How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
In her grief and wounded pride, Hepzibah had spent her life in divesting herself of friends; she had wilfully cast off the support which God has ordained his creatures to need from one another; and it was now her punishment, that Clifford and herself would fall the easier victims to their kindred enemy. (16.6)
The God who appears from time to time in Hawthorne's pages does not seem to become directly involved in the lives of individual people. Instead, this God creates the conditions for ordinary people to live their lives as they choose. Hepzibah chooses to shut herself off from society and has left Clifford and herself vulnerable to Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon as a result. How does this hands-off conception of God work with the novel's other theme of fate through family inheritance? Why is it that Hepzibah is free to choose whether or not she will be sociable, but Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon cannot choose whether he will be stern and tyrannical? What can these characters control about their lives and what can't they?
Quote #8
Her faith was too weak; the prayer too heavy to be thus uplifted. It fell back, a lump of lead, upon her heart. It smote her with the wretched conviction that Providence intermeddled not in these petty wrongs of one individual to his fellow, nor had any balm for these little agonies of a solitary soul; but shed its justice, and its mercy, in a broad, sunlike sweep, over half the universe at once. Its vastness made it nothing. But Hepzibah did not see that, just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God's care and pity for every separate need. (16.7)
Just because Hawthorne is highly critical of the New England church doesn't mean he doesn't have faith. And Hepzibah's crisis of faith doesn't necessarily reflect the narrator's. Hepzibah has fallen into despair because the social forces that are stacked against her seem so strong. But the narrator takes care to remind us that, just because creation is huge doesn't mean that "a lovebeam of God's care and pity" doesn't fall on "every separate need." (Wow, was Hawthorne a closet hippie?) Why might the author decide to stop and talk about faith in this scene? What kinds of conflicts does The House of the Seven Gables set up between official religious practice and individual faith in God? Where do we see examples of public religion and private faith in the novel?
Quote #9
There is a certain house within my familiar recollection, – one of those peaked-gable (there are seven of them), projecting-storied edifices, such as you occasionally see in our older towns, – a rusty, crazy, creaky, dry-rotted, dingy, dark, and miserable old dungeon, with an arched window over the porch, and a little shop-door on one side, and a great, melancholy elm before it! Now, sir, whenever my thoughts recur to this seven-gabled mansion (the fact is so very curious that I must needs mention it), immediately I have a vision or image of an elderly man, of remarkably stern countenance, sitting in an oaken elbow-chair, dead, stone-dead, with an ugly flow of blood upon his shirt-bosom! Dead, but with open eyes! He taints the whole house, as I remember it. I could never flourish there, nor be happy, nor do nor enjoy what God meant me to do and enjoy. (17.25)
Clifford claims that the presence of a dead man has tainted the House of the Seven Gables for him for as long as he can remember. He could never flourish with the stern example of Colonel Pyncheon (and by extension Judge Pyncheon) casting a pall over everything. But it's interesting that this fatal influence from the Colonel is working against God's will. He has proved an obstacle to what God "meant [Clifford] to do and enjoy." What do you think Clifford imagines was meant for him? How can Clifford have faith in God and yet believe that God's plans have been frustrated by another, greater force – the curse of Colonel Pyncheon?