"I
exaggerate my own defects," says Miles Coverdale in his final
confessions of The Blithedale Romance (247). This
sums up much of his character. Coverdale is a self-absorbed jerk who
carries on with a "woe is me" demeanor. Let's flash back to
Chapter 6, "Coverdale's Sick-Chamber." The title of the
chapter alone indicates his prima donna nature.
"Sick-chamber"
indicates a serious level of illness. It conjures of images of severe
quarantine, like what we in the modern era do with people who've come
down with smallpox or Ebola. In reality, he was just bed ridden
in his room. Sure, it was still a chamber, but it
wasn't that severe.
He
goes on to talk about death, and dying. "How many men, I wonder,
does one meet with, in a lifetime, whom he would choose for his
death-bed companions!" Immediately after, he calls Hollingsworth
into the room and groans on about how he's about to face the worst.
Hollingsworth brings back the voice of reason, reminding Coverdale
that he knows nothing medicine. “Death should take me while I am in
the mood[.]” Coverdale has given up. He has a fever, and he
exaggerates it to the point where he wants to die.
Flashing
forward back to the end of the book. In the final sentence, he makes
the great reveal that, “I—I myself—was in love—with—Priscilla!”
(247) This was painfully obvious to us readers. The way he stretched
it out, however, seems a bit degrading. It's like he's spelling it
out to us like children. “I—I myself...” Just the fact that he
thinks we were too stupid to figure this out was demeaning in and of
itself.
I
think the reason behind all of this is that Coverdale views himself
as being superior to all those he encounters. Whenever Zenobia
attempts to talk poetry with him, he refuses to entertain her. He has
to keep her lower than him. Although they were supposed to share
everything in their socialist compound, he felt the need to have his
own seclusion in the woods. His needs, in his mind, outweighed that
of the many.
His
opposition to doing others favors really speaks to this. In the very
first chapter, he refuses to do Mr. Moodie a favor before Moodie even
has a chance to tell him what that favor is. Had Coverdale actually
listened to him, he may have learned about the nature of Priscilla
and Zenobia.
