The book is set in and around Salem, Massachusetts, near where Hawthorne lived. Most of the action takes place in Hawthorne's contemporary time period (the 19th century), but the backstory extends back to the original days of European settlement of the area in the 17th century.
The Massachusetts of the 19th century looked vastly different from the Massachusetts of the 17th century. Industrialization introduced many technologies, such as the railroad and more advanced farming equipment, so that sustenance farming had given way to more factory work, division of labor, and consumerism. Hawthorne's "romance" explores the many changes industrialization and capitalism have wrought on the area while also considering how inescapable the past can be. Once, Hepzibah may have been able to have her needs seen to by a full staff of servants and laborers on the property of the House of the Seven Gables. But this is not the way people's lives are structured anymore. Left penniless by a sordid family history she can't shake off, she must open a cent shop and learn how to participate in modern consumer culture. The past haunts her and forces her to confront the future.
Hawthorne is especially interested in local history and how it can be traced in the present. He describes Matthew Maule's execution in the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s and the curse Maule places on the Pyncheons with his last breath. During the historical Witch Trials, local authorities were driven by an angry and paranoid mob to hang 19 people for practicing witchcraft. There was never much evidence of wrongdoing by any of these people, but suspicions snowballed quickly into accusations and executions. One of Hawthorne's own ancestors, John Hathorne, was a magistrate who was highly involved in the trials and called loudly for executions, not unlike Colonel Pyncheon in Hawthorne's novel. Hathorne never expressed regret for his role in the affair. Hawthorne, the author, changed the spelling of his own name, adding a "w," to distance himself from this shameful relative. The House of the Seven Gables explores the legacy of the Witch Trials and the aftereffects on the persecutors' descendants. Maule's descendants are left without property, but it is the Pyncheons who are stuck in perpetuity with the haunted house they gained when their forebear had his rival hanged. Hawthorne does not believe in magic, but he does believe that the land in Salem bears some kind of historical curse.
