How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
The guest responded to her tone by a smile, which did not half light up his face. Feeble as it was, however, and gone in a moment, it had a charm of wonderful beauty. It was followed by a coarser expression; or one that had the effect of coarseness on the fine mould and outline of his countenance, because there was nothing intellectual to temper it. It was a look of appetite. He ate food with what might almost be termed voracity; and seemed to forget himself, Hepzibah, the young girl, and everything else around him, in the sensual enjoyment which the bountifully spread table afforded. In his natural system, though high-wrought and delicately refined, a sensibility to the delights of the palate was probably inherent. It would have been kept in check, however, and even converted into an accomplishment, and one of the thousand modes of intellectual culture, had his more ethereal characteristics retained their vigor. (7.28)
Clifford Pyncheon's essential nature is one of sweetness and light, and, as with most characters in this book, you can read these traits on his face. But his long life in prison has written over his essential nature with "the effect of coarseness." He is starving and he scarfs down food in a way that makes Phoebe pity him. We're of two minds about this point. On the one hand, we find it interesting that Hawthorne tries to show physical evidence of Clifford's conflict between his personal nature and the demands of the world around him (nature vs. nurture embodied in one person). On the other hand, we think the narrator's passing judgment on a man who's just gotten out of prison for his "coarseness" of "appetite" seems a little harsh. Sure, the narrator finds it worth pitying, but he also appears disgusted by Clifford's behavior. We find that disgust a little misplaced – how would you act if you'd spent the majority of your life in prison? A little gulping at the breakfast table seems fair.
Quote #5
Coming so late as it did, it was a kind of Indian summer, with a mist in its balmiest sunshine, and decay and death in its gaudiest delight. The more Clifford seemed to taste the happiness of a child, the sadder was the difference to be recognized. [...] Clifford saw, it may be, in the mirror of his deeper consciousness, that he was an example and representative of that great class of people whom an inexplicable Providence is continually putting at cross-purposes with the world: breaking what seems its own promise in their nature; withholding their proper food, and setting poison before them for a banquet; and thus—when it might so easily, as one would think, have been adjusted otherwise—making their existence a strangeness, a solitude, and torment. All his life long, he had been learning how to be wretched, as one learns a foreign tongue; and now, with the lesson thoroughly by heart, he could with difficulty comprehend his little airy happiness. (10.8)
Clifford is happy to be spending these afternoons with Phoebe in their secluded garden. But it's a case of too little, too late: having spent 30 years in prison, it's still hard for him to believe that he's allowed to enjoy himself now. We're intrigued by the narrator's description of "that great class of people" who are constantly required by fate to act against their own natures. Clifford is not meant for a lifetime of misery in prison, but that's what he gets. We guess that the reverse of his case is Judge Pyncheon, who is a hypocrite – he doesn't deserve a lifetime of wealth and respect from his fellow man – but that's what he gets. It seems that Hawthorne is meditating, as we all so often do, on why life is unfair.
Quote #6
"I shall not bandy words with you," observed the foreign-bred Mr. Pyncheon, with haughty composure. "Nor will it become me to resent any rudeness towards either my grandfather or myself. A gentleman, before seeking intercourse with a person of your station and habits, will first consider whether the urgency of the end may compensate for the disagreeableness of the means. It does so in the present instance." (13.38)
We aren't sure why the narrator insists so strongly that Gervayse Pyncheon is "foreign-bred" in this exchange between Matthew Maule II and Gervayse Pyncheon. Does it matter? Is it supposed to explain why Gervayse is so high-handed and snotty with someone he thinks is his social inferior? At any rate, it really shows how stupid and self-defeating Gervayse Pyncheon can be that he actually thinks he can persuade Matthew Maule II to help him by saying that someone as poor and low-class as Maule can't be proud enough to turn his nose up at the offer of good, hard cash. Nice going, Gervayse.