The Fate of the True Woman in The Blithedale Romance Essay -- Blitheda

  The Fate of the avowedly Woman in The Blithedale Romance         The pistillate characters in Nathaniel Hawthornes The Blithedale Romance, Zenobia and Priscilla, differ in their representations of womanhood. Zenobia begins as an independent character, whom later surrenders to Hollingsworths control, whereas Priscilla is forever submissive to his desires. This determines how the male characters, Coverdale and Hollingsworth, view both women. Coverdale and Hollingsworth are first enamored by Zenobias charm, but both fall for Priscillas docility. Zenobia represents female independence and Priscilla embodies feminine subservience the triumph of Priscilla casts the male vote in this novel unanimously for obedient women. Hollingsworth describes the True Woman She is the most admirable handiwork of God, in her true place and character. Her place is at mans side . . . All the separate action of woman is, and ever has been, and always shall be, false, fo olish, vain, destructive of her own best and holiest qualities, void of e rattling good effect, and productive of intolerable mischiefs sic . . . The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it (Hawthorne 122-3). Zenobia falls short of Hollingsworths definition of the True Woman. In the beginning of the novel, she is noted for being an intellectual, a writer. Such separate action as thinking and writing surely offends the True Womanhood. This betrayal reaches its pinnacle at Eliots Pulpit, where she vows to speak in behalf of womans wider liberty (Hawthorne 120). It is here that Hollingsworth describes the True Woman whom Zenobia is so very unlike. Priscilla, however, is the epito... ...sible ever to redeem them? (Hawthorne 124). However, by falling for Priscilla, a True Woman, he perpetuates the degradation of woman through the ideal of True Womanhood. Zenobias failure to submit amply to the ideal of True Woman condemns her to unha ppiness. Everything had failed her-prosperity, in the worlds sense, for her opulence was gone-the hearts prosperity, in love (Hawthorne 239). According to Coverdale, herself, and much of society, there was nothing left for her to do but die. Priscilla, although a True Woman, is also doomed to such a fate. Zenobia laments Priscillas fate, ...you have a melancholy lot before you, sitting all alone in that wide, grim heart, where . . . the fire which you have kindled may soon go out (Hawthorne 220). Therefore, it appears that a woman of this time, True or otherwise, was condemned to a life of misery.