ellauri107.html on line 195: In the following excerpts from Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance, the Hawthorne-like character, poet and narrator Miles Coverdale, and the Melville-like character, passionate monomaniac Hollingsworth suggest Melville's influence on the novel. The first person narrator, a young man who joins a major enterprise with mostly adventure-seeking motives, certainly calls to mind narrator Ishmael in Melville's Moby-Dick. The dark and brawny Hollingsworth, bearing a physical resemblance to Melville, cares for Coverdale and seeks his partnership, moreover, in an intensity that seems to parallel Melville's evident affection for and desire for intimacy with Hawthorne. The sharp, mysterious break in the relationships between the two authors and the fictional pair constitute yet another likeness.
ellauri107.html on line 200: Coverdale describes Hollingsworth's "dark complexion, his abundant beard, and the rude strength with which his features seemed to have been hammered out of iron, rather than chiselled or moulded from any finer or softer material." He adds that in Hollingsworth's "gentler moods, there was a tenderness in his voice, eyes, mouth, in his gesture, and in every indescribable manifestation, which few men could resist, and no woman."
ellauri107.html on line 204: Coverdale notes that "there was something of the woman moulded into the great, stalwart frame of Hollingsworth; nor was he ashamed of it, as men often are of what is best in them, nor seemed ever to know that there was such a soft place in his heart. . . . I besought Hollingsworth to let nobody else enter the room, but continually to make me sensible of his own presence by a grasp of the hand, a word, -- a prayer, if he thought good to utter it . . . ."
ellauri107.html on line 208: Coverdale declares, "I loved Hollingsworth, as has already been enough expressed." He adds, "If . . .[Priscilla] thought him beautiful, it was no wonder. I often thought him so, with the expression of tender, human care, and gentlest sympathy . . . ." And in Hawthorne's most explicitly homoerotic allusion, Coverdale notes, "the footing, on which we all associated at Blithedale, was widely different from that of conventional society. While inclining us to the soft affections of the Golden Age, it seemed to authorize any individual, of either sex, to fall in love with any other, regardless of what would elsewhere be judged suitable and prudent."
ellauri107.html on line 212: Coverdale concludes the tale of Zenobia's hopeless love for Hollingsworth and enigmatically adds, "It suits me not to explain what was the analogy that I saw, or imagined, between Zenobia's situation and mine; nor, I believe, will the reader detect this one secret, hidden beneath many a revelation which perhaps concerned me less."
ellauri107.html on line 214: Actually, the reader would have to be remarkably obtuse not to recognize the sexual tension between Coverdale and Hollingsworth. If only we could know what Melville thought when he read it! Certainly, Melville was aware that Brook Farm in Roxbury, Massachusetts, which Blithedale represents, had enjoyed the company of Hawthorne as a communal society member for most of 1841. Perhaps he also knew that substantial portions of Coverdale’s first person narration are taken directly from Hawthorne’s Brook Farm journals, and he would certainly know better than we the extent to which the novel may also represent allusions to Hawthorne’s and his experiences together during the year before the publication of Blithedale.
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