Comic laughter in The Blithedale Romance: Miles Coverdale and the idea of the gentleman humorist. (2024)

"We sometimes hold mirth to a stricter accountability thansorrow; it must show good cause, or the echo of its laughter comes backdrearily." Miles Coverdale (CE 3:75)

Nathaniel Hawthorne's use of irony is well known. Along withhis famous concern about the differences between the narrative forms ofromance and novel, his interest in American history as a usable literarypast, and his often Gothic exploration of the psychology of humanmotives, irony stands out as a signature element of his work. Becauseirony is often employed to produce comic laughter, scholars inevitablyhave also pointed out other comic elements in Hawthorne's shortstories and novels. (1)

Irony is front and center when The Blithedale Romance (1852) comesinto view. Translating the title as "the tale of the happy valleyguarantees an ironic tone, though not simply as a contrast to the deathof Zenobia, the psychological shattering of Hollingsworth, and theself-imposed isolation of Coverdale. Throughout the book, the everydayactions of Blithedale's inhabitants constantly reveal the ethicalhollowness of its professed mission: the colony's behaviorironically undercuts its ideology of reform. The complicated nature ofCoverdale as narrator highlights this topic too, the gap between whatCoverdale narrates and what Hawthorne wants the reader to understandproviding an especially rich aspect for developing irony. For MartinFitzPatrick, Hawthorne has exploited that ironic gap to render Coverdaleas a "failed substitute Hawthorne" or a"travesty-Hawthorne" (29, 35), enabling the reader toapprehend the full truth of the tale.

Coverdale may be a "failed substitute Hawthorne" or a"travesty-Hawthorne," but I will argue that Hawthorne hasconstructed his unreliable narrator as a failed humorist of a particularsort, one whose humor is marked by the good-natured amiability of aproper gentleman who observes and sketches what he sees for theedification of the reader, as Washington Irving's narrator does inThe Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819). From this angle,Coverdale travesties and becomes a failed substitute Geoffrey Crayon.Like Crayon, Coverdale has an artistic sensibility as well as apropensity to daydream and entertain fanciful thoughts. Like Crayon,Coverdale is always observing the scene and its people. UnlikeCrayon's, Coverdale's first-person narrative provides not somuch events reliably reported as events subjectively "rendered,creating a false sense of omniscience. Coverdale functions as"Hawthorne's main vehicle for questioning the viability of thefigure of the gentleman humorist as Irving constructed him with theexemplary Geoffrey Crayon. (2)

Despite their grim outcomes at the end of The Blithedale Romance,the main characters as the story unfolds are often laughing and smiling,surprising behaviors perhaps, given those outcomes and the potential forirony to supply a sharp-edged comic tone to a narrative.Hawthorne's obsession with sympathy does not surprise, however;many critics have" noted it over the years. Although Robert Levinehas claimed that the narrative is "comically informed" (402)by Coverdale's acute awareness of his limitations as a sympatheticreformer, no one has investigated links" between a sympatheticimagination and the narrative's comic aspect. (3) This essay willshow the ways in which Hawthorne uses laughter and smiles to develop therole sympathy plays in his characters' behavior. In addition,Hawthorne projects skepticism about attempts to rationalize within aninstitutional format the amiable and benevolent sympathy that motivatesthe behavior of the gentleman humorist; the Blithedale communityrepresents such an attempt. Ultimately, Hawthorne questions arationalization of benevolence, doubting its implied support for theEnlightenment project of perfecting mankind, what Coverdale calls theworld's improvability" (20). (4) In keeping with his grandtheme of the often mysterious motives of the human heart, Hawthorneprobes his characters' benevolence and tolerance as well assympathy, motives underpinning the enterprises of philanthropy andreform. These motives are also part of a long-standing internationaldiscourse about comic laughter, humorous characters, and proper satire,a backdrop of theorizing that began in early eighteenth-century England,theorizing that finds its American apotheosis in Irving's narrator,Geoffrey Crayon, Gentleman. In The Blithedale Romance, Hawthornereinscribes this discourse, its philosophical debate and literarypresentation, to stage an examination of the motives for philanthropicreform.

Theorizing Comic Laughter as Amiable, Sympathetic, Benevolent

Understanding the complicated comic dimension of Coverdale meansrecognizing him as a figure made visible by a discourse about comiclaughter, humorists, and satirists that started with Joseph Addison andRichard Steele. (5) In Spectator #23, Joseph Addison considers theproper use of lampoons, that is, the ridiculing of specified individuals(1:97-100). Plato had outlawed such writings, however playful. Addisonagrees that such ridicule in an ill-natured man is troubling, but hedoes not as a solution ban the genre, but rather insists that theridicule be tempered with "Virtue and Humanity." In short,Addison prescribes what the satirist's temperament or humor oughtto be. Richard Steele makes his own prescription. In addition to a goodsatirist having a cause that is society's concern and not merelyhis own, he must have "a benevolence to all men," that is, agood-nature, to "rail agreeably" and to create"representations [that] bear a pleasantry in them" (Tatler#242, 4:236, 237; cf. Spectator #33, 1:145-48).

Addison wants to keep the traditional function of the satirist, tocorrect bad behavior with ridicule, to "recover them [his readers]out of that desperate state of vice and folly, into which the age isfallen" (Spectator # 10, 1:44). Proper satire only targets thevice, not the person, an important but old distinction. Therevolutionary ingredient from Addison and Steele can be found in theprescribed attitude for the satirist: a cheerfulness that renders theridicule agreeable and even pleasant. Given these paradoxicalparameters, the figure of Mr. Spectator emerges as a startlingly newhybrid, an amiable satirist, one who "rails agreeably" andthus creates a ridiculing and corrective laughter for benevolentpurposes.

The satirist as a cheerful, amiable, and good-natured figurerepresents a significant departure from centuries of theorizing inWestern culture about comic art and comic laughter. Beginning with Platoand Aristotle, the central justification in the West for comic works ofart depended upon their function of reminding an audience whatconstitutes social propriety or good ethics. Comic art needed justifyingbecause much of it seemed harmful--scurrilous, abusive, scandalous--andbecause laughter too often signified childishness, vulgarity, or evenmadness. (6) Addison's amiable satirist maintains comic artsethical function of exposing bad behavior to ridicule but reconfiguresthe satirists manner and motivation, proscribing harsh and personalridicule while demanding a cheerful and good-natured manner. Addison andSteele's emerging discourse on comic laughter and comic art thusentails a doubling dynamic for amiable and good-natured laughter, adynamic in which the one who ridicules understands that he is also apotential butt and thus perceives with tolerance eccentricity in others,indeed, looks to find the eccentric other as confirmation thatone's own odd self is tolerable.

The new ideas of Addison and Steele in the early eighteenth centuryabout how satire should be prosecuted delimited a conceptual space forthe creation of new comic character types, a process admirably traced byStuart Tave. (7) In addition, the benevolent motivation required tocreate an amiable satirist encouraged discriminating any comic laughteraimed at a butt into two kinds: one that ridicules vice and folly; onethat tolerates and humors odd foibles or eccentricities. Comic laughter,then, effectively divided into ridiculous and ludicrous modes, theformer used to correct major faults, the latter deployed as a sign oftolerance for lesser faults. (8) Comic characters in the mode of theridiculous were humorists as Ben Jonson would have understood the term,butts whose faults needed to be reformed, objects of a caustic satire.Comic characters in the mode of the ludicrous were humorists in thenewer, Addisonian sense, individuals whose faults not only could betolerated--they are not the butts of a reforming satire--but whosefaults, their odd humors, could even make them endearing to the reader.For comic writers who followed the Addison/Steele vision of comiclaughter and comic art, two new comic character types emerged: theamiable satirist and the lovable humorist. As the eighteenth centuryprogressed, characters exemplifying the lovable humorist in a ludicrousmode included Parson Adams in Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews(1742) and Uncle Toby in Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions ofTristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759). By the early nineteenth century, suchcomic characters constituted a recognizably new branch of comic writing,one privileging a species of comic laughter that is amiable.

