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Thomas Hardy

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Two on a Tower

October 13, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, commentary, further reading, web links

Two on a Tower was first published by Sampson Low, London, in three volumes in 1882. it was written between two of Thomas Hardy’s major novels – The Return of the Native in 1878 and arguably his greatest work The Mayor of Casterbridge in 1886 – though it has to be said that he produced a number of other minor works around this time, such as The Trumpet Major (1880) and A Laodicean (1881). Hardy called the novel a ‘romance and a fantasy’, but there seem no valid reasons why it should not be judged by the same criteria as those used to assess his other works.

Two on a Tower


Two on a Tower – commentary

The sensation novel

The sensation novel was a literary genre developed in the mid nineteenth century by writers such as Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. They created plots that were designed to ‘jolt the reader’ (John Sutherland’s term) with elements of secret marriages, forged wills, bigamy, blackmail, murder, concealed identities, and other elements inherited from the late eighteenth-century Gothic – such as fraud, theft, kidnapping, and incarceration.

Thomas Hardy is not normally regarded as a novelist of the ‘sensationalist’ school, but there are certainly many elements of its literary devices in his work. Two on a Tower features several plot devices that span the melodrama and the sensation novel.

The relationship between the protagonist Swithin and Lady Viviette Constantine is presented as ‘peculiar’ because of the age difference and the apparent disparity in their status. Yet she is only eight years older than him; she has married into her position of Lady Constantine; and he is the son of a clergyman. They are not so far apart socially.

This age difference might seem inconsequential to readers today – but in the late nineteenth century it was considered somewhat risque to have a mature (and formerly married) woman making what are clearly sexual overtures to a young male.

The sudden arrival of unexpected news is also a favourite device of the sensation novel. On the very day that Swithin is setting off to secretly marry Viviette he receives an inheritance, but only on the condition that he remain single. On virtually the same day Viviette also receives a letter from her brother Louis Granville (who has not been mentioned in the novel up to that point) announcing his arrival to thwart her romance.

Bigamy

But the most glaring element of sensationalism is the fact that Swithin and Viviette enter into a secret marriage. The reasons for secrecy are bound up with the complex socio-economic issues arising from their perceived difference in status – which Hardy does not fully explain or justify. The secret provides a dramatic element to the events that follow – but the more significant issue is that the marriage remains unconsummated for quite some time.

Moreover, there are not just one but two instances of bigamy in the novel. When Swithin and Viviette get married in secret, they do so believing that Sir Boult Constantine is dead- from disease contracted during his African lion hunt. But the report is what we might currently call false news – so for quite some time Viviette is married to two men – Swithin and Sir Boult.

This is perhaps the main reason Hardy leaves her second marriage unconsummated for so long. Public moral attitudes might not (probably would not) have tolerated both technical bigamy and what would have been seen as sexual pluralism at that time. This voluntary state of chastity also stretches the reader’s credulity – almost to breaking point.

It subsequently turns out that Sir Blount has indeed died – but at a much later date than that reported. So the secret marriage between Swithin and Viviette remains invalid, because at the time of its being registered Viviette was not free to marry someone else.

But this revelation allows Hardy to introduce another sensationalist element into the plot. Sir Blount has not died of typhoid or any other tropical disease. He too has committed a form of bigamy by taking an African ‘wife’ whilst still married to Viviette – and then he has subsequently committed suicide in what we take to be a fit of existential despair.

Indeed, Viviette comes close to being a double bigamist – because she marries Swithin whilst her first husband is still alive. Later, having learned that her first husband is now dead, she consummates her marriage to Swithin, but then after he leaves for South Africa she marries the Bishop of Melchester – whilst she is pregnant with Swithin’s child.

The final twist

Close followers of Hardy’s psychology and his attitude to women and human relationships will notice a double twist at the end of the novel. Swithin returns from South Africa to be confronted by Viviette as the ‘older woman’. She is only in her early thirties, but is described as being in her ‘worn and faded aspect’. She has also had by this point two former husbands. Swithin realises with horror he no longer loves her – but out of a sense of loyalty he offers to marry her. She spares him the ordeal by dying on the spot

But his neighbour Tabitha Lark has meanwhile conveniently matured into ‘blushing womanhood’ and is not only a trained musician but someone ready to help him transpose his astronomical notes. In other words, she is a younger wife ready and in waiting.

