SAT Reading & Writing Practice Set - The House of the Seven Gables (Adapted)
When Hepzibah Pyncheon, half-blind and long secluded in the House of the Seven Gables, first raised
the stubborn little shutter of the shop-window, the gesture felt to her less like opening a business than
like bowing her head beneath a sentence. The Pyncheons had been accustomed, in earlier days, to buy
with a dignified air and to have others measure out their sugar and tea; they had not been trained to
weigh out penny-worths for the town’s apprentices and children. Yet age, dwindling income, and the
impending return of her broken brother Clifford from prison left Hepzibah with scant alternatives. As
she groped for her spectacles and tried to force her stiff features into something like a smile, the same
dark walls that bore painted Pyncheon faces seemed to watch her, half censorious and half curious,
while passersby, drawn as much by the novelty of a proud gentlewoman behind a counter as by
gingerbread or newspapers, stepped inside to make their purchases and to stare. (Hawthorne, 1851)
Phoebe Pyncheon’s arrival from the country altered the air of the old house almost before Hepzibah had
finished deciding whether to send her back. Where Hepzibah’s movements were jerky with
self-consciousness, Phoebe’s hands moved with unstudied order among the shelves, brightening the
stock and coaxing even the shyest customers into conversation. To Clifford, whose mind had been
clouded by the injustice of his long confinement and by the memory of a crime for which he had borne
the blame but not the guilt, Phoebe’s presence came like the return of a half-forgotten song—familiar,
soothing, and just distant enough from his own sorrow to be bearable. Even the old story of Matthew
Maule’s curse on Colonel Pyncheon, with its dark promise that God would give the wrongdoer “blood
to drink,” seemed, in Phoebe’s company, less like a doom laid on every Pyncheon forever and more like
a tale one might learn from without wholly submitting to its terms. Yet the very light she brought made
it harder to ignore how much of the family’s dignity had curdled into mere touchiness, and how stingy
the house looked when measured against the richness of the life that ought to have been lived in it.
(Hawthorne, 1851)
In one of the upper gables lodged Holgrave, a young daguerreotypist whose camera and opinions both
regarded old houses and old names with a cool, questioning eye. Some of the town, noting his trade
and his talk of the future, took him for a restless spirit of reform, better suited to newspapers and
political clubs than to a dwelling where ancestral portraits gazed down in unchanging judgment. Yet in
conversation with Phoebe he spoke less of overturning institutions than of the way inherited wrong can
linger in stones and habits, influencing descendants who barely know the facts. One evening, he told
her the tale of Alice Pyncheon, a delicate ancestress who had fallen under the mesmeric power of a
Maule and been made to play music at another’s silent command, until the conflict between her pride
and her bondage helped to drive her to a fatal exposure in the cold night air. As Holgrave saw Phoebe’s
eyes grow vacant and her attention bend unconsciously toward his every tone, he realized that he, too,
had begun to exert that dangerous kind of influence—and then abruptly broke off, speaking sharply and
turning the talk to safer ground, as if to prove to himself that whatever future he meant to claim with her
would not be built on the old pattern of secret mastery. (Hawthorne, 1851)
Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, whose broad, composed face reproduced in living flesh the features that
looked down from Colonel Pyncheon’s portrait over the parlor, preferred older patterns. In public he
appeared as a man of substance and benevolence, attending meetings, giving to charities, and
collecting small tokens of esteem; in private, his visits to Hepzibah carried an undercurrent of demand.
