I am reading The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is a fictional story about a Utopian commune in the late 19th century. The story is based on the author's experiences living in an actual Utopian commune. The author seasoned his writing with mild sarcasm, poking good-humored fun at various stereotypes encountered in community living. I relished the old-fashioned language and read some portions of it out-loud for my own enjoyment.
We had left the rusty iron framework of society behind us; we had broken through many hindrances that are powerful enough to keep most people on the weary treadmill of the established system, even while they feel its irksomeness almost as intolerable as we did. ... It was our purpose to give up whatever we had heretofore attained, for the sake of showing mankind the example of a life governed by other than the false and cruel principles on which human society has all along been based.
We were of all creeds and opinions, and generally tolerant of all, on every imaginable subject. Our bond, it seems to me, was not affirmative, but negative. We had individually found one thing or another to quarrel with in our past life, and were pretty well agreed as to the inexpediency of lumbering along with the old system any further. As to what should be substituted, there was much less unanimity. ... My hope was, that, between theory and practice, a true and available mode of life might be struck out; and that, even should we ultimately fail, the months or years spent in the trial would not have been wasted, either as regarded passing enjoyment, or the experience which makes men wise.
author: Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/The_Blithedale_Romance
title: The Blithedale Romance