# The Blithedale Romance — Character guide

> Key figures in The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

- [Zenobia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/characters/zenobia.md): 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 appro
- [Mr. Hollingsworth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/characters/hollingsworth.md): 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, 
- [Priscilla](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/characters/priscilla.md): 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 con
- [Miles Coverdale](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/characters/miles_coverdale.md): 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 
- [Silas Foster](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/characters/silas_foster.md): 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, w
- [Old Moodie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/characters/old_moodie.md): 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 ge
- [Fauntleroy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/characters/fauntleroy.md): 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 wor
- [Professor Westervelt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/characters/professor_westervelt.md): 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 experi
- [Theodore](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/characters/theodore.md): A young man in Zenobia's legend who unmasks the Veiled Lady.
- [The Veiled Lady](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/characters/the_veiled_lady.md): A mysterious veiled figure who performs in public shows.
- [Mrs. Foster](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/characters/mrs_foster.md): Silas Foster's wife, who helps run the Blithedale household.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/characters