The Blithedale Romance

"The Blithedale Romance" (1852) is Nathaniel Hawthorne's third major romance. In "Hawthorne" (1879), Henry James called it "the lightest, the brightest, the liveliest" of Hawthorne's "unhumorous fictions."

Plot introduction

The principal setting is a communal farm called Blithedale (i.e., "Happy Valley"), a would-be modern Arcadia along the lines of the anti-capitalist ideals of Charles Fourier, yet is nonetheless destroyed by the self-interested behavior of some of its members. Among those members are: Hollingsworth, a monomaniacal philanthropist and confirmed misogynist who intends to turn Blithedale into a colony for the reformation of criminals; Zenobia, a passionate feminist of exotic origin who ironically finds Hollingsworth's misogyny irresistible; Priscilla, a young and impecunious seamstress from the city; and Miles Coverdale, the unreliable narrator, a minor poet and dandy given to acts of voyeurism.

An intense friendship develops among these four during the spring and summer, but begins to disintegrate as autumn approaches and ultimately ends in Zenobia's apparent suicide by drowning.

"The Blithedale Romance" and Brook Farm

"The Blithedale Romance" is a work of fiction based on Hawthorne's recollections of Brook Farm, [McFarland, Philip. "Hawthorne in Concord". New York: Grove Press, 2004. p. 149. ISBN 0802117767] a short-lived agricultural and educational commune where Hawthorne lived from April to November 1841. In the novel's preface, Hawthorne describes his memories of this temporary home as "essentially a daydream, and yet a fact" which he employs as "an available foothold between fiction and reality." His feelings of affectionate scepticism toward the commune are reflected not only in the novel, but also in his journal entries and in the numerous letters he wrote from Brook Farm to Sophia Peabody, his future wife.

Hawthorne's claim that the novel's characters are "entirely fictitious" has been widely questioned. The character of Zenobia, for example, is said to have been modelled upon Margaret Fuller, [Blanchard, Paula. "Margaret Fuller: From Transcendentalism to Revolution". Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1987: 187. ISBN 0-201-10458-X] an acquaintance of Hawthorne and a frequent guest at Brook Farm. The circumstances of Zenobia's death, however, were not inspired by the shipwreck that ended Fuller's life but by the suicide of a certain Miss Martha Hunt, a refined but melancholy young woman who drowned herself in a river on the morning of July 9, 1845. Hawthorne helped to search for the body that night, and later recorded the incident at considerable length in his journal. [Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Blithedale Romance: an Authoritative Text; Background and Sources; Criticism" (Seymour Gross, Editor). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978, pp. 253-257.] Suggested prototypes for Hollingsworth include Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horace Mann [Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Blithedale Romance: an Authoritative Text; Background and Sources; Criticism" (Seymour Gross, Editor). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978, p. 270.] , while the narrator is often supposed to be none other than Hawthorne himself. [Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Blithedale Romance: an Authoritative Text; Background and Sources; Criticism" (Seymour Gross, Editor). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978, p. 272.]

References

External links

*gutenberg|no=2081|name=The Blithedale Romance