Other People's Dreams

Where has Clifford gone? In the five days since the storm started, he hasn’t left his room, yet, now that Hepzibah is in desperate need of him, he can’t be found. Where could he have gone?

As Hawthorne plunges Hepzibah into her living nightmare, Clifford is released of his and awakens to find his dreams coming true—he can now rid himself of the past and fulfill his youthful dreams!

Hepzibah desperately calls for help in finding her mentally unstable brother—so intense is her desperation that she turns to Judge Jaffrey, her sole enemy, for his aid. Yet the old gentleman does not move! He does not care for her desperation but mocks her with mute silence. As she searches the lower floors, Clifford reveals himself, quite in the opposing disposition of his sister. With celebrations of freedom, Clifford hurries Hepzibah out of the house that has imprisoned them for so long.

The siblings flee the morbid house of their ancestors into the pouring rain. Their destination? Anywhere but the house of seven gables. Hepzibah, lost within her nightmare, willing gives leadership of the situation to the childlike Clifford.

“Clifford! Clifford! Is not this a dream?”
“A dream, Hepzibah!” repeated he, almost laughing in her face. “On the contrary, I have never been awake before!” (190)

The very event that drowns Hepzibah in a nightmare, awakens Clifford to his greatest dreams. And where do they run to? The crowding throng of people we call the world.

“Here we are, in the world, Hepzibah!—in the midst of life!—in the throng of our fellow beings! Let you and I be happy!” Happy. A word formerly unknown to the ancient siblings. But can Hepzibah truly be happy outside of the world she has known for so long? Though covering vast miles at a quick pace aboard the train, Hepzibah can’t rid the familial establishment from her mind. “This one old house was everywhere! It transported its great, lumbering bulk with more than railroad speed, and set itself phlegmatically down on whatever spot she glanced at” (191). Will Clifford be happy in the new world he has found? They have taken the step of faith—but was it right?

Clifford and Hepzibah board the train with no particular destination in mind. The flight has freed Clifford and, for the first time, we see Clifford’s youthful dreams. Freed from the oppression of his gabled prison, Clifford revolts against structure, just like Holgrave. He explains to the conductor that the railroad “is destined to do away with those stale ideas of home and fireside, and substitute something better” (192). Like the young dagurrtypist , he sees that “all human progress is in a circle” and that “the past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy of the present and the future” (192).

You are lost in your dream Clifford. Think sensibly—like the conductor “I should scarcely call it an improved state of things to live everywhere and nowhere!” Why must you run, Clifford? From what are you escaping? An old man cannot relive his youth, even if it was robbed from him. Oh, Clifford, beware—guard your heart. What you believe may be only a dream.

(534)