The Blithedale Romance

I fell in love with Hawthorne's books and short stories when I was in junior high school. Twenty years later he continues to be on my list of top ten favorites. His novels strike me as incredibly modern and relevant to modern day life. The Blithedale Romance has many elements in common with the much sillier novel Tommy's Tale by Alan Cumming. The events at Blithedale (a commune in the woods) are laid out in chronological order by Miles Coverdale who proves to be as unreliable a narrator as Tommy. Cloverdale's omissions are a result of Puritan embarrassment but the sexual tension is hovering just below the surface of his euphemisms. Like Tommy who lives in a flat with Sadie, Bobby and Charlie, Cloverdale moves into Blithedale to live with two women (Zenobia, Priscilla) and a man, Hollingsworth. Unlike Tommy's flat, the two men and women pair up in more conventional ways but Cloverdale hints that the four are more open with their adult desires than what Cloverdale feels is proper. Nonetheless, he is a willing participant. Blithedale, though, ends up being a failed experiment. Puritan mores and hot tempers ultimately brings the downfall of the commune and Zenobia, the liberated modern woman, pays the ultimate price. If you like character driven tragedies like Hamlet, I highly recommend The Blithedale Romance.

I often go to the public library on Saturdays and select an armful of books to take home. I check out so many because I know that only one or two of them will strike my fancy. This particular time I went through my stack of novels, reading the first 50 or so pages, and found all of them wanting--except for the last one in the pile: The Blythedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's funny how some reviewers insisted that the first few chapters of this novel were "slow going." It's all in what you're looking for, I suppose. Like most 19th century novels, the plot is developed in its own time. Since this was before movies were around, more scene descriptions and character development was necessary. I was immediately enchanted with this tale of a group of intellectuals, or would-be intellectuals, who decided to give Utopia another chance. I found the narrator, Miles Coverdale, charming and witty and all the characters interesting and complex. This kind of surprised me, because I read the book years ago and liked it, but felt that now I might have outgrown it. Not so. After House of the Seven Gables, it's my favorite Hawthorne.

Lacking perhaps the ambitious design of other Hawthorne novels, Blithdale makes up for it in first-person freshness. It's witty and straight, take it as you will. And yes, somewhat wickedly tongue in cheek in its engagement with a 19th century American experiment in utopia on earth. Some reviews on this site are a sad testament to what a new generation has been subjected to by way of heavily idealized and politically ladened literary theory. The subtleties are all on the page but many students lately have apparently been prevented from seeing them by the standard goggles forced on their heads. "Depressing," "cynical" etc are odd ways to approach a text -- I take it the reviewers were disturbed by the Grand Canyon between what was on the page and what was in their teachers' heads and expectations. Taken as a sort of cry of pain (an honest emotional response anyway) I would urge these young readers to try again. Truth is, utopia has always been the lodestar of the American mind -- inseperable from what brought many here in the first place, from the Declaration and Constitution, from the competing utopias of the civil war, to the published justifications of every one of our wars since. So what if Hawthorne didn't completely succeeed? Who else among our major writers so directly flew right to the heart of things, like a bee to honey? This is the story of Miles Coverdale, a self-satisfied reformer of his time, a sort of proto-yuppie, comes to Blithedale for reasons as vague as his own dense and unexamined mind. He finds other high minded individuals mouthing platitudes but in full rutting behavior, as would befit dueling moose in the Yellowstone -- mainly over the brazen Zenobia. Why isn't everyone laughing yet? No, of course D.H. Lawrence didn't think it was funny. But yes, all of these admirable characters have a lot to say about social advancement, womens' freedom, etc -- but hasn't anyone told the students of today that serious literature requires we look behind, nay beneath our own self-satisfied justifications? Apparently training in critical thinking has disappeared, replaced with acceptance of the jingoism of all-pervasive advertising: one is what one says one is, since one has the right to say it and thereby define oneself, end of story. But there's an apple at the end, folks, the punch line, "I was in love with . . . Priscilla . . . !" Thus the ironic punchline to one of the funniest things I ever read in my life.

This is not only a book with which any Hawthorne fan should be familiar, it is a necessity to anyone who is studying the Romantic Tradition. This text is an elegant commentary on the ideals that the Romantics held dear, such as the authenticity of a life close to the earth, the superiority of existence outside of common society rather than within it, and our innate ability, with enough well-directed effort, to transcend our own humanity. Like a breath of fresh air after Wordsworth, Thoreau, Keats, and both Shelleys, Hawthorne's cynicism and pessimism on these topics shine clearly through this work. Though admittedly he has failed in his announced effort to make the text cheerful and lighthearted, this is not such a complete failure as one may initially suppose, when this novel is contrasted with his others. Much of the humor that is in the book is centered around the narrator, Coverdale, whose nature forces him to fit in with his surroundings in a way which is a bit askew, precipitating enjoyable scenes which the reader can appreciate, if he or she has refrained from judging this main character. The treasure in this book, however, is not mainly in its humor, but rather (for me at least - each person presumably takes from it something different) in the elegance with which so many universal truths are exposed (often only partially, so that the reader can feel a sense of triumph when they wholly uncover them) to our conscious awareness. As you have no doubt already surmised, I highly recommend this novel.

Hawthorne was able to work within a strict set of boundaries to create something of a social call to arms and equally,a strange, unwordly tale. The scenes in the forest are a clear antecedent to those writers in the 20th century working the magic realism vein. Above and beyond all of this though is the magnificent use of language to create atmosphere and brilliantly delineated characters. It's a gorgeous book ; the effect as rich as a Gauguin painting.