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The unhumanizingimagination: Hawthorne'sThe Blithedale RomanceOrm ÖverlandPublished online: 21 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: Orm Överland (1974) The unhumanizing imagination:Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance , Studia Neophilologica, 46:2, 370-381,DOI: 10.1080/00393277408587595

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The Unhumanizing Imagination:Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance

In spite of the considerable body of criticism that has accrued, Natha-niel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance remains a tantalizing work. Inhis contribution to the Hawthorne Centenary Essays Robert C. Elliottclaims to speak for "most readers" when saying that it "suffers from aradical incoherence".1 A growing number of critics, however, have onvarying grounds insisted on the coherence and unity of The BlithedaleRomance. The most convincing readings are those that place MilesCoverdale and his role as narrator at the center of the novel. Among thefirst to interpret Blithedale in this light was Frederick Crews, whopublished "A New Reading of The Blithedale Romance" in 1957.2

Other critics, however, had had similar insights. Irving Howe, forinstance, published his essay on the novel (later included in his Politicsand the Novel) in 1955, and then observed that "everything is seen throughthe eyes of Coverdale . . . and so methodical is the evasiveness and mysti-fication with which he presents the action that one begins to suspect thebook is hampered less by literary clumsiness than by some psychologicalblock of which he is merely the symptom".3

Among the many critics who have written about Blithedale as a novelin the "tradition, continued by Henry James, of stories about artists andtheir art", are Rudolph von Abele, Millicent Bell, Frank Davidson,William Hedges, Daniel Hoffman, Terence Martin, Richard Poirier,Robert Stanton and Jac Tharpe.4 Although they all stress the central

1 (Columbus, Ohio, 1964), p. 113.2 American Literature, 29 (May 1957), 147-70.3 Politics and the Novel (Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian Books, 1957), p. 166.4 Abele, The Death of the Artist: A Study of Hawthorne's Disintegration (The

Hague, 1955); Bell, Hawthorne's View of the Artist (New York, 1962); Davidson,"Toward a Re-evaluation of The Blithedale Romance", The New England Quar-terly, 25 (September 1932), 374-83; Hedges, "Hawthorne's Blithedale: TheFunction of the Narrator", Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 14 (March i960), 303-16;Hoffman, Form and Fable in American Fiction (New York, 1961); Martin, Natha-niel Hawthorne (New York, 1965); Poirier, A World Elsewhere (London, 1967);Stanton, "The Trial of Nature: An Analysis of The Blithedale Romance", PMLA,76 (December 1961), 528-38; Tharpe, Nathaniel Hawthorne : Identity and Knowl-edge (Carbondale, Ill., 1967). The quotation is from Hoffman, p. 216.

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HAWTHORNE'S The Blithedale Romance 371

role of Coverdale as narrator, these critics may differ in their interpreta-tion of the novel. Some suggest, like Hyatt H. Waggoner, that "In creat-ing Coverdale, Hawthorne isolated and projected a part of himselfthat he disliked."1 It remained for Frederick Crews to develop thispsychological reading of Coverdale as Hawthorne's self-portrait in TheSins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes? Here Crews addsto his earlier analysis the view that Hawthorne in Blithedale (and otherworks) dramatized his own personal problems as man and artist. As aone-thesis book it runs the obvious danger of exaggerating some aspectsof Hawthorne's work and overlooking others, but Crew's psychoanalyticalstudy, as well as his earlier "New Reading", are invaluable for anyonewho wishes to set out on new voyages of discovery in still unchartedareas of The Blithedale Romance.

This essay will demonstrate how two of the prominent traits inMiles Coverdale's character, his reluctance to become involved in lifeand his corresponding urge to approach life with the cold, dissecting andanalytic intellect of the natural scientist, are brought out in formal patternsin the novel where Coverdale plays his role in three repeated movements,each involving one of the other three main characters: Priscilla, Zenobiaand Hollingsworth.

