actual, participating member. She let her youth and whatever beauty she had slip away in.
the dark recesses of the dusty old house, all the while clinging to the notion that she was.
a member of the long-dead aristocracy. She also dreamed of the vast fortune she was.
bound to receive from the "Pyncheon territory", a "delusion of family importance" each.
Pyncheon has clung to "from generation to generation. She lived in solitude for the better part of thirty years, remaining an "old maid" who "never had a lover". When her finances become dependent on actual labor, she felt that she had "brought an irretrievable disgrace" for having to work. Her selfish desire to remain in the past, in the time when she would not have to soil her hands with the disgrace of actual labor, is something to which she clings desperately. .
.
The feeble-minded Clifford suffers from a childish need to always be surrounded.
by beautiful things. This need leaves little room for the consideration of the other.
characters and their feelings. He greedily partakes of anything he finds attractive, and.
openly shuns everything else. "[Perhaps] the hardest stroke of fate for Hepzibah to.
endure, and perhaps for Clifford, too--was his invincible distaste for her appearance".
(Hawthorne 136). He somewhat comprehends the hurt he has caused, but can not find.
the means to rectify it, partially because of his inability to grasp reality. Clifford has not.
yet escaped the prison of his own mind, into which he was forced to flee. His need for.
love and warmth are understandable, but he searches for these traits only in beautiful.
objects, thus creating a childish avarice.
"In almost every generation there happened to be some one descendant of the.
family gifted with a portion of the hard, keen sense, and practical energy that has so.
remarkable distinguished the original founder". In each generation, one.
member, to a small degree, exhibited the habits of the long dead Colonel Pyncheon.