A review by jds70
The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne

3.0

Several years before writing The Blithedale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne lived for less than a year at the Trancendentalist commune Brook Farm. Although the story is not based on his experience, it does inform it. It also isn't a romance in the modern sense of a couple who falls in love throughout the course of the story, but is written in the romantic literary style of the time, full of flowery language (but not purple prose). The Blithedale Romance focuses on the narrator & three other characters who are part of the Blithedale communal farm; their idealism & eventual disillusionment with their experiment. Hawthorne doesn't satirize, criticize, or advocate for communes, but simply explores the foibles of the flawed people attempting to create the perfect society. I loved The Scarlet Letter & Rapuccini's Daughter, but this was harder for me to get into. Reading other reviews, I'm not alone. I think maybe his novella is a bit less accessible than his other works. Despite this, I really enjoyed it. Stick with it, & you'll be rewarded in the end.