I

The central metaphor for Coverdale's reluctance to become involvedin life and to commit himself wholeheartedly to a cause or to otherhuman beings is "Zenobia's Legend", "The Silvery Veil". In Zenobia'sstory, told before the company at Blithedale, Theodore is a sceptic whoboasted that he could "find out the mystery of the Veiled Lady" (no).3

When he confronts the Veiled Lady in her private room and tells her hemust discover "who and what you are", she answers, "there is no waysave to lift my veil". There are, however, two alternative modes ofaction open to Theodore:

1 Hawthorne: A Critical Study, Revised Edition (Cambridge, Mass., 1963),p. 207. Compare Howe, p. 166: "Coverdale is a self-portrait of Hawthorne, buta highly distorted and mocking self-portrait, as if Hawthorne were trying toisolate and thereby exorcise everything within him that impedes full participationin life."

2 (New York, 1966).3 All page references are to Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance and

Fanshawe, Centenary edition, III (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press,1964).

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372 ORM OVERLAND

". . . before raising it, I entreat thee, in all maiden modesty, to bend for-ward, and impress a kiss, where my breath stirs the veil; and my virginlips shall come forward to meet thy lips; and from that instant, Theodore,thou shalt be mine, and I thine, with never more a veil between us! Andall the felicity of earth and of the future world shall be thine and minetogether. . . . If thou shrinkest from this, there is yet another way."

"And -what is that?" asked Theodore."Dost thou hesitate," said the Veiled Lady, "to pledge thyself to me, by

meeting these lips of mine, while the veil yet hides my face? Has not thyheart recognized me? Dost thou come hither, not in holy faith, nor with apure and generous purpose, but in scornful scepticism and idle curiosity?Still, thou mayst lift the veil! But from that instant, Theodore, I am doomedto be thy evil fate; nor wilt thou ever taste another breath of happiness!"("3)

Life, the mysterious lady would seem to warn Theodore, may be embracedin love, trust and daring and thus be lived to the full, or it may be studiedcoldly and without personal commitment "in scornful scepticism andidle curiosity". The consequence of the latter is a death in life.

But Theodore, we are told, "felt himself almost injured and insultedby the Veiled Lady's proposal that he should pledge himself, for life andeternity, to so questionable a creature as herself.... 'Excuse me, fair lady,'said Theodore—and I think he nearly burst into a laugh—'if I prefer tolift the veil first; and for this affair of the kiss, we may decide uponit, afterwards!' " But, as he had been warned, there could be no kissafterwards. Life can be lived or studied; the Veiled Lady's terms did notallow for any middle way. Theodore chose the latter and just as he"caught a glimpse of a pale, lovely face, beneath... the apparition vanish-ed" and he was alone. "His retribution was, to pine, forever and ever,for another sight of that dim, mournful face—which might have been hislife-long, household, fireside joy—to desire, and waste life in a feverishquest, and never meet it more!" (113-114)

At the end of his story Coverdale reflects on his lack of purpose whichhas rendered his "own life all an emptiness". His irony is perhaps tooheavy-handed when he adds: "I by no means wish to die. Yet, werethere any cause ... worth a sane man's dying for, and which my deathwould benefit, then—provided, however, the effort did not involve anunreasonable amount of trouble—methinks I might be bold to offer upmy life Farther than that, I should be loth to pledge myself." Finally,he reveals the reason for the emptiness of his life, his "one secret"

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HAWTHORNE'S The Blithedale Romance 373

hinted at several times in the course of the novel: his hopeless and un-remitted love for Priscilla (246-7). [My italics.]

Coverdale had begun his narrative by telling how he was accostedby Old Moodie "after attending the wonderful exhibition of the VeiledLady" (5). When Old Moodie suggests that he "might do me a verygreat favor", Coverdale responds "in a tone that must have expressed butlittle alacrity of beneficence, although I was ready to do the old man anyamount of kindness involving no special trouble to myself" (7). [My italics.]Mr Moodie does not press the matter further, but his words have whettedCoverdale's curiosity: "But what can this business be, Mr Moodie? Itbegins to interest me; especially since your hint that a lady's influencemight be found desirable. Come; I am really anxious to be of service toyou" (7). But it is too late. Moodie had come to ask Coverdale takeresponsibility for his daughter, Priscilla. Like Theodore, Coverdalepassed by the one opportunity he had to commit himself to the VeiledLady, alias Priscilla. She must be taken in faith or not at all. Coverdale's"retribution was to pine forever and ever", like Theodore.

