The Blithedale Romance

The novel never reveals the real name of the strong, vibrant, and engaging Zenobia. One of the founding members of Blithedale, she’s dedicated to women’s rights and the utopian vision. She was born to the wealthy Fauntleroy and raised by her uncle after her mother’s death and her father’s fall from grace. Left with a sizeable inheritance upon her uncle’s death, Zenobia’s youth remains a mystery, although rumors circulated about her secret marriage to an “unprincipled young man” (189). The half-sister of Priscilla, Zenobia finds her feminist principles and morals challenged by her attraction to Hollingsworth. After learning that her father still lives, losing her inheritance, and suffering Hollingsworth’s rejection, Zenobia dies by suicide, drowning herself.

Often believed to have been modeled on the early feminist Margaret Fuller, Zenobia supports women’s rights and frequently expresses her concerns about the position of women in 19th-century America. When Coverdale first meets her, Zenobia states her hope that “it may be that some of us, who wear the petticoat, will go afield,” explaining that some women might find the domestic sphere too confining (16). She also laments that most women aren’t happy because they quickly discover “that fate has assigned [the woman] but one single event, which she must contrive to make the substance of her whole life” (60). Despite her feminist beliefs, however, Zenobia comes to love Hollingsworth, a man whose view of women runs counter to hers.

Zenobia’s attraction to Hollingsworth, which Coverdale believes stems from her sexual and passionate nature, leads her to a fateful decision. Even after Hollingsworth rejects her, Zenobia defends him, telling Coverdale he shouldn’t presume “to estimate a great man like Hollingsworth” (225). In short, Zenobia, despite her disagreement with Hollingsworth’s views and the pain caused by his rejection, viewed Hollingsworth as someone with a vision, despite his selfishness. In the end, she blames herself and her passion for her heartbreak. Her death by suicide at the end of the novel becomes a symbol of the failure of Blithedale itself, which failed to live up to the moral imperatives of its founding.

Hawthorne uses Zenobia not only to show the flaws inherent in passion untempered by reason but also to highlight the recurring theme of the veil. The pseudonym Zenobia “represent[s] the Oriental Princess” (213). Coverdale recognizes as this pseudonym “as sort of mask in which she comes before the world […] a contrivance, in short, like the white drapery of the Veiled Lady” (8).

Zenobia’s younger half-sister and Moodie’s daughter after his fall from prestige, Priscilla is spirited away to Blithedale to save her from Westervelt’s machinations. Formerly exhibited by Westervelt as the Veiled Lady, Priscilla sews silken purses. Her past remains a mystery until about halfway through the novel, and her exploitation by Westervelt, while unspecified, indicates that he emotionally and possibly sexually abused her.

Priscilla is a melancholy and sickly figure when she first enters Blithedale. A counterpoint to her more exotic and voluptuous sister, Zenobia, Priscilla is pale and delicate, a “shadowy snow-maiden” (33). Initially meek and nervous, Priscilla blossoms at Blithedale, exhibiting a wildness that shocks Coverdale. Her obvious worship of Zenobia stems from her hope that the two will bond as sisters, but despite Priscilla’s obsession with her elder sister, the two become competitors for Hollingsworth’s heart.

Priscilla’s position as the Veiled Lady, “a phenomenon in the mesmeric line” (5), comments on the “new science” of Hawthorne’s age as well as women’s positions in these emerging ideologies. Women’s rights, Transcendentalism, and other progressive movements gained followers during this time, alongside mesmerism and other spiritualist beliefs. Priscilla enters the public sphere as an entertainer—but anonymously, as a woman covered by a veil. Controlled by a man and effectively erased as a public figure due to her veil, Priscilla represents the spiritual aspects of womanhood, in contrast to her sister, who represents the physical and public-facing woman.

A blacksmith, Hollingsworth joins the community at Blithedale shortly after Coverdale, bringing Priscilla with him. He’s a large and masculine man, with a “great shaggy head” and features that “seemed to have been hammered out of iron” (28). His reason for joining the community stems from his hope that he can convince some of his fellow residents to support his scheme to build a rehabilitation center for criminals on the property.

Charismatic and focused on his dream, Hollingsworth exhibits tender qualities as well as monomania. During Coverdale’s illness, he nurses the young poet with “more than brotherly attendance,” and he rescues Priscilla from the control of the magician, Westervelt (41). Nevertheless, his single-minded focus on his own goal blinds Hollingsworth to the needs of others. Both Priscilla and Zenobia fall for him, partly because of his passion and charm, although the community believes that he intends to build a cottage and live with Zenobia. In the end, however, he rejects Zenobia when she loses her fortune and marries Priscilla for her money. Zenobia derides him as “a cold, heartless, self-beginning and self-ending piece of mechanism” (218) and dies by suicide out of grief over his betrayal.

Hollingsworth becomes a shadow of his former self. Haunted by the awful fact of Zenobia’s death and the guilt he feels because of it, Hollingsworth never completes his project. His storyline, therefore, shows the dangers inherent in the more radical reformers of Hawthorne’s day. He not only undermines Blithedale’s socialist experiment but also uses his own allure to further his own ends, inadvertently destroying the lives of those he befriends.