# XXVII: Midnight explained — The Blithedale Romance > Chapter companion for The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne. ## What happens Coverdale awakens Hollingsworth and Silas Foster in the middle of the night with the terrible suspicion that Zenobia has drowned herself. The three men retrieve her body from the river, and Coverdale reflects on the horror and rigidity of her corpse, as well as the ambiguous posture of her arms—partly prayerful, partly defiant. ## Themes in this chapter ### Idealism vs. Reality Coverdale contrasts Zenobia's imagined graceful death with the ugly, rigid reality of her corpse. ### Love and Sacrifice Zenobia's suicide is framed as a tragic outcome of unrequited love and rejection by Hollingsworth. ### Secrecy and Identity The hidden circumstances of Zenobia's death and the mystery surrounding her final moments. ## Character check-ins ### Miles Coverdale Narrator who discovers Zenobia's handkerchief and leads the search for her body. ### Mr. Hollingsworth Summoned by Coverdale; helps retrieve Zenobia's body and is accused by Foster of wounding her breast. ### Silas Foster Practical farmer who assists in the search and makes blunt observations about the corpse. ### Zenobia Found drowned in the river; her body is described in rigid, defiant posture. ## Key lines > They were clenched in immitigable defiance. Away with the hideous thought. The flitting moment after Zenobia sank into the dark pool—when her breath was gone, and her soul at her lips—was as long, in its capacity of God’s infinite forgiveness, as the lifetime of the world! Her hands were clenched in unyielding defiance. But Coverdale rejects that terrible idea, insisting that the brief moment after she sank—when her breath ceased and her soul was at her lips—was as full of God's infinite forgiveness as the entire history of the world. _Coverdale grapples with the ambiguity of Zenobia's final posture, seeking hope in divine mercy._ > Being the woman that she was, could Zenobia have foreseen all these ugly circumstances of death—how ill it would become her, the altogether unseemly aspect which she must put on, and especially old Silas Foster’s efforts to improve the matter—she would no more have committed the dreadful act than have exhibited herself to a public assembly in a badly fitting garment! Coverdale reflects that if Zenobia had known how ugly and undignified her death would appear—especially with Silas Foster trying to arrange her body—she would never have drowned herself, just as she would never appear in public wearing an ill-fitting dress. _Coverdale suggests Zenobia's vanity and sense of decorum might have prevented her suicide had she foreseen the reality._ > Her arms had grown rigid in the act of struggling, and were bent before her with clenched hands; her knees, too, were bent, and—thank God for it!—in the attitude of prayer. Her arms were stiff from the struggle, bent in front with fists clenched; her knees were also bent, and—thankfully—in a position that suggested prayer. _Coverdale finds a sliver of hope in the prayer-like posture of Zenobia's knees._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/chapters/xxvii-midnight - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_blithedale_romance_se/chapters