In the course of his narrative Coverdale also re-enacts Theodore'srejection of the Veiled Lady in his relations with Zenobia and Hollings-worth. Like her half-sister, Zenobia, too, wears a veil: "Zenobia, by-the-by ... is merely her public name; a sort of mask in which she comesbefore the world, retaining all the privileges of privacy—a contrivance,in short, like the white drapery of the Veiled Lady, only a little moretransparent" (8). Her name is suggestive of Eastern opulence1 and hersensuality and her vitality make a strong impression on the narrator:"One felt an influence breathing out of her, such as we might suppose tocome from Eve, when she was just made, and her Creator brought herto Adam, saying—'Behold, here is a woman!' " (17)

Coverdale is extremely aware of her sexuality, but in spite of thisattraction he veers away from a personal involvement with Zenobia.Instead his interest in her is "purely speculative", and he is driven byan intense desire to peep beneath her veil, to discover "the mystery" ofher life. But by refusing to commit himself—"I should not, under anycircumstances, have fallen in love with Zenobia" (48)—he also denieshimself the only accessible avenue to her heart, that leading from hisown. He is thus unable to help Zenobia in her last desperate hours.Before she goes to her death she invites him to take a last look at her

1 In obvious contrast with Priscilla, "the pale Western child" (187).

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374 0 R M OVERLAND

face before it is covered by a veil for ever (228). Only too late doesCoverdale learn the bitter lesson that more is involved between humanbeings than a "purely speculative" interest: "Were I to describe theperfect horror of the spectacle [of her corpse], the reader might justlyreckon it to me for a sin and shame. For more than twelve long years Ihave borne it in my memory, and could now reproduce it as freshly as ifit were still before my eyes" (235). She is doomed to be his evil fate; forthe rest of his life he is haunted by the vision revealed by the peep be-neath her veil, his fatal disclosure of "the mystery" of her life.

Hollingsworth, in more explicit terms than Zenobia, also offers thepossibility of love and a meaningful life to Coverdale: "his deep eyesfilled with tears, and he held out both his hands to me. 'Coverdale',he murmured, 'there is not the man in this wide world, whom I can loveas I could you. Do not forsake me'" (133). His promise of what thefuture will have in store for Coverdale if he dares commit himself iscouched in more masculine terms than the Veiled Lady's plea to Theodorebut the parallel is nevertheless marked: "Strike hands with me; and,from this moment, you shall never again feel the languor and vaguewretchedness of an indolent or half-occupied man! There may be nomore aimless beauty in your life; but, in its stead, there shall be strength,courage, immitigable will—everything that a manly and generous natureshould desire!" But Coverdale turns away from this promise of a lifefull of meaning and purpose. As Theodore imagined the possibility offinding "the lips of a dead girl, or the jaws of a skeleton, or the grinningcavity of a monster's mouth!" so Coverdale saw in Hollingsworth'soffer "nothing but what was odious" (134). To say yes to Hollingsworthis as impossible for Coverdale as it had been for Theodore to kiss theveiled lips. The consequences are similar. Coverdale looks "back uponthis scene, through the coldness and dimness" of the years that havepassed, and the "heart-pang" that he felt when he made his choice "wasnot merely figurative, but an absolute torture of the breast" (135).Hollingsworth may be inhuman in his demands, but not more so thanthe Veiled Lady, and he, too, is lost forever. When Coverdale takes leaveof Blithedale a few days later he realizes that "Being dead henceforth tohim, and he to me, there could be no propriety in our chilling oneanother with the touch of two corpse-like hands, or playing at looks ofcourtesy with eyes that were impenetrable beneath the glaze and thefilm. We passed, therefore, as if mutually invisible" (143).

