THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLESにおけるGOTHIC ROMANCE的要素

抄録

The Castle of Otranto written by Horace Walpole in 1764 marks the dawn of a new era of Gothic literature in England. It corresponds with Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables published in 1851 in many respects ; for instance, in the plot of usurpation with the appearance of an obscure but legitimate successor, in the frequent happenings of weird events, especially of blood and revenge, and in the marriage of a new couple to atone for the crime of bygone days. The two are also alike in the setting. Hawthorne's dreary and sinister seven-gabled house can be compared to the old castle of the medieval Italy where ghosts haunted. At the outset Gothic romance element in The House of the Seven Gables shows the elevation in the middle of the first chapter where the unnatural death of Colonel Pyncheon causes the gruesome horror to the invited guests. Then follow many episodes of le roman noir until we come to the eighteenth chapter in which the sudden and fatal death of Judge Pyncheon, who is a second advent of old-time Colonel. But we must not overlook the other phase of this work of art, that is, the realistic novel element. The author delineates minutely the store and the private room of old Hepzibah and the picture scroll of ordinary life unfolded in the street of his home town of Salem. In one of his earlier tales "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," the last dialogue between young Robin and and a city gentleman indicates the possibility of the awaking to the realities of life at the midnight town full of overwhelming mood of Gothic romance. In The House of the Seven Gables, on the other hand, the practical, nice girl Phoebe appears early in the story as an incarnation of the creative and realistic element, and tries to exorcise the destructive gloom of Pyncheon family. Hawthorne enjoyed writing this work more than any other. It is probably because, while he was writing, he bore in mind his beloved wife Sophia, whose term of endearment was Phoebe itself. But I would not regard it as reasonable if he had been anxious to win her favor and brought about by personal feelings the sentimental ending. Moreover as Henry James suggested, he was not a realist in the strict sense of the word. His scenery sketches are generally superficial and fragmentary, and the characters of his story are often stereotyped or ambiguous. So far as this work is concerned, he should be remembered as an artist of Gothic romance tradition rather than of realistic tendency-as a follower of Horace Walpole with American history and climate for a material.