Inside Out

Simple-minded Clifford Pyncheon has missed a lot of changes in this thirty-year absence. One of his favorite pastimes is sitting at the arched window on the second floor of the family estate and watching the world pass by. But what interest has an old man with modern invention?

Clifford finds most interest and pleasure in pictures and reminders of his childhood past. Children playing in the streets and horse-drawn carriages bring a smile to his face. On the other hand, modern inventions like trains and omnibuses are deemed ugly and loud by the worshipper of Beauty.

But the pleasure of watching the world pass outside the second-story window is more than a pastime—it’s a picture. The self-imprisoned siblings sit within the Pyncheon estate observing the life, day to day life, of the world outside. Something needs to happen within Hepzibah and Clifford to draw them outside themselves so they can join humanity.

Hepzibah and Clifford need to take a leap of faith—one step outside of themselves and the prison they have created out of their home. A leap of faith would change their worlds forever.

And Clifford almost leaps. Literally.

While watching a parade go by, Clifford is moved with so much passion to rejoin humanity, he steps out from behind the curtain that has hidden him and proceeds to step out of the window itself. Hepzibah and Phoebe, motivated by fear for the troubled man’s life, reach out to Clifford and pull him back in.

Did they do the right thing?

Clifford, in response to Hepzibah’s exclamation of fear says, “Fear nothing—it is over now—but had I taken that plunge, and survived it, methinks it would have made me another man!?” (124) Hawthorne further illuminates Clifford’s insight, saying, “He needed a shock; or perhaps he required to take a deep, deep plunge into the ocean of human life, and to sink down and to be covered by its profoundness, and then to emerge, sobered, invigorated, restored to the world and to himself.” That one step—that one leap of faith—would have freed Clifford from his prison. But he was stopped.

The opportunity to change doesn’t stop with Clifford’s moment of insanity. Later, as he and Hepzibah watch the people of the city celebrate the Sabbath, Clifford is tempted once again to take a step of faith. The siblings dress in their decaying best and prepare to worship. They make it as far as the threshold. Immediately, they felt the weight of their imprisonment upon them. How could they ever consider leaving their home? “It cannot be, Hepzibah!—it is too late,” said Clifford with deep sadness. “We are ghosts! We have no right among human beings—no right anywhere but in this old house, which as a curse on it, and which, therefore, we are doomed to haunt!” (126)

Who is this prisoner that confines the aging siblings within a cursed home? Themselves. Clifford and Hepzibah can only view the world from the inside out because, as Hawthorne’s imperative question asks, “what other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!” (126)

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