Burying the Body: Pandemic and Public Health in Hawthorne's <i>The House of the Seven Gables</i>

Abstract This article discusses Hawthorne's engagement with discourses of public health, disease, and burial practices in The House the Seven Gables. recurring descriptions decayed house its stifling air, coupled frequent imagery bodies/corpses within it, evoke contemporary historical concerns related to “miasma,” as well changing during first half nineteenth century. These issues were made even more pressing, especially urban centers, by devastating 1832 1849 cholera pandemics, experiences these events make their way into his writing. fearful health discourse connected pandemics is epitomized now-obscure 1850 gothic novel Cholera-Fiend, Hawthorne engages similar but subdued language rhetoric Gables, employing it for own thematic ends.