Compassion In Hawthorne's The House Of The Seven Gables

At a certain point in the course of human existence, we stopped considering ourselves animals. We started inventing, thinking complex thoughts, forming complex relationships. In time, we became the developed beings we are today. What does this state of being human entail? With the emergence of a new complexity in our beliefs and relationships came the development of morality. Perhaps humanity is defined by our propensity for individual evaluation. We convey levels of compassion that are specific to the act that is being done unto us. Forgiveness is fluid, and a compassionate person is not obligated to feel compassionate unconditionally. There is a duality to the concept of forgiveness - which party truly benefits from forgiveness; the

We are often unaware to the extent of which the compassion we give and receive molds our identities. In The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne depicts poor Hepzibah with a scowl that had “done [her] a very ill office, in establishing her character as an ill-tempered old maid” (Hawthorne 34). She is described very early as having never had a lover, “nor ever knew, by her own experience, what love technically means” (32). Hepzibah is surely a prime example of how a lack of compassion translates itself physically. Hepzibah, in her own right a Pyncheon of high social standing, is confined to a pitiful existence in which she is offered no acknowledgement due to her loyalty to her condemned brother, Clifford. Hepzibah, a woman who has not been offered any compassion nor extends any toward herself, is much like the caged bird Maya Angelou writes about in her poem, “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.” The poem juxtaposes the sentiments of a free bird and a caged bird. A free bird “dares to claim the sky” and has the freedom to “name[s] the sky his own” (Angelou 7, 25). A caged bird - anyone who cannot display compassion, an integral component of humanity, to his or herself - cannot flaunt the luxury that is the feeling of being free. Angelou describes the actions of caged birds as “stalk[ing] down his narrow cage...can seldom see through his bars of rage” (8-11). She expresses a sense of confining oneself to a state of misery, as if by feeling bad for oneself, one is actively contributing to the confinement they felt already from their