“We are sisters!”: Class, Gender, and Social Reform in The Blithedale Romance

ABSTRACT

The representations of two female figures in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance (1852), Zenobia and Priscilla, have frequently been interpreted as a contrast between a dark lady and a fair lady. Although recent criticism has shown that the contrast between the two is ambiguous, critics have not doubted that Hawthorne’s feminist awareness is expressed exclusively through Zenobia. This article proposes that Priscilla should be reexamined not as an angel in the house but as a potentially radical working-class girl. By focusing on Priscilla’s social mobility and strong sense of sisterhood, this article investigates how Priscilla destabilizes ideas about class and middle-class norms of marriage and female sexuality. Priscilla’s strong sisterhood surpasses heterosexual love, representing a more radical social reformism than that of Zenobia. Additionally, Priscilla’s change from a helpless seamstress to a middle-class housewife does not necessarily make her the ideal True Woman, into which Coverdale tries to fit her, but a wife who has agency and supports her husband’s repentance for his patriarchal behavior. This article further examines the ways in which Priscilla serves to present an alternative form of social reform to Hollingsworth’s philanthropy or the organized enterprise depicted in the novel.