In The House of the Seven Gables, the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne, uses many various aspects of literature to express certain ideas to the reader in his book . Among these are the usage of tone as well as setting (and the imagery used to paint the setting) which are two of the most important.
Hawthorne incorporates an unorthodox tone throughout the novel to create a certain familiarity between himself and the reader. And he does so mainly (although there are other devices to do so) through one word: "we". When referring to himself as the narrator, by using the word "I" it would bring about familiarity. However, Hawthorne goes a step past that by saying "we", as if reading this book is an experience not just for the author to tell, but for the author and the reader to go through together. A true example of this comes on page 151 when he says "we must not stain our page with any contemporary scandal, to a similar purport, that may be whispered against the Judge", meaning that both the reader and the author should hold gossip against this character when considering his integrity in the pages to come.
The importance of setting in this novel is made blatantly apparent on the first page, and perhaps even before that in the title since the title is an object, thus meaning it must have great importance to be the title. Understanding the way the house looked in its early days and the ways it has changed through time, neglect, and tenants (both the living and dead as has been hinted at) is definitely key. By knowing this, the reader can better understand how its history affects each character that comes into the story (the characters associate much pride as well as shame as to what the house has been through). While the building up of the history and total description of the house is a constant progression, a large piece of that begins in the first sentence which says "Half-way down a by-street of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely placed gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst". Just this one sentence does wonders towards setting the scene, with the rest of the first chapter used to build off of that. And the imagery used, not only suggests the house’s physical appearance, but it also suggests that it is perhaps lonely (halfway down a by-street) and slighted (rusted) and that the story to come, although it will be extremely specific, is of a generic situation in past New England. Thus, the setting is extremely important on more levels than one.