The
general idea of the story is this,--"that the wrong-doing of one
generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of
every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief";
and the mode in which this idea is carried out shows great force,
fertility, and refinement of mind. A weird fancy, sporting with the
facts detected by a keen observation, gives to every gable of the Seven
Gables, every room in the House, every burdock growing rankly before
the door, a symbolic significance. The queer mansion is
haunted,--haunted with thoughts which every moment are liable to take
ghostly shape. All the Pyncheons who have resided in it appear to have
infected the very timbers and walls with the spiritual essence of their
lives, and each seems ready to pass from a memory into a presence. The
stern theory of the author regarding the hereditary transmission of
family qualities, and the visiting of the sins of the fathers on the
heads of their children, almost wins our reluctant assent through the
pertinacity with which the generations of the Pyncheon race are made
not merely to live in the blood and brain of their descendants, but to
cling to their old abiding-place on earth, so that to inhabit the house
is to breathe the Pyncheon soul and assimilate the Pyncheon
individuality.
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