So just as Angel Clare goes off with Tess d’Uurberville’s younger sister after his wife is hanged for the murder of Alec d’Urberville, Hardy has a ‘solution’ to the problem on hand that reveals a great deal about his own unconscious and not-so-unconscious wishes – and one which he was to act out in his own troubled life with such unhappy consequences.

Hardy had a largely unhappy marriage, but following the death of his first wife Emma, he married the much younger woman Florence Dugdale – who was forty years his junior. Unfortunately for him this marriage also turned out to be unsatisfactory, and Hardy spent the next sixteen years expressing his remorse in poems dedicated to his first wife.

Symbolism

It is possible to see Swithin’s interest in astronomy as a metaphor for intellectual ambition and his yearning for a world beyond everyday existence in a provincial backwater of south-west England. But a more obvious instance of symbolism is the Tower itself and the telescopes used in his observations.

Almost all the romance between Swithin and Viviette is conducted on the clearly phallic tower – which even acquires a ‘dome’ during the course of events. It is Viviette who supplies Swithin with an object lens for his telescope when he rather clumsily breaks the one he has just bought. She also supplies the ‘equatorial mount’ – a device for synchronising the telescope with the earth’s axis of rotation.

Given that Swithin and Viviette spend the greater part of the novel in an unconsummated ‘union’, the tower and the telescopes act as suggestive symbolic parallels to their relationship

A weakness?

Swithin St Cleve is devastated to find that someone has made the same astronomical discovery as himself and published a scholarly paper on the matter. He collapses during a rainstorm, catches a chill, and is thought to be near the point of death. However, his spirits rise and he recovers on hearing news of the arrival of a comet – which he observes through his new ‘equatorial’ telescope.

Now of all the people in a remote rural location who would know about the arrival dates and visibility of comets – it would be an astronomer. Yet we are led to believe that this occurrence is some form of therapeutic surprise to Swithin. In addition, the comet appears to be visible for not just a number of days, but for months – which is uncommon to the point of extreme improbability. It is not like Hardy to make mistakes of this magnitude in his work.

Geography

Almost all the events of the novel take place in an unspecified location in the south-west of England. But apart from mention of Bath, Southampton, and Melchester (Salisbury) there is very little attempt on Hardy’s part to integrate his narrative with the world of ‘Wessex’ that is built up so powerfully in his other novels.

In novels such as The Return of the Native (1876), The Woodlanders (1887), and Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) the landscape of Wessex is not only densely realised and vividly evoked; it becomes part of the narrative of events itself.

Egdon Heath presides over all the events of The Native with a brooding intensity. The woods, forests and coppices provide not only the background to events but the livelihoods of characters in The Woodlanders. And Tess is forced to work on the land as an agricultural labourer because of her tragic circumstances.

This sort of close relationship between the geography of the region and the events of the narrative simply do not exist in Two on a Tower. There is very little reason to believe that the events of the novel take place imaginatively within the boundaries of Hardy’s traditional ‘Wessex’.


Two on a Tower – study resources

Two on a Tower Two on a Tower – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Two on a Tower Two on a Tower – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Two on a Tower Two on a Tower – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Two on a Tower Two on a Tower – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Two on a Tower The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Two on a Tower

Two on a Tower


Two on a Tower – plot synopsis

I.   Lady Constantine explores the memorial tower on her husband’s estate She meets the beautiful young man Swithin St Cleve who is studying astronomy

II.   Members of the local choir assemble for practice at Grandma Martin’s house. Tabitha Lark reports on Lady Constantine’s listlessness. Her husband Sir Blount Constantine is missing in Africa. Swithin hides upstairs in the house.

III.   Lady Constantine asks parson Torkingham’s advice on her vow to remain socially secluded during her husband’s visit to Africa. She agrees to maintain her vow.

IV.   Lady Constantine visits Swithin on the tower. He describes astronomy in emotive terms.. She asks him to check on Sir Blount who has been seen in London.

V.   The person on London is not Sir Blount. Swithin breaks his new object lens, but Lady Constantine replaces it. She cuts off a lock of his hair whilst he is asleep.

VI.   Swithin’s new telescope doesn’t work, but Lady Constantine agrees to buy him an ‘equatorial’ viewing instrument. The new project energises her.

VII.   She decides to buy the new instrument for herself, and let him have use of it. But local gossip about their relationship begins, so she puts the whole project into his name.

