# The House of the Seven Gables — Character guide

> Key figures in The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

- [Clifford Pyncheon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters/clifford_pyncheon.md): Clifford reenters the House of the Seven Gables after a long, ruinous confinement, dependent on his sister Hepzibah and startled by ordinary daylight, music, and human kindness. His exquisite sensitivity makes the world 
- [Hepzibah Pyncheon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters/hepzibah_pyncheon.md): Hepzibah has spent years sealed inside the House of the Seven Gables, nursing a fierce Pyncheon pride and a bitter grudge against her wealthy cousin Jaffrey. Forced by poverty to sell small wares across her own counter, 
- [Phoebe Pyncheon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters/phoebe_pyncheon.md): Phoebe arrives at the House of the Seven Gables as a poor relation, expecting a brief visit and finding instead a household of shadows, a proud aunt, and a hidden invalid. Her cheerful industry—baking, tending the garden
- [Holgrave](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters/holgrave.md): Holgrave rents a room in the House of the Seven Gables and earns his bread by taking likenesses, an art he claims exposes the soul beneath the surface. He speaks like a reformer who would sweep away old families, old hou
- [Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters/judge_jaffrey_pyncheon.md): Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon is the family's most respected and most feared member, a man whose philanthropy is performed for an audience and whose kindness always has a price. He covets the old house, the missing deed, and ab
- [Matthew Maule](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters/matthew_maule.md): Old Matthew Maule claimed the spring-fed plot of land before the Pyncheons did, and he went to Gallows Hill rather than surrender it, leaving behind a curse that the family has never quite dismissed as superstition. His 
- [Alice Pyncheon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters/alice_pyncheon.md): Alice belongs to the Pyncheons' genteel past, the kind of heiress whose grace and hauteur are meant to adorn the family name. Her pride is both her armor and her vulnerability, and it draws her into a fateful encounter w
- [Uncle Venner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters/uncle_venner.md): Uncle Venner survives on odd jobs and neighborly goodwill, and his easy talk about life, death, and human folly makes him a fixture around the House of the Seven Gables. He is poor in purse but rich in equanimity, and hi
- [Colonel Pyncheon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters/colonel_pyncheon.md): Colonel Pyncheon is the family's mythic ancestor, a man whose stern piety and ruthless ambition built both a mansion and a curse. He took the site from Matthew Maule and helped send the old wizard to the gallows, and the
- [Ned Higgins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters/ned_higgins.md): A young boy who is Hepzibah's first customer at her shop.
- [Scipio](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters/scipio.md): A Black servant in the Pyncheon household during Colonel Pyncheon's time.
- [Old Maid Pyncheon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters/old_maid_pyncheon.md): A deceased elderly Pyncheon relative who left a small inheritance to Hepzibah.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_house_of_the_seven_gables_se/characters