Essay Comparing The Brook Farm And The Blithedale Romance

On April 28th, 1841, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote to his wife: “ I feel the original Adam reviving within me” (Hawthorne 233). This was when he lived in The Brook Farm as one of the founding fathers with the beliefs inspired by transcendentalists. Their goal was to establish utopian communal living. Not long after Nathaniel Hawthorne withdrew from the community, he began to write a fiction based on his experience at The Brook Farm. This book, The Blithedale Romance, was eventually published in 1851. In one of the letters to his friend, Curtis, Hawthorne suggested him “Do not read[The Blithedale Romance] as if it had anything to do with Brook Farm (which essentially it has not) but merely for its own story and characters” (Hawthorne 241). However, although it is unclear why Hawthorne hast to draw the line between The Brook Farm and Blithedale, there are many similarities between The Brook Farm and Blithedale in their visions of Utopian communities.

They tried to redefine the community, personal relationships, and political beliefs. Also, the time proximity of the establishment of the Brook farm and Hawthorne’s creation of Blithedale makes it difficult to not draw connections between the two. We can reasonably perceive The Blithedale Romance as a scope that reflects The Brook farm and the society at the time. Historically, Coverdale and Hawthorne both belong to the post-heroic generation that romanticize utopia communities. Their deeply rooted heroism creates illusions. These illusions in both fiction and reality enhances theatrical effect of performances in utopian societies. Understanding the history and the origin of these illusions, readers can better understand the role transition Hawthorne in the communities and the significance of utopian