The House of the Seven Gables: Irony 3 key examples

The drowsiness Holgrave notices in Phoebe is similar to the mesmeric trance under which Matthew Maule placed Alice in Holgrave's story. Holgrave is realizing that if he so desired, he might be able to manipulate Phoebe to do his bidding, just as Maule once manipulated Alice. He chooses not to, marking himself as morally superior to Maule (who, incidentally, is an ancestor of his).

Hawthorne distinguishes this mesmeric type of drowsiness from "that with which the reader possibly feels himself affected." This comment constitutes verbal irony. What Hawthorne first appears to be saying is that the reader might be falling asleep out of boredom, whereas Phoebe is falling asleep due to the power of Holgrave's storytelling. What the comment actually conveys, however, is the opposite. The reader who has been following along, the comment suggests, should not be bored at all, but should rather be riveted. In fact, Hawthorne use facetious self-deprecation (playfully admitting that the reader might be bored) in order to play off the notion that the reader might, in fact, be in a state exactly like the one Phoebe now finds herself in. He claims outwardly to be just a lowly writer who could never manipulate a reader's mind. By brushing off that possibility, he implicitly raises it as well. The reader is left wondering whether they will ever be able to look away from Hawthorne and the story he has been spinning.

This passage makes it sound as though the Judge has a mysterious red stain on his shirt that he ought to cover up before going home for dinner. The narrator has been cagey about stating explicitly that Judge Pyncheon is dead, but his death has been heavily implied; he has died in the same way as Colonel Pyncheon once did, mysteriously choking on his own blood while sitting in the big chair in the House of the Seven Gables. There is no way this man will be rising from the chair to go to dinner tonight.

But in Chapter 18, the narrator plays dumb. He describes everything the Judge is supposed to be doing instead of sitting in the House of the Seven Gables, and he expresses incredulity that the Judge is neglecting all these tasks. Verbal irony often contributes to humor, but it serves here mainly to create suspense and horror. By acting as though Judge Pyncheon is behaving strangely, and by wondering why on earth he is not getting up for dinner, the narrator encourages the reader to question what is real and what is false and to indulge superstitious fantasies about mistaking live bodies for dead. The reader begins waiting for the Judge to rise from the dead to haunt his relatives, just as Colonel Pyncheon and Matthew Maule have figuratively done for many years. The suspense sets the stage for even more suspense in the next chapter, when neighbors all wonder why Hepzibah is not opening her shop anymore. While life continues like normal outside the house, the reader has a sense that a great horror lurks within. Chapter 19 ends with Phoebe walking into the house. Because of the narrator's verbal irony in Chapter 18, the reader has the sense that she is walking into a trap. The dead body in the house is not an inanimate object; rather, it is lying in wait to jump out at her.

Clifford, Hepzibah, Phoebe, and Holgrave have assumed during the week after Judge Pyncheon's death that their fate, and the fate of the House of the Seven Gables, is in the hands of Cousin Jaffrey's son. Cousin Jaffrey, for his part, has spent his life trying to direct the Pyncheon wealth through his bloodline. Clifford was initially supposed to inherit the House of the Seven Gables. Although Cousin Jaffrey was able to take the house for himself (at least temporarily) by pinning Uncle Jaffrey's death on Clifford, Clifford has remained a loose end that threatens Cousin Jaffrey's ability to pass the house down to his progeny. Cousin Jaffrey's villainy in the book has all been due to his greed, not only on his own behalf but on behalf of his son. His final act was to threaten Clifford; the stress seems to have brought on the hereditary end that many Pyncheon men face, choking on their own blood.

As it turns out, Cousin Jaffrey had no need to hoard his wealth for future generations or to threaten Clifford. He died for his son without ever knowing that his son, in fact, died first. There is no one left who could have inherited the house except for Clifford and Hepzibah (and, after them, Phoebe and Holgrave). This twist constitutes situational irony because Cousin Jaffrey's antagonism against his relatives should have at least gained his son something. Instead, it results in his death and speeds the house into the hands of the very people he is trying to keep it from. Dramatic irony is also at play because the living characters get the satisfaction of knowing about the blunder Cousin Jaffrey never knew he committed. This villain ends up a laughingstock who accidentally solves everyone's problems but his own.