ABSTRACT

This article argues that The House of the Seven Gables encourages readers to consider the trauma inflicted by a society in which “somebody is always at the drowning point” (CE 2:38), the behaviors and identities such a society both rewards and marginalizes, and how we might begin to heal from the damage done by the repressive imperatives of the normative social contract. Hawthorne’s antidote to the trauma of marginalization and shame lies in the redemptive potential of the “romance,” a genre that, like the Gothic, encourages recognitions of both self and other not according to the ideals, mandates, and expectations of the explicit social contract, but rather based on our shared affinity with the abject. Hawthorne’s conclusion to the novel is not optimistic, however; rather, it offers an ending that is entirely consistent with one of the fundamental premises of Gothic fiction, which is the essential truth that although we may want desperately to associate evil, perversion, corruption, and monstrosity with obvious villains, we should take care to also look within our own psychic holding vaults, for virtually all aspects of American life—including our desires for happy endings and profitable novels—are haunted by the most frightening monster of all, which is the insatiable and all devouring ghost of money itself.

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