The House of the Seven Gables characters

Appears from the start

A powerful Puritan landowner who secured Matthew Maule's property during the witchcraft persecutions and built the seven-gabled mansion on it. His sudden death at the house's first great gathering begins the pattern of guilt and misfortune associated with the Pyncheon family.

Appears from the start

The original owner of the ground on which the Pyncheon house is built. He resists Colonel Pyncheon's claim, is condemned as a wizard, and at his execution leaves words that later generations remember as a curse on the Pyncheons.

First appears in chapter 2

The elderly, impoverished mistress of the House of the Seven Gables. Proud of her family's former position yet devoted to her absent brother, she overcomes her fear of public notice to open a small shop in one of the gables.

First appears in chapter 3

A young daguerreotypist who rents part of the Pyncheon house. Independent and skeptical of inherited rank, he becomes one of Hepzibah's first customers and views the old family's habits with an outsider's alertness.

First appears in chapter 3

A neighborhood boy and eager customer at Hepzibah's newly opened shop. His appetite for gingerbread helps turn her alarming experiment in trade into an ordinary part of local life.

First appears in chapter 4

An elderly handyman and familiar figure in the neighborhood. Poor but sociable, he offers Hepzibah practical sympathy and treats the prospect of eventually living at the poorhouse with cheerful equanimity.

First appears in chapter 5

Hepzibah's young country cousin, who comes to stay at the old house. Capable, warm, and untroubled by aristocratic pride, she quickly improves both the cent shop and the spirits of the people living behind it.

First appears in chapter 7

Hepzibah's beloved brother, returned to the family home after decades in prison. He is frail, frightened, and poorly suited to ordinary demands, but remains exceptionally responsive to music, flowers, and Phoebe's gentle company.

Also known as Judge Pyncheon

First appears in chapter 8

A wealthy cousin of Hepzibah and Clifford, publicly admired for dignity and benevolence. His resemblance to the ancestral Colonel and Clifford's terror of him make his offers of family assistance appear far less reassuring inside the old house.

First appears in chapter 13

A beautiful Pyncheon ancestor whose fate is described in the story Holgrave reads to Phoebe. Raised in privilege and confident of her place, she becomes the unwilling means through which her father tries to recover a lost family claim.

First appears in chapter 13

Alice's father, a merchant determined to establish the Pyncheon family's title to valuable eastern land. He asks a descendant of the Maules to use his unusual powers in the hope that Alice can reveal where the missing evidence lies.

First appears in chapter 13

A young carpenter descended from the condemned Matthew Maule and bearing the same name. Summoned by Gervayse Pyncheon, he agrees to mesmerize Alice but uses the bond to assert the Maule family's power over the people who displaced them.