Area Scholar Ponders Suicidal Plunge from any One of Seven Available Gables

For research purposes, I have been reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables as of late. Written in 1851, this book was reviewed more favorably than Hawthorne's earlier (and currently more preferred) The Scarlet Letter. While reviewers were "nearly unanimous in celebrating the novel for its literary mastery, grace, and cheerful perspective on life's possibilities" (Levine ix), it is sucking my will to live. Here are a few reasons why:

1) Omnipresent portrait of dour and tragic Puritan ancestor Judge Pyncheon. Burn it...burn it!
2) Decrepit, decaying, dusty seven-gabled ediface.
3) Scowling, rustling, aged spinster Miss Hepzibah who doesn't want to work for a living. Times change: suck it up.
4) Can-do young cousin Phoebe from the country. Hate the "scribbling women" do you, H? Then stop stealing their tropes!
5) Lack of evident plot even after 127 pages of writing. Warning: don't make me build a time machine with my own hands, travel back to 1850, and bitch-slap you in front of your literary friends. I want a plot, and I want it now. You've been warned.

While The Scarlet Letter famously caused Mrs. Hawthorne "a grievous headache" (ix), the lesser-known story holds that House of the Seven Gables caused her to kick Natty H squarely in the balls, as she screamed, "Do I look like I have all century, Nate!?! Get to the freakin' point!" I mean, this is a novel which makes Moby-Dick read like the latest Harry Potter installment. This is a novel which caused the folks over at Reader's Digest Condensed Books to consider going to pamphlet form. Indeed, this is a novel that is currently being used by Dr. Kevorkian in assisting suicide and is endorsed by 9 out of 10 Hemlock Society members.

Which is a shame. In one respect, Hawthorne had literary gold on his hands. His daguerreotypist is his most interesting and mysterious character - traveling from job to job, growing vegetables in the garden, taking people's pictures, and infiltrating people's domestic space. Who is he? What does he want? As a reader still stuck in the mire of this literary peat bog, I can only hope that he comes out on top. Even so, if the review is anything to go by, it looks as if I'll be summarily glad-handed out of the gloom. If, that is, I can make it to the end.

Levine, Robert S. Introduction. House of the Seven Gables. 1851. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2006.