Dialectical Sentences and Social Contradictions in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables

Abstract

This paper highlights formal and thematic expressions of discursive conflicts in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables. It focuses on Hawthorne’s use of the “dialectical sentence,” a type of sentence attributed to German dialectical thinkers, principally Theodor Adorno. Voicing two contradictory views in the same breath, the dialectical sentence provides formal expression of irresolvable discursive conflicts. Hawthorne’s dialectical sentence serves as a suitable medium for expressing the conflict of interests between the Pyncheon and Maule families. The discursive conflicts are expressed through a set of binary terms, including Pyncheon/Maule, novel/romance, present/past, reason/rumor and science/ superstition. The first term in each binary usually serves for the Pyncheons and the second, the Maules. Thus, expressed in dialectical sentences, the narrative voice oscillates between an irony which reflects the values of the former family and an enthusiasm which reflects those of the latter. Coming down firmly on neither side of the conflict, and through avoiding reconciliation, the novel takes on a dialectical structure which keeps the resolution of the discursive conflicts, as a utopian element, for a time outside the novel’s timeframe.