"Cliff Notes - House of Seven Gables" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Hepzibah, trapped by the past, cannot understand his new-fangled
notions. Even when she takes his advice, she doesn't completely
trust him. Conservative Phoebe is threatened by his
irreverence, by his clinical view of life, and by her attraction
for him, as well. In some ways, Holgrave has much more in
common with Clifford. The views he preaches to Phoebe in the
garden are not far from those Clifford espouses on the train.
But whereas Clifford is a dreamer, Holgrave is a man of
action.

The character of Holgrave is a puzzling one, and nowhere is
it more puzzling than at the end of the novel. After reading
his story entitled "Alice Pyncheon," Holgrave breaks the spell
he has unwittingly cast over Phoebe. Unlike a Maule before him,
he refuses to exploit the spirit of a young Pyncheon woman.
This incident seems to suggest that change is possible, that we
are not doomed forever to repeat past sins.

But by the end of the novel, Holgrave--like all the other
characters--undergoes an inversion. In the cases of the others,
the inversion is a setting straight, a triumph of reality over
appearance. Clifford is shown to be innocent, for example, and
the Judge is revealed as an evil man. But in the case of
Holgrave, the inversion is completely baffling. In a complete
turnaround of his earlier views, he willingly accepts Phoebe's
Pyncheon fortune and goes off to live in a Pyncheon house,
complaining all the while about its lack of permanence. This is
not the same Holgrave whose beliefs have helped to bring about
so many other changes for the better.

What can this change in him mean? And what does it say about
Hawthorne's theme?

^^^^^^^^^^
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES: JUDGE JAFFREY
PYNCHEON

When Jaffrey Pyncheon steps into the cent-shop one morning,
Phoebe--who has never met the man--is filled with horror. For a
moment she mistakes him for her ancestor, Colonel Pyncheon,
risen from the dead. With his full beard trimmed into a pair of
grizzled whiskers, his sable and velvet cloak changed for a suit
and tie, and his sword traded in for a gold-headed cane, the
"original Puritan" seems to step forward across two centuries.

The similarities between the two men go beyond the physical.
As the Colonel is remembered as greedy, the Judge is now known
to be tightfisted. What was seen as the "grim kindliness" of
the Colonel lives on, now, in what the townspeople see as the
benevolent smile of the Judge. Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon is, as