COMMENTARY: The Blessed Mother introduces God to the world.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of America’s most outstanding novelists, had a deep respect for the Catholic Church, although he never became a Catholic. He did have a strong influence on his daughter Rose, who not only embraced the Church but also founded what has come to be known as the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne. In her religious life, she is presented as the Venerable Mother Mary Alphonsa. Her cause for canonization was opened in the year 2003.
Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance was published in 1852. Its setting is a utopian socialist farming commune based on Brook Farm, of which Hawthorne was a founding member. The conversation among three people concerning the place of women could have been just as well written in 2026. The issues concerning women are strikingly similar, and the conflicting opinions remain without resolution.
Zenobia is a staunch, angry feminist. She decries the “injustice which the world did to women, and equally to itself, by not allowing them, in freedom and honor, and with the fullest welcome, their natural utterance in public. … If I live another year, I will lift up my own voice in behalf of woman’s
