Directorio Okouko

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance is fictionalized account of the author’s stay at Brook Farm in 1841. It is an amazing source of information about utopian experiments, and fits nicely with my research on Home, Washington. It is an insightful window into social attitudes and the culture of this sort of living environment during that period. Overall the narrator in the novel is skeptical of these endeavors, but it is a great source for research on the utopian drive and a richly dramatic tale that illustrates an individual’s inability to escape the past.
The novel is ordered around four characters that come to Blithedale as part of the communal farm. Each character has a life they left behind. Miles Coverdale is a poet and the stories narrator, Zenobia is a feminist whose past and family origins are mysterious, Priscilla is a seamstress that is somehow linked to the Veiled Lady, and Hollingsworth is a single-minded philanthropist anxious to recruit members to his cause. The fates of these four individuals become tragically entwined as they strive to create a new life for themselves. The novel is structured as a mystery with Coverdale gradually uncovering details that illuminate each character’s past and motivation.

One of the main themes in this work is the individual’s inability to sublimate self-interest for the sake of the collective good. It illustrates the tension between ideals and daily life. The novel is a pull between individual ambition and the shared group.

On the surface everyone seems invested in the utopian experiment, but as Coverdale notes early on,” Though we saw fit to drink our tea out of earthen cups to-night, and in earthen company, it was at our own option to use pictured porcelain and handle silver forks again, tomorrow” (55). Most of those involved could deign to be a part of this experiment, because they had the luxury to opt out at a later point. Blithedale was a brief reprieve from their real lives.

On closer examination, each character doesn’t seem to be truly invested in the experiment. Zenobia and Coverdale repeatedly allude to a time when their connection to Blithedale may be over. Zenobia takes it upon herself to lecture and educate Priscilla for the future. “Ever day, I shall give you a lecture, a quarter-of-an-hour in length, on the morals, manners, and proprieties of social life. When our pastoral shall be quite played out, Priscilla, my worldly wisdom may stand you in good stead” (95). Eventually she foresees them having to go back to the real world. Coverdale predicts the later failing of their Arcadian ideals when he laments, “…and if all went to rack with the crumbling embers, and have never since arisen out of the ashes — let us take to ourselves no shame. In my own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better of the world’s improvability than it deserved” (51).

Hollingsworth sees Blithedale as a foundation for his own ruthless ambitions in creating a colony for the reformation of criminals. “…Hollingsworth held it as his choice (and he did so choose) to obtain possession of the very ground on which we had planted our Community, and which had not been irrevocably ours, by purchase. It was the foundation that he desired. Our beginnings might readily be adapted to his great end” (134).

The only character of the four that seems to be truly committed to her time at Blithedale is Priscilla who flowers under the care and attention she receives there. When questioned about her happiness at Blithedale, Priscilla responds “But this I am sure of — that it is a world where everybody is kind to me, and where I love everybody” (93). She cannot foresee a time when she will no longer be there. Priscilla is the only character that is truly committed to Blithedale. She also doesn’t have the option of going back to some higher station in life if the experiment fails. She is the most invested. The other three characters all see the experiment as a pleasant diversion from their real lives or as a means to furthering their personal ambitions. It is this inability to truly invest in the reality of this utopian experiment and the pursuit of self-interest that ultimately destroys them.

Since reading The Blithedale Romance I have gone back to my early interviews and sources about Home and discovered a number of references to Brook Farm. In articles dating from the late 19th century, Home was referred to as the “Brook Farm of the West.” These remarks lend insight into the texture and aspirations of both locations. Brook Farm is commonly categorized as a transcendentalist project and an outgrowth of Unitarian ideals. Home on the other hand was obsessed with the notion of Individual Liberty and was more atheist or humanist in nature, classified as a collective anarchist individualist community. The reality was that although fifty years separated their founding, the patterns of daily life and the texture of their existence were remarkably similar. Each embraced progressive ideals as a unifying principal to organize their community and suffered between this pull between individual and collective good. Having access to this type of period material is already proving to be a great resource as I conceptualize certain elements of my research