The Blithedale Romance (The Penguin American Library) - Softcover

Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140390286 ISBN 13: 9780140390285

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 1983

Synopsis

A superb depiction of a utopian community that cannot survive the individual passions of its members. In language that is suggestive and often erotic, Nathaniel Hawthorne tells a tale of failed possibilities and multiple personal betrayals as he explores the contrasts between what his characters espouse and what they actually experience in an 'ideal' community. A theme of unrealized sexual possibilities serves as a counterpoint to the other failures at Blithedale: class and sex distinctions are not eradicated, and communal work on the farm proves personally unrewarding and economically disastrous. Based in part on Hawthorne's own experiences at Brook Farm, an experimental socialist community, The Blithedale Romance is especially timely in light of renewed interest in self-sufficient and other cooperative societies.

About this title

Review:

"Hawthorne, in putting this novel together, was engaged in the most serious literary enterprise of his career."
--Louis Auchincloss

From the Back Cover:

A group of Utopians, dispirited by a mid-nineteenth-century America they view as dissolute, takes to the pastoral life, but finds little satisfaction in its socialist living experiments. Little by little, the members' hypocrisies, contradictions, and ideological and economic paradoxes are exposed--even as they attempt to create the ideal community.
Among the group are Hollingsworth, an idealistic but egotistical reformer; Zenobia, an ardent feminist and exotic beauty; Priscilla, her frail and mysterious sister; Old Moodie, the sisters' manipulative father; Westervelt, a demonic mesmerist; and Miles Coverdale, whose narrative of the Blithedale experiment reveals the sexist and classist oppression permeating the Utopian group.
First published in 1852, The Blithedale Romance was based in part on Hawthorne's disillusioning experiences with the Brook Farm experimental community near Boston in 1841. An engrossing novel about love, idealism, and politics tragically gone amiss, this captivating work bristles with the author's perceptive wit and intelligence.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1983
• ISBN 10: 0140390286
• ISBN 13: 9780140390285
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304