Hinting that Clifford was unfit to remain at large, and that only the Judge’s good offices stood between
him and another, harsher confinement, Jaffrey pressed his cousins for some acknowledgment of the
, hidden wealth he believed still attached to the Maule land on which the house stood. One evening, as
he sat in the Colonel’s armchair waiting for Clifford, the Judge died suddenly and silently, his body
lingering in a posture of thought that made his absence harder at first to recognize. When his death and
lack of a direct heir became known, the very relatives he had hoped to frighten into service found
themselves his beneficiaries instead; and Hepzibah, Clifford, Phoebe, and Holgrave could finally leave
the seven-gabled house behind. The building, rooted in an act of dispossession and haunted by a family
legend of “blood to drink,” did not collapse or blaze in any visible act of justice, but it did lose its
authority over those who had lived under its gaze, as they chose at last to measure themselves by
something other than its walls and portraits. (Hawthorne, 1851)
(Adapted from the novel The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne)
QUESTIONS 1–8: MAIN IDEA, BIG PICTURE
1. The passage as a whole primarily emphasizes
A. the legal procedures by which property disputes were settled in nineteenth-century New
England.
B. the different ways members of the Pyncheon family and Holgrave respond to the weight of
an inherited house, name, and curse.
C. the economic advantages of small family-run shops in urban neighborhoods.
D. the supernatural events that literally destroy the House of the Seven Gables.
2. Across the four paragraphs, the House of the Seven Gables functions mainly as
A. a neutral backdrop for unrelated character sketches.
B. a symbol of how past injustice can shape, but not entirely dictate, the lives of those who
come after.
C. a thriving commercial property that solves all of Hepzibah’s financial problems.
D. a public building used for elections and civic festivals.
3. The first paragraph’s description of Hepzibah’s new shop suggests that she
A. welcomes trade as a long-desired escape from aristocratic expectations.
B. sees keeping a shop as both necessary and deeply humiliating, given her sense of Pyncheon
dignity.
C. has already adjusted easily to her new role in the town.
D. cares more about outcompeting other merchants than about Clifford’s return.
4. Taken together, the first two paragraphs present the contrast between Hepzibah and Phoebe
primarily in order to show that
A. the curse has no effect on women.
B. Hepzibah is morally inferior to her younger cousin.
C. the same house can be experienced as a prison by one inhabitant and, under the right
temperament, as a place that can still be partly reclaimed by another.
D. Phoebe is completely unaware of any family history.
When Hepzibah Pyncheon, half-blind and long secluded in the House of the Seven Gables, first raised
the stubborn little shutter of the shop-window, the gesture felt to her less like opening a business than
like bowing her head beneath a sentence. The Pyncheons had been accustomed, in earlier days, to buy
with a dignified air and to have others measure out their sugar and tea; they had not been trained to
weigh out penny-worths for the town’s apprentices and children. Yet age, dwindling income, and the
impending return of her broken brother Clifford from prison left Hepzibah with scant alternatives. As
she groped for her spectacles and tried to force her stiff features into something like a smile, the same
dark walls that bore painted Pyncheon faces seemed to watch her, half censorious and half curious,
while passersby, drawn as much by the novelty of a proud gentlewoman behind a counter as by
gingerbread or newspapers, stepped inside to make their purchases and to stare. (Hawthorne, 1851)
Phoebe Pyncheon’s arrival from the country altered the air of the old house almost before Hepzibah had
finished deciding whether to send her back. Where Hepzibah’s movements were jerky with
self-consciousness, Phoebe’s hands moved with unstudied order among the shelves, brightening the
stock and coaxing even the shyest customers into conversation. To Clifford, whose mind had been
clouded by the injustice of his long confinement and by the memory of a crime for which he had borne
the blame but not the guilt, Phoebe’s presence came like the return of a half-forgotten song—familiar,
soothing, and just distant enough from his own sorrow to be bearable. Even the old story of Matthew
Maule’s curse on Colonel Pyncheon, with its dark promise that God would give the wrongdoer “blood
to drink,” seemed, in Phoebe’s company, less like a doom laid on every Pyncheon forever and more like
a tale one might learn from without wholly submitting to its terms. Yet the very light she brought made
it harder to ignore how much of the family’s dignity had curdled into mere touchiness, and how stingy
the house looked when measured against the richness of the life that ought to have been lived in it.
