The house of the seven gables symbolizes both The Legacy of Violence that enabled its founding, and the victimization and enervation of family members who do not participate in this violence. It thus represents history and the need to attend to historical violence, functioning as both a physical setting for the novel and as a symbolic reflection of the family’s guilt and trauma.   

More generally, the house symbolizes ancestral homes in general, of which Holgrave is particularly critical. These historical structures refuse each successive generation the opportunity to create new systems of culture, thought, and architecture. For Holgrave, there must be a constant creation of the new, with the refusal of the old. This ideology, however, insists that the past and history itself are not already embedded in “the new,” and that change can happen within a vacuum that denies the past. Instead, Holgrave ultimately revises his views, accepting that a home is not always a burden, but can instead be a place to voluntarily—and happily—put down healthy roots and families.