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KMID : 0615219880130010117
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Journal of Kwangju Health
1988 Volume.13 No. 1 p.117 ~ p.143
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The Symbolism in The Blithedale Romance
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趙權洙
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Abstract
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As I have shown so far, the study of the symbols in the book casts a fresh light upon the theme, characters, and the structure of the book. Without close attention to the function of the symbols, we are apt to misunderstand the book and to miss to much of the meaning and beauty of the work.
The theme of the book, vanity of the attempt to reform due to the lack of true love and communication and the human inability to understand the troubled world, is clarified by three main streams of imagery, the veil, the fire and the dream.
It is true that Blithedale is Brook Farm in many obvious ways, and numerous passages are lifted, some of them with scarcerely any revision, from Hawthorne´s Brook Farm notebooks. But it does not mean that we have to regard the book as a realistic segment of Hawthorne´s life at Brook Farm.
Most people admit that the symbols in Hawthorne´s Works function greatly, as above mentioned, in achieving the effects the author wishes to creat in his works.
The characters in The Blithedale Romansce are also heavily drawn with symbols, and I found that Hawthorne also give some hints to the interrelationships of the main characters by those symbols.
Zenovia, the heroine of the story, is simply, as Coverdale says, "a magnificent woman." She is, says, "a depiction of the eternal feminine as early, mayernal, domestic, natural, sensual, brilliant, and loving." For this "most vital character" in the novel Hawthorne employs quite an appropriate symbol, that is, a flower.
In almost all ways Priscilla is opposite to Zenobia. She is weak, fragile, passive, sympathetic, and never sexual. To present her, Hawthorne uses the counterpart images to those used for Zenobia. While Zenobia is a full-blossomed flower, Priscilla is an unopened small flower blooming on a vine in the shade. She is "like a flower-shrub that has done its best to blossom in too scanty light. "She is like the plants that one sometimes observes doing their best to vegetate among the bricks of an enclosed court where there is scanty soil, and never any sunshine."
Hollingsworth is asociated with tenderness of heart and the warmth of fire. It is he who kindly leads Priscilla to the warm fireside of Blithedale, which Coverdale refuses to do.
Coverdale admits that Hollingsworth was originally endowed with "a great spirit of benevolence," but his great, warm, gentle heart which held such possibilities for brotherhood is perverted by his philanthropic idea, not its humanitarian goal, but his mad pursuit of it, into a force of destruction.
So Hollingsworth´s fire of warm heart burnes excessively to the fire of mono-mania, so that "his heart is on fire with his one purpose, but icy for all human affection." and at last his heart becomes a "heart of ice."
The entangled fates of Zenobia, Priscilla, and Hollingsworth can also be seen through other symbols which Hawthorne uses to characterize them. Besides the flower symbol Zenobia is mainly described in the images of warmth and day-light which seem to suggest her passion, glorious beauty, and sensuality. Coverdale mentions her "warm and rich characteristic," her smile which " beamed warmth upon us all," and he is overwhelmed during his illness by "the fresh-warmth over her round arms."
So far I have tried to study the characters in Blithedale presented through various symbols and the interrelationships of them revealed through those of the symbols themselves.
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