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II

It is not only in thus shrinking away from committing himself that

Coverdale offers a parallel to the Theodore of "Zenobia's Legend". For

though Theodore's heart remained cold, his imagination and curiosity

were kindled, and he was fascinated by the secret hidden by the veil.

Although the Veiled Lady warned him that he could have "recognized"

her if he had dared open his heart, he came to lift the veil "in scornful

scepticism and idle curiosity". For him the Veiled Lady was an object

of study, not a human being who could have more to offer in a reciprocal

relationship than the mere satisfaction of his curiosity.

The dominant motive behind Coverdale's reluctance to becomeinvolved in life is his overpowering impulse to observe life, to speculateon it, to know it. He does not see Hollingsworth, Zenobia and Priscillaprimarily as fellow human beings; for him they "were separated fromthe rest of the Community, to my imagination, and stood forth as theindices of a problem which it was my business to solve" (69). This atti-tude also separates Coverdale "from the rest of the Community" and,as he self-pityingly admits, he often had "a feeling of loneliness" (70).Indeed, he has effectively cut himself off from intercourse with humanity:"That cold tendency, between instinct and intellect, which made mepry with a speculative interest into people's passions and impulses,appeared to have gone far towards unhumanizing my heart" (154).

The metaphor Hawthorne employs to dramatize this "speculativeinterest" is the natural scientist experimenting with the life forms underhis microscope or on his dissecting table. Coverdale is able to keep his"knot of characters" upon his "mental stage, as actors in a drama","greatly assisted by [his] method of insulating them from other relations"(156). This is the method of the natural scientist and Coverdale's experi-ments demonstrate that it cannot be applied with impunity in the fieldof human relations. Regarding his fellow human beings "as the indicesof a problem" not only separates Coverdale from humanity, it leads himto sin against humanity:

if we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we therebyinsulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities,inevitably tear him into parts, and, of course, patch him very clumsilytogether again. What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspectof a monster, which, after all—though we can point to every feature of his.deformity in the real personage—may be said to have been created mainlyby ourselves! (69)

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In describing his own activity as artist, trying to get at the innermostsecrets of his characters, Coverdale sees himself in the guise of the Roman-tic imagination's most frightening image of the scientist: Frankenstein.

Coverdale would here seem to be exaggerating his "own defects" ashe claims in the concluding chapter. The monsters are, after all, merelyfigments of his imagination; the characters are thus maltreated on his"mental stage". But Coverdale also conducts his experiments in his actualrelations with Priscilla, Zenobia and Hollingsworth. As a natural scientistdissecting a flower to study its inner secrets, Coverdale thrusts hispointed shafts into the hearts of his three friends in order to study theirreactions.

He is strangely affected by Priscilla's "simple, careless, childish flowof spirits" at Blithedale. "Absurd as it might be, I tried to reason withher, and persuade her not to be so joyous. ..." After many attempts hefinally touches a vital spot with his "Have you nothing dismal to remem-ber?" and follows up his success by suggesting that she, too, speculateon what may be hidden in "the hearts where we wish to be most valued"(76). But Priscilla rejects his attitude to life and instead turns to Hollings-worth, "unconsciously seeking to rest upon his strength" (77). Ironically,Coverdale is amazed "that Hollingsworth should show himself sorecklessly tender towards Priscilla, and never once seem to think of theeffect which it might have upon her heart" (78). The image he uses toexpress his fear of love (and perhaps his jealousy) is striking for itsoblique reflection on his own behavior. He would not "deny Hollings-worth the simple solace of a young girl's heart, which he held in hishand, and smelled to, like a rosebud. But what if, while pressing out itsfragrance, he should crush the tender rosebud in his grasp!" (79)

When Coverdale contemplates the "sacrilege" of his "attempt tocome within her maidenly mystery" he again uses the flower image:"I could not resist the impulse to take just one peep beneath her foldedpetals." As the scientist cuts into a plant, Coverdale uses barbed wordsto cut into her heart and succeeds in briefly frightening Priscilla "at thescrutiny into her feelings which I compelled her to make" (126). Theprying Coverdale would seem to run as grave a risk of destroying theflower as the "recklessly tender" Hollingsworth.

