Priscilla

Priscilla is a character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1852 novel, The Blithedale Romance. Priscilla is a mysterious young woman who visits the experimental commune at Blithedale in New England, and poses a romantic ideal to both of the men involved there – Hollingsworth and Coverdale. Poor Priscilla – in this story she serves to represent “True Womanhood”, the 19th century standard for feminine behavior and demeanor. She is a girlish, virginal little seamstress who seems to embody the axiom that woman’s place is in the home, as helpmeet to man, submissive to his wishes as surely as if they had been expressed by God. By the novel’s end, she is asserted to be a more powerful woman, but even then, it is her salvation at the hands of a man, and her devotion to him, that accounts for this more positive description. Her more powerful, feminist sister, Zenobia, has committed suicide, so we know what happens to women who step beyond their calling! Still, we love the sound of the name, Priscilla. (And who would want to be named “Zenobia”?!)

The Courtship of Miles Standish is a narrative poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1858. The poem is set in the early days of Plymouth Colony settled by pilgrims fresh off the Mayflower ship, and during a time of Native-American unrest (1621). It is the story of a love-triangle between Miles Standish, Priscilla Mullins, and John Alden, and is said to be true and passed to Longfellow (an Alden descendent) through oral tradition. Captain Miles Standish is the middle-aged, brave, swaggering military hero if a bit rough around the edges, and who just lost his wife and seeks to marry Pricilla. John Alden is Standish’s young and handsome roommate whom he asks to deliver his (Miles’) marriage proposal to the beautiful Pricilla on his behalf (fearing he lacks the right way with words). John Alden goes to Pricilla to deliver the proposal but is clearly enamored with the young beauty himself; thus, he innocently bumbles the message, clumsily attempts to recover, and muddles that effort until finally Pricilla makes her famous retort: “Prithee, John, why do you not speak for yourself?" In the end, John gets the girl and Miles “standishs” aside having given his blessing to the young lovers. It’s an optimistic ending; a fresh start for these new settlers in this new land.