VIII .   She pays over the money for the instrument in secret then visits the new telescope at night with Swithin. She feels he is losing himself in the stars.

IX.   Swithin makes a new astronomical discovery, but then finds that someone else has just published the same results. He falls ill, and when Lady Constantine goes to visit him he is thought to be dying.

X.   Swithin’s spirits are revived by the arrival of a comet. Lady Constantine follows the news of his recovery at a distance.

XI.   Lady Constantine feels guilty about her romantic yearning for Swithin, and she vows to both deny herself and find him a suitable wife. At this very point Torkinham reveals that her husband died some time ago in Africa.

XII.   Sir Blount dies leaving his estate in debt. Much of his estate is sold off, and Lady Constantine is left in relative poverty. She goes to the tower and reveals her position to Swithin, wondering why he is so matter-of-fact in his response.

XIII.   They try to leave the tower, but are obstructed by the arrival of the rustics, who discuss Lady Constantine, Swithin, and the possibilities of a marriage. Swithin is shocked by what he overhears.

XIV.   The new knowledge inflames his passion, but when they meet she feels guilty at distracting him from his astronomy They think their relationship cannot succeed, and must be concealed from the general public.

XV.   Three months later they meet on the tower again. . He proposes a secret marriage, which will only be revealed when he becomes ‘famous’. In the meantime, they will continue to live separately. She agrees to the proposal.

XVI.   A sudden gale blows the protective dome off the tower and the gable end off his grandmother’s house. Plans are changed. She will go to Bath and arrange a marriage license. She gets a letter announcing the arrival of her brother from South America.

XVII.   Lady Constantine goes to Bath and despite her fears and misgivings she arranges a marriage license – though she is two days short of qualification.

XVIII.   Swithin sets out to join her in Bath, but the same morning he gets notice of an inheritance from his great-uncle. However, it stipulates that he must not marry before reaching twenty-five. He ignores the offer and sets off.

XIX .   They meet in Bath and after delays are married. But Viviette’s face is cut by a horse whip at the station – brandished by her brother. Fearing they will be recognised and exposed, they hide out in the Tower hut.

XX.   They observe the Aurora Borealis from the Tower, then the next day she goes back home.

XXI .   Swithin visits Viviette secretly at her home. She shows him round the house, and persuades him to be confirmed in church.

XXII.   Viviette’s brother Louis Glanville suddenly arrives at the house. Swithin hides, then leaves dressed in an old coat of Sir Blount’s. The rustics meet him on the way back and think they have seen a ghost.

XXIII.   Winter comes and goes. Viviette refurbishes the house in preparation for the forthcoming confirmation ceremony.

XXIV.   The confirmation ceremony takes place, during which Louis watches Swithin very closely.

XXV.   The visiting bishop is an old friend of Swithin’s father. He takes a keen interest in Swithin at the luncheon celebration that follows. In the evening he is taken to see the Tower.

XXVI.   Viviette. is at the Tower, but hides when the Bishop’s party arrives. Swithin shows them the observatory, but the Bishop appears to be suspicious of something.

XXVII.   Next day the Bishop accuses Swithin of having a woman in his room, and produces a bracelet as evidence. Swithin assures him he has done nothing wrong.

XXVIII.   Louis gives the bracelet to Tabitha and urges Viviette to encourage the Bishop. He tries to sow suspicion in his sister’s mind against Swithin.

XXIX.   Viviette and Tabitha divide their bracelets into two – which thwarts Louis in his suspicions. But he vows to set a trap for Viviette and Swithin.

XXX.   Louis invites Swithin to dinner, then insists that he stay over. When Swithin disappears during the night, Louis interrogates Viviette, who admits that she loves Swithin – who had merely gone back to the Tower to take a reading.

XXXI.   Viviette receives a proposal of marriage from the Bishop. Louis urges her to accept it, but she refuses. He leaves the house in a rage.

XXXII.   Viviette and Swithin decide to reveal their marriage to the Bishop and to Louis. Viviette’s solicitor sends word that Sir Blount died much later than was previously thought. Viviette realises that her current marriage to Swithin is therefore invalid.

XXXIII.   Viviette sends a letter of refusal to the Bishop. Swithin tells her not to worry about the legalities, and they plan to marry a second time.

XXXIV.   Viviette reads a letter from Swithin’s solicitor regarding his unclaimed inheritance. She fears that she is preventing him from advancing in his best interests. Swithin urges that they undertake a second marriage.

