Character guide

Zenobia

major

Also known as the fair Zenobia, Queen Zenobia, Coverdale Zenobia

Zenobia arrives at the farm like a great actress trailing her own legend, brilliant in conversation and impatient with any life that admits only one set of forms. She offers the community a condescending, qualified approval that stings Coverdale into trying to strip the performance away and find something real beneath it. Her rivalry with the fragile Priscilla, and the question of which woman Hollingsworth truly sees, quietly drives the novel's central knot of love and power.

Mr. Hollingsworth

major

Also known as Hollingsworth, dear Hollingsworth, Poor Hollingsworth

Hollingsworth is the moral center of gravity at Blithedale, a stalwart man in whom Coverdale finds the warmth of a deathbed companion. Yet he confesses to an inflexible severity of purpose that no mortal has a right to, and his one philanthropic idea threatens to swallow every other loyalty. His tenderness and his monomania pull against each other, making him the figure on whom the community's ideals and its dangers both rest.

Priscilla

major

Also known as XX They Vanish Priscilla

Priscilla drifts into the farmhouse like a leaf on a dark current, so slight that sunlight passes through her and so strange that she speaks of distant rooms she has never seen. Her timid, melancholy eyes seem to see concealed things, and her passive presence sets her in utter opposition to Zenobia's dearest interests. She matters because she is the still point around which the others' desires, guilt, and secrets begin to turn.

Miles Coverdale

major

Also known as Mr. Coverdale, Coverdale, Mr. Miles Coverdale, Miles

Coverdale leaves his apartments for the farm after consulting a Veiled Lady about the enterprise, and arrives as the community's resident observer and versifier. He is drawn into the lives of Hollingsworth, Zenobia, and Priscilla until they absorb his own, yet he keeps a stubborn reluctance to be fully known or fully committed. His divided stance, sympathetic and withholding at once, shapes how the reader sees every other character.

Silas Foster

supporting

Also known as stout Silas Foster, Silas, Grim Silas Foster, Foster, old Silas, gruff Silas, O cruel Silas, Stout Silas Foster

Silas Foster runs the farm's real work while the idealists theorize, and his dry remarks about firelight drawing stragglers frame the night Hollingsworth arrives with Priscilla. He is the community's grounding in soil, weather, and appetite, skeptical of grand schemes but not unkind. His plainness throws the reformers' aspirations into relief and keeps the pastoral from floating entirely off the ground.

Old Moodie

supporting

Also known as this Mr. Moodie, Mr. Moodie, Moodie, old Moodie

Moodie stops Coverdale the night before his departure for Blithedale, revealing just enough of himself from under a gate to be recognized as an acquaintance. He is a man of errands and obscure connections, his mode of getting bread thrusting him into the world's hubbub despite his retiring nature. His quiet approach plants the first thread of the mystery that will draw Priscilla and the others into the story's web.

Fauntleroy

supporting

Fauntleroy is the vanished grandee behind Old Moodie, a man whose every touch seems to dissolve — fortune, wives, and standing alike. Married twice into decline, he raises Priscilla in grimy poverty while feeding her worship of an unseen, brilliant sister from his first marriage. That strange, tender idolatry is the emotional engine Priscilla carries into Blithedale, and the reason her father's shadowed past keeps reaching into the community's present.

Professor Westervelt

supporting

Also known as Westervelt

Westervelt is the impresario behind the Veiled Lady, a phenomenon whose veiled identity and contrived stagecraft make her the talk of the town. He trades in mystery and suggestion, cultivating an air of scientific experiment while keeping his subject's true self conveniently hidden. His presence lingers at the edges of Blithedale's experiment, a reminder that the community's ideals may be entangled with manipulation, spectacle, and unseen control.

Theodore

minor

A young man in Zenobia's legend who unmasks the Veiled Lady.

The Veiled Lady

minor

A mysterious veiled figure who performs in public shows.

Mrs. Foster

minor

Also known as Good Mrs. Foster

Silas Foster's wife, who helps run the Blithedale household.

Eliot

minor

Also known as the venerable Apostle Eliot

Historical figure referenced as the namesake of Eliot's Pulpit.