Why did zenobia kill herself

The sphere of ordinary womanhood was felt to be narrower than her development required. It is the simplest thing in the world, with you, to bring a woman before your secret tribunals, and judge and condemn her, unheard, and then tell her to go free without a sentence. The misfortune is, that this same secret tribunal chances to be the only judgment-seat that a true woman stands in awe of, and that any verdict short of acquittal is equivalent to a death-sentence!

The fiend, I doubt not, has made his choicest mirth of you, these seven years past, and especially in the mad summer which we have spent together. I see it now! I am awake, disenchanted, disenthralled! Self, self, self! You have embodied yourself in a project. You are a better masquerader than the witches and gipsies yonder; for your disguise is a self-deception. Of all the varieties of mock-life, we have surely blundered into the very emptiest mockery, in our effort to establish the one true system.

I have done with it […]. It was, indeed, a foolish dream! Yet it gave us some pleasant summer days and bright hopes, while they lasted. It can do no more; nor will it avail us to shed tears over a broken bubble. The Blithedale Romance. Plot Summary. All Terms Mesmerism. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does.

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Struggling with distance learning? Themes All Themes. Terms All Terms Mesmerism. Symbols All Symbols. Theme Wheel. Everything you need for every book you read. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive. As the story continues, Hawthorne reveals what these connections are.

The book implies that she is married to but estranged from the sinister magician Westervelt, and Coverdale suggests that their marriage might have been a traumatic loss of independence for Zenobia, which perhaps led to her feminist activism. Moodie turns out to be her father, who left her with a wealthy uncle when he fled debtors during her childhood, and Priscilla is her half-sister who has come to Blithedale to find her although Zenobia never knew she existed.

At Blithedale, Zenobia becomes good friends with Coverdale and she falls in love and has a somewhat one-sided relationship with Hollingsworth. However, Zenobia comes to a moment of crisis when she realizes that Hollingsworth is using her for her money, manipulating her love so she will fund his philanthropic project while not actually being in love with her. After a confrontation, Priscilla and Hollingsworth walk off together, and Zenobia tells Coverdale that Hollingsworth has killed her then drowns herself in the pond.

Her suicide is also a comment on the difficulty of being a 19th-century woman. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:.

Chapter 6 Quotes. Related Characters: Miles Coverdale speaker , Zenobia. Related Themes: Progressive vs. Traditional Gender Roles. Page Number and Citation : 45 Cite this Quote. Explanation and Analysis:.

Page Number and Citation : 47 Cite this Quote. Chapter 8 Quotes. Page Number and Citation : 60 Cite this Quote. Chapter 9 Quotes. Page Number and Citation : 69 Cite this Quote. Chapter 12 Quotes. Page Number and Citation : Cite this Quote. Chapter 14 Quotes. Related Characters: Zenobia speaker. Related Characters: Miles Coverdale speaker , Zenobia speaker. Chapter 19 Quotes. Chapter 20 Quotes. Related Characters: Zenobia speaker , Miles Coverdale speaker. Chapter 22 Quotes.

Chapter 25 Quotes. Related Characters: Zenobia speaker , Hollingsworth. Related Themes: Secrecy and Self-deception. Chapter 26 Quotes. Related Characters: Zenobia speaker , Miles Coverdale. Chapter 28 Quotes.

The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance. Chapter 1: Old Moodie. He asks Coverdale if he knows Zenobia.

Coverdale says he does, but not personally. Chapter 2: Blithedale. Zenobia walks in shortly after these initial greetings. Chapter 3: A Knot of Dreamers. Zenobia explains that their new life as brothers and sisters will begin at dawn.

Women will Coverdale hopes this will change over time. Zenobia calls them to the dinner table. She tells Coverdale how odd she thinks it is Chapter 4: The Supper-table. Zenobia urges everyone to sit without any pomp or ceremony and enjoy the tea. At the Hollingsworth—who is very tall Chapter 5: Until Bedtime. Foster knits. Everyone is unfailingly kind to Coverdale during his illness.

Zenobia brings him gruel she made herself and talks to him whenever she has time. Coverdale obsesses over the thought that Zenobia has been married. She is young, wealthy, and beautiful, but if she has ever been Chapter 7: The Convalescent. Priscilla is very devoted to Zenobia , but Zenobia sometimes loses patience with her. Priscilla also favors Hollingsworth and the two often Chapter 8: A Modern Arcadia. Coverdale leaves his bed in May.

He wanders outside, toward the sound of Zenobia and someone else laughing. In the barn he sees that Zenobia is decorating Priscilla with Halfway there, she suddenly stops and looks around like someone has called her. Zenobia arrives at a similar conclusion. Chapter 9: Hollingsworth.

Zenobia, Priscilla. As it is, Hollingsworth, Zenobia , and Priscilla stand apart from the rest of Blithedale and seem like a problem that Hollingsworth is affectionate with Priscilla, and Coverdale knows Zenobia would give anything for Hollingsworth to show her the same.

Coverdale would like to protect Zenobia appears in the doorway and stares at them a moment before telling Priscilla to come The gossips in Blithedale theorize that Hollingsworth and Zenobia are in love. They frequently take long walks alone together, with Hollingsworth talking about his Chapter A Visitor from Town.

Zenobia has lost Hollingsworth, her fortune, and her entire way of being. She is adrift, bereft. Her new sister has chosen Hollingsworth, her lover. Her loss of fortune means that she will no longer be above the masses, thus escaping their censure. The entire way she has lived her life thus far, both materially and emotionally, is over. Even the women's rights views that she espoused must ring hollow, as she was willing to ignore them for Hollingsworth's love.

The other explanation, albeit one more far-fetched, is that Coverdale murdered her; thus, she did not commit suicide at all but died to assuage Coverdale's frustration with not procuring her affection and his intense judgment of her behavior.

The Veiled Lady is first and foremost Priscilla, a young woman coerced into performing this erotic and mysterious role. The Lady is also emblematic of the spiritual currents of the day, which, like the utopias, sought to push back against growing industrialization and secularization.

She is also a symbol of covert sexuality, of secretiveness, of hidden identity. She is, as one critic writes, "a void for the poet to decorate.

Hawthorne makes it very clear that Blithedale is a failure, just as Brook Farm was in real life. The Blithedalers ignore history, the human condition, the prevailing forces of the day, and their own motivations and ambitions as they come together in their doomed experiment. Everyone has ulterior motives, and everyone is ultimately selfish and self-interested. It is also impossible to unite the farmer and the intellectual into one; Coverdale's hands are fated to be un-calloused.

Some critics see the work as secular allegory of the biblical tale of sin and virtue, "an allegorical dream-play between God and the devil" according to Brian M.