Close-Reading Passage 1: The House of the Seven Gables

"There were curtains to Phoebe's bed; a dark antique of canopy . . . which now brooded over the girl like a cloud, making a night in that one corner, while elsewhere it was beginning to be day. The morning light, however, soon stole into the aperture at the foot of the bed . . . Finding the new guest there - with a bloom on her cheeks like the morning's own, and a gentle stir of departing slumber in her limbs, as when an early breeze moves the foliage - the dawn kissed her brow. It was the caress which a dewy maiden - such as the Dawn is, immortally - gives to her sleeping sister, partly from the impulse of irresistible fondness, and partly as a pretty hint that it is time now to unclose her eyes" (Hawthorne 70). 

     The reader is presented with this passage when the house's only living descendant besides its scowling, depressed resident comes to stay for a while unexpectedly. Up to this moment, the reader has only been presented with grim imagery of the House and its prime resident, Hepizbah Pyncheon. This passage appears almost out of surprise, shifting the tone from dark and grim to light and gentle, using many literary devices stacked on top of one another to convey the author's purpose.
    In beginning to dissect this wisely-written passage, one would notice almost immediately that the whole passage uses an extended form of imagery. The reader's presented with an image of an old bed with a canopy, shading Phoebe, and the sun's first light breaking the darkness through the canopy. Up until this moment, the imagery has been dark, grim, and serious in speaking about the House, its legend, and its atmosphere. Phoebe's light and cheerful entrance into the House first brings about this change of tone from grim to giddy, almost symbolic in conveying Phoebe as a bringer of light and delight to this House of lingering depression.
     The novel's narrator continues to describe this scene of a bright morning, personifying the approaching daylight and giving it a name: Dawn. Dawn, almost daintily, figuratively comes down to Phoebe, "with a bloom on her cheeks like the morning's own", and kisses her brow. This playful tone reinforces the assumption that Phoebe is this House's bringer of light. presenting delicate diction such as "gentle stir", "caress", "sleeping sister", and "irresistible fondness". The author uses both personification and simile to convey an even larger extended metaphor. All of this figurative language comes together in comparing Phoebe to a gentle bringer of light, like the personified Dawn.
     The passage is simply a gentle presentation and comparison of Phoebe as a gentle force of light coming into the House's presence. Even in the use of nature-like and feminine words such as "foliage", "breeze", "maiden", and "sister", the author conveys Phoebe as a kind controller like that of Mother Nature. By reading this, one could conclude that Hawthorne is suggesting Phoebe is the cheerful hope of the depressed House of Seven Gables.

Word Count: 365