Shedding Some Light On Dark Secrets

This chapter speaks to me as being the most Romantic of all the chapters because of the wizardry and supernatural density presented. This chapter shows to me that The House of Seven Gables belong in the Gothic genre. The death of a young innocent girl is another signifier of the unnatural happening in this novel. This chapter encompasses the book as a whole into one chapter by showing the realism laced with the absurd and supernatural by Hawthorne himself.
By presenting us with a story by Holgrave, Hawthorne is highlighting the fact that through storytelling, one can "hypnotize" an audience such as Maule did to Alice Pyncheon. By being the storyteller, you can almost control how your audience is feeling (tense) or what emotions they will feel (anger,sadness,fear). This is a allegory to how Hawthorne is controlling how we are perceiving the story as it is written. Should we take everything literally, or look for signifiers of the supernatural entanglement.
Speaking of art forms, I thought of how Alice looked at Maule as an artistic individual and became infatuated with him. Infatuation to the point of trusting him to hypnotize her, which, unfortunately, led to her untimely death.
Hawthorne presents storytelling and writing as an art form that uses form and content to tell a story or explain a human condition.