Miles Coverdale, the Limits of Queer Subjectivity, and Political Ambivalence in Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance Ryan Brady College

Benjamin Scott Grossberg, in “Coverdale’s Queer Utopia,” responds to what he posits as “attempts to contain [Miles] Coverdale’s erotic desire,” attempts that consequently “lead to strange contortions of the text” (24). Other critics, according to Grossberg, portray Coverdale as a “power-hungry monster” or theorize his sexuality in a way that distorts his character’s true identity. Grossberg, however, asserts that “Coverdale’s actions and affections are best understood through his own lens, one that staunchly refuses to limit desire or gender to stable, discrete categories” (25). For the duration of this essay, I will refer to this phenomenon, in which categories and definitions of human sexuality are undermined or viewed as restrictive and limiting, as “queer subjectivity.” And while Grossberg’s response is undoubtedly an attempt to disentangle Coverdale’s rhetorical ideology from a century of misguided conservative interpretation, this reader further posits that Grossbergs’s theories complicate Hawthorne’s narrative in unexpected ways, particularly in regards to the ethical nature of the Blithedale project itself. This tension between conservative and progressive values are indicative of Hawthorne’s work, particularly in The...