Engl. 368: The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I must admit, I was prejudiced against Hawthorne when I first got the list of books for Eng. 368. I read The Scarlet Letter in high school and hated it, so I feared the worst. "Oh well," I told myself, "at least it's not Moby Dick." So imagine my surprise when The Blithedale Romance turned out to have... a romance in it! (I find that you often can't trust the titles of these older books - for instance, Dante's Divine Comedy wasn't even a little bit funny.)

It actually had quite the love pentagon going on, with Coverdale loving first Zenobia (who loved Hollingsworth) and then Priscilla (who also loved Hollingsworth) and Hollingsworth who probably loved Zenobia best but picked Priscilla anyway, and there was voyeurism and a mysterious seer named the Veiled Lady and a suicide and was overall much better than I had been expecting.

It is interesting in this book that nearly all of the main characters are not only flawed but vastly selfish, with the exceptions being Priscilla (who embodied the ideal of the perfect woman at the time: quiet, pretty, and submissive) Silas Foster & Family: Rustic Farmers, and Moodie, who had already used up his selfishness in the past and is now just an alcoholic. Wait, no, I take that back. I just remembered that he buys his booze by selling the silk purses that Priscilla makes, and (I'm assuming) none of the money makes it back to her - not that she would take it, because she's so selfless.

Coverdale is, is of course, the first that springs to mind; this is mostly because he is the narrator and so we get to hear all of his superficiality straight from the horse's mouth. Hollingsworth is also obvious because he is at the apex of our little love pentagon, and ultimately he chooses the girl who is richer. Not to mention his constant sense of imperious self-righteousness throughout the book.

Zenobia, though, is an interesting case. She is described as being this exotic and unusual woman, a writer and campaigner for women's rights, free of thought and idea, and overall exactly the wrong sort of woman for her century. Personally, I disliked her from the start. She starts out appearing to be this lovely, magnanimous woman (Coverdale is falling all over himself for her at this point) but even through the strongly biased narration we begin to see a hard, bitter side of her. Throughout the book, even though Coverdale tries his best to portray her as a goddess among women, she shows this sharp side, mostly directed toward poor submissive Priscilla, who is obsessed with her. It all culminates with Zenobia, out of jealousy (i.e. selfishness), selling Priscilla out to the former life that she came to Blithedale to escape. Because of this Zenobia falls out of favor with the rest of the main characters - especially Hollingsworth - and SPOILER! she kills herself. Before she does the deed, though, she laments to Coverdale that there is no place in the world for a woman like her.

I don't buy it. As far as I am concerned, her suicide is her final act of selfishness. She is an independent woman, sure. She lives her life off the beaten path, okay. But should a man reject her, well then she just has to kill herself and make him live the rest of his life haunted by the fact that he caused her death. Sure, Hollingsworth is a jerk, too, but by the end of the book he is so broken by her final act against him that I feel sympathy for him and none for poor, tormented, selfish Zenobia.

I guess my question is this: was Zenobia bitter and selfish because she had no place in society, or did she have no place in society because her bitterness and selfishness drove everyone away?