For Addison, the ability to become an amiable satirist, that is, todiscriminate laughter into two modes, marks a gentleman, one whose tasteis not engendered by ordinary objects that stir up laughter "amongmen of gross taste." "Men of superior sense andknowledge" (Spectator #47, 1:201) are able to distance themselvesfrom the "the thoughtless herd" (Spectator # 10, 1:44) and notlaugh with "those little cracklings of mirth and folly that areapter to betray virtue than support it" (Spectator #381,3:432).Addison implies that "honest gentlemen ... who are men of wit andsense" (Spectator #47, 1:203, 204) can be found in both the old andnew versions of the humorist: these are men whose "odd turn ofhumor [makes] the company merry" (Spectator #A7, 1:204), that is,they can be treated as butts, yet that odd humor does not necessarilyprovoke a wish to reform them. Their peers both ridicule and toleratetheir humors. It is just here that the new discourse about comiclaughter developed by Addison and Steele confuses the older meanings of"satirist" and "humorist" in their traditionalopposition of a figure who creates comic ridicule against a figure whois the butt of that ridicule. In the new discourse about comic laughter,the gentleman who is an amiable satirist demonstrates his amiability byrecognizing a lovable humorist as his laughable counterpart. Theimplication is that one comic type mirrors the other, but as we shallsee, that metaphor misleads.

Moreover, Addison asserts that, as butts, lovable humorists who aregentlemen have the wit and sense to turn the tables and ridicule theirridiculers. The lovable humorist thus has the potential to switch hisstatus and become the amiable satirist. Crucially, Addisonbelieved" that only a gentleman could apprehend such potential.Thus Addison and Steele's conception of amiable and benevolentlaughter creates a peculiar and complex figure: "the gentlemanhumorist." (9) The complexity of the gentleman humorist stems fromhis embodiment of the doubling dynamic of good-natured comic laughter:one first conceptually splits the self into ridiculer and ridiculed, andthen perceptually replicates the split in others. Target of laughter yetproducer of laughter, the gentleman humorist has the potential to bequite sophisticated as a comic type. Others might make him a butt ofridicule, but if they too are gentleman humorists, they can alsotolerate the inherent oddity of his humor. The gentleman humorist canproduce the correcting ridicule of satire, but knowledge of his owneccentricities fits him to be good-humored and cheerful in his raillery,as Addison and Steele dictate. The gentleman humorist, then, encompassesthe notion of an amiable satirist, as ready to be self-deprecating inhis production of laughter as to ridicule others. Comic laughter for thegentleman humorist is Addisonian: amiable and tolerant when possible,with benevolence always at the core of whatever raillery seemsnecessary. One ramification of this figure is that the correctingridicule of satire becomes diminished, if not marginalized, aconsequence suggested by my repression of "satirist" in using"gentleman humorist" to name the doubling dynamic that marksthe Addisonian conception of good-natured comic laughter.

In the storyworld of Irving's travel sketches, Geoffrey Crayonexemplifies the American gentleman humorist. In his satiric function,Crayon appears so amiable and self-deprecating that ridicule all butdisappears; he views the comic faults of others, not with the prideimplied by Hobbes' superiority theory of laughter, but with thetolerating sympathy of benevolence. Geoffrey Crayon as dreamer and idlerpresents his own comic foibles and eccentricities; he is a gentleman whodisplays a humorist's profile in the Addisonian sense, notdeserving the full scorn of ridicule from the reader; he is someone whohumors others as he would have them humor him. Crucial for my reading ofThe Blithedale Romance is that the constellation of emotionshighlighted--sympathy and amiability as well as benevolence--not onlyunderpins the tolerance entailed in the Addisonian idea of the humoristthat Irving's narrator exemplifies, but they also ostensiblydescribe the heart of both the Blithe-dale enterprise andHollingsworth's scheme to rehabilitate criminals. My point is notthat Hollingsworth embodies a gentleman humorist who replicates GeoffreyCrayon, but rather that the figure of the gentleman humorist canfunction as a heuristic for Hawthorne's narrative, not only toanalyze characters and thus to discern a critique of reform schemes andprofessional reformers, but also to discern how the novel inscribes thedebate about laughter initiated by Addison and Steele.

For Addison, "A cheerful mind is not only disposed to beaffable and obliging, but raises the same good humour [sic] in those whowould come within its influence" (Spectator #381, 3:430).Addison's narrator, Mr. Spectator, deliberately looks for otherhumorists like himself: odd and uncommon characters are the game that Ilook for, and most delight in" (Spectator #108, 1:448). Being ahumorist has a forensic function, allowing one to "raise the samegood humour [sic]." Thus the exemplary moment of Geoffrey Crayon asa gentleman humorist occurs when he finds another humorist to matchhimself, Squire Bracebridge. "In The Sketch Book, amiability andbenevolence rule as Crayon and "Bracebridge reproduce Mr. Spectatorand his friends at his club. In effect, Mr. Crayon's comic task isto discover the virtues of the eighteenth" century coffee house,its intrinsic and good-humored camaraderie, in the nineteenth-centurybody politic.

If The Sketch Book as the early nineteenth-century Americanrepresentative of the Addisonian discourse of amiable and good-naturedlaughter makes sense, then--also given the fact of its enormouspopularity--what can be learned by reading Miles Coverdale as anotherpotential American version of Mr. Spectator, like Geoffrey Crayon?Though Coverdale is not an avowed satirist, like Mr. Spectator, he is ajokester and something of an ironist. For FitzPatrick, this behaviorwarrants calling Coverdale a "latent satirist." In my reading,Coverdale tries to be not just the gentleman at Blithedale, in contrastto Hollingsworth the blacksmith, but the gentleman humorist, tiepretends to be the equivalent of Geoffrey Crayon, someone who ostensiblyobserves the scene and comments upon it with a benevolence deep andwide, yet someone who can also fulfill his function as an amiablesatirist when needed. Coverdale's failure to display thebenevolence at the core of the gentleman humorist means that he alsofails his potential to be an amiable satirist. That potential is notlatent in the sense of being unconscious. Coverdale as failed gentlemanhumorist instead features, on the one hand, his claim for and a denialof a benevolent heart, and on the other hand, his embrace and denial ofa satiric capability. Unlike Crayon when he reaches Bracebridge Hall,Coverdale does not enjoy a serendipitous discovery of a household ofamiable humorists during travels. Ironically, the enterprise atBlithedale has already gathered" together a group of like-mindedreformists who potentially represent en masse the benevolence andsympathy of the Addisonian humorist in a domestic setting.

Humorists at Blithedale: Hollingsworth and Zenobia?

Hawthorne's experience living at Brook Farm provided thefoundation for his most contemporary novel and the pretext for readingThe Blithedale Romance as a roman a clef, an approach Hawthorneencourages when Zenobia alludes to the community as a "knot ofvisionary transcendentalists" (115). The Blithedale community wasfounded on "silent and unknown sympathy" (62), thusinstitutionalizing the benevolence that underpins the amiable humorGeoffrey Crayon employs ad hoc on his rambles through the Englishcountryside. Hawthorne multiplies Crayon's individualized amiablehumor of benevolence into a sympathetic community of well-intentionedand apparently good-humored "pilgrims" (52) at Blithedale. The"jollity (209) of the masqueraders later in the story, their"festal cheer" expressed with "a roar of laughter"(210), suggests a comparison to the merriment of the Christmas storiesin The Sketch Book.

To the social world outside the commune, Blithedale has the"reputation of a benevolent fraternity" (49). However, societyalso mocks the enterprise (145), and the country folks on theneighboring farms make jokes about the Blithedalers' competence(65), an attitude that later transforms into the "savage andbloody-minded jokes" (195) in newspapers about Hollingsworth'sphilanthropic efforts. From the point of view of conventional society,philanthropy and reform are objects of ridicule, and those who believein such enterprises should be treated as old-school Jonsonian humorists,the butts of jokes. Coverdale suggests this status of eccentrics andcranks for the Blithedalers when he calls them "Persons of markedindividuality--crooked sticks" that cannot be easily boundtogether. However, from the perspective within the community, thosedifferences are not ridiculous: "We were of all creeds andopinions, and generally tolerant of all, on every imaginable subject(63). The Blithedalers humor each other with a "species of nervoussympathy" (139), an attitude that does bind them together. In thissense, they behave as new-school Addisonian humorists, who may viewothers' "crooked" qualities, their eccentricities, aslaughable, but only in the ludicrous mode of amiable comic laughter. Ifthey laugh, they do so in the key of benevolent sympathy that ostensiblyunderpins the reforming impulse of the Blithedale enterprise.

