The legacy of guilt is likewise the theme of "The House of the
Seven Gables," which Hawthorne himself was inclined to think a
better book than "The Scarlet Letter." Certainly this story of
old Salem is impeccably written and its subtle handling of tone
and atmosphere is beyond dispute. An ancestral curse, the
visitation of the sins of the fathers upon the children, the
gradual decay of a once sound stock, are motives that Ibsen might
have developed. But the Norseman would have failed to rival
Hawthorne's delicate manipulation of his shadows, and the no less
masterly deftness of the ultimate mediation of a dark inheritance
through the love of the light-hearted Phoebe for the latest
descendant of the Maules. In "The Blithedale Romance" Hawthorne
stood for once, perhaps, too near his material to allow the rich
atmospheric effects which he prefers, and in spite of the
unforgetable portrait of Zenobia and powerful passages of
realistic description, the book is not quite focussed. In "The
Marble Faun" Hawthorne comes into his own again.
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