Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Wyn Kelley

Critical Essay by Wyn Kelley

SOURCE: “Pierre's Domestic Ambiguities,” in The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville, edited by Robert S. Levine, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 91-113.

In the following essay, Kelley suggests that Melville's notion of domesticity based on the brother/sister rather than husband/wife relationship was too extreme for his middle-class readers, and so contributed to the novel's failure.

In the spring of 1851, Melville wrote to his Pittsfield neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne, pretending to review his new novel:

“The House of the Seven Gables: A Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. One vol. 16mo, pp. 344.” … This book is like a fine old chamber, abundantly, but still judiciously, furnished. … There is old china with rare devices, set out on the carved buffet; there are long and indolent lounges to throw yourself upon; there is an admirable sideboard, plentifully stored with good viands; there is a smell as of old wine in the pantry; and...
(read more)