When first introduced, Hollingsworth appears to have the necessarybenevolent sympathy for becoming a forceful participant in the scheme ofBlithedale. Coverdale signals Hollingsworth's large capacity foremotional warmth when he compares the light in his eyes to the cheeringaspect of a blazing fire (42). More intriguing, Hollingsworth displaysbehavior that would disturb conventional ideas about gender and thusopens himself to being the butt of ridicule, to being treated as anold-school humorist. Coverdale thus marks Hollingsworth's essentialeccentricity as centering on an incongruity between his rude strength,his bodily presence as a former blacksmith (57), and on actions thatdisplay a feminine tenderness: "something of the woman moulded[sic] into [his] "great, stalwart frame" (42; cf 43). Hisbeing a "more than brotherly" (41) nurse for Coverdale earlyin the story provides the obvious example of "his great, stern, yettender soul" (186), though his kindness later to Old Moodie is alsonotable (83), an echo of his initial sympathy for Priscilla (27).Priscilla consistently draws out Hollingsworth's sympathy (72); hissmiles are often for her. Notably, while Hollingsworth might beunderstood either as a humorist in the old sense of being a butt oflaughter," or in the new and liberal sense that he possesses thesympathy necessary for humoring the quirks and foibles of others, helacks the most obvious quality of being a new-school humorist:deliberately producing laughter in others, a lack which makes himsimilar to Geoffrey Crayon."

That lack is certainly not evident in Zenobia, though her smile andher laugh first impress Coverdale. Similar to the cheering light inHollingsworth's eyes, "mirth [is] gleaming out of hereyes" (16-17), and "her smile beamed warmth upon us all,"a geniality matched by "her mellow, almost broad laugh" (16;cf. 45, 59, 78). In her first appearance Zenobia manifests a benevolentsympathy for all her prospective compatriots at Blithedale. In additionand unlike Hollingsworth, she makes a joke. Provocatively,Zenobia's first effort to be a humorist in the sense of adeliberate producer of laughter takes the form of a very daring jokeabout her donning "Eve's earliest garment" (17), a jokereinforcing the attention to her body and to her sexuality thatCoverdale has already given when he mentions in his initial description"one glimpse of a white shoulder" (15). Her joke andCoverdale's reaction to it complicates the reader's sense ofZenobia as a humorist because that circuit of producing humor for anaudience not only signifies her character, her interiority, but it alsostresses what her laughter has already stressed: her physical body. Theallusion to Eve prompts Coverdale to imagine that God "Himselfwould look at Zenobia and say "'Behold, here is a woman!"(17). Although the allusion to Eden inevitably evokes the expulsion fromparadise, that image is overshadowed by a divine praise of Zenobia forher primal, prelapsarian femaleness."

However, there is a twist, an incongruity structuring thisadmiration for her physical beauty, one that disturbs conventions aboutgender. Zenobia's status as a writer of course already puts anyconventional feminine identity in doubt, but her body augments theeccentricity" conferred on her by the profession of writing forperiodicals, a body whose physical beauty challenges conventional idealsof femininity; it is for an "overflow [of bloom, health, and vigor]that a man might well have fallen in love with her," as Coverdaleconfesses, despite the fact that "some fastidious person wouldpronounce [her physical features] a little deficient in softness anddelicacy" (15). Her hands, "larger than most women would liketo have" (15), symbolize this eccentric quality of being verybeautiful yet not in a conventionally feminine way. More-over, her laughreinforces this eccentricity, a "mellow, almost broad laugh"... not in the least like an ordinary woman's laugh" (16).Zenobia's laugh indicates her maturity--"what girl had everlaughed as Zenobia did! (47); it also signifies the fullness of herpresence in a crowded room, a fullness at once masculine and feminineand indicated by what is lost with conventional notions of femalebeauty: "a certain warm and rich characteristic refined away out ofthe feminine system" (17). Her "laugh, as a bodily phenomenon,literally signifies her basic character. Her laugh marks her as thehumorist capable of producing laughter in an audience, a capacitycommensurate with a commanding presence as an extraordinarily beautifulwoman, even though social conventions present her as odd, as notfeminine. Her eccentricity is to be so" much woman--physically andaesthetically and intellectually--that she challenges highbrowconceptions about the naturalness of the qualities of delicacy andrefinement that supposedly define women. (10)

That challenge to conventional thinking lays her open to beingtreated as an old-school humorist, as a butt of ridiculing jokes, astatus that would match her with Hollingsworth, just as Coverdale'sclaim that she ought to be "a stump oratress" (44) blatantlymirrors Hollingsworth's ability as a public speaker. They appear tobe intrinsically paired. Hollingsworth's fundamental eccentricitystems from an incongruity between his obviously masculine physique andhis capacity for "womanly" tenderness, while Zenobia'sbasic oddity lies in the contrast between her obviously female physiqueand a male confidence expressed by her gender-defying "womanlyfrankness" (47), a confidence manifested by her status as a writerand symbolized by her laugh that registers as beyond both woman andgirl. As Coverdale says, Zenobia has a "character of eccentricityand defiance" (103). Hawthorne clearly uses joking behavior,smiles, laughter, and the intricacies of being a humorist post-Addisonand Steele to convey the complexity of Zenobia's character. Odd,eccentric, jocular, and unconventional, Zenobia qualifies as a humoristin all Addisonian senses of the word: she apparently should beunderstood as the female complement to the gentleman humorist.

The generosity of spirit that ostensibly marks Zenobia'sparticipation in the reform effort of Blithedale as well asHollingsworth's philanthropic impulse could have been aptlyexpressed by a duet of amiable joking behaviors that leads and inspiresthe Blithedalers by comically dramatizing the sympathy and toleranceneeded for group efforts to succeed. Imagining Zenobia and Hollingsworthin this fashion is tantamount to constructing a classic romantic comedy,a transcendentalist" Much Ado About Nothing. It is tempting towonder if any of her writings for periodicals is comic, but clearly ifone imagines Zenobia as the lady humorist, Hollingsworth should be hercomic double, as Squire Bracebridge matches Mr. Crayon and Benedictpartners with Beatrice. Perhaps, Hawthorne wishes to suggest thatpossibility early in the story yet quickly to withdraw it. Hollingsworthbehaves much too earnestly to play his role in such a scenario.Coverdale, with his propensity to jest, seems a more suitable match.(More on this point later.) In any case, Hawthorne thwarts suchpossibilities before the fact. Moreover, he does so in a way that alsocasts doubt on the entire Blithedale enterprise by exposingeveryone's lack of the benevolence needed to succeed not only as areformist but also as an Addisonian humorist.

The Irony of Benevolence at Blithedale

Coverdale early on makes explicit the irony of working in the nameof brotherhood and sisterhood when he realizes that Blithedale as a farmin market competition with neighboring farms contravenes fraternalsympathy. Ranged against the rest of society, the Blithedalers wereinevitably estranged" and in a "position of newhostility" (20). More importantly, Hawthorne dramatizes this ironyas an internal faction in the chapter entitled "The SupperTable" when the gentlemen and ladies feel awkward having therustic, "uncouth" (18) yeoman Silas Foster, his wife, and theservants sit at the supper table with them. Coverdale undercuts this"first practical trial of our theories of equal brotherhood andsisterhood" by wondering if the "people of superiorcultivation and refinement" would have sat with their"unpolished companions" if they could have avoided it (24).Coverdale senses that the community has failed the test, and in doing sohe functions as a satirist, suggesting the hypocrisy of their"sympathy" (25). Hawthorne demonstrates that Coverdale sharesthe ambivalence of the ladies and gentlemen sitting down at table withrustics and servants in his ridicule of Silas, whose eating habits are"less like a civilized Christian than the worst kind of ogre"(30). Coverdale does recognize the honorable and sensible nature ofSilas' comments about Priscilla, "though they proceeded out ofan unwiped mouth" and though he sarcastically refers to Silas'bad table manners as "amiable exploits" (30).

