me show that this past is disintegrating. The house itself is personified so as to represent the family as if it were another member:
The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive, also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within (1).
The Pyncheon women in The House of the Seven Gables are bound by the same bonds that hold the men, the bonds of the past, and for Hepzibah that past has a palpable form in the shop she takes over, a shop which becomes her primary connection to the outside 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 con
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