I ended up writing my research paper about the connection between the members of Brook Farm and the characters in The Blithedale Romance. I came to the conclusion in my paper that there was no connection between the two groups as Hawthorne stated in the preface of the novel. The paper was complete and the argument was well supported but it doesn't really go past the point of answering a simple yes or no question.
So I've been attempting to come up with an alternative argument and so far haven't had much luck. I don't want to completely abandon my original thesis, but I need to figure out a way to make it more meaningful to the novel. Unfortunately I don't really think that the relationship between the two groups is very significant to the overall reading of the novel. I think it is something that is very valuable to know from a historical perspective but not really from a literary perspective.
An early critic of the book warned readers to skip the preface and read it after they finished the novel. So that critic apparently believed that it was better to read the novel under the pretext that it was based on Brook Farm. Does anyone have any idea why?
Does anyone believe that the opposite might be true?
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2 comments:
Haha, we both are in the same boat, aren't we Adam? I felt the same way about my first research question, so I'm wasting almost no time to figure out a new one before it is due four days from now.... Good luck to both of us!
I also have a lot of work to do on my paper.
But on the note of the preface. I support what the one critic said. The preface in reality does not do much to convince me of anything. I feel as if it was just added for commentary. The story itself is about Hawthorne's experiences at Brook Farm; it would be very hard for someone to convince me otherwise. There are just too many connections and similarities between his Brook Farm and Blithedale.
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