[In]toxic[ating] Bodies: Spirits and Spectral Biopolitics in The House of the Seven Gables

Abstract

In this article I apply the theme of obsession, and its psychological aspects in particular, to Hawthorne’s preoccupation with drink and intoxication. I aim to unpack the often-messy entanglements between alcohol, toxicity, and subjectivity in Hawthorne’s fiction. Using The House of the Seven Gables as a case study, I argue that Hawthorne’s link between intoxication and toxic materials is less a means of critiquing the political and institutional systems at work in his moment, than a way to interrogate a particular narrative of American history. Hawthorne’s depictions of toxic and intoxicating bodies are bound up in the ongoing discourse of “civilizing” processes unfolding in a relatively new nation—processes that determine which lives are productive, valuable, and essential, and which are “extraneous,” as Colin Dayan puts it. From Matthew Maule’s execution to Clifford Pyncheon’s incarceration, Hawthorne deploys the language of intoxication and toxicity to suggest that persons or bodies who do not neatly fit into America’s sense of teleological progress are viewed as infectious, poisonous, noxious, and otherwise threatening.