The House of the Seven Gables is the central organizing symbol of this novel. It stands in for tons of things: the Pyncheon family as a whole, the Pyncheon family's fight with Matthew Maule, the Past (definitely with a capital P), and the Pyncheon family's evil fate. We get into the House as a symbol in our section on "Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory," so we won't repeat ourselves too much here. It's enough to say that the title of the novel is The House of the Seven Gables because the novel is about the House of the Seven Gables – and all that it implies for Nathaniel Hawthorne.