Somewhat on the Community System: Representations of Fourierism in the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne

by Andrew Loman

Overview

Hawthorne wrote much of his major fiction in the decade that the theories of Charles Marie François Fourier crossed the Atlantic and contributed to a wave of communitarian experimentation in the American North. Famously, Hawthorne briefly lived and worked at Brook Farm, a Transcendentalist commune that formally converted to Fourierism when he had left and was embroiled in litigation to recover money he had invested in the community. In his fiction, Hawthorne responded directly to Fourierism and its critique of capitalism. He used his experiences at Brook Farm as the inspiration for The Blithedale Romance , and in The House of the Seven Gables cast one of the principal characters as a recovering Fourierist. In The Scarlet Letter he engaged with Fourierist debates on marriage and the regulation of desire. Somewhat on the Community-System examines these interventions, and argues that Hawthorne's fiction both seeks to contain Fourierism and responds to its allure. Moreover, in formulating alternative, morally acceptable utopias (ones that are predicated on middle-class marriage), Hawthorne's fiction appropriates key aspects of Fourierist theory

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415975513
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/30/2005
Series:	Studies in Major Literary Authors
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Chapter One Introduction; Chapter Two Dreamers' Utopias: Communitarianism and Fourierism in Hawthorne's Works Prior to the American Romances; Chapter Three The Unpardonable Sin: Egotism as Ideology in The House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance; Chapter Four Free Love and its Specters in the American Romances; Conclusion;