--The ending of the book is famous or infamous. To what extent does this "confession" change, alter or revise your understanding of the relations between the characters? Do you believe in it, or do you think it is 'made up' and, if made up, why?
--Zenobia's death: as a representative of women's rights issues, Zenobia has an ambiguous role here and her death is no less ambiguous. Is she a tragic figure, as Coverdale seems to imagine her, or a foolishly self-dramatizing one as Westervelt suggests? What do you make of her 'morals' (there seem to be more than one) for her life? What do you think Hawthorne is saying about women's rights through her?
--Priscilla and the Silvery Veil. Here, the allegorical story becomes real. What does its fulfillment in the confrontation at the Lyceum say about women and their relations to men and the world at large?
--Blithedale Romance is a text that engages with country, city and even suburban landscapes (the lyceum audience is described as suburban): what does it suggest about the relationship of landscape/setting and human behavior or human nature?
For me, Coverdale's confession came as a surprise only in the fact that Hawthorne found it necessary. The call for readers to "charitably suppose me to blush", which Millington refers to as inauthentic "melodramatic punctuation" (580) made me cringe, but then, so did many of Coverdale's over-the-top dramatic phrasings in the course of the novel.
ReplyDeleteI don't see the confession as false, but as merely unnecessary. In his close, persistent analysis of Priscilla, Zenobia, and Hollingsworth, Coverdale has shown signs of being in love with all three of them. In time, however, factors such as his disdain for Zenobia's cooking and his ideological falling out with Hollingsworth have distanced him from those two even as he has grown increasing awed by Priscilla.
I take his inaction and his later apparently blushing embarrassment partially as a matter of pride: when he first met Priscilla, she was nothing more than a pale seamstress. She grew into a beautiful and capable woman through the influence of others and was never close to him. Having watched that transformation, he still cannot help thinking of what she used to be and blushing to have fallen in love with someone of such origins. In traditional society, she was also of a lower class than Coverdale's, which may play into that sense of shame.
I think the confession does more than state the obvious in that it it shows how far from Blithedale ideals like equality even Coverdale, who claims to honor them, remains. It doesn't change my understanding of the relations between characters, but I think it places Blithedale firmly in the realm of a dangerous summer fling as far as Coverdale is concerned. After everything serious he has felt and expressed, I think he intends to trivialize it all a bit, so that readers may go back and see it all in the light of a foolish love. Why Hawthorne should want that is another issue.
Personally, as the novel came to its end, I began to trust Coverdale’s narration less and less. His obvious jealousy of Hollingsworth had always made his analysis of events somewhat dubious, but towards the end, when Zenobia started to describe Coverdale as the “worthier conquest” (227), he became all the more suspect. Zenobia hadn’t really shown any signs of being seriously attracted to Coverdale in the past, and so this detail almost came across like the scene Coverdale wished might have occurred. And since the story must be completely viewed through Coverdale’s perception, the reader has absolutely no choice but to accept his version of events as being true.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet it is almost because I so suspected Coverdale’s actions that I do believe his final statement, that he was in love with Priscilla. The confession, located at the very end of the book, reads almost like a confession that he hasn’t been entirely truthful in his narrative. As Coverdale says, the information really does “throw a gleam of light over [his] behavior” (247), as it explains his jealousy and his true reasons for leaving Blithedale. It also explains his almost unnatural interest in Priscilla and Zenobia’s histories.
What strikes me as interesting however is that Coverdale asserts that this information is “essential to the full understanding of [his] story” (247), and I cannot think how it can be. Certainly the information is interesting, as it does explain Coverdale’s actions and makes the reader question his harsh evaluation of Hollingsworth. But, as Coverdale said, he was “a poor and dim figure in [his] own narrative, establishing no separate interest” (245). The knowledge that Coverdale loved Priscilla didn’t really dramatically alter my perception of any of the characters, or the moral that Coverdale concludes with against Philanthropy. And because Coverdale was such a minor character within his own narrative, his actions did not really need explanation. His love for Priscilla is hardly more satisfying a reason for his voyeurism than the notion that he was simply interested. Coverdale almost seems to be taking a piece of really minor information (which the reader may have guessed anyway) and claiming that it is important.
The overly forced manner in which Coverdale reveals the information adds to the impression that he is, for some reason, attempting to make a minor piece of personal information the great secret in the novel. His claim that he might blush and the reluctant dashes he employs in his actual confession make it appear as if he is giving the information against his will. But in truth, it has been several years since any of these events took place. What reason would he have to hide the information at this stage in his life?
While I do believe Coverdale’s claims that he was in love with Priscilla, I do think that it is interesting that he portrays the information in what seems to me to be a false manner. Clearly the information is not as important as Coverdale claims it is, and so the narrative seems to conclude oddly with Coverdale breaking his previous style of narration to place his own personal drama above that of the other characters which previously held his interest.
