Literary Criticism: The Blithedale Romance

A Reading of The Blithedale Romance: Coverdale’s Coverup

In Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, Miles Coverdale recounts his experience in an experiment at Blithedale. Coverdale’s tale is titled a romance, but the true romance at the center of his story is not as overt as he would have the reader to believe. Miles Coverdale’s story reveals that he is not in love with Priscilla despite what he states in his concluding recollection. Coverdale lies about his love for Priscilla in order to cover up a deeper sin of his own. The motive behind this elaborate cover up in Coverdale’s tale can be read as one realization: Coverdale is a narcissist only capable of loving himself. In this character reading of Coverdale, he uses Priscilla as a veil to mask the truths he wishes to hide from himself and his readers.

As the storyteller of The Blithedale Romance, Coverdale fails to explain any reason behind his love for Priscilla. Coverdale only confesses his love and affection for Priscilla in the last words of his tale. He dramatically confesses, “I, I myself, was in love, with, Priscilla!” (Hawthorne 218). This confession becomes his cover up. In Coverdale’s version of the events at Blithedale Priscilla is a minor character. She has hardly any attributes besides physicalities described by Coverdale. No where in the novel does Coverdale explain or detail Priscilla’s effect on him. Coverdale spends more time describing Hollingsworth’s and Zenobia’s effects on him than Priscilla’s. Coverdale says, “Hollingsworth’s more than brotherly attendance gave me inexpressible comfort” (Hawthorne 67). Coverdale describes Hollingsworth’s character in an explicit description because he performed a generous deed for Coverdale. Coverdale describes Zenobia through implicit actions. Zenobia is shown to perform caring, generous, and spiteful acts towards Hollingsworth and Coverdale. Priscilla’s character is neither explicitly nor implicitly described. Coverdale spends an entire summer with her and he is only able to recollect and remember characteristics that define her physical beauty or events that happened to her. Priscilla performs several acts of kindness for Coverdale, but he does not give her as much attention as he did with Zenobia and Hollingsworth.

Coverdale’s reflections on Priscilla often center around his own being rather than her’s. Coverdale recollects, “She now produced, out of a bag of work instruments, (what they are called, I never knew,) and proceeded to knit, or net, an article which ultimately took the shape of a silk purse. As the work went on, I remembered to have seen just such purses before. Indeed, I was the possessor of one” (Hawthorne 62). In this example, Coverdale inserts himself over Priscilla’s character. The reader is told more about Coverdale’s lack of knowledge, his recollection, and his possessions, than one is able to denote about Priscilla’s character. Coverdale’s construction is focused on himself, which is odd if he loved Priscilla, but not so odd if he loved himself.

Unlike Hollingsworth’s and Zenobia’s effect on Coverdale, Priscilla has an effect on both Zenobia and Coverdale of exaggerated extremes. Coverdale says, “In short, there has seldom been seen so depressed and sad a figure as this young girl’s; and it was hardly possible to help being angry with her, from mere despair of doing anything for her comfort” (Hawthorne 56). Her extreme deposition caused Coverdale to react with anger, not empathy or compassion. Zenobia also had a similar resentment, “It is quite ridiculous, and provokes one’s malice, almost, to see a creature so happy -- especially a feminine creature” (Hawthorne 80). Zenobia and Coverdale fail to recognize or acknowledge the humanity in Priscilla. They respond with jealousy or bitterness, not empathy or sympathy. Throughout Coverdale’s Blithedale experience he does not describe an empathetic connection to or reaction to Priscilla in any way.

