Scan barcode
aliteraryprincess's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
rachaelakraft's review against another edition
4.0
That feeling when an author has to kill off (by drowning no less) the feminist character to get the novel published... :/
lonesomereader's review against another edition
3.0
I’ve been meaning to read this novel for quite some time. Firstly, I have a particular interest in stories about communal life since I came close to joining a commune when I was a teenager. Hawthorne based the novel’s intentional community of Blithedale on the real utopian farming commune Brooke Farm which Hawthorne helped to establish (although apparently he didn’t adhere too strongly to its values.) Secondly, the second novel in Joyce Carol Oates’ Gothic Quintet is called “A Bloodsmoore Romance”. I’m not sure if Oates’ book plays upon Hawthorne’s novel at all (other than in its title) but I figured it’s best to read the classic novel first. Perhaps my motivations for reading this novel slightly soured my experience of it because the story is more Romance than it is about the actual community of Blithedale.
It begins with its narrator Miles travelling to the newly founded intentional community of Blithedale in the dead of winter. He’s a poet so isn’t accustomed to the rigorous work of agricultural life which meets him when he gets there. Like many well-meaning intellectuals who go to found alternative societies, he quickly finds the practicalities of the enterprise overwhelm him: “we had pleased ourselves with delectable visions of the spiritualization of labor… matters did not turn out quite so well as we anticipated.” Therefore, it’s quite funny he quickly becomes ill and spends all his time in bed rather than working the fields or milking cows. But few details are given about the structure of the community or its core values. Instead the story becomes consumed with a beautiful resident named Zenobia who always has an exotic flower in her hair as well as a mysterious young woman named Priscilla who arrives. The novel primarily concerns the mysterious backstory of these women’s lives and Miles rivalry with a philanthropist and fellow resident Hollingsworth.
Read my full review of The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne on LonesomeReader
It begins with its narrator Miles travelling to the newly founded intentional community of Blithedale in the dead of winter. He’s a poet so isn’t accustomed to the rigorous work of agricultural life which meets him when he gets there. Like many well-meaning intellectuals who go to found alternative societies, he quickly finds the practicalities of the enterprise overwhelm him: “we had pleased ourselves with delectable visions of the spiritualization of labor… matters did not turn out quite so well as we anticipated.” Therefore, it’s quite funny he quickly becomes ill and spends all his time in bed rather than working the fields or milking cows. But few details are given about the structure of the community or its core values. Instead the story becomes consumed with a beautiful resident named Zenobia who always has an exotic flower in her hair as well as a mysterious young woman named Priscilla who arrives. The novel primarily concerns the mysterious backstory of these women’s lives and Miles rivalry with a philanthropist and fellow resident Hollingsworth.
Read my full review of The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne on LonesomeReader
expendablemudge's review against another edition
3.0
Rating: 3.25* of five
I read this as part of the RL book circle's festivities. I can't really say I enjoyed it, though I admired it. I thiink I learned a lot from it...for example, there is no new idea anywhere under the sun. Hawthorne (really? no touchstone for Hawthorne?!) wrote of such familiar characters to any modern reader, the creepy pseudo-spiritual control freak, the conflicted feminist, the wishy-washy eternal follower, that it really feels like the book could have been written yesterday.
In the author's preface to the book, he is even very careful to state that he is NOT modeling the characters in the book, nor the community that they inhabit, after his own experiences and the people he knew while living in a Utopian community much like the fictional Blithedale of the title. He goes so far as to say he hopes other specific members of Brook Farm, the real-life communiity Hawthorne lived in during 1841-1842, will write the definitive books about it. Ha. He's already done it. And I venture to say, though without any personal experience to back it up, the definitive history of many another Utopia.
I find the American aversion to all things Socialist very curious. Hawthorne defends himself against as-yet-unleveled accusations of beig an apologist for Socialism in choosing to write about Brook Farm at all. It existed from 1841-1847, and it had as little impact on American culture as the other "Socialist" Utopias before it and after it did. What precisely does America's vast majority fear? The possibility that others could be helped in some way? What is this reactionary terror of social justice about?
Well, it seems that Hawthorne wondered the same thing. He put it inside the struggles of the characters to get their needs met. Conformism is rewarded for flirting with radical thought and then returning to it by gaining a lot of money, access to a comfortable life, and an aura of sanctity that is almost palpable. Americans fear the alternative...shunning and criticism and poverty...so they see the radical and just readjustment of society's power (aka money) as a threat instead of a basic benefit. Hawthorne isn't on board with this, it becomes obvious, though he plays by the rules of his time. It's an interesting thought experiment to imagine what a Hawthorne born in 1904 would have done with this story.
