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The Blithedale Romance (Penguin Classics)
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Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Publisher: Penguin Classics
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Our Price: $8.00
You Save: $ 2.00 ( 20% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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The Blithedale Romance (Penguin Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.3
EAN: 9780140390285
ISBN: 0140390286
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 304
Publication Date: 1983-08-25
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.3
EAN: 9780140390285
ISBN: 0140390286
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 304
Publication Date: 1983-08-25
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Editorial Review of The Blithedale Romance (Penguin Classics)
1894. Hawthorne, who, like Edgar Allan Poe, took a dark view of human nature, was a central figure in the American Renaissance. His best-known works include The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. Renouncing the city for a pastoral life, a group of utopians set out to reform a dissipated America. But the group is a powerful mix of competing ambitions and its idealism finds little satisfaction in farmwork. Instead, of changing the world, the members of the Blithedale community individually pursue egotistical paths that ultimately lead to tragedy. Hawthorne's tale both mourns and satirizes a rural idyll not unlike that of nineteenth-century America at large. The Blithedale Romance shadows the Brook Farm, in Roxbury, which was occupied and cultivated by a company of socialists. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.
Customer Reviews of The Blithedale Romance (Penguin Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Cloverdale's Tale
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Much More Than Your Typical Romance
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Light and shadow
Review: The narrator, a poet, Miles Coverdale, describes Zenobia's bloom as health and vigor. It is determined that they, the community members, would not make good market gardeners and that they should look into the raising of pigs.
Hollingsworth arrives with Priscilla who seeks shelter to be in Zenobia's company. She is a thin pale thing, and her origins are not known. Hollingsworth is not really interested in socialism, he is interested in the reformation of criminals.
A committee is formed to name the community and Blithedale is the result. Hollingsworth joins the group because its members are estranging themselves from the world. Coverdale feels that the man, Hollingsworth, is fast going mad. May Day is to be a movable festival. Coverdale discovers that neither he nor Robert Burns is able to combine farming and poetry.
A stranger, Westevelt, wants to meet with Zenobia privately. It seems that she has another name. Miles Coverdale dislikes the stranger who, among other things, refers to the utopian experiment mockingly. Coverdale overhears Zenobia and Westervelt discussing Priscilla. Zernobia tells the story of the Veiled Lady and throws a piece of gauze over Priscilla who faints.
One has to understand here the context of Hawthorne's writing, his immersion in literature--gothicism, orientalism, romanticism, transcendentalism, even melodrama. Too, the novel is titled a romance. Hawthornes's themes and concerns included issues of identity, claustrophobia, detrimental influence, whiteness, purity.
The community is planning to erect a Philanstery Coverdale relates. The land has not yet been acquired in fee and Hollingswoth wants to take over the site for his project involving the reforming of the wicked. Hollingsworth invites Coverdale to join his enterprise. Miles learns that Zenobia is to be part of the plan. He decides to leave Blithedale. Emotions are fraught. Zenobia says she regrets not taking Coverdale into her confidence.
Situated at a hotel in town, Miles sees Westervelt, Zenobia, and Priscilla. Westervelt has cat-like circumspection and detects Miles's presence. He comes to see that his shadowing of Zenobia at her house in town is absurd and he goes to the house to present himself.
Later, approaching Blithedale again, he feels simultaneously dread and gaiety. A masque is taking place in the woods. Zenobia charges Hollingsworth with self-deception. She claims she is sick of playing at philanthropy and progress. It seems that Hollingsworth has cast her aside. She dies by drowning and Miles Coverdale is led to forgive Hollingswoth for hgis role in the catastrophe. In the end MIles Coverdale confesses to the reader that he loves Zenobia's sister, Priscilla.
This is, of course, famously based upon the experiences of the New Englanders at Brook Farm, a short-lived utopian community. Notwithstanding the early American notion, particularly prevalent in New England, of the farmer-poet, in truth it is difficult to convert intellectuals into effective day laborers.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Blithedale Romance
Review:
Isolation and a refusal to see things straight-on are the main themes of this mildly successful novel by Hawthorne. Narrated by Miles Coverdale who comes to the Utopian community of Blithedale for his health (Hawthorne had spent some time at Brook Farm, a communal farm, on which Blithedale is based), we encounter Hollingsworth, who is interested in prison reform, and who uses the wealthy and exotic Zenobia for his own selfish purposes; she drowns herself when Hollingworth shows a romantic interest in Priscilla, Zenobia's half-sister. Priscilla is a true innocent, who is under the influence of the evil mesmerist, Westervelt.