While the image of awkward equality provided by the supper tableimplies the illusory nature of sympathy among the Blithedalers, the lackof hospitality for Priscilla when she suddenly enters the room withHollingsworth makes manifest the lack of sympathy. Hawthorne presentsCoverdale's reaction to everyone's cold reception forPriscilla in terms that suggest the narrator deliberately displays thecoldly playful malice of the caustic satirist: "Perhaps it showedthe iron substance of my heart, that I could not help smiling at thisodd scene of unknown and unaccountable calamity, into which our cheerfulparty had been entrapped without the liberty of choosing whether tosympathize or no" (29). Coverdale's cynical smile illuminates,indeed it dramatizes, what is at stake in the scene. Secure in theirsense of the benevolence of their mission, which is no less than toreform all of mankind, the new company of like-minded and supposedlygood-humored believers coldly fails to offer any hospitality toPriscilla. Her unexpected arrival exposes the "cheerful" partyas not amiable or sympathetic. Instead, the company displays theemotional distance of a pride that, like the moment when they realizedthey had to eat with social inferiors, traps them into the necessity ofchoosing consciously rather than being sympathetic spontaneously. Theymask their emotion and only appear sympathetic, which" Coverdalegrasps and finds comic. And it is comic in a sharply satiric way: theirfailure to act shows the ironic distance between the avowed principle ofbenevolence that informs the Blithedale ideology and the behavior of itsinhabitants, a potentially fatal incongruity that threatens theBlithedale enterprise before it begins. The company believes in theprinciple but not the commensurate emotion. Most importantly, Zenobiaparticipates in the company's cold reaction, suggesting that thewarmth of her smile and the mellowness of her laughter could be read"as a performance, gestures that mask rather than define hercharacter, as her pseudonym hides her true name.

Zenobia: Humorist or Satirist at Blithedale?

Zenobia's initial reaction to Priscilla fits intoCoverdale's cynically amused view of Blithedale and apparentlyundermines any claim she "may have to be a female Geoffrey Crayon,but one must also note that she "recovers" quickly from herinitial attitude--by making a joke. She is shown "laughing"over her conceit that Priscilla's sudden and dramatic appearance is"worthy" for the adventure of the new life of "love andfree-heartedness" (29) to which everyone has publicly committedthemselves. Nevertheless, Priscilla's initial appearancejeopardizes the comically inflected sympathy projected by Zenobia'sfirst appearance, forcing" the reader to judge the manner of thelatter's deliberate comic behaviors: caustic old-school satirist orthe female equivalent of Geoffrey Crayon, the amiable version of thesatirist I am calling a gentleman humorist? The answer would seem to beboth. Coverdale initially presents Zenobia as the best expression of theliberality of the gentleman humorist, as the one individual who morethan any other already embodies the benevolent goals of Blithedale, butas the narrative unfolds, he also presents" Zenobia as someoneequally capable of the judgmental distance that marks sharp ridicule.

Zenobia's "mischievous smile" (116) signals herambivalent comic status. She often jokes with Coverdale but never withHollingsworth (68), and no doubt such joking has its measure ofgood-natured chaffing, which indicates a level of intimacy in whichfriends can tease one another. However, she jokes often enough thatCoverdale realizes she can turn him into a "butt of endlessridicule" (94) if she chooses. In one notable instance, she makes ajoke connecting manual farm labor with writing poetry, a joke ridiculingboth Silas and Coverdale, but more significantly for Coverdale the poet,she mocks the very possibility of the pastoral poetry for which heapparently is known (66-67). Does she in this last instance cross theline from being amiable and friendly in her teasing, moving toward whatmight be called a chaffing style of satire that hints at a lampoon? Bynot detailing his reaction, Cover dale provides no help to decide thequestion, nor does he aid the reader on another notable occasion, whenshe laughs at him as he looks into her eyes, seeking to solve themystery of her life in one mesmeric moment (48).

Consider another of Zenobia's jokes, uttered in "a toneof humorous vexation" (78), this one about beating Priscilla. Thetemptation to read the joke as revelatory of an unconscious aggressiontoward her unknown sister seems to be confirmed later by her cruelgesture of covering Priscilla with a veil when telling her oddly spooky,oddly comic legend, The Silver Veil" (116). Even the legend itselfcan be read as either a tale full of friendly chaffing or as a mockingsatire (107-08). More certain is the moment when she readily returnsCoverdale's ridicule (166), or when she greets Coverdale, firstlaughing, and then with her smile, "scornful anger underneath"(162). Her laugh as she says she is on trial would seem to have anundercurrent of defiant and scornful anger too, though Coverdale onceagain does not characterize it (214), nor does he tell the reader whatkind are the several smiles he also notes during his recounting of thescene (215, 216, 219). Within the narrative's economy of irony,Coverdale's silence on these details signifies his inability toread the tone of Zenobia's laugh and the tenor of her smiles. Forthe reader, however, her laughter and smiles during this scene registeras more than merely mischievous; they place Zenobia in the role of thecaustic satirist.

When Zenobia estimates her own character, she says, "I ampositively not an ill-natured person" (34), as though sheconsciously makes a bid to be the female equivalent of Addison'sgentleman humorist, but several other details contradict herself-estimate: her chronic haughty look (88), her "continualinequalities of temper" (119-20), her frequently "not verykindly tone" (50) to Priscilla, and what has already been noted asher joking anger against Priscilla (78). Coverdale wonders about the"latent mischief" (59) in her, a thought suggesting how closeto the surface rests her behavior as a tongue-lashing satirist,apparently just underneath the warmth and geniality of her behavior as alady humorist. Hawthorne uses the full range of comic laughter tocharacterize Zenobia, showing her both as Addison's ideal of agood-humored satirist as well as a satirist of the Jonsonian stripe,ready to squeeze the humors out of others with a caustic grip.

Coverdale: Humorist or Satirist at Blithedale?

Coverdale's character presents a complicated comic profiletoo. In many instances, he acts as a humorist in the sense of trying toproduce laughter in an audience with jokes: the claim for balmy air inthe middle of a snowstorm (11); the need to commit crimes so as to catchHollingsworth's philanthropic attention (22); the wish to postponereformation for fifty years (40). Occasionally, he can produce aself-deprecating humor, as with this remark during his illness: "Ispeedily became a skeleton above ground" (41). Similarly, he canjoke about wearing the night cap Priscilla made for him only in the daytime, in order to" receive company, because it is so beautifullycrafted (51), or joke about the image that the Blithedalers present withthe clothes they wear to work the farm: "gentility in tatters"(64). Coverdale can even argue with Hollingsworth by invoking the roleof an artificial fool: "the profoundest wisdom must be mingled withnine-tenths of nonsense" (129). In these examples from the earlychapters of the novel, Coverdale would seem to be a gentleman humorist,amiable in his manner, minimally any sort of satirist, evoking GeoffreyCrayon.

If Coverdale replicates Crayon, theoretically he is looking forhumorous doubles in the world, that is, for folks who apparently mirrorthe amiable ridicule of a gentleman humorist, as Crayon found SquireBracebridge and Mr. Spectator found Sir Roger de Coverley. As jokester,Coverdale matches Zenobia. If Hollingsworth early in the storyapparently pairs with Zenobia in a philanthropic sympathy, Cover-daleequals her in the playful sympathy required of an amiable humorist. Thepotential pairing of Coverdale and Zenobia should strike the reader asall the more plausible given the earnestness of Hollingsworth. Moreover,unlike Crayon, Coverdale is not just looking for amiable comrades; healso wishes for a sympathetic soul-mate, a romantic double. He hidesthis second goal, despite his initial attraction to Zenobia, until thescene at Eliot's Pulpit, when he notes with a bitter smile thatHollingsworth has apparently won the affection of Zenobia and Priscillaboth (124). (11)

However, the first crisis for Coverdale as gentleman humoristhappens with Hollingsworth, for the sympathy embodied by that comicfigure concerns the benevolent love of mankind, the camaraderie implicitin the Blithedale enterprise, not the romantic love of an individual.Hollingsworth and Coverdale should be brothers in the pursuit of thatbenevolent enterprise, especially after the emotional bondingestablished by Hollingsworth's nursing Coverdale back to health.Thus the chapter entitled "Crisis," which literally marks themid-point of the book, involves Coverdale's angry refusal to aidHollingsworth in his scheme to subvert Blithedale for his philanthropicgoal of establishing an institution for rehabilitating criminals. Hisexplicit rejection of Hollingsworth, not his intuition that neitherZenobia nor Priscilla loves him, drives Coverdale from Blithedale.

