Abjuring the city for a pastoral life, a group of utopians set out to reform a
dissipated America. But the group is a powerful mix of competing ambitions and i
ts idealism finds little satisfaction in farmwork. Instead, of changing the worl
d, the members of the Blithedale community individually pursue egotistical paths
that ultimately lead to tragedy. Hawthorne's tale both mourns and satirizes a r
ural idyll not unlike that of nineteenth-century America at large.
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