XXXV.   Her fears are confirmed when she reads the original inheritance letter from Swithin’s great-uncle, warning him against marriage. She decides to sacrifice her own happiness in Swithin’s best social interests. Finally she proposes postponing the marriage until he is twenty-five.

XXXVII.   Swithin sets off for the southern hemisphere, and his lodgings at the Tower are dismantled. Viviette has a vision of a golden-haired child, and decides she must follow Swithin.

XXXVIII.   She goes to Southampton but his ship has just left. She returns to Grandma Martin and writes letters to Swithin telling him that he cannot claim his inheritance.

XXXIX.   Louis goes to Melchester and tells the Bishop that Viviette is ready to marry him. The Bishop arrives next day, and Viviette accepts him, believing that it will leave Swithin free to claim his inheritance.

XL.   Swithin goes to America on the expedition to study the transit of Venus, and then settles on the South African cape. He receives a letter from his grandmother announcing Viviette’s marriage to the Bishop, and another from Viviette justifying her decision and giving him news of their child.

XLI.   Three years later a newspaper announces the death of the Bishop. Swithin’s researches are complete, so he goes home. He meets Viviette on the Tower and is horrified to find her aged and unattractive. Nevertheless, he offers to marry her, but she dies from the shock.


Two on a Tower – characters
Swithin St Cleve a handsome young astronomer
Sir Bount Constantine estate owner and African explorer
Lady Viviette Constantine his attractive young wife
Louis Glanville Viviette’s profligate brother
Dr Helmsdale the Bishop of Melchester

© Roy Johnson 2017


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Filed Under: Thomas Hardy Tagged With: English literature, Literary studies, The novel, Thomas Hardy

Under the Greenwood Tree

October 11, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, commentary, further reading, web links

Under the Greenwood Tree was Thomas Hardy’s second novel to be published. It appeared anonymously in 1872, and was the first in his great series of what came to be called the ‘Wessex’ novels. It is a light, pastoral comedy of manners that is quite unlike the dark and tragic novels of his later years for which he is well known. The sub-title suggests both the principal subject and the tone in which it should be considered: The Mellstock Quire: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School.

Under the Greenwood Tree


Under the Greenwood Tree – commentary

Thomas Hardy was disappointed by the rejection of his first novel The Poor Man and the Lady at the hands of publishers Chapman and Hall. To offset this, for his second work, Desperate Remedies (1871), he chose a popular genre – the sensation novel – which full of dramatic plot devices designed to shock readers. When this too failed to meet his hopes of commercial success, he decided to turn to a subject that he knew intimately – the life and customs of ordinary working people from rural south-west England. For his third novel he created a fictional landscape called ‘Wessex’ and he made it entirely his own in the many novels that followed.

Because he chose rural settings for his work, Hardy was at first considered by many critics as merely a ‘regional novelist’ – a minor artist whose vision of life is limited by geographic boundaries. But this view has since been completely overturned, and Hardy is now seen as a major novelist of the late nineteenth century. Almost all his most important works are set in a fictional version of south-west England, but they encompass issues of social class, education, gender identity, industrialisation, and the psychology of individuals pitting themselves against society and even what is often seen as a cosmic destiny.

The geographic location of events in the Wessex novels is an interesting blend of real and fictional place names. Some towns are given their real names – such as Bristol, Bath, and Southampton. Others are given invented names – so Dorchester becomes ‘Casterbridge’, the Isle of Portand becomes ‘The Isle of Slingers’, and Dartmoor is re-named ‘Egdon Heath’.

It is generally accepted that the events of the Mellstock parish church and its choir (or ‘quire’) are based on the based on the church at Stinsford in Dorset, near to where Hardy grew up in Little Brockhampton.

The historical theme

Hardy was very conscious that during his own lifetime many rural occupations and much traditional behaviour were being swept away by the arrival of new forms of transport, production, and ownership. His novels create a record of these pastoral traditions as a form of social record, and he is particularly acute in registering the details of rural economy and its effects on a wide range of characters – from rural labourers, through craftsmen, to farmers, tradesmen, and local landowners.

For a work as gentle as Under the Greenwood Tree Hardy selects an appropriately minor feature of traditional social life – the musicians and singers of a parish choir. Its members are all tradesmen and workers who play a variety of stringed instruments – which they clannishly regard as the only appropriate accompaniment to both religious and secular performance. They particularly object to the introduction of clarinets – which became popular in the mid nineteenth century.

