Return to Seven Gables?

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Months of isolation and self-quarantine lead to various forms of mental illness -- or if not "illness," at least dysfunction.  One form of which is unfocused thought, and rambling daydreams, and free association.  Sometimes known as "wool gathering."

Re-reading a YA novel, one that is worthier of re-reading than most, started me off on this latest mental straying from the safe and sane path of normal mentation.  The novel is narrated by a student at a private prep school in the Oregon mountains, a student whose primary love is rugby and whose primary obsession is obtaining a kiss -- at the very least -- from a young lady in his class.  He is driven mad by his hormones -- overcome by both passion for this girl (and for girls indiscriminately) and by anger, or at least aggression, against some of his male classmates.

Given this boy's personality, it felt surprising to read a reference to "Rappaccini's Daughter," a short story by Hawthorne assigned in his American literature class.  Not surprising that he had been assigned that story, but that -- in the midst of his various hormonal turmoils -- he should lament:

I love the way Hawthorne said things.  I wished that I could also find "no better occupation than to look down into the garden" beneath my window, but I had, in such a short time, gotten myself so occupied with crap that I lay there convinced there was no way I would make it through my eleventh-grade year.

He refers back to Hawthorne's short story at other points throughout the novel.  (To be fair, I should note that the kid -- whose thoughts often resembled those of a teen hoodlum -- was at the top of his class academically.)

I'd never read "Rappaccini's Daughter."  I pondered:   Perhaps I'd missed something?  I downloaded a collection of Hawthorne's short stories, and read it. 

"Rappaccini's Daughter" is an interesting tale -- perhaps I insult my readers, all of whom are intimately familiar with it? -- narrated by a young man who finds a young girl who has been raised by her eccentric scientist father in a garden filled with poisonous plants.  She has become immune to poison, but also has become lethal to other creatures.  The narrator doesn't die from proximity with her, but himself becomes as lethal as his beloved.  Hawthorne seems to suggest the poison to be a representation of corruption, of evil, and that the girl has unwittingly "corrupted" the boy.

The ending is not happy.  The story was interesting, but didn't overwhelm me.  But I  read some of the other short stories -- "Young Goodman Brown" (analogous in some ways to "Rappaccini's Daughter," but in seventeenth century Salem, rather than Padua, Italy), "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," and "The Artist of the Beautiful."  All of which I found very enjoyable.  I remember also, of course, the novel, The Scarlet Letter, which I enjoyed even in college American Literature -- when forced to read it! -- and on later voluntary re-readings.  Also, I long ago read The Marble Faun, a novel about which I now remember nothing except that it took place in Italy, but which I do recall enjoying.

So much for the promised mental rambling.  Which brings me to Hawthorne's well-known novel, The House of the Seven Gables.  In October 2018, I discussed my visit to Salem, Massachusetts, and my tour of the house in which Hawthorne had boarded for a period, and on whose history he based the novel.  I expressed doubt at the end of my blog entry that I would actually go ahead and read the novel: "The book itself might be anticlimactic after wandering through the eponymous house."

I'm now reconsidering this obvious declaration of mental laziness.  What better time to read the novel -- which has actually lurked on my Kindle ever since 2018 -- than now, when by governmental decree and medical necessity I'm confined to quarters in my own house of several -- but not seven -- gables?  And when I've again renewed my acquaintance with Nathaniel Hawthorne?

More to come on this question.  Maybe.