The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne audiobook. Genre: romance The Blithedale Romance is the story of four principal characters who work with -- and sometimes against -- each other on Blithedale, a communal farm antecedent to those that sprang up later in the 1960s, and similar to one on which Hawthorne himself lived in 1841. These communes arose out of the pressures on society and the individual brought by the Industrial Revolution. Some were organized around religious philosophies, some were secular. Among the secularists, the Transcendental movement mentioned in the novel espoused the idea that the individual's intuition, rather than religious dogma, was the true path to spiritual enlightenment. Our four characters, like so many who fled to these communes, struggle to free mankind from bondage as they struggle with the unaccustomed day-to-day tasks of farm life. But they are plagued by a mystery that follows them from the world, and ultimately leads to tragedy. Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 00 (00:05:41) Chapter 01 (00:14:24) Chapter 02 (00:25:27) Chapter 03 (00:44:33) Chapter 04 (01:02:38) Chapter 05 (01:17:41) Chapter 06 (01:39:51) Chapter 07 (01:58:59) Chapter 08 (02:24:42) Chapter 09 (02:52:30) Chapter 10 (03:08:13) Chapter 11 (03:27:23) Chapter 12 (03:43:36) Chapter 13 (04:08:09) Chapter 14 (04:33:07) Chapter 15 (04:51:36) Chapter 16 (05:08:48) Chapter 17 (05:25:51) Chapter 18 (05:40:06) Chapter 19 (05:57:56) Chapter 20 (06:09:16) Chapter 21 (06:25:46) Chapter 22 (06:52:35) Chapter 23 (07:15:16) Chapter 24 (07:34:56) Chapter 25 (07:53:25) Chapter 26 (08:08:33) Chapter 27 (08:26:56) Chapter 28 (08:41:45) Chapter 29 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.