A few chapters later Coverdale experiments with Zenobia as a chemistin his laboratory "to make proof if there were any spell that wouldexorcise her out of the part which she seemed to be acting. She should

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HAWTHORNE'S The Blithedale Romance 377

be compelled to give me a glimpse of something true; some nature, somepassion, no matter whether right or wrong, provided it were real" (165).Coverdale concludes that his "experiment had fully succeeded" when"Zenobia's eyes darted lightning; her cheeks flushed; the vividness ofher expression was like the effect of a powerful light, flaming up suddenlywithin her" (166). However, he continues his experiment with Zenobia,testing her reactions to various pointed questions and suggestions untilshe finally resists, rebelling against being an object of study and analysis:"You know not what you do! It is dangerous, sir, believe me, to tamperthus with earnest human passions, out of your own mere idleness, andfor your sport. I will endure it no longer!' " (170)

The same type of experiment is conducted with Hollingsworth. WhenCoverdale sees him in the lyceum hall just before a performance of theVeiled Lady he was "irresistibly moved" to cut into his friend with oneof his knifelike questions. "His nerves, however, were proof against myattack" (197). When Westervelt suddenly appears upon the stage, Cover-dale is inspired to make a new thrust:like an evil spirit, bringing up reminiscences of a man's sins, I whispereda question in Hollingsworth's ear.

"What have you done with Priscilla?"He gave a convulsive start, as if I had thrust a knife into him, writhed

himself round on his seat, glared fiercely into my eyes, but answered not aword. (200)

Significantly, in connection with each of these successive experiments,the image of Westervelt has been evoked, either in Coverdale's thoughts(127) or in fact (172, 199). For it is this manipulator of human beings—whose "delusive show of spirituality" was "really imbued throughoutwith a cold and dead materialism" and who spoke of his vision of afuture Utopia "in a strange, philosophical guise, with terms of art, as ifit were a matter of chemical discovery" (200)—who fully embodies"that cold tendency" which Coverdale feared was "unhumanizing" hisheart: "I detested this kind of man, and all the more, because a part ofmy own nature showed itself responsive to him" (102).

I l lWhat finally paralyses Coverdale, his poetic impulse as well as his

faith in humanity (246), is his sense of an affinity between this part ofhis own nature, which made him "pry with a speculative interest intopeople's passions and impulses," and the writer's or artist's imagination.25 - 742843 Studia Neophilologica

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Coverdale sees his cold-blooded violation of the sanctity of his friends'

hearts1 as the sin committed by the writer when he follows his instinct to

turn the real life drama of "earnest human passions" into tales or romances.

Hawthorne's would-be artist feels he must stand apart from life, even

above life as Coverdale in his "hermitage" or "observatory" which, he

says, "symbolized my individuality" (99). He cannot allow himself to

become involved in the tragedy he observes and evaluates:

My own part, in these transactions, was singularly subordinate. It resembledthat of the Chorus in a classic play, which seems to be set aloof from thepossibility of personal concernment, and bestows the whole measure of itshope or fear, its exultation or sorrow, on the fortunes of others, betweenwhom and itself this sympathy is the only bond. (97)

I t is the office of this "calm observer. ... to give applause, when due, andsometimes an inevitable tear, to detect the final fitness of incident tocharacter, and distil, in his long-brooding thought, the whole moralityof the performance" (97). But Coverdale learns to distrust the ability ofthe artist's imagination, "his long-brooding thought", to give any worth-while picture of life. He is forced to acknowledge that he understoodbut little of the passionate scene enacted by Zenobia and Westerveltbelow his observatory, and he doubts whether he now, after the event,can present even a fair version of the "performance": "By long broodingover our recollections, we subtilize them into something akin to imaginarystuff, and hardly capable of being distinguished from i t" (104-5). Thefull impact of this despairing view of the power of the imaginationdepends on its conjunction with his earlier image of his anticipatedemergence from his poet's retreat: "... like an allegorical figure of richOctober, I should make my appearance, with shoulders bent beneaththe burthen of ripe grapes, and some of the crushed ones crimsoningmy brow as with a blood-stain" (99).