Coverdale objects not to the principle of Hollingsworth'sscheme, but to his "methods" (135), that is, the plan to buysurreptitiously the Blithedale property and change its benevolent schemeto his own. However, long before the crisis, Coverdale has suspected theperverse nature of Hollingsworth's purpose, sensing that his"godlike benevolence has been debased into all devouringegotism" (71). In the process of debasem*nt, men like Hollingsworthwill "keep no friend, unless he make [sic] himself the mirror oftheir purpose" (70). Hawthorne here reveals the fundamentalinability of Hollingsworth to be a sympathetic and amiable gentlemanhumorist. The metaphor of the mirror does not dramatize the doublingdynamic implied by the figure of the gentleman humorist and hissympathetic laughter, but instead expresses its perversion. Theamiability of the gentleman humorist consists of tolerating someoneelse's difference. Hollingsworth's false sympathy insteaddemands that the other become his mirror image. As egotist rather thanhumorist, Hollingsworth does not ride a hobby-horse but instead worships"an idol" (70), his own self, in whose image he would remakethe other. Priscilla provides such a relationship for Hollingsworth,which is precisely why Coverdale calls her a "gentle parasite"(123).

As early as the end of his convalescence, when Coverdale andHollingsworth discuss Fourierism, Coverdale has realized the perversesingle-mindedness of the blacksmith-turned-philanthropist. Coverdalesurmises that Hollingsworth "must have been originally endowed witha great spirit of benevolence" but that he had come to Blithedale"actuated by no real sympathy" (54). Coverdale'sconclusion as to the current state of Hollingsworth's mind andcharacter includes harsh ridicule--and is stated in specific terms:

 It is my private opinion, that, at this period of his life, Holling-sworth was fast going mad; and, as with other crazy people, (among whom I include humorists of every degree,) it required all the constancy of friendship to restrain his associates from pronouncing him an intolerable bore. Such prolonged fiddling upon one string; such multiformed presentation of one idea! (56)

Coverdale implies that Hollingsworth bores everyone by repeatedlyspeaking of his scheme. The comment makes clear that Coverdaleconceptualizes Hollingsworth as a humorist in the older, classic senseof someone dominated by one idea or behavior, someone who continuallyplays one tune or perpetually rides his hobby-horse and thereforedeserves the hearty ridicule of caustic satire. This classic sense ofthe humorist, demonstrated memorably in the comedies of Ben Jonson andMoliere, points to the gentleman's belles lettres educationCoverdale has had, an education represented also in his mentioning otherclassic writers. The link between madness and laughter that Coverdalemakes--humorists "of every degree" are crazy--was notablyexpressed in Samuel Butler's seventeenth-century essay, "AHumorist" (Tave 92), in which the humorist is nearly the same as amadman. Butler implies that laughter represents not just low behaviorwithin a scale of manners but also signals the complete disorder ofinsanity. Hollingsworth's "over-ruling purpose (70) makes himthis old-school kind of humorist, which means that Coverdale'spresentation of Hollingsworth as a butt of ridicule puts the former intothe role of old-school satirist.

However, if in Hollingsworth Coverdale fails completely toreplicate the magical discovery of another gentleman humoristdemonstrated by Geoffrey Crayon and Mr. Spectator, it is not simply amatter of Hollingsworth's inability to bring with him the properspirit of benevolence and sympathy. As suggested by his smile at theawkward reception for Priscilla, Coverdale does not have the requisitebenevolence and sympathy either. In addition, that lack prevents himfrom fully appreciating Zenobia's strong, even eccentric,individuality and possibly falling in love with her. She will not loseher identity in a husband as Priscilla seems to want to do with themimetic sympathy implied by the mirror metaphor. Rather, Zenobia'scharacter implies a partnership that tolerates and humors thedifferences of the partners. Coverdale's confession at the end ofthe narrative, that he loves Priscilla, amounts to an admission that herconventional nature attracted him, same as Hollingsworth, but theconfession can also be read as expressing Hawthorne's belief thatmen in general (and so society in general) fail to act as Addison'sgentleman humorist because they cannot be creatively sympathetic to theZenobias of the world, cannot humor her differences from conventionalideas about gendered behavior. Here the reader should discern Hawthornethe caustic satirist.

A smile definitively reveals Coverdale's failure to sympathizewith Zenobia. When she passionately speaks for women's rights atthe outset of the scene at Eliot's Pulpit, Coverdale smiles, whichprompts Zenobia to say, with anger in her eyes, "What matter ofridicule do you find in this, Miles Coverdale?" (120). Sheremembers that smile months later, when they meet in town and sheannounces her intention to mount the lecture platform on behalf ofwomen's rights (225). Coverdale tries to reassure her that hissmile did not signal the coldly scornful satirist, but he stuffs hisspeech so full of outlandish ideas that he sounds insincere, as thoughprotesting too much. And if that performance does not raise doubts aboutCoverdale's gentlemanly amiability, he also displays what he admitsto be a "petty malice" when he tries (just after the scene atEliot's Pulpit) to make Priscilla jealous of Zenobia'srelationship with Hollingsworth almost immediately after discerning herlove for him. This malice toward Priscilla, a "foolishbitterness" (126), matches in its cold-heartedness Zenobia'scovering Priscilla with the veil. Coverdale repeats the cruelty of thegesture in his impulse at the end of the story to pry intoHollingsworth's state of mind in order to mock him (242-43).

Hawthorne has hinted at Coverdale's capacity for malice allalong, but it has often been mitigated by appearing in the form of aplayful malice, the root motive for ridicule and all degrees of satire.(12) Though Coverdale early on consciously tries to be in many of hiscomic moments a gentleman humorist whose good-natured benevolencetolerates the foibles and minor faults he sees, he has also been thecold observer whose observations serve the function of a causticsatirist, finding faults to ridicule, such as the transcendentalistideal of labor as prayer or as wisdom found under clods of dirt (65).His gaze discerns "great errors in Hollingsworth (39), notes the"steel engine of the Devil's contrivance" in hisphilanthropy (71), and spotlights the "ridiculous" nature ofHollingsworths project and egotism (100). Moreover, Coverdale laughs outloud at the Blithedale enterprise, not with an amiable laughter, eventhough he is still part of Blithedale, which also suggests difficulty inlaughing at himself. He does not think to sympathize or to tolerate theothers; he only wants to escape (101). His ridiculing smile atZenobia's desire for women's rights has been noted (120, 225),and he readily laughs at Hollingsworth, along with the social world atlarge (166). Other scenes draw out the venom of Coverdale'sobservations: the old soakers in the saloon would yield alcohol ratherthan blood if tapped (177). Finally, the wonders of the age presented inlyceum lectures, the stories he hears in the hall beforePriscilla's performance as the Veiled Lady, the claim for a comingage of spirit-rappers--his account of them has at best a weary andcynical humor to it (198-99).

Unreliable as a narrator and also uncertain in his tendency to becomic, Miles Coverdale not only fails to be a gentleman humorist with acapacity for producing amiable satire; he also fails to be any sort ofdeliberate satirist. Westervelt's eyes express either "fun ormalice" (194), but apparently so do Coverdale's. Thisambiguity raises the same issue that at times one might ask aboutZenobia: when is Coverdale being a humorist (playful sympathy) and whenis he being a satirist (playful malice)? It is not so much thatCoverdale is a "latent" satirist (FitzPatrick 27, 42) in thesense that he ridicules unconsciously, but that he apparently cannotconsistently behave as either the amiable satirist entailed inAddison's gentleman humorist or the scornfully old-school satirist.Moreover, that inconsistent comic intention manifests itself in theoverstated rhetoric that at times casts doubt on his sincerity as itprojects certain expressions as ill-natured jokes: Blithedale asParadise (9); the twice-breathed air of the city (11); the light kindledfor humanity (25); the pure influence of "our" mode of life(27); "their haste to begin the reformation of the world"(39); "our apostolic society" (39); "a light oftransfiguration (40); the transformation to a new man (61); "ourlittle army of saints and martyrs" (62); an essay for The Dial thatspeaks the solution of the wind's riddle (99); imagining himselfthe allegory of October, with crushed grapes "crimsoning my brow aswith a bloodstain" (99); his rhetoric about a female ruler (121);his sarcastic picture of the future (129-30); his resolution to die inthe last ditch of revolution (138); the music to accompanyZenobia's steps (136); his consecration to priesthood by"sympathy" (222). In these many instances, Coverdaleunconsciously parodies and lampoons himself, with Hawthorne the causticsatirist again visible in the dramatic irony of such moments.

