My students
have just completed two novels: The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. This
month, instead of responding to articles or recordings, I have provided some
discussion questions about these works.
The
Blithedale Romance: Why doesn’t Miles spill the beans?
When he
discovered that Hollingsworth wanted to purchase the land for his prisoner
reform scheme, why does Miles retreat to town instead of telling the others at
Blithedale? How would the plot of the
novel have changed if had revealed this?
One of the possible reasons why Miles did not tell anybody about Hollingsworth’s plans is his great scare of commitment. This trait was shown quite early in the book, for example, in the first chapter, where Miles is ready to offer “any amount of kindness involving no special trouble for himself”. Similarly, when Miles and Hollingsworth are on Westerwelt magic session, Miles does nothing to help Priscilla, assuming he must have been aware of the fact that odds are that Priscilla is the Veiled Lady. His disconnected attitude was also presented in the Zenobia’s legend. In the legend, Theodore (who symbolizes Miles) is afraid to marry an unknown girl, and therefore loses a very nice one. This is definitely a picture of Zenobia’s perception of Miles. As it is visible that the scare of commitment was a dominant trait of Miles, it is possible to consider it as a possible reason. Miles was probably afraid of developing a bad relationship with Hollingsworth.
ReplyDeleteDue to developing a bad relation with Hollingsworth, Miles could have been deprived of gaining information, what was his most favorite hobby. Moreover, nobody would tell him secrets anymore in case he became known as indiscreet. Curiosity was crucial reason of Miles’ actions, sometimes even more powerful than his scare of commitment. In the first chapter, Miles seems to be acting against his own will just to find out which kind of favor does Old Moodie want. Later, when Hollingsworth brings Priscilla to Blithedale, Miles wants Hollingsworth to “tell us how and where did you meet her”. The show-off of Miles curiosity is depicted in the chapter Hotel where he describes the whole scene, observing people in work through the window, and making judgments about the situation he sees. Moreover, it seems like he really enjoys doing this. Hence, it is possible to think that Miles did not want to tell anybody about Hollingsworth’s plans, because firstly he did not want to deprive himself of the source of information, and secondly, he might have been curious to find out how will the situation develop.
Well, it is hard to predict how the situation would develop if Miles told Blithedale people about Hollingsworth’s plans. Most likely Miles and Hollingsworth would end up in a word against word situation, resulting in nothing but very bad relationship of Miles and Hollingsworth. Moreover, as I tried to show, Miles was not the type of person, who would do something like this. His personality and interests were blocking him to do so.