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Blithedale Romance Conflict

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In this excerpt from “The Blithedale Romance”, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the narrator is having a conversation with Zenobia in which he is examining her and her room. The narrator feels like Zenobia is hiding her true self. The author uses conflict to convey the narrator’s attitude towards Zenobia. Conflict is when an author creates a struggle between opposition forces. In this case, the opposing forces are the narrator and Zenobia. Zenobia is a woman with an abundance of beauty that can also be expressed in the drawing room of her home. The conflict between the narrator and Zenobia is created when the narrator is taking a look at this room which is decorated with luxurious items and furniture, although the narrator recognizes the pleasure in this lifestyle it leads to them to believe Zenobia is hiding some sort of truth. This conflict is enforced when the narrator says “... she was too …show more content…

The narrator thought that by changing her lifestyle and the way she presented herself Zenobia was creating an illusion of herself and trying to give up on the Blithedale community she once lived in. She, however, refutes this by arguing that she is not giving up on that way of life but choosing to not “... be content with [her] homely life of a few months past...” (Lines 50-51). Zenobia no longer wants to conform or feel obligated to the lifestyle lived in Blithedale, she doesn’t want to feel like that lifestyle is all she should know and what she should be okay with. This argument

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