ABSTRACT
More political than metaphysical—and thoughtful enough to redeem its evident will-to-optimism (and its motiveless romance), The House of the Seven Gables dares to ask if such aristocracy as exists in nineteenth century New England is not somehow a Puritan survival—if, in some metaphoric sense, it is not, like the House in question, built on the grave of the witches. Like Salem earlier, on the “Red Man’s Grave.” And, delving into the curious career of a certain Landlord-Theologian named Pyncheon, it comes close to (re-)discovering that property is theft. Somebody stole land from somebody else (who had somehow worked it from nomadic common resource into squatter’s private plot), and some others inherited the guilt by shamelessly inhabiting the property. Not Augustine’s or Calvin’s (or even Herman Melville’s) idea of the inheritance of original sin, but close enough for government work. Or for the kind of fiction they called romance.