Coverdale is always on the fringe of what's going on, but never a direct participant. He eavesdrops and spies from windows (once even while hiding in a tree), and his inability to take part in the life around him is Hawthorne's central figure of isolation. Even at the end he declares his love for Priscilla - only after she has married Hollingsworth. Hollingsworth, too, spends much of the novel in isolation, pursuing his dream of prison reform; when he gives it up it destroys Zenobia (who has been living in a romantic fantasy of her own), but redeems himself and Priscilla. While Hawthorne deals credibly with the reality vs. fantasy theme of the characters, the plot is somewhat draggy, as is the dialogue. Not among the very best of Hawthorne's works.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Hawthorne's Sleeper
Review: 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.
Review Summary: Cloverdale's Tale
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Much More Than Your Typical Romance
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Light and shadow
Review: The narrator, a poet, Miles Coverdale, describes Zenobia's bloom as health and vigor. It is determined that they, the community members, would not make good market gardeners and that they should look into the raising of pigs.
Hollingsworth arrives with Priscilla who seeks shelter to be in Zenobia's company. She is a thin pale thing, and her origins are not known. Hollingsworth is not really interested in socialism, he is interested in the reformation of criminals.
A committee is formed to name the community and Blithedale is the result. Hollingsworth joins the group because its members are estranging themselves from the world. Coverdale feels that the man, Hollingsworth, is fast going mad. May Day is to be a movable festival. Coverdale discovers that neither he nor Robert Burns is able to combine farming and poetry.
A stranger, Westevelt, wants to meet with Zenobia privately. It seems that she has another name. Miles Coverdale dislikes the stranger who, among other things, refers to the utopian experiment mockingly. Coverdale overhears Zenobia and Westervelt discussing Priscilla. Zernobia tells the story of the Veiled Lady and throws a piece of gauze over Priscilla who faints.
One has to understand here the context of Hawthorne's writing, his immersion in literature--gothicism, orientalism, romanticism, transcendentalism, even melodrama. Too, the novel is titled a romance. Hawthornes's themes and concerns included issues of identity, claustrophobia, detrimental influence, whiteness, purity.
The community is planning to erect a Philanstery Coverdale relates. The land has not yet been acquired in fee and Hollingswoth wants to take over the site for his project involving the reforming of the wicked. Hollingsworth invites Coverdale to join his enterprise. Miles learns that Zenobia is to be part of the plan. He decides to leave Blithedale. Emotions are fraught. Zenobia says she regrets not taking Coverdale into her confidence.
Situated at a hotel in town, Miles sees Westervelt, Zenobia, and Priscilla. Westervelt has cat-like circumspection and detects Miles's presence. He comes to see that his shadowing of Zenobia at her house in town is absurd and he goes to the house to present himself.
Later, approaching Blithedale again, he feels simultaneously dread and gaiety. A masque is taking place in the woods. Zenobia charges Hollingsworth with self-deception. She claims she is sick of playing at philanthropy and progress. It seems that Hollingsworth has cast her aside. She dies by drowning and Miles Coverdale is led to forgive Hollingswoth for hgis role in the catastrophe. In the end MIles Coverdale confesses to the reader that he loves Zenobia's sister, Priscilla.
This is, of course, famously based upon the experiences of the New Englanders at Brook Farm, a short-lived utopian community. Notwithstanding the early American notion, particularly prevalent in New England, of the farmer-poet, in truth it is difficult to convert intellectuals into effective day laborers.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Blithedale Romance
Review:
Isolation and a refusal to see things straight-on are the main themes of this mildly successful novel by Hawthorne. Narrated by Miles Coverdale who comes to the Utopian community of Blithedale for his health (Hawthorne had spent some time at Brook Farm, a communal farm, on which Blithedale is based), we encounter Hollingsworth, who is interested in prison reform, and who uses the wealthy and exotic Zenobia for his own selfish purposes; she drowns herself when Hollingworth shows a romantic interest in Priscilla, Zenobia's half-sister. Priscilla is a true innocent, who is under the influence of the evil mesmerist, Westervelt.
Coverdale is always on the fringe of what's going on, but never a direct participant. He eavesdrops and spies from windows (once even while hiding in a tree), and his inability to take part in the life around him is Hawthorne's central figure of isolation. Even at the end he declares his love for Priscilla - only after she has married Hollingsworth. Hollingsworth, too, spends much of the novel in isolation, pursuing his dream of prison reform; when he gives it up it destroys Zenobia (who has been living in a romantic fantasy of her own), but redeems himself and Priscilla. While Hawthorne deals credibly with the reality vs. fantasy theme of the characters, the plot is somewhat draggy, as is the dialogue. Not among the very best of Hawthorne's works.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Hawthorne's Sleeper
Review: 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.