Zenobia was a standout irritating character in a story about irritating characters. If she is supposed to be a champion of women’s rights, or a figure for the women’s movement, she is a luke-warm example of the former, and not a very encouraging portrait of the latter. In the beginning of the story, when we are first introduced to Z, she seems to be the embodiment of domesticity. When discussing the roles of the participants (guests, tenants, comuners, I never really could get a strong impression of the goals of the experiment) Zenobia “we women will take the domestic and indoor part of the business, as a matter of course. To bake, to boil, to roast…” (16) This hardly seems like the voice of a woman trying to step outside of her prescribed gender role. Quite the opposite, she seems to be imposing gender normalcy. Then, thirty pages later it is revealed that “Nature certainly never intended Zenobia for a cook” (48). Maybe this is supposed to some sort of statement about why prescribed gender roles don’t help society, but it just seemed like convolutions of character that are rampant in the book. Zenobia embarks on this communal life to expand her options, then just slips into the roles she could have taken on in normal society, but no, she couldn’t do that because she is ill suited for those roles due to her lack of proficiency. Then there is the flower. Oh, that damn flower. It seemed to enter the scenes long before Zenobia did, and of course since the narrator is a poet the flower has to be commented on at length, and often. Perhaps I’m cynical, but it has got to be difficult to take a suffragette complaining about a lack of social options seriously who has nestled the ultimate symbol of delicate femininity into her hair (141 esp.) Furthering this is the fact that it is a very rare and exotic flower that has to be hot-housed, cultivated and harvested daily. This seems like a terrible waste of time and effort on a farm, and only shows how ill-suited this endeavor was for so many of the participants. Finally, Zenobia seems to define herself only through her relationships with men. During her courtship with Hollingsworth she seems happy as a clam, but as soon as his love evaporates (or rather his intentions become obvious) she kills herself. If she is a tragic figure, it is because of her foolishly self-dramatizing nature, not because of the invisible hands of fate conspiring against her. In a book full of unsympathetic characters (save Silas, I really felt bad for his situation) she seemed to be the standout. Her bulleted points would be that she: exhibits cruelty (initial meeting with Priscilla), is a blowhard/hypocrite (women’s rights), and is belligerently oblivious to someone taking advantage of her, in spite of being warned (Hollingsworth/Coverdale).
ReplyDeleteI cannot be sure what Hawthorne is trying to say about women’s rights here. Without the back-story that he gives Zenobia, I would think that he was just saying that the women’s rights movement is sophomoric. This is due to a lack of leadership and of cohesive qualities with which people can cling to that would facilitate the national attention it would need to gain any momentum. But given that Zenobia was raised by men, it complicates that read (though it does explain her domestic ineptitude). Since Zenobia was the product of an untraditional childhood that did not include a mother, it is just as easy to explain her desire for “rights” to her family life as it is to injustices she has seen in the world as it is the fact that she had such a strong masculine presence in her youth and thus craved the sort of social outlets she was familiar with. It is just impossible to say.
I wasn’t quite sure how to react at first upon learning of his long endured love for Priscilla. I guess I can believe in it, for Priscilla’s capacity to love is stressed in the novel by Mr. Moodie. Also, Coverdale’s voyeuristic tendencies complement the idea that Priscilla is the mysterious Veiled Lady, so it makes sense that he would be drawn to her. What I have an issue with, however, is Coverdale’s assessment that the reason he lost his passion is because of his love for Priscilla. Throughout the novel Coverdale takes an active role as a voyeur. The reader learns of the other characters’ interactions primarily through his incessant spying and eavesdropping. Also, he hardly writes any poetry while inhabiting Blithedale; yet, he suggests that it is only after leaving Blithedale that he has decided to give up poetry, since his life lacks a purpose. I agree with Millington’s suggestion that Coverdale’s character is defined through his absence of self and the refuge he seeks through vicariousness. Thus, I don’t believe Priscilla has anything to do with the structure of his directionless life.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn’t reshape my feelings of the characters’ relationships or really of Blithedale at all. Coverdale admits in the last chapter that the experiment failed as a result of their “infidelity to its higher spirit.” He still believes (or at least tells the reader he believes) in the merits of an experiment like Blithedale. Yet, I thought the first blog post made an excellent point about Coverdale’s feelings towards equality. If readers attribute Priscilla’s lower class (in relation to Coverdale) as playing a role in Coverdale’s blushing embarrassment, then how can we trust his praise of the ideals of Blithedale? The same can be said for Hawthorne (which I guess makes sense, since critics often believe him to mostly resemble the Coverdale character). In his preface he tells readers that he did have Brook Farm in mind when writing The Blithedale Romance but goes on to say that he does not intend to prompt a conclusion about Socialism. Can readers trust this declaration? Zenobia’s tragic suicide can be interpreted as the climax event of the novel, for Coverdale leaves the farm within the week of her death. To me, it seemed as if Hawthorne’s suggestion of the flaws of utopian idealism permeated the novel from start to finish.