Before moving to the communist community of Blithedale in the mid-1800s, Miles Coverdale is approached by Moodie (an apparent beggar) who asks for a favor.

They are welcomed by Mr. and Mrs. Silas Foster (a gruff, experienced farmer) and Zenobia, a charming woman who enchants Coverdale, Hollingsworth and Priscilla.

Moodie approaches Coverdale in the fields one day and asks about Priscilla and Zenobia, but declines to see them when he hears they are good friends.

Later, Zenobia theorizes that Priscilla, whose background is a mystery, may, in fact, be the Veiled Lady: a popular clairvoyant who recently stopped doing public shows.

He fell into financial ruin and left her to be raised by his still-wealthy uncle (who died, leaving her considerable wealth).

There he witnesses the community dressed as witches, fairies and other creatures; when he laughs, they chase him and he runs toward Eliot's Pulpit.

Hollingsworth hooks her body with a pole; Silas Foster observes that he left a physical wound near her heart.

He is a professed supporter of women's equality, as evidenced in an argument with Hollingsworth, although he also views Zenobia's feminism as a symptom of romantic disillusionment.

She is said to have been held captive by the curse of the veil, a symbol that in Hawthorne's literature typically represents secret sin.

He is one of the three men to search for and find Zenobia's body and, while displaying proper sadness and emotion, also accepts her death with the most ease.

By the end of the story, she is revealed to be (presumably) complicit in Westervelt's pseudo-slavery of Priscilla as the Veiled Lady, a scheme she uses to perpetuate her wealthy lifestyle, and a potential reason Hollingsworth leaves her.

She becomes progressively more open and less frail throughout the novel and develops a strong attachment to Hollingsworth on top of her sisterly affection for Zenobia.

In fact, much of the imagery Coverdale uses, such as the flames on Westervelt's pin and the serpent-headed staff he carries are direct references to Satan.

He is revealed to be the magician controlling Priscilla near the end of the book, and his last appearance is at Zenobia's funeral where he criticizes her foolish suicide.

[5] In a final chapter added after the original manuscript was completed but before publishing, Coverdale breaks the fourth wall and reveals that the writing takes place significantly after leaving Blithedale.

[4] In the novel's preface, Hawthorne describes his memories of this temporary home as "essentially a daydream, and yet a fact" which he employs as "an available foothold between fiction and reality."

His feelings of affectionate scepticism toward the commune are reflected not only in the novel but also in his journal entries and in the numerous letters he wrote from Brook Farm to Sophia Peabody, his future wife.

The character of Zenobia, for example, is said to have been modelled upon Margaret Fuller,[9] an acquaintance of Hawthorne and a frequent guest at Brook Farm.

The circumstances of Zenobia's death, however, were not inspired by the shipwreck that ended Fuller's life but by the suicide of a certain Miss Martha Hunt, a refined but melancholy young woman who drowned herself in a river on the morning of July 9, 1845.

[10] Suggested prototypes for Hollingsworth include Amos Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horace Mann,[11] while the narrator is often supposed to be Hawthorne himself.

One reviewer states "So vividly does [Hawthorne] present to us the scheme at Brook Farm, to which some of our acquaintance were parties, so sharply and accurately does he portray some incidents of life there, that we are irresistibly impelled to fix the real names of men and women to the characters of his book".

One review states "We can recognize in the personages of his Romance individual traits of several real characters who were [at Brook Farm], but no one has his or her whole counterpart in one who was actually a member of the community.

Critics believe that when viewed as representative of Hawthorne's own life and beliefs, "The Blithedale Romance" provides insight into the mind of the author.

His acute moral sense had been largely detached from the traditional context of the orthodox faith, but it had found little else in which to thrive".

[18] In a broader sense, critics have long argued that the majority of the people, places, and events of The Blithedale Romance can be traced back to Hawthorne's observations and experiences over his lifetime.

[19] The most obvious of these correlations between fiction and reality is the similarity between Blithedale and Brook Farm, an actual experimental community in the 19th century of which Hawthorne was a part.