Zenobia and Coverdale’s Veil: Hawthorne’s Sexual Politics in The Blithedale Romance

Jin Man Jeong

doi:10.21049/ccs.2020.60..301

This essay examines if Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance suggests a prospective feminist vision distancing from his contemporary dominant belief in gender. First, this essay identifies Zenobia’s inner inconsistency, focusing on her voices torn between defending her feminist cause energetically in the beginning and undercutting it skeptically at the latter part of the story. Arguably, despite her seeming eagerness in enhancing women’s rights as shown in Nina Baym’s longstanding claim, Zenobia continues to advocate the established notion of womanhood, unveiling her conservative voices. Second, this essay investigates the irreparably discordant perspectives that the narrator Coverdale as Hawthorne’s persona has assumed toward gender issues. Similar to Zenobia, he discloses his rear view wherein he promotes surreptitiously his or the author’s conservative, rigid ideology of gender as undeniably dichotomous and hierarchical, while at the front he is disguised as an earnest supporter of the feminist cause. Also, this essay articulates that Coverdale’s disguised sexual politics cannot be sustained safely, by testifying how his narrative that has chased ‘chimaera’ as an illusion of gender is being disrupted unknowingly by itself. Thus, aside from referring to a historical context around Hawthorne, a close reading concerning Zenobia and Coverdale’s (un-)veiling of gender ideology and a deconstructive approach to Coverdale’s narrative would facilitate elucidating the sexual politics underneath The Blithedale Romance and Hawthorne’s contentious attitude toward gender as well.

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REFERENCES (17)
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* 2021년 이후 발행 논문의 참고문헌은 현재 구축 중입니다.

[journal] 김은형 / 2011 / Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance: the Morbid Middle Class and the Failure of Romance / 미국소설 / 미국소설학회 18(2) : 101~132

[journal] 송호림 / 2011 / Woman’s Veil and Male Gaze: Conflicts of Conventional and Unconventional Womanhood in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance / 영어영문학연구 / 한국중앙영어영문학회 53(4) : 201~216 / 10.18853/jjell.2011.53.4.011

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[journal] Baym, Nina / 1968 / The Blithedale Romance : A Radical Reading / The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 67(4)

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[book] Hawthorne, Nathaniel / 2005 / The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings / W. W. Norton

[book] Hawthorne, Nathaniel / 1983 / The Blithedale Romance, 1852 / Penguin

[book] Hawthorne, Nathaniel / 2006 / 1836, The Norton Introduction to Literature / W. W. Norton

[book] Herbert, T. Walter / 2004 / The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne / Cambridge UP

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[journal] Orsagh, Jacqueline E / 1987 / ‘Blithedale’ : Another Lesson for Dark Ladies / The Centennial Review 31(3)

[journal] Schriber, Mary Suzanne / 1982 / Justice to Zenobia / The New England Quarterly 55(1)

[journal] Van Cromphout, Gustaaf / 1971 / Emerson, Hawthorne, and The Blithedale Romance / The Georgia Review 25(4)

[journal] Warren, Austin / 1939 / Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and ‘Nemesis’ / PMLA 54(2)

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