But they are threatened by vicar Maybold’s introduction of the organ or harmonium. It is significant that their provision of musical accompaniment involves the sympathetic co-operation of a group of musicians, whereas the organ is played by an individual. Socially cohesive practices from an earlier age are being replaced by individualism and a machine-age device.

It is worth noting how skilfully Hardy blends his two themes on this issue. Maybold could easily have been demonised as an enemy of the rustics, but in fact he compromises with them over the date of introducing the organ. But the person who will play it is Fancy Day – in whom he has a romantic interest.

The romantic theme

In his later, more mature novels Hardy explored all sorts of complex issues that arise between men and women in their emotional attachments to each other. In The Mayor of Casterbridge Michael Henchard actually sells a wife he no longer loves, then reaps the consequences when she comes back to him years later. In Tess of the d’Urbervilles Tess murders the man who has seduced her so that she is psychologically free to run off with the man who is her lawful husband.

There are no such dark issues in Under the Greenwood Tree. In this novel Hardy explores a very innocent and simple romance between two characters who have very few psychological problems perplexing them. But their relationship does include issues that Hardy was to explore more fully in his later works – principally those of class and education.

Fancy’s father Geoffrey Fay objects to Dick Dewey as a suitor to his daughter on grounds of class expectations and education. Fancy is the daughter of Geoffrey’s first marriage to a well educated woman, and she has been sent to the best finishing schools – which is why she is qualified to be a schoolteacher. Moreover, Mr Day has lived at a modest level with his second wife in order to provide Fancy with a good dowry. He is hoping to attract a well-to-do middle class husband for his daughter. Dick Dewey is merely the son of a man with a horse and cart haulage business.

Geoffrey Day’s capitulation to Fancy’s self-starvation tactic is not altogether convincing, but it does introduce the element of folk superstitions (the ‘witch’ Elizabeth Endorfield) that Hardy was to include in many of his other novels as part of the traditional beliefs and behaviours he was documenting.

The romance between Dick and Fancy runs a predictable series of ups and downs – all congruent with the delicate and emotionally good-natured tenor of the plot. But the story does end on an interesting note that speaks volumes for what was to come in Hardy’s later work. In a moment of self-indulgent weakness, Fancy accepts Maybold’s proposal of marriage whilst she is still engaged to Dick Dewey. (Maybold is the sort of suitor of whom her father certainly would approve.) But then she rescinds the decision next day.

Maybold, a very honourable chap, accepts her reasons and recommends that she confess all to Dick Dewey, who he predicts will be forgiving. But she does not tell her husband about the incident – and so their marriage begins with a secret between them – ‘a secret she would never tell’.

Significance

Although Under the Greenwood Tree is obviously very light-hearted in tone and is generally classed amongst Hardy’s minor works, it has a far greater significance when viewed in the light of his later novels.

First, it establishes ‘Wessex’ as a fictional location which Hardy would make the setting for all his major works in the years that followed. Wessex is an area of south-west England bounded by Somerset in the north, Devon, Cornwall, and Hampshire and Dorsetshire in the south. His account of this locale, in all its topographical, geographical, architectural, and botanical detail is what gives his novels their compelling realism.

The issues he explores – such as the relationships between rustic country people and the content of their social and emotional lives – is something he would take to the level of high drama and even tragedy in his later works. Dick Dewey is the son of a carter (a ‘tranter’) but by the end of the novel he has had business cards printed with a view to becoming more successful and occupying a slightly higher social position. Michael Henchard in The Mayor of Casterbridge is similarly ambitious, but after a spectacular rise he is eventually reduced to a form of self-destruction at the end of which he wishes to be remembered by nobody.

The rustics in Under the Greenwood Tree are a charming set of naive, friendly, and sympathetic characters variations of whom will recur in Hardy’s later novels. They are always depicted as simple, honest, folk embracing any number of folk memories, superstitions, and tolerance of each other’s foibles. They also embody the vehicle of everyday speech patterns, local dialect, slang, and regional pronunciation that Hardy was keen to record.


