The author introduces the main characters revealing the dominant theme of the work which is the acquisition of the land where the house is built and the consequences that follow. Colonel Pyncheon covets the land on which Mathew Maule builds his humble home and appropriates his house including the property by accusing him of witchcraft but when the poor man is hanged he curses the Colonel and his future generation. The Colonel later constructs the House of the Seven Gables with the help of Mathew Maule‘s grandson who is a carpenter and once completed invites the whole town for a big feast while he mysteriously dies that very day.
He has his portrait hung on the wall in his room forbidding it to be taken down while the deed of the family’s land remains concealed and forgotten for generations. For a long time the Pyncheon family lives in the House with each epoch having another Pyncheon who takes after the Colonel’s character and the story opens with Clifford Pyncheon returning home after thirty years in prison falsely accused of having murdered his uncle.
Having thus traced the family history, the anecdote begins in its contemporary period with Hepzibah Pyncheon, an elderly woman opening a tiny store in the house as she is poor. She does not have many customers perhaps the consequence of a permanent scowl on her face resulting to her problems with her vision. We are then acquainted to the different characters of the story with Ned Higgins, a young boy who buys gingerbread regularly at the store, Mr Holgrave a young daguerreotypist who is a boarder at the House; Judge Pyncheon, an unpleasant character resembling very much his ancestor the Colonel and the youthful Phoebe Pyncheon, a 17 year old relative, who arrives from the country wishing to stay at the House while there is also Uncle Venner a local elderly man mentally deficient.
Hepzibah and Clifford’s cousin Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon comes to the store but she refuses to see him while Holgrave soon reveals the history of the Pyncheon family especially the tragedy concerning Clifford’s imprisonment to the young Phoebe who is shocked. As for Judge Pyncheon he returns to the House and this time asks to see Clifford and again Hepzibah refuses accusing the Judge for being like his ancestor; but the Colonel threatens her saying he will have her interned for irrational behaviour. After this encounter Hepzibah goes to find her brother and unable to see him returns to the room where the Judge was sitting. There she finds Clifford next to the Judge dead from a stroke and in panic runs away with her brother on a train with no destination on mind.
Consequently the little shop remains closed that day and the people of the town realise that something is amiss in the House of the Seven Gables while Holgrave and Phoebe come back to the House to find the Judge dead from a stroke, the same natural death that his uncle died of and everyone now realises that Clifford was framed for a crime he did not commit. At this moment Hepzibah returns to the House with her brother and Holgrave reveals himself as the descendant of Mathew Maule disclosing the deed to the lands hidden behind the portrait of colonel Pyncheon. After receiving their inheritance Hepzibah and Clifford with Phoebe move into the Judge’s residence leaving Holgrave to the property that belonged to his ancestors.
He clearly explains that “the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones and… becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief.” He emerges as one of the first American writers to explore and analyze the motivations of human consciousness and indeed, his “romance”, “The House of the Seven Gables” is an outstanding example.
