The Blithedale Romance
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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."
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[edit] Plot Introduction
The principal setting is a communal farm called Blithedale (i.e., "Happy Valley"), a would-be modern Arcadia that is founded upon anti-capitalist ideals, 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 strong-minded feminist who ironically finds Hollingsworth's misogyny irresistible; Priscilla, a fragile, impecunious young woman who turns out to be Zenobia's half-sister; and Miles Coverdale, the unreliable narrator, a minor poet given to acts of voyeurism. An intense friendship develops among these four during the spring and summer, but begins to disintegrate as autumn approaches.
[edit] The Blithedale Romance and Brook Farm
Blithedale is based loosely on Brook Farm, 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, 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 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.[1] Suggested prototypes for Hollingsworth include Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horace Mann[2], while the narrator is often supposed to be none other than Hawthorne himself.[3]
[edit] Notes
1. 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.
2. ibid., p. 270.
3. ibid., p. 272.
[edit] External links
- The Blithedale Romance, available at Project Gutenberg.
| Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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| Novels |
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The Blithedale Romance • Doctor Grimshaw's Secret • The Dolliver Romance • Fanshawe • The House of the Seven Gables • The Marble Faun • The Scarlet Letter |
| Tales |
| Twice-Told Tales • The Gray Champion • Sundays at Home • The Wedding-Knell • The Minister's Black Veil • The May-Pole of Merry Mount • The Gentle Boy • Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe • Little Annie's Ramble • Wakefield • A Rill from the Town-Pump • The Great Carbuncle • The Prophetic Pictures • David Swan • Sights from a Steeple • The Hollow of the Three Hills • The Toll-Gatherer's Day • The Vision of the Fountain • Fancy's Show Box • Dr. Heidegger's Experiment • Legends of the Province-House • The Haunted Mind • The Village Uncle • The Ambitious Guest • The Sister Years • Snow-Flakes • The Seven Vagabonds • The White Old Maid • Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure • Chippings with a Chisel • The Shaker Bridal • Night Sketches • Endicott and the Red Cross • The Lily's Quest • Foot-prints on the Sea-shore • Edward Fane's Rosebud • The Threefold Destiny |
| The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales • The Snow-Image • The Great Stone Face • Main-street • Ethan Brand • A Bell's Biography • Sylph Etherege • The Canterbury Pilgrims • Old News • The Man of Adamant • The Devil in Manuscript • John Inglefield's Thanksgiving • Old Ticonderoga • The Wives of the Dead • Little Daffydowndilly • My Kinsman, Major Molineux |
| Mosses from an Old Manse • The Old Manse • The Birth-Mark • A Select Party • Young Goodman Brown • Rappaccini's Daughter • Mrs. Bullfrog • Fire-Worship • Buds and Bird-Voices • Monsieur du Miroir • The Hall of Fantasy • The Celestial Rail-road • The Procession of Life • Feathertop • The New Adam and Eve • Egotism; or, The Bosom-Serpent • The Christmas Banquet • Drowne's Wooden Image • The Intelligence Office • Roger Malvin's Burial • P.'s Correspondence • Earth's Holocaust • Passages from a Relinquished Work • Sketches from Memory • The Old Apple-Dealer • The Artist of the Beautiful • A Virtuoso's Collection |