And there is worse, in the sense that Coverdale misreads himself.He would like to think he embodies the liberal gentleman, that hiscustomary levity" (43) marks him as a gentleman humorist. Hebelieves that he is the "one calm observer" (97) of the dramaat Blithedale. However, though the reader has glimpses of an amiablehumor, more often one sees decidedly other sorts: his "sombrehumor" (75, 204); his humor ludicrously irate" (90); hissickly humor (139); his "owl-like humors" (154). SeeingCoverdale in the calm of his hermitage, the reader realizes (again) howeasily observation becomes poetic fancy, when he turns a bird into amessenger (100), and how easily retrospection becomes debilitating idlefancy when he admits that he cares more for his poetically fabricatedPriscilla than the real woman (100). Similarly, he turns Zenobia into afancied work of art (164). His calmness becomes an icy distance as helongs for catastrophe and will "look on" (157), emotionallymiles away, as his first name suggests.

The Dynamics of Doubling

The narrative strategy of a retrospective first-person memoirpresents Coverdale as a doubled character, split in two by time. Thisstructural feature echoes throughout the story. Priscilla turns our tobe the veiled lady while Zenobias true identity remains veiled. Zenobiaand Hollingsworth are physically matched as well as apparent soul-matesin their large capacity for generosity and sympathy, while Zenobia andCoverdale's habit of joking links them.

The figure of the gentleman humorist entails doubling, one humoristdiscovering others, finding those whose humors mark them astemperamentally compatible. While the mechanism for this doubling ofself consists of benevolence and sympathy, The Blithedale Romancepresents two kinds of sympathy and thus two kinds of doubling. The firstkind of sympathy discerns difference as well as similarity in another,humors and thus amiably maintains the difference, not insisting on astrict identification, even as it celebrates the similarity. The secondalso discerns difference as well as similarity in another, but wishes toeliminate the difference, insisting on a mimetic process that impliesone mirror image encompassing two selves, one temperament mimicking theother. Hollingsworth and Priscilla exemplify the latter sort, which isclearly not emotionally healthy. The first kind of sympathy has acreative quality and typifies the gentleman humorist; the second kind ofsympathy implies a passivity that Hawthorne uses for a satiric critiquenot only of the false sympathy of the self-conscious philanthropist, butalso of the sentimental and patriarchal view of romantic love in which awife subsumes her identity into her husband's.

In Zenobia's legend, Hawthorne suggests the potentiallydiabolical results of a romantic version of false sympathy'smirroring dynamic: if anyone lifts the veil of the Veiled Lady, he"would behold the features of that person, in all the world, whowas destined to be his fate" (110): future wife or bitter enemy.The tale within the tale casts Coverdale as Theodore's double, forCoverdale also remains scornfully skeptical and full of idle curiosityabout others (113), Zenobia in particular, and fearful of declaring hislove for Priscilla, therefore losing her to Hollingsworth as the VeiledLady vanishes before Theodore's eyes. Theodore subsequently longsfor one more look at the face, as Coverdale pines for Priscilla."Has not thy heart recognized me?" (113) asks the Veiled Ladyof Theodore, and Coverdale's behavior displays an analogousfailure. To the extent that Coverdale might be paired with Zenobia, thequestion could be said to come from her, and his behavior againsignifies failure. In romantic affairs, Coverdale apparently fails firstto read his own heart and thus fails to recognize Zenobia as asoul-mate: he cannot humor the ways in which her behavior remainsunconventional by gender norms; he even reacts ambivalently to her styleof physical beauty.

The fear of a diabolical other, however, also surfaces withWestervelt. When Westervelt meets him with a greeting of"friend" and a lifting of his hat, Coverdale perceives thesegestures of amiability as mocking in their manner, with "enoughsarcasm to be offensive and just enough of doubtful courtesy to renderany resentment of it absurd" (91). However, this description shouldremind the reader of Coverdale's own characteristic ambivalencethat he chronically expresses in various comic tones, many of themmocking. Similarly, when Coverdale says that Westervelt's brieflaugh, which struck me as a note-worthy expression of hischaracter" (93), is made with face averted, one should recall thehabitual emotional concealment of Coverdale, symbolized by his"hermitage" and evoked when the narrative first presentsWestervelt, who steps out from under cover. With his "well-orderedfoppishness" (92), Westervelt becomes the parodic double ofCoverdale, the would-be gentleman humorist: both of them secretive andsemi-sarcastic, mocking rather than motivated by benevolence andsympathy.

Notably, when Westervelt repeats his laugh--a "metallic"laugh" in a "fit of merriment," with eyes that express"fun or malice" (94)--Coverdale's reaction clearly markshim as Westervelt's double: "the wicked expression of his grin... so wrought upon me, together with the contagion of his strange mirthon my sympathies, that I soon began to laugh as loudly as himself"(95). Crucially, Coverdale laughs at Westervelt's ridicule ofHollingsworth, ridicule worthy of a caustic satirist. Coverdale'slaugh dramatizes the difficulty of reading some instances of laughter asbeing either in the mode of the ridiculous or the ludicrous. As with theexpression in Westervelt's eyes, which can be read as conveying"fun or malice," Coverdale's laugh can convey either aplayful sympathy or a playful malice. The reader could either understandCoverdale in this scene as Addison's gentleman humorist playing therole of amiable satirist, correcting with cheerfulness, or as aclassically caustic satirist. Westervelt's phrase forHollingsworth, a "holy and benevolent blacksmith," surelymocks his formerly being a laborer as well as his dream of being areform-minded philanthropist, and so is unkind, but it also mocksHollingsworth's ego (94), which clearly needs the correction of anamiable ridicule.

The simultaneous laughter of Westervelt and Coverdale signals thelatter's assent to the former's ridicule of Hollingsworth,implying a mirroring of temperaments that Coverdale denies when herefers to his laughter as "folly" (95). However, Westervelthas only exposed what was already apparent about Coverdale: the laughtherefore functions as a confession. Coverdale recognizes this mimeticsympathy when he says that "part of my own nature showed itselfresponsive" to Westervelt, yet this admission comes a moment afterhe has again laughed, this time at all the Blithedalers, while ensconcedsolitary in his hermitage: the scheme of reform "looked soridiculous that it was impossible not to laugh out loud" (101).Though even as prominent a participant in Brook Farm as Orestes Brownsonacknowledged in a review of the novel that Hawthorne "makes theexperiment appear, as in reality it was, a folly born of honestintentions" (265), the reader may be reluctant to laugh too andthus be apparently emotionally aligned with Westervelt as well as withCoverdale. Westervelt repulses Coverdale because his appearance as agentleman is just that, appearance (172), because his smile represents"the Devil's signet" (158), because the sham of his falseteeth symbolizes his phony moral character (95), and becauseCoverdale" finds too much of his darker self in him.

More Uncovering of Coverdale

Similar to Hollingsworth, then, Coverdale perverts the amiable andtolerant sympathy at the core of the benevolent reformist impulse ofBlithedale. He too becomes a humorist in the classic, old-schoolJonsonian sense, his behavior dominated by one impulse, by one humor.Ironically, Coverdale's ruling humor is a brand of sympathy--but aninvasive one. He claims a gentleman's sensibility, implying thathis humor was not "mere vulgar curiosity," but rather wasimpelled by the proper sentiment of "generous sympathies."Nevertheless, his idea of generous manifests as unremitting, as a wish"to live in other lives" and to penetrate secrets unknown tothose others (160). Coverdale argues for the benevolence of such"an indefatigable human sympathy," but Zenobia quicklycorrects him in favor of "an intelligent sympathy (163), one muchmore discriminating than Coverdale's. In the terms I have beendeveloping, she invokes the sympathy of the gentleman humorist.Coverdale believes that his mistake in judging Hollingsworth and Zenobiaas well as Priscilla was "too much sympathy, rather than toolittle" (154), but the truth resides in what kind of sympathyrather than its quantity. As Zenobia says, ridiculing Coverdale'sclaim that duty motivates him, he tampers with people's passionsfor "sport" (170), as a game" (214).