Under the Greenwood Tree – resources

Under the Greenwood Tree Under the Greenwood Tree – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Under the Greenwood Tree Under the Greenwood Tree – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Under the Greenwood Tree Under the Greenwood Tree – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Under the Greenwood Tree Under the Greenwood Tree – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Under the Greenwood Tree The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

A Laodicean

Under the Greenwood Tree


Under the Greenwood Tree – synopsis

Part the First – Winter

I.   Dick Dewy meets fellow members of the Mellstock parish choir after work on Christmas Eve.

II.   They all go to his father’s cottage where Reuben Dewy clumsily taps a barrel of cider for consumption before their tour of the parish.

III.   There is light-hearted banter about recognising someone from their footwear, and mention of new schoolmistress Fancy Day and her prettiness.

IV .   The choir makes a procession round the hamlets, playing hymns and bemoaning the loss of musical traditions.

V.   They serenade young schoolmistress Fancy Day, where Dick Dewy becomes entranced. Farmer Shiner is hostile to their serenade. They then move on to the new parson Mr Maybold, whose reception is lukewarm.

VI.   On Christmas Day morning Dick is still in a romantic daze. The choir performs in church, but it is disrupted by loud singing from schoolgirls.

VII.   At midnight on Christmas Day dancing begins at Reuben Dewy’s party. Dick feels pangs of jealousy when Fancy dances with rich farmer Mr Shiner..

VIII.   The dancing gets faster. Heavy men remove their jackets. They sit to a late supper. Tales of old folk beliefs are related. Dick is rueful that Fancy is escorted home by Mr Shiner.

IX.   Some days later Dick calls at the school to return Fancy’s handkerchief, but is too shy to take advantage of the situation.

Part the Second – Spring

I .   Dick makes frequent visits past the schoolhouse in order to see Fancy.

II.   The choir members are worried by what they see as Parson Maybold’s radical social changes.

II.  I Maybold wants to use a new organ (played by Fancy Day) instead of the Mellstock choir. Reuben Dewy proposes a deputation of the choir to confront him.

IV.   The choir visits the vicarage and deferentially asks for a delay in the proposed change. Maybold politely equivocates and in the end they compromise.

V.   The choir congratulate themselves and discuss Fancy Day’s secretive father.

VI.   Dick has dinner with Fancy at her father’s house, where there is provocative chat about marriage and Mr Shiner. The eccentric Mrs Day re-sets the table whilst they are all eating.

VII.   Dick helps Fancy in her lodgings, but his pleasure is spoiled by the arrival of Maybold.

VIII.   Dick meets his father and seeks his advice on romance and Fancy. Reuben is naive and sceptical. He suggests that Dick should remain a bachelor. Dick writes a letter to Fancy, but fails to deliver it, then writes another.

Part the Third – Summer

I.   Dick meets Fancy in Budmouth-Regis. Driving her back to Mellstock, he insists that she admit that she has feelings for him – and she does.

II.   On the way back they stop for tea. Fancy thinks it might seem improper, so Dick proposes marriage to overcome such objections – and she accepts.

III.   Fancy recounts a story of Mr Shirer’s attentions to her to make Dick jealous. Dick sees through the ploy, but Shirer has Mr Day’s blessing as a suitor.

IV.   Dick and Fancy decide to confront Mr Day about their engagement – but they spend all their time deciding how to dress for the occasion.

Part the Fourth – Autumn

I.   Frustrated by Fancy’s attention to mending her dress, Dick goes nutting alone – after which they are reconciled.

II .   Dick and Shiner compete with each other whilst the Day family are gathering honey. Mr Day then explains to Dick that Fancy is beyond his social reach because of her education and potential dowry.

III.   The ‘witch’ Elizabeth Endorfield advises Fancy on overcoming her father’s objections to Dick as a suitor.

IV.   Fancy starves herself. Her father becomes worried and removes his objections to Dick as a suitor..

V.   Fancy dresses attractively for her church organ debut. Dick acts as pallbearer at a friend’s funeral, then walks back home in the rain.

VI .   Maybold proposes to Fancy, and she accepts him, but is upset by doing so.

VII.   Next day Maybold meets Dick, who reveals that he is engaged to Fancy. Maybold writes to Fancy, asking her to reconsider, but his letter crosses with one from her withdrawing her acceptance.

Part the Fifth – The Conclusion

I .   Fancy prepares for the wedding amidst much teasing from older male visitors. Former wedding customs are recalled.

II.   Celebrations conclude outdoors under a tree. Dick and Fancy drive off to his new cottage in Mellstock. Fancy has not told him about Maybold.


