中文

Journal of Shanghai University (Social Science Edition) ›› 2009, Vol. 16 ›› Issue (6): 131-142.

• Articles • Previous Articles    

The Age of Reform and The Pastoral：
Contextualizing the House of the Seven Gables

  

  1. School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China
  • Received:2009-03-16 Online:2009-11-15 Published:2009-11-15

Abstract:

Set in the volatile world of antebellum America, The House of the Seven Gables, the second Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne, mirrors in the vicissitudes of the Pyncheons over a century and a half the radical social changes and unsettling class issues consequent upon the rise of capitalism in the country. This essay argues that though sympathetic with the utopian reform movement that flourished during the decades of 1830s to 1840s, Nathaniel Hawthorne, as an unswerving conservative, could not espouse its utopian vision and turns instead to an equally illusive ideal of class union and social solidarity which an ageold pastoral tradition helps to foster. In the novel, a radical stance of reform is embraced and then rejected by Holgrave, a daguerreotypist and a reformer; and the utopian illusion is temporarily evoked on a brief train ride by Clifford and Phoebe and then revealed as impossible and almost wild attempts to escape the weight of the past and to begin anew. The abrupt ending in the promise of a pastoral retreat, while decidedly reveals Hawthorne' s conservative understanding of all utopian or reform movements of his age, is also indicative of the author's desire for resolution and closure, if not politically, at least symbolically, and therefore might be read as a symbolic act on the part of the author to transcend class conflicts in a pastoral ideal.

 

Key words: capitalism, reform movement, conservatism, pastoral

CLC Number: