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Hepzibah Pyncheon is the last in a long line of Pyncheon aristocrats. Hepzibah personifies the pitfalls of this aristocracy, both financially, as evidenced by her having to open and tend a shop, and spiritually, as shown by the permanent scowl on her face.
If Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon is a jerk who looks like a nice guy, his cousin Hepzibah is the opposite: she looks mean but she has a heart of gold. Where Judge Pyncheon's most recognizable characteristic is his kindly smile, Hepzibah's is her dark scowl.
Clifford eats his food ravenously, but he cannot look his sister in the face and keeps casting his eyes around so that he does not have to look at the ugliness of Hepzibah’s scowl. After breakfast, Clifford begins to look around the room.
Poor Hepzibah's dark, near-sighted scowl is the counterpart of the dark-browed house itself, and her scowl is both the cause and the effect of her isolation from society. Frail, gray-haired, and garbed in black rusty silk dresses, Hepzibah is sustained by "fantasies of the old time" and by a strong, passionate love for her brother.
When a rich woman passes, Hepzibah is tempted to curse her, but then she repents and scowls instead. The day continues. Hepzibah's rich cousin, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, walks by, well dressed but no longer handsome, with an unpleasant smile, and he looks disapprovingly at her shop but then smiles broadly when he sees her.
The Scowl and Smile. Clifford and Hepzibah start moping around the House of the Seven Gables. The weather is cold and stormy. Hepzibah is exhausted trying to keep up the house by herself. On the fifth day of this, Clifford refuses to get up in the morning.
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Is Hepzibah a Pyncheon?
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Hepzibah is the member of the Pyncheon family who currently resides in the House of the Seven Gables, having lived as a near-recluse there for the past quarter-century. Hepzibah grew up thinking of herself as a member of the aristocracy even as the family’s fortunes declined.
