Violence, Sex and Loss of Identity in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Abstract The House of the Seven Gables

Résumé

American gothic romances depict the violence that constitutes the story of America. In the gothic, psychological, sexual and social relations reflect the repression of the society and the patriarchal family. The gothic deals with class struggle and the tyranny of the haunting past. The relationship between man and woman is seen in terms of domination and submission: sex is related to violence and transgression. Family and social violence results in the disintegration of personal identity.

The ultimate source of violence in The House of the Seven Gables is an act of injustice, whose ensuing consequence is guilt. The Pyncheons’ guilt generates a never- ending violence represented by two typical gothic stories, in which a wicked villain threatens the sexuality of an innocent maiden. They depict the class struggle between the aristocratic Pyncheons and the plebeian Maules and women’s vulnerable position in a patriarchal society. In the gothic the relationship between man and woman reproduces the paternal incest tale and is defined through a process of domination and subordination in which the identity of the woman is eliminated.

Another important aspect of the violence can be found in the Pyncheon family itself, whose problems are mainly due to the tyrannical paternal figure, who exertsdespotic control over his ‘weak’ relatives. As a result, they suffer from disembodiment and impotence. Sterility is associated with familial sexual transgression, incest, which is the essential erotic theme of gothic fiction. As a consequence of repression, the menaced members of the family want to kill symbolically the “father” figure, whose death will make retribution possible.