de world. Hepzibah is contrasted with her niece, Phoebe, a member of the younger generation and a young woman with ideas of her own. The two women symbolize and play out the plight of all the Pyncheons--the past in the person of Hepzibah attempting to control and hold the younger generation of the present to a tradition, to a curse, to sins that happened long ago. Hepzibah has been an accomplice in her own bondage by hiding herself in the shop. She is a spinster and of course has never married, which would have bene an escape from the Pyncheon family, at least directly. Her demeanor is imposing and would seem to many to leave her looking cross, though Hawthorne says this is misleading:
Her scowl. . . had done Miss Hepzibah a very ill office, in establishing her character as an ill-tempered old maid. . . (Hawthorne 36).
At the point where we meet Hepzibah, she has just taken a positive step toward the outside world, toward escape from the confines of the Pyncheon house, by reopening and refurbishing the shop started by an ancestor a century ago and maintained until he retired from trade. Now, Hepzibah has opened the shop to make money in a society where her options are quite limited:
This business of setting up a petty shop is almost the only resource of women in circumstances at all similar to those of our unfortunate recluse (Hawthorne 40).
Some women might be seamstresses or teachers, but Hepzibah is not cut out for either occupation and so will open this small shop. However, the way Hepzibah goes about doing this shows how reclusive she has been and how reticent she is to thrust herself into the public eye. She is described as stealing up to the window on tiptoe, and she also keeps the fact of her opening of the
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