Stunted sexuality in hawthorne's the blithedale romance Stunted sexuality in hawthorne's the blithedale romance

• Main Author: Arnold Gordenstein
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina 2008-04-01
• Series: Ilha do Desterro
• Online Access: http://www.periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/desterro/article/view/9045

By now a commonplace of Blithedale Romance criticism is that
 Coverdale is a voyeur. But hardly anyone has related coverdale's voyeurism to the larger psychological pattern that includes voyeurism and these to its central themes. Otto Fenichel couples voyeurism and toucheurism and defines them as "scoptophilia, the sexualization of the sensations of looking... analogous to touch eroticism." 1 Doubly restricted by Victorian morality as well as by his American Puritan heritage, Hawthorne indicated that the motivations that drew people to and that characterized their relationships at Blithedale were, in part, sexual. Since he could not directly describe this sexuality he used sight and touch images
 to convey the kind of attraction he had in mind. By now a commonplace of Blithedale Romance criticism is that
 Coverdale is a voyeur. But hardly anyone has related coverdale's voyeurism to the larger psychological pattern that includes voyeurism and these to its central themes. Otto Fenichel couples voyeurism and toucheurism and defines them as "scoptophilia, the sexualization of the sensations of looking... analogous to touch eroticism." 1 Doubly restricted by Victorian morality as well as by his American Puritan heritage, Hawthorne indicated that the motivations that drew people to and that characterized their relationships at Blithedale were, in part, sexual. Since he could not directly describe this sexuality he used sight and touch images
 to convey the kind of attraction he had in mind.