ABSTRACT
Associating the masquers with the fauns and nymphs of classical legend, driven out of Europe by the spread of Christianity, Nathaniel Hawthorne wittily links them with all exiles from Europe who sought freedom in the New World, including the Puritans. In The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne had already to some extent tackled contemporary issues in his art, though in his preface he had argued that as a romancer he was free from the obligation to be faithful to the probable and ordinary course of experience. There was, obviously, enough of 'the Marvellous' in this romance to justify Hawthorne's apologia in his preface, but in the character of Holgrave, the young man who at the age of twenty-two has already changed jobs half a dozen times and is as unsettled in his convictions as in his career, we are dealing with a plausible representative of the culture of 'expansionist' America.
