Review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Blithedale Romance'

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American writer in the 1800s. He had many works of Romanticism, most being inspired by Puritan New England. One of these is The Scarlet Letter, which he wrote based on the Puritan era. Puritans had a series of beliefs including: the will of God explains all natural phenomena, God chooses who becomes one of the elect, and ministers and church members control and made up the government. Hawthorn does include examples of Romanticism as the story goes on, but this novel focuses more on the Puritan lifestyle throughout the timeline of the story. Hawthorne also includes a bit of sarcasm when mentioning the Puritan’s beliefs.

If the townspeople as a collective could be considered a ‘character,’ taking into account that they many of the mentioned individuals share the same characteristics, aside from the minister and his wife, then there are Romantic characters aside from the main ones in Hawthorne’s story. When the villagers first see the minister’s veil, one exclaims that “‘[Their] parson has gone mad,’” without taking a moment to consider any of the minister’s

The Blithedale Romance, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a story of a twisted utopia. This perfect world is twisted in that the roles of gender have a traditional utopian representation, only with a more contemporary take. Of course, this is interesting because this book was written and published in the 19th century when such ideas were beginning to establish a form for the genre of writing. Hawthorne combines fantasy, philosophy, mystery, gothic, and even [what would be called today] science fiction. This novel illustrates the early break from even fresh ideas. The writing style allows for the "genderizing degenderizing" affect as well as nature of the self.

The Romantic Period served as a breeding ground for some of America's most extraordinary authors.  Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are just some of the names that graced this Golden Era of American literature.  Great as they were, these men still lacked a significant amount of originality.  Relating their themes and structures results in little to no variation.  One author, though born into the era of Romanticism dared to expand the possibilities nineteenth - century literature had to offer.  Through works such as "Young Goodman Brown," "The Minister's Black Veil," and "The Birthmark," Nathaniel Hawthorne incorporated Romanticism into his own style.  Including ordinary men,

     In Hawthorne's revered novel The Scarlet Letter, the use of Romanticism plays an important role in the development of his characters. He effectively demonstrates individualism in Hester to further our understanding of the difficulties of living in the stern, joyless world of Puritan New England.  It is all gloom and doom.  If the sun ever shines, one could hardly notice.  The entire place seems to be shrouded in black.  The people of this society were stern, and repressed natural human impulses and emotions than any society before or since.  But for this reason specifically, emotions began bubbling and eventually boiled over, passions a novelist

Nathaniel Hawthorne gives his own definition of romanticism in the preface to The House of Seven Gables. According to Hawthorne, the writer of a romance may "claim a certain latitude" and may "deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture," as long as he does not "swerve aside from the truth of the human heart." The writer of a romance "will be wise...to mingle the Marvelous" as long as he does it to a "slight," however if he "disregards this caution," he will not be committing "a literary crime" (Hawthorne, House of Seven Gables, preface). Nathaniel Hawthorne consistently stays true to his standards of romanticism. The application of these standards

He explains that the novelist is limited to “a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man’s experience,” while the romancer can represent “the truth of the human heart…under circumstances, to a great extent, of [his] own choosing or creation” (Hawthorne qtd. in Bell 31) . These ideas began in “The Custom House” preface where Hawthorne continued to explain these thoughts as the romancer who could take license of a fictional reality. He wrote American literature in a nation that existed without a definite literary style, and created a society outside of conventional public

American literature begins with the Romantic era. In this era, authors begin to focus on other aspects of life besides politics. Romanticism values intuition over reason, believes imagination could discover truths the rational mind could not, and contemplates nature’s beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development. Dark romanticism is a subgenre that has a dark view of human life. The most famous Dark Romantic writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, emphasizes human proneness to sin and self-destruction, uses symbols that are considered dark, and believes that evil can overtake good. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne employs elements of Romanticism and symbolism to communicate the idea that sin and guilt have psychological effects which can turn into physical and mental manifestations.

“The more extreme and sentimental postures of courtly love do not appetite in the Scarlet Letter since the setting is in the 19th century. The quote outlines the story to being associated with Dark Romanticism rather than traditional romance novels. This is because of the fact that the characters in this novel are not cliché and the concept of dark romanticism that revolves around the story. Furthermore, in the article it emphasizes that Hawthorne abstains from romance as the time period contrasts the jolly matters of life. The Scarlet Letter will always be interpreted as a gothic romance as deaths are the result of what happens when two people sinfully express their love in manners that goes against what is set according to the Puritan rule.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance and Maria Susanna Cummins’ The Lamplighter are vastly different books. While originally published within two years of each other, both authors approached their writing through distinctive practices. Hawthorne failed to show development in the majority of his characters in his romance, while Cummins’ sentimental novel is heavily loaded with positive character growth. After reading The Blithedale Romance and The Lamplighter, one of the main differences noted is how the development of the characters, specifically female, was addressed within the novels.

This emphasis to various emotions, almost blurring the intellectual aspect of the text, is another characteristic of Romantic literature, not only of England, but of continental Europe as well. The whole text, instead of just

However, while Poe was deeply rooted in his dark romantic beliefs, Hawthorne came about only after experiencing for himself the pitfalls of reform. He wrote The Blithedale Romance, a satirical romantic fiction, based on his recollections of experiences he had after living at Brook Farm, a short-lived utopian community based on extrapolation of transcendental ideas. While initially excited for the possibilities of Transcendentalist reform, by the end of his time at Brook Farm, Hawthorne was ultimately disappointed. He grew to dislike Transcendentalism after living there, and criticized the

Contemporary literary theory has thoroughly debunked the traditional view of the artist as a divinely inspired, completely original and creative individual. This view has been replaced with the more apt view of the author as a product of his or her environment and the existing discourses of the society in which he or she lives. In this new attitude toward the writer as a product of society, the author is considered, according to Dr. James E. Porter, as somewhat of a quiltmaker who takes various traces of the existing cultural intertext (the collected writing and debate of a society) and combines them in new ways to create new discourse (34). Differences in these new discourses of various

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance, rather than being considered a novel, should be considered with the distinction of a romance. The beginnings of the book are heavily laden with symbols and allusions to the supernatural along with romantic interests, both characteristic of a romance.

America’s inception stemmed from the desire to create a society which differed from those before it. By taking the best pieces of previous civilizations, the founding fathers strived to create a perfectly formed society based on equality, a balance of power, and the independence of man to pursue their own dreams. Literature of this period and more specifically the 19th century often deals with experimentations on this very basis for society. Does one favor the individual over the community or ignore the personal desires of the individual in favor of a collective mindset? Experimenting with the makings of a utopia, defined by Merriam-Webster as, “a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions” creates a serious question on the plausibility of a perfect society. Dealing with this very quandary first hand, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance is an experimentation on forming a perfect utopia. Within the novel, the desires of the individual are squandered in favor of the collective. In reading Hawthorne, one gets the sense that the world is just out of reach for him. Attaching a mysticism to everything detaches the characters from any sense of reality, meaning that any experiment they set out on should be met with suspicion. Whereas in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Thoreau places the individual on a higher plane than the community. Going into the woods, Thoreau detaches himself from society in a far different manner than Hawthorne, with