2.1. The daguerreotype: 
an agent of truth?

In his essay "Hawthorne's daguerreotypist: Scientist, Artist, Reformer", Alfred H. Marks writes that Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables describes the daguerreotype as, "an instrument of truth, a tool of romantic epistemology, and a scientific art-form which does unfailingly what only genius has been able to do earlier." [16] To corroborate this reading, Marks identifies mainly two interpretations of the new medium's truthfulness in the novel. The first one, "a simple mechanical and psychological explanation", we have already encountered: because of the long time of exposure, the daguerreotyped subject lost control over their facial muscles and their "true" selves appeared. 
   In the novel the focus on the revealing power of the daguerreotype is the face of Judge Pyncheon. At the Judge's first appearance his face is central to the narrator's attention: "The artist would have found it desirable to study his face, and prove its capacity for varied expression, to darken it with a frown - to kindle it up with a smile." (57) Presently the characteristic frown and smile show themselves on the Judge's face: "While the elderly gentleman stood looking at the Pyncheon-house, both the frown and the smile passed successively over his countenance." 
   The smile is the expression which the Judge wants to be beholden by the world, the frown is his natural expression which constantly reestablishes its reign over the Judge's face. When he gets his picture taken by Holgrave, he wants to be presented as a smiling, benevolent figure. However, the "sun, as you see, tells quite another story, and will not be coaxed out of it [...] Here we have the man, sly, subtle, hard, imperious, and, withal, cold as ice" (92). Holgrave explains his failure to render the Judge's picture in an amiable way. How is Judge Pyncheon's "sly, subtle, hard, imperious" expression different from those of millions of other people, who got their daguerreotypes taken at that time? Should one dislike the man, or, as Phoebe believes, the medium itself which is only able to render "hard and stern" expressions? 
Holgrave at least is convinced of the revealing powers of his apparatus. For him, the image of Judge Pyncheon is Judge Pyncheon's true self. Neither he nor the Judge can change the outcome of the daguerreotype, because it is a picture created by the sun itself. This is the second interpretation of the new medium which Marks identifies in the novel, "the daguerreotype as the favored ally of a potent cosmic force". He goes on to say that, "Throughout the book the daguerreotype is mentioned in connection with sunlight and often interchangeably with it." [17] But if one reads closely, one can see that only Holgrave emphasizes the truthfulness of his apparatus by associating it with the sun. Thus, only a closer look at Holgrave himself allows for a conclusive interpretation of Hawthorne's view of the new medium.