nature, which are so commonly employed in the development of allegory, certainly have an important place in The House of the Seven Gables; indeed, an entire chapter is devoted to The Pyncheon Garden (Hawthorne 162). Like the symbols of the house and of the number seven, there is a certain duality inherent in the allegory of nature in works by Hawthorne, and that is that it has the potential to be contained and controlled, just like human passions, or to

be left wild, with errant vines and branches choking off the healthy growth of other plants. These are thinly veiled images of the human relationships that characterize the individuals in The House of the Seven Gables. The detailed descriptions of the life of the garden, in which bees and lizards all have work to perform, may seem tangential to the narrative, but their inclusion alludes to the ways in which seemingly invisible actors or unimportant actions have important consequences, even when they are not acknowledged by others. Finally, nature also clearly has a cycle of life and death, just as human beings do. Yet the uninterrupted cycle of life that goes on in the garden stands as an important and dramatic commentary about and counterpoint to the ways that malevolent human interference with one another prevents healthy growth. A final allegorical symbol is the daguerreotype. Again, the symbolism of the daguerreotype is thinly veiled, but it is nonetheless important. The daguerreotype represents people as they truly are, mostly revealing their disagreeable traits, even on otherwise amiable faces (Hawthorne 102). Most people, however, rarely have the opportunity to observe themselves, except in mirrors, and so the daguerreotype offers a fixed image of a person as he or she is at one moment in time. The photograph that captures someones physical image offers the individual and others an opportunity to reflect upon the personality and character of that person. Despite all of these opportunities, however, the characters in The House of the Seven Gables, generally lack the kind of awareness of self and others that would disrupt the cycles that trap them in patterns that are destructive and, in Hawthornes estimation, profoundly immoral. Since biblical times, the device of the allegory has been an effective way to convey moral messages. While many critics chastise Hawthorne for his reliance upon the device that is constantly creeping in around [the] fringes (McCall 28), replacing reality but remaining insufficiently real (Brownell 73), the allegories that are identified in The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne function effectively within the text and serve Hawthornes intended purpose. Had he set out to write a novel, such criticism may be warranted. However, Hawthorne stated clearly that his intention was not to write a novel, but to write a moral tale, and in The House of the Seven Gables, he has done just that. Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : Nathaniel Hawthorne : An Overview of the Author and Thematic Analysis of Works Full Summary and Analysis of The Ministers Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne : The Effects of Sin on the Mind, Body, and Soul Analysis and Plot Summary of Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne Full Plot Summary and Analysis of The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne Puritan

Influences on Modern American Culture and Thought Analysis and Plot Summary of Rappaccinis Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Works Cited Abrams, M.H., & Stephen Greenblatt, eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000. Brownell, W.C. American Prose Masters: Cooper, Hawthorne, Emerson, Poe, Lowell, Henry James. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1909. Chandler, M.R. Dwelling in the Text: Houses in American Fiction. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991. Crowley, J. Donald. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1997. Dickson White, Andrew. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. New York: Appleton & Company, 1914. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of the Seven Gables. New York