Conclusion

It is possible for the reader to decide in favour of or against Holgrave's integrity. As I have shown, there are many instances in the novel which speak for and against this figure. Accordingly, the end can be read in two ways: as the replacement of the villain, Judge Pynceon, by the hero, Holgrave, who leads his new family to a better fate; or as no end at all, but rather as the beginning of a new circle of evil. After all, when Holgrave reveals his true identity in the end, he not only sheds his mask but also his former, almost revolutionary ambitions: "I have a presentiment, that, hereafter, it will be my lot to set out trees, to make fences - perhaps, even, in due time, to build a house for another generation - in a word, to conform myself to laws, and the peaceful practice of society." (307) The ease with which Holgrave casts off his former beliefs raises doubts, if they have not been there in the first place. The house which Holgrave envisions for the future could well be just another gloomy incarnation of the House of the Seven Gables.
   Instead of deciding upon one of the interpretations, one should rather ask oneself why Holgrave is such an ambiguous character: how can it be that two such extreme evaluations of this person are possible at the same time? In my opinion, this question leads directly to the heart of the novel. Rather than with morality and character, Hawthorne is concerned with representation itself and the possibility of depicting the truth. Daguerreotyping's claim for "objective truth" and Holgrave as its enthusiastic promulgator were the ideal objects for such an investigation.
   The House of the Seven Gables can be read as a critique of all art which claims to be objective. By constantly undermining Holgrave's presentation of himself and his medium as uninvolved and truthful, Hawthorne reveals the impossibility of objective representation. Representation appears as always bound to some subjective agency. This subjectivity expresses itself already with the choice of a model for representation. By turning the Judge into an image, Holgrave makes him into something which has to be interpreted. By repeatedly making daguerreotypes of the Judge, Holgrave already forms him to his own subjective needs, if only by making him the object of Phoebe's scrutiny.
Also, the act of representation itself has mesmerizing effects: represented events are struck by the recipient as true. [18] Phoebe's mesmerization by Holgrave's legend can be read as an allegory for the effects of all story-telling. The teller/representer gains control over the listener, who suppresses his own subject position. Here the representational artist and the mesmerizing wizard become one, because they are both engaged in the process of establishing power over other subjects. The notion of the artist [19] lies where the two extreme interpretations of Holgrave's character meet. As an artist, he is seeking an objective truth. However, as an artist he must represent that truth, thereby putting it into a convincing "mesmerizing" form.
Cathy N. Davidson writes that Holgrave, "is a romancer pretending to be a novelist, but then, for Hawthorne, perhaps every novelist is a romancer in disguise." [20] This remark leads us back to the introduction of the novel. If the daguerreotype is indeed a mimetic imprint of nature, it is aligned with the realistic novel in which the writer aims "at a very minute fidelity [...] to the probable and ordinary course of manís experience". But as we have seen, these "mimetic" daguerreotypes are deeply ambiguous at best, and serving concrete subjective intentions at worst. The romancer, on the other hand, who openly acknowleds that he represents reality under circumstances of his "own choosing and creation", paradoxically gets closer to the truth. This is perhaps the paradox which rests at the heart of all of Hawthorne's fiction: to approach the truth, to be able to represent the world to the reader, one has to submit it to subjective construction.
   The new photographic medium seems to provide a possibility of avoiding this paradoxical situation. It seems to capture the essence of things without human interference. But by surrounding the daguerreotype(ist) with ambiguities, Hawthorne undermines the notion of "objective representation". The new medium may alter and enlarge the possibilities of the artist, but it does not releave him from his responsibilities towards his subjects and audience. To represent the "truth of the human heart", the artist has to incorporate in his work his own implied subject position, just like the man on the church steeple.