Priscilla takes on the role of an object more than a character. She lacks human qualities where she has influence over anyone or anything. Like an object, she is just used, abused, and tossed around in the story without having any significance to how she ends up. Priscilla is often described as a “thing” or a “creature”by Zenobia and Coverdale (Hawthorne 61,62). She is also described in language that presents her as an object. “The poor thing had not shed any tears; but now that she found herself received, and at least temporarily established, the big drops ooze out from beneath her eyelids, as if she were full of them” (Hawthorne 58). In this depiction by Coverdale, Priscilla is not viewed as a person whose emotions overtook them, but she is described as an object as if she were constituted of only tears. Coverdale describes her again after being gone for some time. He says, “passionate, self-willed, and imperious, she had a warm and generous nature” (Hawthorne 176). Although he describes her character, he still provides no evidence or reason for these judgements of her. Coverdale has no basis on which to define any feelings for Priscilla, she affects him in no instance in his story. Coverdale divulges the history of Priscilla to the reader, but her history tells the story of what happened to her, not how she influenced her own being or own character. Coverdale says, “her character was left to shape itself” (176). Priscilla never fully reaches her own character identity in Coverdale’s story, and he never prescribes her his own identity. Instead he uses her lack of identity as a means to make her cover a part of his own identity.

Priscilla is generally seen as an object in the eyes of Coverdale and Zenobia, but Coverdale confesses that he was in love with Priscilla. The name Coverdale suggests a little more than just his name. Coverdale is covering up and hiding truths about himself. Coverdale tells his story about Blithedale from an outside perspective. He never claims to want to have been more involved, in fact he lacks the want to be committed to anything. Coverdale confesses he is “a bachelor, with no very decided purpose of ever being otherwise” (Hawthorne 217). This statement slightly detracts from his larger confession of being in love with Priscilla. The interesting part is Coverdale’s confession explains or justifies any of his actions throughout the book. His love for Priscilla is an addition that makes no sense in light of the story that he has told, especially if he no intention of ever becoming anything more than a bachelor. Coverdale also says,“A bachelor always feels himself defrauded, when he knows, or suspects, that any woman of his acquaintance has given herself away” (Hawthorne 72). If there is truth to this statement, why is there no evidence of his defrauded self at being denied the chance to be with Priscilla? Because he feels no more attached to her as he to any object.

Priscilla functions merely as a metaphor and an object in Blithedale. Her role as the Veiled Lady and lack of character make her Coverdale’s perfect coverup. The Silvery Veil works as a captivating device to keep the Veiled Lady in a repressed spiritual state. Priscilla is the veil that cloaks Coverdale into a repressed state of the acceptance of his truth. In the novel Coverdale does not acknowledge his own narcissistic actions, but they are seen through his sentence construction. The metaphor culminates on one moment in Blithedale, where Priscilla is crowned the Veiled Lady by Zenobia’s legend. Coverdale says, “As for Priscilla, she stood, droopingly, in the midst of us, making no attempt to remove the veil” (Hawthorne 123). This moment represents Priscilla’s lack of influence to accomplish anything and her ability to cloak reality. In the case of Coverdale’s cover up, Priscilla is much too weak of a character to be able to remove herself as his veil, as his coverup. In the eyes of Coverdale, Priscilla becomes an easily manipulable character because she does nothing to repel, counteract, or revolt against anything that is thrown at her.

Why would Coverdale lie about being in love with Priscilla? Because he is demonstrating that he is capable of loving someone other than himself. By showing this plausible result Coverdale covers up any suspicion, on the reader’s end and in his own consciousness, that he could not possibly be a narcissist.

But what does this mean about Priscilla, that she is so weak of character? Coverdale takes advantage of this weakness to cover his own realizations. With Coverdale’s intent aside, this speaks to a general aspect of Hawthorne. Hawthorne hates reformers and revolutionaries. This is easily seen through the tragedy of Zenobia and the Blithedale community’s downfall, but does Hawthorne also hate those that can be easily taken advantage of? Priscilla is rewarded with a man because she blindly loves and follows Hollingsworth, but she is used as a tool of deception and self-deception for Miles Coverdale. Hawthorne is illuminating the nature of people in their truest form. He is commenting on the ability to use a person. Priscilla is used as a tool of gaining something by both Zenobia and Coverdale, but also Hollingsworth. Hawthorne is showing that the docile feminine lover is no more safe from harm or any less weak than the hypocritical one-dimensional reformers. Characters in Blithedale use and abuse each other in their perfect society, but still end up lying or dying in the end. There is no justifiable moment to being blind to others, society, or oneself.

Works Cited

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Blithedale Romance. Ed. William E. Cain. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's,

1996. Print.