His last name gives him away: Coverdale must have solitude or hewill lose his "individuality" (89). The cover of the leafyhermitage symbolizes his "individuality" (99). Individualitypremised on solitude could define being unsympathetic, or it couldguarantee a debasing of sympathy to merely prying into the characters ofothers (69). The daydreams that so strongly mark Geoffrey Crayon as acharacter and narrator become with Coverdale when at Blithedalecustomary curiosity about people's motivations (77, 84) and thenvoyeurism when he returns to town, in moments when he "could notresist the impulse to take just one peep" (125, 207)."

At one point, Coverdale tries explicitly to enact the doublingdynamic of the gentleman humorist's good-natured laughter with OldMoodie--"I tried to identify my mind with the oldfellow's" (84)--but he fails. This failure presents theindividual version of the collective failure of Blithedale to sympathizesincerely--as a gentleman humorist. The giveaway to Coverdale'slack of sincere action can be found in what seems to be his jokingreaction to Old Moodies request at the start of the tale: "I wasready to do the old man any amount of kindness involving no specialtrouble to myself" (7). Coverdale repeats this sentiment at thevery close of the book: he claims to be ready to do anything"provided, however, the effort did not involve an unreasonableamount of trouble" (246). How should these comments be read: asdeliberate jokes, as unconscious revelations, as the ultimate inself-deprecating remarks? If one argues that the comments in the finalinstance are self-deprecating, then perhaps Coverdale has come out ofhis experience with a comic wisdom, a liberal attitude befitting hisapparent sympathy for women's rights (241). However, if he simplyhas broadcast his selfishness one more time, he truly becomesHollingsworth's as well as Westervelt's double, merely theold-school humorist in the sense of being the largest butt of ridicule,foolish in his ruling humor to the end, like Moliere's Harpagon.

Hawthorne and The Gentleman Humorist

The entanglement of sympathy and benevolence with laughter thatAddison and Steele propose as a new way to understand the role of thesatirist partially enables Hawthorne's examination of the emotionof sympathy in The Blithedale Romance. Zenobia comes closest toembodying the tolerating sympathy of Addison's gentleman humorist,as though she might have been a comic counterpart to Geoffrey Crayon.Hollingsworth illustrates the way in which sympathy can be perverted byschemes for its formalizing within an institution. Ego trumps sympathyin Hollingsworth, that is, turns sympathy into a will to dominatean" Other, Zenobia as well as Priscilla.

In Adam Smith's analysis of sympathy, his figure of animpartial spectator can produce a "concord of feelings" in theservice of a generalized social cohesion. Addison's gentlemanhumorist embodies social cohesion in a narrower sense, finding comradesin temperament and creating a club of sorts. Either on Smith'slarge or Addison's small scale, the link established by sympathybetween two selves maintains difference as it asserts identity: Addisonas well as Irving dramatizes this kind of tolerating sympathy. FrankChristianson argues that Coverdale imagines himself as Smith'simpartial spectator but fails to enact the vision: Coverdale'ssympathy is proprietary (249) and voyeuristic--a seduction (252). In theend, Coverdale's brand of sympathy appears no less invasive thanHollingsworth's. My essay understands that failure within adiscourse about satire and benevolent laughter promulgated best byAddison and Steele.

For Henry James, there is "no satire whatever in theRomance" (69); the novel does not aim "in the least atsatire" (108). Despite such absolutes, James implies that Hawthornedeploys satire when he also notes that if Hawthorne had been "moreof a satirist" (69), then his colleagues at Brook Farm would nothave been treated as lightly as they are in the novel. James'sequivocation can be read as registering the lowest frequencies ofsatire; he apparently understands Hawthorne's use of satire in TheBlithedale Romance as similar to the minimalist approach of WashingtonIrving in The Sketch Book. The figure of the gentleman humorist,however, uncovers Hawthorne as a satirist in The Blithedale Romance,more than Irving-minimalist though certainly partially obscured by hisinfusing dramatic irony into a first-person narrative.

With Coverdale as his stalking horse, Hawthorne in effect questionsthe viability of the figure of the gentleman humorist as Irvingdramatized him with Geoffrey Crayon. Coverdale functions as a kind ofexperiment to test the Addisonian discourse on amiable laughter, and inso doing, Hawthorne also casts doubt on an argument for the possibilityof an amiable satirist whose intent is reform via benevolent laughter.Although in places The Blithedale Romance apparently lines up with thenarrative pattern created by The Sketch Book, their differencesultimately signify a critique edged with irony. For example, rather thanthe merriment of the Christmas holidays that Irving highlights,Hawthorne presents the antics of Halloween to distinguish the festivityof the Blithedale community. Rather than the Christmas features of birthand undisguised mirth, communal laughter at Blithedale is associatedwith death and masking.

James understands Hawthorne to be "a good deal of a mildskeptic (70) in the novel, and clearly Hawthorne dramatizes skepticismabout Blithedale representing an institutionalization of the amiable andbenevolent sympathy that motivates the behavior of the gentlemanhumorist. However, the details of that dramatic rendering, both ingeneral and with the principal characters of Blithedale, are anythingbut mild in their invitation to laugh scornfully at folly andpretension. If Hawthorne questions benevolence as a tool to perfectmankind, he may also doubt the existence of good-humored laughter. At aminimum, Hawthorne's skepticism suggests that laughter ridiculesmuch more than it tolerates. There may be the amiable laughter of aGeoffrey Crayon, but Hawthorne insists that the reader not forget theolder tradition of a darker side to laughter, a tradition in whichlaughter can be associated with madness, if not the Fiend. In 1855, justthree years after The Blithedale Romance, Charles Baudelaire publisheshis essay, "On the Essence of Laughter." Baudelaire returns tothe idea that the primordial law of laughter comes from aggressivepride, and adds something to it: laughter is a profoundly human behaviorthat opposes the wisdom of Jesus--a Satanic gesture. Hawthorne wouldagree, and here his role of satirist assumes its most caustic aspect, asif prepared beforehand to throw in his lot with Baudelaire's modernreformulation of ancient ideas about laughter and the comic arts.

In The Sketch Book, the narrating persona of Geoffrey Crayon asgentleman humorist constructs the implied reader as a gentleman humoristtoo: the reader apprehends the eccentricities of Crayon and humors them,may even be delighted with them, while also appreciating any satiricobservations that Crayon may supply. Thus the doubling dynamic ofgood-natured comic laughter moves outward from the narrator in twodirections: toward other characters in the storyworld of the book,toward the reader. The reader completes the circuit by humoring, thatis, by laughing good-naturedly with Crayon and the other humorouscharacters he presents. This circuit from narrator through charactersand encompassing the reader is precisely why any satire in the narrativenevertheless feels amiable and motivated by benevolence. The pleasurestems not from a sense of superiority but rather camaraderie.

In The Blithedale Romance, Coverdale's failure as gentlemanhumorist necessarily disables this circuit of fun and camaraderie. Atbest, his narration manages to create the comic circuit intermittently,as though the clarifying sound of whole-hearted laughter alternated withthe silence of a deeply disturbing fear. This intermittent quality, notquite a short-circuit of amiable laughter but neither a clear andcompelling signal, happens because the reader cannot readily discernCoverdale's motivation when in a given instance he presents thefaults and foibles of others. Coverdale's comic presentation ofother characters inconsistently demonstrates the benevolence at the coreof the gentleman humorist as he both embraces and disavows any attemptto satirize his colleagues at Blithedale. Correspondingly, theself-deprecating quality of Coverdale's humor remains murky, evencontradicted when he employs grandiose rhetoric, such as his odddeclaration of solidarity with Kossuth--provided the revolution takesplace nearby, after breakfast, on a sunny day (246-47). Such ill-formedjoking statements demonstrate the truth of Coverdale's own dictum,used as epigraph to this essay: mirth "must show good cause, or theecho of its laughter comes back drearily." Coverdale too oftenfails to show good cause not only for his own laughter but also for thelaughter he would engender in others, including the reader. Indeed, hisfundamental humor of sequestering himself demonstrates his tendency tomask rather than show cause or motivation. For Hawthorne,Coverdale's characterization of the echo of laughter as returningto the ear "drearily" should be scored as a colossalunderstatement.

Coverdale's claim stands as a colossal understatementprincipally because of his terrible performance as gentleman humorist.Coverdale's ridicule of Hollingsworth often has a personal aspect,what one contemporary commentator in the American Whig Review called"sneering," a Westervelt attitude Addison proscribes asunworthy of the gentleman humorist. In such moments, the reader'ssympathy for Coverdale is severed; that is, Hawthorne the satiristcompels the reader to sever whatever sympathy he or she might have forCoverdale (he surely is worthy of some sympathy) because he showsCoverdale in his Westervelt aspect, and to continue to sympathize withthe narrator would be to laugh out loud and acknowledge Coverdale as thediabolical double of the reader. However, the narrative seems designedto prevent complete escape from that linkage and thus Baudelaire mightbe invoked once more: "hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, monfrere."

Henry James and many critics to follow have noted how muchCoverdale resembles Hawthorne. In the Addisonian economy of good-naturedlaughter, Coverdale's status as alter ego makes Hawthorne'snarrator his means for executing a crucial maneuver that partly definesthe gentleman humorist: ridiculing himself in some measure. In turn,Coverdale deserves ridicule from the reader, deserves the censure ofscornful laughter. And yet, Hawthorne's equivocal comicpresentation of Coverdale suggests that his narrator should be accorded(though perhaps does not deserve) the sympathy and tolerance of amiablelaughter as well. In a novel full of doubling, Hawthorne presentsCoverdale as his double, much as Geoffrey Crayon presents SquireBracebridge, and asks the reader to humor them both.

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Works Cited

Addison, Joseph and Richard Steele. The Spectator. Edited withIntroduction and Notes by Donald F. Bond. 5 vols. Oxford: The ClarendonPress, 1965. Print.

--. The Tatler. Edited with Introduction and Notes by George A.Aitken. 4 vols. 1898. Facsimile reprint. Hildesheim and New York: GeorgOlms Verlag, 1970. Print."

Allen, Mary. "Smiles and Laughter in Hawthorne."Philological Quarterly 52.1 (1973): 119-28. Print.

American Whig Review. [Review of The Blithedale Romance.] Sept.1852. Hawthorne: The Critical Heritage. Ed. J. Donald Crowley.Routledge: London and New York, 2002. 267-71. e-book."

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Notes

(1) On irony, see, for example, Martin FitzPatrick. For other comicelements, see Allen, Arner, Brubaker, Carlisle, Inge. MichaelDunne's book, Calvinist Humor in American Literature, argues that aCalvinistic worldview produces laughter at "the perception ofimperfection" and promotes skepticism of human nature (2). In hischapter on Hawthorne, he claims that The Blithedale Romance "mostclearly resonates with Calvinist humor" (57) and that Coverdale"functions safely within the tradition of Calvinistic irony"(59). I do not agree with Dunne's insistence on John Calvin'stheology as a necessary ingredient for understanding comic elements inHawthorne's work. Dunne asserts that Calvinistic humor relies onthe perception of imperfection as though Aristotle had not saidessentially the same thing nearly two thousand years earlier. For Dunne,the Calvinistic mindset would find comical all efforts at reform, likeBlithedale, because the assumption that people can change isfundamentally misguided. Original sin and divine grace are all thatmatter. This position does not do justice to the ambiguity of thenarrative and its narrator, and makes Hawthorne either the most profoundof pessimists or the most cynical of commentators on antebellum reformefforts of any kind.

(2) Gregg Camfield characterizes Irving's narrator in similarterms--"an amiable humorist" with a "pose of gentlemanly... humility" (35, 36), and he also notes the link to Addison andSteele that I will develop.

(3) Levine notes earlier efforts to discuss Hawthorne'schronic interest in human sympathy (385, n. 1 and 386, n. 2). FrankChristianson's investigation of the idea of sympathetic imaginationwill be particularly pertinent for my argument. Lori Merish sums up thepoint: "No nineteenth-century American author delved more deeplyinto the entanglements of sympathy" (171). She demonstrates theconnection between Scottish philosophical discourse on the subject andAmerican sentimental fiction. Richard Chase has also claimed a comic, aswell as satiric, status for the narrative.

(4) All page references are to the Centenary Edition.

(5) A genealogy of connections between laughter, ridicule,benevolence, and sympathy might start with Shaftesbury as the antecedentto Addison and Steele, and then show how Frances Hutcheson and AdamSmith followed in their different ways. In effect, some sketches andessays by Addison and Steele dramatize Shaftesbury's ideas. For mymore literary purposes, the famous duo represents a point of origin,with essays in The Tatler as well as The Spectator from 1709 to 1712.David Farley-Hills finds earlier examples linking benevolence andlaughter in the introduction to his examination of 17th century comicpoetry (10-14). My argument is not that Hawthorne was directlyinfluenced in his writing of the novel by reading Addison andSteele's pronouncements. On the contrary, my argument is that theconcept of amiable laughter was common-place even before Irving wrotehis book. For the record, Marion Kesselring's list ofHawthorne's reading at the Salem Athenaeum shows that he checkedout The Dramatic Works of Richard Steele in December of 1827, butnothing by Joseph Addison.

(6) John Morreall lists nine categories for the traditionalobjections to laughter. In addition to diminishing self-control andfostering sexual license as well as anarchy, laughter signals someoneinsincere, idle, hedonistic, irresponsible, hostile, and foolish.

(7) Tave shows that one could claim that there were notableantecedents for these newer comic characters in Falstaff and DonQuixote. That claim, however, was made after the fact, in the eighteenthcentury and enabled by the theories expounded best by Addison andSteele. While Tave's book is the required starting point forunderstanding the history of amiable laughter, two others must bementioned. Camfield's book does an admirable job of presenting thathistory briefly (26-33) and linking it to American culture andliterature via the Scottish common sense philosophers, with a focus onwhat he calls the "humor of domesticity." The work of FrancisHutcheson on incongruity as the source of laughter is pivotal forCamfield as he explores comparisons and contrasts among American maleand female comic writers in the nineteenth-century. That exploration,like my effort, relies in large measure on using a notion of amiablelaughter as a heuristic. Daniel Wickburg's book traces the historyof the word "humor" and the idea of "a sense ofhumor" from Ben Jonson to the twentieth century, with an emphasison modern conceptions of self and individualism.

(8) Although neither Addison nor Steele used these familiar termsto make this distinction, the root meanings of the words are apt for mypurposes: "ridicule" indicates a harsher attitude than theplayful one suggested by "ludicrous.

(9) Albert Furtwangler discusses Mr. Spectator and Sir Roger asmutually reinforcing humorists but does not develop that linkage as adefining doubling structure for amiable laughter. Wickberg'sdiscussion of laughter and humor takes a different approach to the waythat class counts as a variable: see especially chapter two.

(10) Interestingly, Westervelt also alludes to the New Englandconvention/habit of "refining" women into "delicate andnervous" creatures: too much emphasis on the spiritual (108) itwould seem.

(11) This claim for Coverdale's desire taking astraightforward heterosexual form should be supplemented with a queerperspective. Benjamin Grossberg discusses the mix of masculine andfeminine characteristics displayed by Zenobia and Hollingsworth I notedbefore, but uses that ideal combination to argue for queered sexualidentity. Jordan Stein makes his case for a queer perspective on thenarrative by arguing that Blithedale allows for the possibility of bothhetero and hom*o erotic liaisons, though the novel is not gay "inany clear sense" (213) but queer "without being preciselysexual (216). My argument about the gentleman humorist is closer toStein, suggesting a hom*osocial camaraderie that elides sexuality.

(12) This claim can be traced to Plato (436-40), but his phrasingis also translated as "comic malice."