Holgrave's Challenges

Challenges and changes are a part of life. Many people, especially elderly who have set views can very easily resent changes and anything that can be seen as a challenge to their ideas and the tines they remember. Magic has always been part of life but sometimes the magic life takes on a maliciois spirit when manipulated by those who seek to bring about ruin. Society is built on traditions and revolutions to challenge others. These seemingly unconnected ideas come together in the character of Holgrave ans the plot of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The House of the Seven Gables. Holgrave works as a force of change and challenges conceptions through his profession as a daguerreotypist. But at the same time his ideas ans actions are based on his identy os a Maule, a family, which meet its downfall by the work of a Pyncheon in Puritan days of settlement. Holgrave affects changes in the novel and works to help others see the truth of the sitution. Holgrave himself and his views on the past are changed by his actions in marrying a Pyncheon.

Hepzibah is scarred by the chllenges to her own conventionally and sees what holgrave stands for as a threat to her ideas but he does not frighteen her. She had originally

seen him as a "well-meaning and ordwely young man" (Hawthorne 63). This original

assesment, based on his appearance, is what caused Hepzibah to grant him permission to take out a room. But as time went on "she hardly knew what to make of him" (63). She observed that his friends all desired new ideas , particularly those of dress. Hepzibah also tells Pheobe that he challenged many ideas in a speech that he had made annd that she believes hin\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\m to be involved as a practitioner

of the black arts. Pheobe becoms very frightened and inquires as to why Hepzibah allows such a "lawlwss person" (63) to stay and Hepzibah's response is "... he has a law of his own" (63). Even with all these conserns Hepzibah has about holgrave she "has to admit from her own contact with him that even by her formal standardshe is a quiet and orderly young man" (Matthiessen 371). So even though she voices all her suspicions about holgrave's morality to Pheobe, Hepizbah, in the end, still believes in the truth of her original

feelings about Holgrave. Not only her acceptance od Holgrave but her dependence on him as shown in the chapter entitled "The First Custemer". She decided to open the cent shop in the Pyncheon house once more. This seems like a great feat for someone so far removed form society. The cent shop has been stocked and cleaned for business. It is soon learned that Holgrave has helped with the re-opening of the cent shop. He inquires as to if he "can assist you any further" (Hawthorne 31). Here it is shown that dor all her reservations, Hepzibah is willing to accept help from this man who she distrusts, "Hepzibah's limited intercourse with the world and her comparative ineptitude at handling the merchandise of the shop" (Marks 340). When Hepzibah is in her shop on its first day, Hollgrave comes to purchase some biscuits but she won't accept payment from him claiming "a Pyncheon must not, at all events inder her father's roof, receive money for a morsel of bread from her only friend!" (Hawthorne structures the story so as to allow the cent shop scene to appear before Hepzibah's statements aabout her distrust towards Holgrave to show how appearances

are decieving and how a natural aversion to something can color your judgement. It is obvious that Hepzibah deeply relied on Holgrave ans his help in the cent shop. But she also reconizes Holgrave's uniqueness ans a boarder or "the worth of ?Holgrave's self- relience." (Marks 342). Since Hepzibah is willing to risk all by opening a cent shop it is obvious that she is n need of money. But since she already had one boarder she doesn't consider taking on any more. By choosing the cent shop over boarders she shows that even though she has been in seculision she recoonizes that not everyone is a self-relient as Holgrave and this only causes her to rely on him more.

Daguerreotyping shows the inner oerson rather then the outwardly appearance in a way that painting cannot. Holgrave meets Pheobe in the garden and starts a conversation with her about the use of daguerretyping as a way to see truht in everyday life, "While we give it credit for only depicting the merest surface, it can actually bring out the sevret character with a truth that no painter would ever venture upon." (Hawthoren 68).

Holgrave has extreme views on the danger of overdue emphasis on the past in the present life. He chalenges the ideas of aristrocracy. This challenge to "the root of ideas of a conservative, capitalist society-tradition, succession, and propety" (Buitehuis 99) is something that has been resent in the Maule blood. Matthew Maule, when summened to the Pyncheon house goes in the front door, insteads of the back, as would have been acceptaable to someone of his social standing. hOlgrave holds drastic views on the danger of the past:

If each generation were allowed and expected to build its own houses, that single change, comparativly uniportant in itself, would imply almost every reform which society is now suffering for. I doubt whetherr even our public edifices - our capitols, state houses, courthouses, city hall, and churches - ought to be built of such permanent

material as stone or bricks. It were better that they should crumple to ruin once in every twenty years or thereabouts, as a hint to the people to examine into and reform the instituions which they symbolize. (Hawthorne 140)

Such an extreme view can often be frightful to many people. But the reason which this view is so extreme is shown when Holgrave explains how he believes that all of the vices which have tormented the Pyncheon family exist in the house of the seven gables. This is because it was built by the old colonel, "For Holgrave, the House of the Seven Gables is expressive of the "odious and abombinable Past" against which he declaims publicly." (Martin 136). Holgrave claims the proof for this belief is that all the vbad traits , which have been exhibited by the Phyncheons, were originally

seen in the Colonel. Hawthorne has previously foreshowded the tempering of Holgrave's view, "and when , with the years settling down more weightly upon him, his early faith should be modified by inevitable