Oops

I forgot that we have these weekly blog postings. But anyways, my main research is on The Blithedale Romance. Doing a quick wikipedia search for Brook Farm, the actual community that the novel is based upon, I find that Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the original members of the community. The town was based on the Socialist ideas of Fourier who was mentioned in the book and by Dave earlier in the blog postings.

I guess one of the research topic could be on Fourier ideas, how they were implemented at Brook Farm, and further references to them in the novel. Another would be to look for any journal that Hawthorne might have kept while he was living on the farm. This could give us insight on some of the things that Miles Coverdale was complaining about. It might also reveal people who Hawthorne might based the other characters like Hollingsworth and Silas Foster. (Aside: I was really intrigued by the Westervelt character because we had hardly any interactions with him and he seemed to be pulling quite a few strings. Moreover, it would be really cool if Westervelt was a real person much like Margaret Fuller.) Similar to Mark Twain, I think the library will have Hawthorne's journal as well as some of his correspondence with other people.

It might also be worthwhile to look into the Utopian genre that came before and after The Blithedale Romance. We can see how people like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley followed in the footsteps of Hawthorne. I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like every book that is written about a Utopian society always have the underlying message that it isn't such a good thing. The characters are either too perverse for out liking (Brave New World) or the society is so communistic that it takes away our freewill (1984). We see a little bit of this freewill issue in The Blithedale Romance when Coverdale decided to leave and go to the seashore. But that might have just been Coverdale being lazy.