(Hawthorne, 1851)
In one of the upper gables lodged Holgrave, a young daguerreotypist whose camera and opinions both
regarded old houses and old names with a cool, questioning eye. Some of the town, noting his trade
and his talk of the future, took him for a restless spirit of reform, better suited to newspapers and
political clubs than to a dwelling where ancestral portraits gazed down in unchanging judgment. Yet in
conversation with Phoebe he spoke less of overturning institutions than of the way inherited wrong can
linger in stones and habits, influencing descendants who barely know the facts. One evening, he told
her the tale of Alice Pyncheon, a delicate ancestress who had fallen under the mesmeric power of a
Maule and been made to play music at another’s silent command, until the conflict between her pride
and her bondage helped to drive her to a fatal exposure in the cold night air. As Holgrave saw Phoebe’s
eyes grow vacant and her attention bend unconsciously toward his every tone, he realized that he, too,
had begun to exert that dangerous kind of influence—and then abruptly broke off, speaking sharply and
turning the talk to safer ground, as if to prove to himself that whatever future he meant to claim with her
would not be built on the old pattern of secret mastery. (Hawthorne, 1851)
Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, whose broad, composed face reproduced in living flesh the features that
looked down from Colonel Pyncheon’s portrait over the parlor, preferred older patterns. In public he
appeared as a man of substance and benevolence, attending meetings, giving to charities, and
collecting small tokens of esteem; in private, his visits to Hepzibah carried an undercurrent of demand.
Hinting that Clifford was unfit to remain at large, and that only the Judge’s good offices stood between
him and another, harsher confinement, Jaffrey pressed his cousins for some acknowledgment of the
, hidden wealth he believed still attached to the Maule land on which the house stood. One evening, as
he sat in the Colonel’s armchair waiting for Clifford, the Judge died suddenly and silently, his body
lingering in a posture of thought that made his absence harder at first to recognize. When his death and
lack of a direct heir became known, the very relatives he had hoped to frighten into service found
themselves his beneficiaries instead; and Hepzibah, Clifford, Phoebe, and Holgrave could finally leave
the seven-gabled house behind. The building, rooted in an act of dispossession and haunted by a family
legend of “blood to drink,” did not collapse or blaze in any visible act of justice, but it did lose its
authority over those who had lived under its gaze, as they chose at last to measure themselves by
something other than its walls and portraits. (Hawthorne, 1851)
(Adapted from the novel The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne)
QUESTIONS 1–8: MAIN IDEA, BIG PICTURE
1. The passage as a whole primarily emphasizes
A. the legal procedures by which property disputes were settled in nineteenth-century New
England.
B. the different ways members of the Pyncheon family and Holgrave respond to the weight of
an inherited house, name, and curse.
C. the economic advantages of small family-run shops in urban neighborhoods.
D. the supernatural events that literally destroy the House of the Seven Gables.
2. Across the four paragraphs, the House of the Seven Gables functions mainly as
A. a neutral backdrop for unrelated character sketches.
B. a symbol of how past injustice can shape, but not entirely dictate, the lives of those who
come after.
C. a thriving commercial property that solves all of Hepzibah’s financial problems.
D. a public building used for elections and civic festivals.
3. The first paragraph’s description of Hepzibah’s new shop suggests that she
A. welcomes trade as a long-desired escape from aristocratic expectations.
B. sees keeping a shop as both necessary and deeply humiliating, given her sense of Pyncheon
dignity.
C. has already adjusted easily to her new role in the town.
D. cares more about outcompeting other merchants than about Clifford’s return.
4. Taken together, the first two paragraphs present the contrast between Hepzibah and Phoebe
primarily in order to show that
A. the curse has no effect on women.
B. Hepzibah is morally inferior to her younger cousin.
C. the same house can be experienced as a prison by one inhabitant and, under the right
temperament, as a place that can still be partly reclaimed by another.
D. Phoebe is completely unaware of any family history.
