Nathaniel Hawthorne's work has been largely consumed by an impression of American life that is beset by dreary commitment and family disgrace. Quite often, the author has subjected his characters to experiences driven by old ghosts and static, unfaltering lives. Such is the case for Hepzibah Pyncheon, protagonist of 1851's The House of the Seven Gables, who endures a life of loneliness, emotional hardship and bitterness. Steeped in a place and a set of memories-both personal and inherited-which tie her to the sins and intrigue of her family's past, Hepzibah would seem an unlikely subject for any form of change. But with the unexpected arrival of her sprightly young cousin Phoebe, Hepzibah becomes a vessel for emotional rebirth that may have seemed impossible prior.
             For the character in question, the notion of change should be identified as a transformation from an aged woman saddled with the miring burden of her solitary reflection of the family's fortunes and considerably more extensive misfortunes. And in the second chapter, the narrator offers a picture of the woman which induces understanding both of her stagnant life and of the immediate inflection point which will arrive with the young relation. The narrator tells "this is to be a day of more than ordinary trial to Miss Hepzibah, who, for above a quarter of a century gone by, has dwelt in strict seclusion, taking no part in the business of life, and just as little in its intercourse and pleasures. Not with such fervor prays the torpid recluse, looking forward to the cold, sunless, stagnant calm of a day that is to be like innumerable yesterdays" (Hawthorne, 12) There is a clear negativity which encompasses the routine and patterned experiences which have been Hepzibah's and thus, there is an early indication that some point of divergence would have to be seen as a positive force for change.
             It is without question that Hepzibah ...