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Definition of Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved directly or indirectly, by making... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the story. Foreshadowing can be achieved... read full definition
Foreshadowing is a literary device in which authors hint at plot developments that don't actually occur until later in the... read full definition
Chapter 15: The Scowl and Smile
Explanation and Analysis—Blood to Drink:
In Chapter 15, Judge Pyncheon comes to the House of the Seven Gables and demands to see Clifford. Hepzibah expresses her dislike and suspicion of the Judge, and the narrator uses a simile to foreshadow the fact that Hepzibah's suspicious will prove to have merit:
Nay, we could almost venture to say, further, that a daily guilt might have been acted by him, continually renewed, and reddening forth afresh, like the miraculous bloodstain of a murder, without his necessarily and at every moment being aware of it.
The narrator takes a speculative tone, refusing to say outright that the Judge is guilty of anything in particular. However, the narrator asks the reader to "venture" to imagine that the Judge has an ever-renewing "daily guilt" that blooms red over and over again "like the miraculous bloodstain of a murder." The Judge does not necessarily realize at every moment the toll this guilty "bloodstain" is taking on him, but Hepzibah is able to see what he is not.
Although Hepzibah's main weakness is that she is fearful and contemptuous of her neighbors and therefore isolates herself, her suspicion of Judge Pyncheon turns out at the end of the book not to be a symptom of her general paranoia. Judge Pyncheon is responsible for pinning the death of the house's former owner on Clifford. He attained ownership of the House of the Seven Gables through theft and the years-long sacrifice of Clifford's freedom. The simile the narrator uses, comparing the Judge's guilt to "the miraculous bloodstain of a murder," contributes to the foreshadowing of Judge Pyncheon's disgraceful end. Although the Judge did not directly murder his uncle to attain the house, he might be said to be partially responsible for his death. After all, as it turns out, Uncle Jaffrey died from an unknown congenital disease that causes blood to suddenly burble up out of Pyncheon men's mouths and seemingly choke them to death. The disease struck when Uncle Jaffrey found the younger Judge Pyncheon rifling through his papers -- Judge Pyncheon essentially shocked his uncle to death and "gave him blood to drink." Judge Pyncheon's guilt manifests each day like more blood burbling up until the day this sordid history is revealed. Judge Pyncheon himself eventually suffers the same hereditary fate as his uncle and Colonel Pyncheon. It is almost as if his guilt eventually does turn into real blood that chokes the life out of him.
Related Themes:
Chapter 19: Alice’s Posies
Explanation and Analysis—Maule's Flood:
In Chapter 19, Phoebe returns to the House of the Seven Gables after, unbeknownst to her, Clifford and Hepzibah have fled and left Judge Pyncheon's corpse behind. When she approaches, some of the imagery the narrator uses to describe the house foreshadows the ending of the book:
Maule’s well had overflowed its stone border, and made a pool of formidable breadth in that corner of the garden.
The well has overflowed because it has been storming for days. But superstition among the Pyncheons and the Maules is that the water of the well is cursed. Holgrave has previously advised Phoebe not to let the water touch her, so it seems like a bad sign that the water has overflowed. The "pool of formidable breadth" is daunting not just because it would be hard to hop across it but because the cursed water is threatening to flow uncontained over the entire property.
For generations, Maule's well has threatened the Pyncheons, but the stone border has always kept the water confined to a small part of the property. By keeping Maule's curse at bay, the Pyncheons have been able to cling to the House of the Seven Gables, even if there is some question as to whether they have stolen the property from the Maules. Each successive generation of Pyncheons inherits the threat of the Maule family, but it is a contained threat. The "formidable pool of water" foreshadows the discovery Phoebe is about to make: the Pyncheons at last seem to have been wiped out by the curse. Judge Pyncheon has died in the strange and bloody way many of his forebears also have. Clifford and Hepzibah have taken flight. As a woman, Phoebe might be able to live in the house if granted the right by its owner. But women's legal right to own property was in its infancy at the time Hawthorne was writing; Phoebe would probably need a male relative to control the property, and practically all her known male Pyncheon relatives except Clifford (including her father) have died. Maule has at last "flooded" the Pyncheons out of the house they were never supposed to have.
But the way the Pyncheon property has been overtaken by the water in Maule's well also foreshadows something happier. As Phoebe is soon to find out, Holgrave is inside the house still, and he is a descendant of Maule. It is not the dead Maule at all who has taken over the property, but rather Holgrave. When Phoebe and Holgrave profess their love for one another, it becomes clear that the well has not cursed the Pyncheons away from the House of the Seven Gables. Instead, the waters have at last cleansed the land of past sins. Phoebe and Holgrave's union is thus a metaphorical baptism for both of these families: united, they must no longer be at one another's throats for all eternity.
Related Themes:
