In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, Hawthorne presents stereotypes in order to convey that suppressing true nature as opposed to accepting yourself ultimately brings failure in life, and that when women can find the medium between being true to themselves and being a “true woman”, it allows them opportunity to blossom.
As a feminist, Zenobia is an irrational and prideful woman who constantly preaches about the role women must fulfill in a patriarchal society. Zenobia says, “she’s the type of womanhood, such as man has spent centuries in making it. He is never content, unless he can degrade himself by stooping towards what he loves. In denying us our rights, he betrays even more blindness to his own interests than profligate disregard of ours” (Hawthorne 139). This quote, straight from Zenobia’s lips, exemplifies how women should not act in society. She is slightly mocking Priscilla and putting herself on a pedestal by explaining that she would never fall into that category of woman. As she holds such actions inferior to those of her own, she is setting an example to readers of how a woman should act; a woman should act just like Zenobia does. This quote also proves her to be quite unfeminine because it is shown that she has no problem presenting men with her intelligence. Throughout Zenobia’s life, instead of growing as a woman, she finds herself depleting.
Zenobia presents herself as a steadfast young woman who doesn’t waver to the norm. However, she takes on the one role she vowed she never would - the role of a woman behind a man. Hollingsworth explains the role of women, in his opinion and says that “her place is at man’s side…All the separate action of woman ism and ever has been, and always shall be, false, foolish, vain destructive of her own best and holiest qualities, void of every good effect, and productive of intolerable mischief’s! Man is a wretch without woman; but woman is a monster…without man as her acknowledged principle”...