It is, however, not only that Coverdale despairs of his ability to createan imaginative reconstruction that is true to life, but that he realizes thathe has forfeited his own life in the process. In order to perform in hisrole or "vocation" as "calm observer" (97), Hawthorne's artist is forcedto live his life vicariously; he must repress his own emotions and feed onthose of others. Smarting from one of Zenobia's "pitiless rebukes" whenshe had let down the curtain on his spying, Coverdale feels that:

1 This, it will be recalled, is Dimmesdale's characterization of the sin ofChillingworth in The Scarlet Letter (Centenary edition, I, p. 19s).

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HAWTHORNE'S The Blithedale Romance 379

She should have been able to appreciate that quality of the intellect andthe heart, which impelled me (often against my own will, and to the detri-ment of my own comfort) to live in other lives, and to endeavor—bygenerous sympathies, by delicate intuitions, by taking note of things tooslight for record, and by bringing my human spirit into manifold accord-ance with the companions whom God assigned me—to learn the secretwhich was hidden even from themselves. (160)

That Coverdale finally comes to see this vampire-like existence of livingin other lives and on the emotions of others as a negation of life is broughtout in the consistent association of the imagination with coldness.

In the second chapter there is a striking use of contrasting images offire and cold to distinguish between the real life lived at Blithedale andthe artist's imaginative reconstruction of that life:

There can hardly remain for me, (who am really getting to be a frostybachelor ...) there can hardly flicker up again so cheery a blaze upon thehearth, as that which I remember, the next day, at Blithedale. ... Vividlydoes that fireside re-create itself, as I rake away the ashes from the embersin my memory, and blow them up with a sigh, for lack of more inspiringbreath. Vividly, for an instant, but, anon, with the dimmest gleam, andwith just as little fervency for my heart as for my finger-ends! The staunchoaken-logs were long ago burnt out. Their genial glow must be represented,if at all, by the merest phosphoric glimmer, like that which exudes, ratherthan shines, from damp fragments of decayed trees, deluding the benightedwanderer through a forest. (9)

At the outset of his story the narrator is obviously troubled by hisawareness that a life of the imagination is but a poor substitute for reallife. And one burden of his tale is that these two modes of activity cannotbe reconciled. For closely related to this coldness of the imagination isthe coldness of scepticism. The snow storm raging outside the roomwith "the blazing fire" around which sat a semi-circle of men with faithin "earthly happiness, for themselves and mankind" (19), was "symbolof the cold, desolate, distrustful phantoms that invariably haunt themind, on the eve of adventurous enterprises, to warn us back within theboundaries of ordinary life" (18).1

1 Hollingsworth, the man of action, is associated with fire and warmth, boththrough references to his earlier occupation as blacksmith and to his own innerwarmth: "There never was any blaze of a fireside that warmed and cheered me,in the down-sinkings and shiverings of my spirit, so effectually as did the lightout of those eyes ..." (42) The contrast between Coverdale's "cold instinct"and Hollingsworth's warmth is obvious in the latter's "Let us not pry fartherinto her [Priscilla's] secrets. ... Let us warm her poor, shivering body with thisgood fire, and her poor, shivering heart with our best kindness". "Hollingsworth's

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380 ORM OVERLAND

Coverdale's bitter lesson is that he cannot remain the "calm observer""set aloof from the possibility of personal concernment". After she hasreceived the final, crushing blow from Hollingsworth Zenobia is sodeeply immersed in grief and pain that she is unconscious of Coverdale'spresence:

But, finally, a look of recognition gleamed from her eyes into mine."Is it you, Miles Coverdale?" said she, smiling. "Ah, I perceive what

you are about! You are turning this whole affair into a ballad. Pray let mehear as many stanzas as you happen to have ready!"

