The Blithedale Romance

“With the idea of partially obviating this difficulty, (the sense of which has always pressed very heavily upon him,) the Author has ventured to make free with his old, and affectionately remembered home, at BROOK FARM, as being, certainly, the most romantic episode of his own life—essentially a daydream, and yet a fact—and thus offering an available foothold between fiction and reality.”

In the Preface, Hawthorne concedes that his novel does include elements taken from his time at Brook Farm. In doing so, he also introduces a theme central to the narrative: the juxtaposition of fiction and fact within the text.

“Whatever else I may repent of, therefore, let it be reckoned neither among my sins nor follies, that I once had faith and force enough to form generous hopes of the world’s destiny—yes!—and to do what in me lay for their accomplishment; even to the extent of quitting a warm fireside, flinging away a freshly lighted cigar, and travelling far beyond the strike of city-clocks, through a drifting snow-storm.”

Miles Coverdale, the narrator, references one of the novel’s central themes: the search for Utopia. At this point in the narrative, he expresses himself ready to lay aside his urban life and set out for Blithedale with faith in the socialist experiment upon which he’s ready to embark.

“We mean to lessen the laboring man’s great burthen of toil, by performing our due share of it at the cost of our own thews and sinews.”

This passage, narrated by Coverdale, encapsulates the community member’s goals in establishing and working at Blithedale. Ironically, while Coverdale here celebrates the manual labor he’ll perform, he later comes to regret his choice and finds that he’s unable to pursue a life of the mind while working the land.