I don't think I'd recommend the book to anyone not already accustomed to nineteenth-century writing. It's not the equal of The Scarlet Letter, so it doesn't transcend its era as effortlessly. But for the initiate, this is some excellent storytelling.
I read this as part of the RL book circle's festivities. I can't really say I enjoyed it, though I admired it. I thiink I learned a lot from it...for example, there is no new idea anywhere under the sun. Hawthorne (really? no touchstone for Hawthorne?!) wrote of such familiar characters to any modern reader, the creepy pseudo-spiritual control freak, the conflicted feminist, the wishy-washy eternal follower, that it really feels like the book could have been written yesterday.
In the author's preface to the book, he is even very careful to state that he is NOT modeling the characters in the book, nor the community that they inhabit, after his own experiences and the people he knew while living in a Utopian community much like the fictional Blithedale of the title. He goes so far as to say he hopes other specific members of Brook Farm, the real-life communiity Hawthorne lived in during 1841-1842, will write the definitive books about it. Ha. He's already done it. And I venture to say, though without any personal experience to back it up, the definitive history of many another Utopia.
I find the American aversion to all things Socialist very curious. Hawthorne defends himself against as-yet-unleveled accusations of beig an apologist for Socialism in choosing to write about Brook Farm at all. It existed from 1841-1847, and it had as little impact on American culture as the other "Socialist" Utopias before it and after it did. What precisely does America's vast majority fear? The possibility that others could be helped in some way? What is this reactionary terror of social justice about?
Well, it seems that Hawthorne wondered the same thing. He put it inside the struggles of the characters to get their needs met. Conformism is rewarded for flirting with radical thought and then returning to it by gaining a lot of money, access to a comfortable life, and an aura of sanctity that is almost palpable. Americans fear the alternative...shunning and criticism and poverty...so they see the radical and just readjustment of society's power (aka money) as a threat instead of a basic benefit. Hawthorne isn't on board with this, it becomes obvious, though he plays by the rules of his time. It's an interesting thought experiment to imagine what a Hawthorne born in 1904 would have done with this story.
I don't think I'd recommend the book to anyone not already accustomed to nineteenth-century writing. It's not the equal of The Scarlet Letter, so it doesn't transcend its era as effortlessly. But for the initiate, this is some excellent storytelling.
lnatal's review against another edition
3.0
Free download available at Project Gutenberg.
Page 5:
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.
Page 29:
"When, as a consequence of human improvement," said I, "the globe shall arrive at its final perfection, the great ocean is to be converted into a particular kind of lemonade, such as was fashionable at Paris in Fourier's time. He calls it limonade a cedre. It is positively a fact! Just imagine the city docks filled, every day, with a flood tide of this delectable beverage!"
Page 92:
But a great man—as, perhaps, you do not know—attains his normal condition only through the inspiration of one great idea.
5* The Scarlet Letter
4* Rappaccini's Daughter
3* Wakefield ; Ethan Brand
3* Wakefield - Il velo nero del pastore
3* The Ambitious Guest
3* The Blithedale Romance
TBR The House of the Seven Gables
TBR The Marble Faun
TBR Fanshawe
Page 5:
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.
Page 29:
"When, as a consequence of human improvement," said I, "the globe shall arrive at its final perfection, the great ocean is to be converted into a particular kind of lemonade, such as was fashionable at Paris in Fourier's time. He calls it limonade a cedre. It is positively a fact! Just imagine the city docks filled, every day, with a flood tide of this delectable beverage!"
Page 92:
But a great man—as, perhaps, you do not know—attains his normal condition only through the inspiration of one great idea.
5* The Scarlet Letter
4* Rappaccini's Daughter
3* Wakefield ; Ethan Brand
3* Wakefield - Il velo nero del pastore
3* The Ambitious Guest
3* The Blithedale Romance
TBR The House of the Seven Gables
TBR The Marble Faun
TBR Fanshawe
scaluba's review against another edition
3.0
i mean it was better than the scarlet letter, but that's really not saying much. also spent like 90% of the book trying to figure out how old everyone was because in my head they were all wildly different ages even though logically i now recognize they were all in their twenties
queenfury's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
More...