Yoggsogoth is Weeding the Wildflowers

    I have recently been rereading The House of Seven Gables, and every time I read this book I am more amazed at how delightfully snarkey Nathaniel Hawthorne can be (he has become a close friend of mine). Some scholars may disagree with me on this point, but I assure you there are some that would agree.
    If you have read The Scarlet Letter at some point during your high school career you may have developed the opinion that Hawthorne (in the way he writes his characters) is trying to show us the wages of sin. You might believe that Hawthorne believed that for Hester Prynn and Rev. Dinsdale there was no path, but degradation and destruction for their sins. I think Nate wants you to feel that way initially, but I think, in his perfect world, Hester and the Rev live happily ever after (at least that's what he told me). We imagine them in heaven, after all, at the final trumpet. It's the town's people that finally kill Rev. Dinsdale. He can't face the shame and judgement in their eyes, not God's eyes, their eyes. Trust me, Nate wants you to caste yourself as one of the town's people and he wants you to judge Hester and the Rev. and he wants you to feel terrible at the end of the book when you find out what a tool you have been. It's the same for the Blithedale Romance, but it's The House of Seven Gables when Nate gets subtle and maybe a bit too smart for the casual reader.
    I think sometimes I am tempted to not think very closely about art and the message any artist might be trying to convey. There is a temptation to think that things are best enjoyed peripherally. Why should something have to make you think? Why can't it be enjoyed on it's surface level? I think, I think this way when I am bowing to the rather frightening "anti-intellectual" sentiments that are quite popular today. (they'll try to make you feel "not cool", but to hell with them anyway..)
    If you try that with Nate he is going to make you out to be a big shallow tool, (and he will be sitting in that chair of his with that smug expression on his face cause he knew all along how to jerk your chains, he is such a pain in the ass when he gets like this). Nate does not believe you can think for yourself; he has no faith whatever in society as a whole. To him, you all are lazy dangerous people, but at least he feels like he can use your best fault against you, and make you feel the way he wants you to feel. The problem comes when you all reuse to look beyond the surface story. Nate sees this as inconceivable (I keep telling him I don't think he is using that word correctly in that context.)
    The House of Seven Gables does the same thing as The Scarlet Letter, but instead of of ill fated Hester and Rev. Dimsdale going to a fate that Nate thinks they don't deserve, it is a monster hidden inside all societies tropes for beauty and desirability. Penelope. I was looking at my notes (I write them in the book as I read) from the last time I read 7 Gables, here is what I said about Penelope: GOD enough about Pheobe. Pheobe is a house and Clifford want to come inside her... I get it. It's when Nate is hitting his slow readers over the head that I get impatient with him, but it's worth the wait, cause he gets ya so good at the end.
    At the end of 7 Gables, Pheobe marries the Daguerreotypist  Holgrave and Holgrave gives up his adventuresome traveling life of taking "magical pictures of things using nature's own sunlight" to be Pheobe's husband, and to live of the Pynchon fortune instead of working to create and contribute to the good in the world. The right kinda woman can really suck the wizard out of a man.
    You might be tempted on reading 7 Gables to think that Pheobe saves the day, but I assure you if you will look close enough you will see that Nate has created his most destructive terrifying monster yet. Nate's got horror down and his monsters at ten times more terrifying than his contemporary Good Old H.P. Lovecraft's, because while Lovecraft's unholy god's can only be unleashed when the stars are right and can be banished from the world of sanity and daylight, Nate's monster's are sitting next to you at the DMV, they are making cookies for the church bake sale, they are picketing gay soldiers funerals and bombing abortion clinics (god, you know Pheobe would bomb and abortion clinic). So if your not a fan of horror, you can keep reading Nathaniel Hawthorn's stories on their surface, and never realize what he really wants you to see, or as I prefer (on this beautiful October day) you can revel in the horror of soccer moms as depicted in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables.