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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of Choosing The Subject
Community according to Oxford dictionary means “group of people with
the same interests or having the things in common who live in one place.” (p. 79)
According to Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences the term
“Community” has evolved from a simple to a complex conception, as originally
used in the literature of the social sciences community designated a geographical
area with definite legal boundaries, occupied by residents engaged in interrelated
economic activities and constituting a politically self governing unit. A
community, defines in its implicit elements is any process of social interaction
which gives rise to a more intensive or more extensive attitude and practice of
interdependence, cooperation, collaboration, and unification. It omits all
consideration of locality or other spatial terms and directs attention to the
processes by which socialization takes place, including psychological process.
Society may be defined as the total complexity of human relationships as
far as they grow out of action in terms of the means and values, either intrinsically
or symbolically. According to such a definition society is but an element in the
concrete whole human’s social life, which is also affected by the factors of
heredity and environment as well as by the element of culture-scientific
knowledge and religious, metaphysical and ethical systems of ideas and forms of
artistic expression. (Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol.13, 1951)
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Based on these definitions of community and society mentioned above, it
can be said that community is a group of people who share life and interests and
thoughts in the same place, while society is the system in which people live in
organized communities.
The improvement of society has occupied the mind of mankind for
centuries. Through the years many philosophers and thinkers have been
formulating their conceptions of ideal community or ideal society even their
conceptions about ideal state. One of the philosophers was Plato, he describes in
his book Republic about Utopian society which consists of society of peasants and
soldiers ruled over by a eugenically bred class of “guardians”, and in Critias he
imagined that this was the constitution of ancient Athens before the war with
Atlantis 9,000 years earlier.
Another philosopher who has formulated the idea about utopian
community was Sir Thomas More, an English man who wrote Utopia, a book
which was published in 1516. The Utopia described society of an imaginary
island which is discovered by a companion of Americus Vespucius in the waters
of the New World. Life in Utopia was nearly perfect as human beings were
guided by reason and good will that could make it. Though the Utopians lived
comfortably enough, they refused the more accumulation of material things. And
while they all were expected to keep busy, none was oppressed or overworked.
They enjoyed complete freedom of thought but they were careful not to offend
one another in the expression of their beliefs. Love of peace is principle of Utopia.
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They went to fight only to defend their neighbors and by that means to insure their
own ultimate safety.
During the 19th century when the Industrial Revolution was leading to
even greater inequalities of wealth, the emergence of slums, and poor factory
condition where a large working class worked for a long hours, have made many
people dissatisfied with the organized society. As a result, many people convinced
that the only way to achieve happiness was to withdraw from organized society
and form small Utopian Communities where all the inequalities that made life
unhappy could be done away with. The methods to search the ideal society could
be differed according to the individual philosophies.
One of the famous utopian philosophers was a French man, Charles
Fourier, who lived from 1772 to 1837. He was the only son of a cloth dealer, a
business which he inherited and despised. During the French Revolution he lost
his inheritance and his brush. The Terror of 1793 left him permanently jarred
against revolutionary violence. As early as 1803, he called himself the “Newton of
passionate attraction.” He believed that he had discovered the laws of social
psychology just as Newton had the laws of gravity. He devoted his adult life
solving the problems of the market economy and by early 1830’s, he had attracted
a small group of followers in Paris who published a journal called La Reforme
Industrielle. Fourier believed that the cause of conflict and suffering was the
perversion of natural human goodness by faulty social organization.
However, he was convinced that reason could discover the laws of
harmony and create perfect order by rearranging economic relationships. He went
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against claims that men were shaped by their environment and considered
civilization repressive and against man’s happiness. He advocated a solution of
small planned communes, and he called then Phalansteries. He devised a blueprint
precisely indicating the size, layout, and industrial organization of each
community or “phalanx.” Organized as both producers’ and consumers’
cooperatives, the communities would escalate economically and fulfill all man’s
passions. The result was to create social harmony and unimaginable bliss. His
main hope was to speed man’s process from a primitive “civilization” to the
highest “state of harmony.” Fourier believed that God was a “supreme economist”
who had devised a plan for a perfect society creating human “happiness” and
"riches.”
The growth of utopian communities in United States of America was
mostly motivated by dissatisfaction with existing social and economic conditions.
In the 19th century in United States of America, there were more than 23 active
utopian communities spread from Amana colonies in Iowa and Aurora Colony
Oregon to the Fairhope Community in Alabama.
(http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/ideas/reform.html)
The most prominent 19th century experimental utopian communities of
New England were Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Oneida Community. Although
the features and philosophies of these three communities differ greatly, all
embody the Romantic spirit of their day and posit unique epistemologies, or ways
of knowing, based on philosophies of Transcendentalism, or more esoteric
philosophies and religious established by the founders of each community.
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The establishments of The Experimental Utopian Communities were in
the form of communal living. Communal living is a term used to describe the
practice of several unrelated persons living together. In every known historical
period, relatively small number of people, dischanted with various aspects of the
dominant social order, have banded together in experiments in communal living to
pursue their vision of the good life. Communal living is characterized by intensive
interpersonal relationship, the physical or psychological separation of the group
from other people, and rituals that submerge individual identity and enhance
group solidarity. Communal living attracts adherents for a variety of reasons.
Most communitarians have utopian goals, the pursuit of which gives participants
an elevated sense of collective and self-worth. The shared rituals, norms, and
beliefs regulating communal life provide a feeling of certitude that is often
difficult to maintain in the larger, more complex society. (Lexicon Universal
Encyclopedia, vol. 5, 1990)
Brook Farm becomes the background of the community in The
Blithedale Romance (1852), situated about nine miles from Boston. Brook Farm
was the most famous cooperative community of the 19th century in the United
States of America. George Ripley and his wife Sophia Dana Ripley and about a
dozen friends established a “Practical Institute of Agricultural and Education” at
the Ellis “Brook” Farm. The Institute was established as a joint-stock company.
There were twenty four shares issued each costing five hundred dollars on which
interest was payable at five per cent, each share was secured against the assets of
the enterprise, each share brought with it voting rights and an entitlement for a
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child to be educated in the projected educational facilities. Shareholders could
expect that they could be reimbursed for their shares at three months notice.
The community of Brook Farm began as an attempt to put into practice
some of the idealistic social ideas of Transcendentalism, a romantic New England
movement that intended the regeneration of the entire quality of American life. In
the United States of America, Transcendentalism as a whole was a serious and
intellectual movement making a sincere desire to uphold the dignity of the
individual. The Transcendentalists believed that the industrial society was
destroying the imagination and self-reliance of human beings. They felt that
man’s hope of regaining these qualities lay in the establishment of small
communities based on utopian socialist principle. Resident members of Brook
Farm community included such notable Nathaniel Hawthorne, John S. Dwight,
Charles A. Dana, and Isaac Hecker, while there also eminent visitors such as
Ralph Waldo Emerson, W. E. Channing, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott,
Theodore Parker, Horace Greely, and Orestes Brownson.
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, a reformer and commentator on the utopian
communities prepared an essay on Brook Farm for January 1842 issue of the Dial.
The essay appeared with the descriptive title, Plan of the West Roxbury
Community. Peabody states:
In order to live a religious and moral life worthy the name, they feel it is
necessary to come out in some degree from the world, and to form
themselves into a community of property so far as to exclude competition
and the ordinary rules of trade while they reserve sufficient private
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property, or the means of obtaining it, for all purposes of independence
and isolation at will. They have bought a farm, in order to make
agriculture the basis of their life, it being the most direct and simple in
relation to nature. (Inge, M. Thomas, 1987: 213)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the residents in Brook Farm community, writes his
experience while he was living there. He writes:
The West Roxbury association was formed in 1841, by a society of
members, men and women, who bought a farm in West Roxbury, of
about two hundred acres, and took possession of the place in April.
It was a noble and generous movement in the projectors, to try an
experiment of better living. They had the feeling that our ways of living
were too conventional and expensive, not allowing each to do what he
had a talent for, and not permitting men to combine cultivation of mind
and heart with a reasonable amount of daily labor. (Gross and Murphy,
1965: 263)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author of The Blithedale Romance is a
prominent American novelist of 19th century. He was born in Salem,
Massachusetts, July 4, 1804. The Blithedale Romance (1852), set in a utopian
New England community, examines the flaws inherent in practical utopianism.
Hawthorne had earlier invested and lived in the Brook Farm Community, West
Roxbury. With his experiences at Brook Farm as background, Hawthorne here
illustrates his thesis that a zeal professional philanthropy can destroy the
individual. At Blithedale, an experimental socialized community, Miles
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Coverdale, the narrator, meets the colorful, imperious, and emancipated Zenobia,
the contrastingly mild and weak Priscilla, later discovered to be Zenobia’s half
sister, and Hollingsworth, an ex-blacksmith now wholly given over to reform.
Zenobia’s suicide after Hollingsworth turns from her to Priscilla leaves him a
broken man, realizing that in his absorption in plans for the reformation of
criminal, he has been criminally indifferent to the feelings of others. (Collier’s
Encyclopedia vol. 11, 1990)
The true importance experiment of the Blithedale experiment, as
Hawthorne presents it, is that it embodies the visionary hope for mankind, which
was coeval with the American settlement itself. As stated in The Blithedale
Romance:
Around such chill mockery of fire, some few of us might sit on the
withered leaves, spreading out each a palm towards the imaginary
warmth, and talk over our exploded scheme for beginning the life of
Paradise a new. Paradise, indeed! Nobody else in the world, I am bold to
affirm-nobody, at least, in our bleak little world of New England-had
dreamed of Paradise, (Hawthorne, 1965: 9-10)
In Blithedale, Hawthorne brought the action up to date. Here again was an
embodiment of archetypal American experience: withdrawal from a corrupt
society to form a better community. As stated in The Blithedale Romance:
…, I felt, so much the more, that we had transported ourselves a world
wide distance from the system of society that shackled us at breakfasttime. (Hawthorne, 1965: 13)
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The researcher wants to study further about the background of the
founding of the experimental utopian community of Brook Farm and the goals
wanted to be achieved by the founding of the experimental utopian community of
Brook Farm, and the impacts of founding the experimental community of Brook
Farm toward the social reformation (1841-1846) based on Transcendentalism as
reflected in The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The fact that to the best of the writer’s knowledge, none of the under_
graduate students of American Studies Program at English Department of Faculty
of Letters and Fine Arts, Sebelas Maret University has attempted to write a thesis
on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance. The researcher believes that
this novel is quite challenging to be discussed.
B. Research Questioners
This thesis will be aimed at finding out the answers of the following
questions:
1. What is the background of the founding of the experiment utopian
community of Brook Farm?
2. What are the goals wanted to be achieved by the founding of the
experimental utopian community of Brook Farm?
3. What are the impacts of the founding of the experimental utopian
community of Brook Farm toward the social reformation (1841-1847)
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based on Transcendentalism in the USA as reflected in The Blithedale
Romance?
C. The Scope of The Study
The scope of the study of this research will be focused on the discussion
about the background of founding the experimental utopian community of Brook
Farm and the goals which are wanted to be achieved by the founding of the
experimental utopian community of Brook Farm, and the impacts of the founding
of the experimental community of Brook Farm toward the social reformation
(1841-1847) based on Transcendentalism in the USA as reflected in The
Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
D. Objectives of The Study
The objectives of this research are:
1. To explain the background of the founding of the experimental
utopian community of Brook Farm.
2. To explain the goals wanted to be achieved by founding the
experimental utopian community of Brook Farm.
3. To explain the impacts of the founding of the experimental utopian
community of Brook Farm toward social reformation (1841-1847)
based on Transcendentalism in the USA.
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E. Benefit of The Study
Through the study of this subject, the researcher hopes that the research
will contribute to:
1. The body of knowledge of American Studies discipline and it can
serve as a valuable beginning for a further research on the other
aspect of founding the experimental utopian community of Brook
Farm and its goals and the impacts toward social reformation
(1841-1847) based on Transcendentalism in the USA.
2. Other researchers who are interested in analyzing the novel further.
The researcher hopes that this study can give additional
information and knowledge to the other researchers.
F. Method of Research
Method of research is a way to explain technically about the methods
used in the research. It is mentioned in the book by Noeng Muhadjir, Metodologi
Penelitian Kualitatif (1996) that “Metoda penelitian mengemukakan secara teknis
tentang metoda-metoda yang digunakan dalam penelitiannya” (p. 3).
In this case, the methods used in this research cover research type,
research approach, data sources, technique of collecting and processing data, and
technique of analyzing data.
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1. Research Type
In this research, the researcher used the type of library research in form
of descriptive qualitative one. The aim of library research is to gather data and
information from library such as books, magazines, texts, articles, notes, history
records, documents, and so on. While descriptive research is used in this study as
the implementation of the research which is done in writing. Further explanation
about descriptive research is given by Brian Allison in the book Research Skills
for Students (1998) that:
A large proportion of all research is descriptive research. This is because
a clear statement of ‘what is’ is an essential prerequisite to understanding
‘why it is so’ and ‘what it might be’. In a very real sense, description is
fundamental to all research. Descriptive research sets out to seek accurate
and adequate descriptions of activities, objects, processes, and persons.
Whenever possible and appropriate, such descriptions are rendered
quantitatively as this enables statistica analysis to be made. (p. 14)
It is supported by Sumadi Suryasubrata in his book Metodologi
Penelitian (1997) about the characteristics of descriptive research that “Secara
harfiah, penelitian deskriptif adalah penelitian yang bermaksud untuk membuat
pencandraan (deskripsi) mengenai situasi-situasi atau kejadian-kejadian”. (p. 18)
Descriptive research is not only concerned with description but also
explanation. Therefore, it is concerned with fact gathering, identifying, and
predicting relationships in and between variables.
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2. Data and Data Sources
The sources of data consists of primary and secondary data. The primary
data are taken from the novel The Blithedale Romance, comprises 29 chapters
and 228 pages, published by W. W. Norton & Company, New York in 1965. As
for the secondary data, they are taken from any source related to the problem such
as books, essays, criticisms, and article about the novel. The data of the thesis are
presented descriptively and analytically.
3. Technique of Collecting Data
To obtain the main data, the researcher read the whole novel The
Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 1965) carefully and repeatedly. Then the researcher quoted phrases,
words, sentences, and dialogues in the novel, which are related to the subject
matter of this research and underlined them.
Meanwhile, the supporting data were obtained by reading essays, articles,
and criticisms about the novel and other references that support the subject matter
whether coming from the Internet as well as from printed resources. The
researcher then took the phrases, words, sentences, and dialogues in the novel
which are related to the subject matter of this research and underlined them. All
of the collected data were then interpreted and analyzed. Therefore, the conclusion
as the final interpretation could be obtained.
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4. Technique of Analyzing Data
The descriptive analysis is used in this research. Therefore, the collected
data were interpreted and analyzed in detail by using appropriate approach to
draw a conclusion.
G. Theoretical Approach
This Study applies the concept of interdisciplinary approach since it is
within the American Studies discipline. The interdisciplinary is used to dig out the
phenomena in American experience. “From the beginning, American Studies has
concerned to explore and even to develop an interdisciplinary methodology.”
(Campbell, 1997: 2) It encourages efforts to establish more open and cooperative
projects between academic areas. “It means that, central to any interdisciplinary
method is the relationship between texts to be studied and the contexts from
which they come.” (Ibid, p. 4) To support this, Henry Nash Smith, one of the
prominent scholars of American Studies in his essay entitles “Can American
Studies Develop A Method?” states about interdisciplinary in American Studies:
American studies as a collaboration among men working from within
existing academic disciplines but attempting to widen the boundaries
imposed by conventional methods of inquiry. This implies a sustained
effort of the student of literature to take account of sociological,
historical, and anthropological data and methods, and of the sociologist
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or the historian to take account of the data and methods of scholarship in
the fields of the arts (Smith in Mickelson, 1969: 26-27)
In accordance with Smith’s assertion, Tremaine Mc Dowell, another
prominent American Studies theorist in his book entitled American Studies
suggests the interdisciplinary point of view in understanding the work of
literature. He argues:
The central theme of American life is the unity within diversity; the
diversity within unity characterizes life in the United States. Considering
the unique characterization of American civilization, the four areas of
American civilization, which are represented by history, literature,
philosophy and fine arts and social science, can be understood only from
the interdisciplinary point of view. (Mc Dowell, 1948: 73)
Similar to Mc Dowell’s idea, Richard E. Sykes in his essay entitles “The
Culture Concept as Keystone” states:
The artifacts from which a culture is inferred include not just written
documents (certainly not just literature) but the creations of other arts and
the products of technology and science. Hence the true reason why
American Studies is interdisciplinary becomes evident- not because we
need to look on an event from several angles, but because the culture
concepts cuts across and includes the content of other disciplines. (Sykes
in Mickelson, 1969: 30)
In Abrams’ opinion, literature or work of art is “an imitation or analogy
of the real world equipped by its actual occasion and setting.” (Abrams, 1981: 61)
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It means that studying literature may lead to get information about socio-cultural
condition of a certain community. Similarly, in American Studies, a literature is
seen as a mental evidence of American culture and history. It combines hard facts
and mental facts to be presented in the work of art. Similarly, Robert Walker
declares, “American Studies begins with the microcosm, not macrocosm. Start
small and move outward.” (Walker, 1958: 474). ) It is assumed that by starting
from a piece of literary work, The Blithedale Romance, the general significance
of the phenomenon of the experimental utopian community of Brook Farm (18411846) in United States of America can be discussed.
To reveal and to place The Blithedale Romance as a record of the
American experience, the researcher applied some approaches in order to meet the
goal of the research. They are:
1. Biographical Approach
To achieve a better understanding of the author’s work, it is necessary to
include author’s biography in this research. It is used to help in satisfying one’s
natural and proper curiosity about the details of an interesting author’s life and
career and also to know how the social background of an author influenced the
work. As a human being who deals with society, an author must have some
impressions toward social phenomenon, which he felt, experienced and witnessed
during his life. That is why a biography shall be considered to be the supporting
data in a literary analysis. As Wellek and Warren (1956) have said that the social
allegiance, attitude and ideology of a writer can be studied not only in his writing
but also frequently in biographical extra literary documents.
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2. Socio-cultural approach
This approach is used to get a clear depiction or description of social and
cultural background of America in the mid of 19th century when the writer wrote
this novel. In “The Culture concept as Keystone” essay, Richard E. Sykes argued
that culture is the key concept, the unifying concept, the root word, which
suggests both theory and method. (Sykes in Mickleson, 1969, p. 28)
As all cultures are characterized by certain patterns of behavior, which
are learned and inherited from generation to generation, they regularize all areas
of life to the existence of that culture. They involve eating, housing, earning a
living, rearing child, marrying, worshipping, etc. There is always variation of
custom. We can describe what people do most of the time in most areas of life and
from their behavior we can infer meanings, values and ideas.
Projecting to analyze a work of literature with sociological method
means elaborating social facts that the writer has already analyzed and synthesized
before he even started to write. Shortly, characters presented and the social setting
compiled is none of reality. These are the products of the author’s abstraction
process toward a given contextual phenomenon. Thus, sociological approach is
the most suitable theory to be applied in analyzing the problem in The Blithedale
Romance.
3. Historical approach
Historical approach was used as an effort to find evidence of American
experiences, especially the experimental utopian community as presented in The
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Blithedale Romance. It is also necessary to reveal the past memories in the
certain time when the work was created.
American Studies by offering a limited body of closely related data in the
history of the culture of a nation, which had developed wholly in the modern era
provided a convenient focus for research and teaching. (Spiller, 1981, p. 5)
In other words, from this approach we can find the facts hidden by the
time and place and the phenomenon reflected in The Blithedale Romance.
4. Philosophical approach
Philosophy and literature have a close relation since literature is a human
product that takes human life as its theme and is addressed to human being. It is
just the same as philosophy that also discusses human life and its entire problem.
Tremaine Mc Dowell (1948) suggests “Considering the unique characterization of
American civilization, the four areas of American civilization, which are
represented by history, literature, philosophy and fine arts and social science, can
be understood only from the interdisciplinary point of view.”
H. Thesis Organization
The thesis consists of four chapters and each of them is subdivided into
subsequent divisions. The thesis is arranged as follows:
Chapter I present an INTRODUCTION which consists of Background
of Choosing the Subject, Research Questioners, Scope of the Study, Objective of
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the Study, Benefit of the Study, Method of Research, Theoretical Approach and
Thesis Organization.
Chapter II covers LITERATURE REVIEW of Hawthorne, New
England and USA, and Transcendentalism.
Chapter III deals with the ANALYSIS of The Experimental Utopian
Community of Brook Farm (1841-1847) based on Transcendentalism in the
United States of America.
Chapter IV provides CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION. It
comprises Conclusion of the analysis done before and Recommendation to other
researchers or readers of the thesis.
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