"Oh, hush, Zenobia!" I answered. "Heaven knows what an ache is inmy soul!" (223)

The question at the heart of The Blithedale Romance, however, is whethera genuine ache in the soul can be combined with the attempt to turnlife into a ballad. There is obvious irony in Zenobia's "by all means,write this ballad, and put your soul's ache into it, and turn your sym-pathy to good account, as other poets do, and as poets must, unless theychoose to give us glittering icicles instead of lines of fire" (224).

Coverdale's dilemma is that while his reluctance to embrace the joyand pain of life was related to his attempt to remain true to his vocationas the calm observer of life, this very reluctance proves to make it impos-sible for him to recapture life in literature. For, to return to Zenobia'sLegend, two ways of lifting the veil were presented to Theodore. Byembracing what was behind the veil in "holy faith" he would not onlyown it completely, but also be owned by it. For him who cannot bear theidea of pledging "himself, for life and eternity", and comes to lift theveil "in scornful scepticism and idle curiosity" only "a momentaryglimpse" of a pale apparition is revealed, and his life becomes a "feverishquest" for the truth he glimpsed. The three characters, whose "mystery"Coverdale set out to solve, remain essentially unknown to him even afterthey have haunted his imagination for more than twelve years.

Coverdale's custom of "making my prey of people's individualities"(84), that Zenobia sarcastically calls his "game, groping for humanemotions in the dark corners of the heart" (214), has come dangerouslyclose to making him a monster, one who, like Ethan Brand,behavior was certainly a great deal more creditable than mine", Coverdale admits(30). When he later insists that "Hollingsworth's heart is on fire with his ownpurpose, but icy for all human affection" (100), this is primarily an instanceof how the narrator's story is colored by his own unacknowledged emotionalinvolvement, another example of "the kind of error into which my mode ofobservation was calculated to lead me" (71).

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HAWTHORNE'S The Blithedale Romance 381

had lost his hold of the magnetic chain of humanity. He was no longer abrother-man, opening the chambers or the dungeons of our commonnature by the key of holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in allits secrets; he was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subjectof his experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be hispuppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of crimeas were demanded for his study.1

Miles Coverdale, says Henry James in his classic study of the author,"is evidently as much Hawthorne as he is anyone else in particular".2

That Coverdale's dilemma was Hawthorne's dilemma is central toFrederick Crew's convincing argument in The Sins of the Fathers, andone may ponder on the problems faced by an author who sees hisvocation as an "unhumanizing" influence and suggests that EthanBrand's unpardonable sin is the sin of the artist prying "with a specula-tive interest into people's passions and impulses".

When he wrote The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven GablesHawthorne used the conventional image of moonlight as a metaphor ofthe poetic imagination.3 When he again uses the same image in TheBlithedale Romance the difference is so striking that it is worth noting.Coverdale, lying in his "fireless chamber", has in his "half-wakingdreams" vaguely "anticipated several of the chief incidents of this narra-tive, including a dim shadow of its catastrophe. Starting up in bed,at length, I saw that the storm was past, and the moon was shining onthe snowy landscape, which looked like a lifeless copy of the world in marble"(38). [My italics.]

The attitude to the artist and his role expressed in The BlithedaleRomance may have weighed heavily on the mind and conscience of itsauthor. Paradoxically, in spite of his own doubts of his vocation, Haw-thorne succeeded in dramatizing these doubts in a work of such complex-ity that it is only in the past two decades that it has received the criticalattention it deserves. In demonstrating some of the formal patterns ofthis dramatization this essay is an attempt to contribute further to thegrowing awareness of the quality of a work that for so long was regardedas a failure.

ORM ÖVERLAND

1 "Ethan Brand", Complete Works, Riverside edition, III (Boston: HoughtonMifflin, 1883), 495.

2 Hawthorne (Ithaca, N.Y., 1956), p. 68.3 Centenary edition, I, 35-36 and II, 281.

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