핀천가의 가족사로서 『일곱 박공의 집』읽기

Abstract

One thing we can not leave out when we read his short stories and novels related with the home is that Hawthorne's real concept of a home originated from his historical perception of New England. Hawthorne was an artist in the period of the 19C American Renaissance when the thoughts of the age had been changing. Nevertheless he, as a successor to disappearing tradition, could not easily forget the moralnightmare which the inordinate actions of Puritan ancestors, such as William Hathorne, his first ancestor who was the persecutor of Quakers and John Hathorne as the inheritor of the persecuting spirit who was involved in witch trials, had stirred up. Therefore, his creative behavior is both the purification of self-suppression and prayers for forgiveness for his ancestor's wrong-doings. The house in The House of the Seven Gables goes back to 200 years before his lifetime and describes the effect which the past of this house has on the present. And so the house can be seen from the viewpoint of both the development and interation of the houses in the wilderness. In The House of the Seven Gables where he uses as a central setting, Hawthorne presented double-sided views of the house in which the corruption of morality is inherent, contrasted with its outward grandeur. He revelas the burden of the characters pressed under the guilt of the house and their attempts to escape from the moral darkness and opens the future to the new house from the old house of inherited corruption. Through the house as artificial setting, he presented a pitiful aspiration and jfrustration, the sense of guilt and remorse, and restriction and liberation. Thus Hawthorne successfully reflected his theme, conflict and reconcilication through the house as the setting appropriate and natural for his works.