Under the Greenwood Tree – characters
Richard Dewey a young apprentice carter
Reuben Dewey his father, a porter/carter
Willian Dewey his grandfather
Fred Shiner a farmer and churchwarden
Geoffrey Day an estate manager
Fancy Day his daughter, an educated schoolmistress
Arthur Maybold the new young vicar

© Roy Johnson 2017


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Filed Under: Thomas Hardy Tagged With: English literature, Literary studies, The novel, Thomas Hardy

Wessex Tales

May 10, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tragic and comic tales of the rural past

Thomas Hardy is one of the few major novelists (D.H.Lawrence was another) who is equally celebrated as a poet and a writer of short stories. Wessex Tales is a collection of his best-known tales which he shaped and re-shaped during his lifetime. It gathers together incidents, anecdotes, and folk memories which record the passing of an old rural era which Hardy captures with his customary sense of drama, his powerful language, and his wonderful depiction of the English countryside. All of these qualities make him an enduring favourite with the common reader.

Wessex Tales The stories seem to exist in three simultaneous time zones. Their events capture the social history, the practices, beliefs, and language of the early nineteenth century which Hardy was keen to document before they disappeared from living memory. They were written in the late nineteenth century and contain many of the literary devices of that period for which Hardy is famous – the use of fateful and tragic coincidences, plots which strain credulity, and a post-Darwinian sense of tragedy which pervades almost all of his work. Yet there are also elements of modern sensibility that reflect the fact that Hardy did in fact live for almost three decades as part of the twentieth century, and was personally acquainted with modernists such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf.

Those people familiar with Hardy’s novels will recognise his use of traditional and melodramatic plot devices in these stories. The young country girl who arranges to elope with a dashing soldier, but at the very meeting point overhears a man from her past and changes her mind – with tragic consequences for her and for the soldier. A christening party interrupted by the arrival of two strangers, who turn out to be an escaped convict and the hangman who has been summoned to execute him.

One of the most interesting stories (Fellow Townsmen) is set, unusually for Hardy, not in the countryside but in a manufacturing Dorset town (Bridport) amongst businessmen, a solicitor, and the local doctor. It concerns a number of Hardy’s favourite themes – the building of a house (a symbol of prosperity and status) an unhappy marriage, a former sweetheart who marries the hero’s best friend, and a series of missed opportunities which lead to a bleak outcome for all concerned.

These are correctly entitled ‘tales’ rather than ‘stories’ because they lack some of the compression and singularity of purpose we expect in a story – long or short. They have instead multiple characters, locations, and incidents. Some even have chapters with descriptive titles, and are almost like scenarios which might easily have been fleshed out into full length novels had Hardy felt the inclination to do so.

At a biographical level of comment and interpretation, it’s notable that many of the stories turn around matters of improvident, unhappy, and second marriages. We know that Hardy was less than content in his relationship with Emma, his first wife, but these stories were written twenty years or more before he met Florence Dugdale, with whom he formed his second and no more successful marriage. It’s almost as if he is exploring unconsciously these issues in advance of living them out, just as he did in his later novels. Tess of the d’Urbervilles has a heroine who is deserted on her wedding night. The Mayor of Casterbridge has a hero who sells his wife. And Jude the Obscure is the story of a man who marries twice – both times without success.

But whatever the plot, all these stories are imbued with that profound love and understanding of the countryside for which Hardy is rightly famous. He has a perception which combines historical consciousness, scientific accuracy, and a lyrical evocation of his native Dorsetshire which is truly poetic:

They were travelling in a direction that was enlivened by no modern current of traffic, the place of Darnton’s pilgrimage being an old-fashioned village – one of the Hintocks (several villages of that name, with distinctive prefix or affix, lying thereabout) – where people make the best cider and cider-wine in all Wessex, and where the dunghills smell of pommace instead of stable refuse as elsewhere. The lane was sometimes so narrow that the brambles of the hedge, which hung forward like anglers’ rods over a stream, scratched their hats and hooked their whiskers as they passed. Yet this neglected lane had been a highway to Queen Elizabeth’s subjects and the cavalcades of the past. Its day was over now, and its history as a national artery done forever

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© Roy Johnson 2011


Thomas Hardy, Wessex Tales, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp.248, ISBN: 0199538522


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Filed Under: Short Stories, The Short Story, Thomas Hardy Tagged With: English literature, Literary studies, The Short Story, Thomas Hardy, Wessex Tales

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