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

A Laodicean (1860-1861) was first published as a serial in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and subsequently in novel form by Sampson Low in 1881. It bears two sub-titles – The Castle of the de Stancys and A Story of To-Day. It is one of Thomas Hardy’s lesser-known novels, but it incorporates many of his personal interests – particularly architecture and the effects of modern technology. It is one of the earliest novels you are likely to come across that features electrical telegraphy (the telegram) as part of the plot.

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A Laodicean – commentary

The sensation novel

Hardy wrote in the wake of the ‘sensation novel’ that had been popularised by writers such as Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon in the middle of the nineteenth century. Hardy never exploited to a similar extent the sensationalist elements of plotting that they had developed – but neither was he averse to including them as an obvious encouragement to gain readers and popular acclaim.

These elements show up more obviously in his weaker novels that do not have the compensating powerful psychological insights and credible dramas that pervade his greatest works.

A Laodicean includes the following typical elements of the sensation novel in its plotting:

• sex outside marriage
• illegitimacy
• personation
• theft
• blackmail
• forgery

William de Stancy has had an illicit sexual relationship in his earlier life. This has led to the birth of his son, who is therefore illegitimate. But the son goes under the name of William Dare (with ‘De Stancy’ tattooed on his chest) which is a form of ‘personation’ – someone masquerading under a false identity.

Dare steals George Somerset’s correspondence in order to become his assistant on the castle restoration project. He then steals the plans to form an alliance with the rival architect Havill. Meanwhile he is blackmailing his own father. He not only drains de Stancy of money to fund his self-indulgent life style, but he threatens to reveal the truth of their relationship, which would ruin Captain de Stancy’s social reputation and marriage prospects (which is eventually what happens).

On top of all that, Dare is guilty of forgery on two counts. He sends a telegram to Paula Power demanding money which purports to come from George Somerset. Then he forges a photograph that is constructed to show Somerset in a state of intoxication.

These are the stock-in-trade elements of the sensation novel, and it is interesting to note that Hardy relies on them more extensively than he does in his more serious novels, for which he is quite rightly better known.

Plotting

There are a number of issues and details in the narrative that are either unexplained or not followed up, once having been introduced. For instance there are two related issues at opposite ends of the novel.

In the first, George Somerset falls into the tower pit on one of his early visits to the castle. Whilst there he notices carvings in the wall:

Among these antique inscriptions he observed two bright and clean ones, consisting of the words ‘De Stancy’ and ‘W. Dare’ crossing each other at right angles. From the state of the stone they could not have been cut more than a month before

There are only two people in the novel who know the relationship between De Stancy and Dare, and those are the two individuals themselves. At that point neither of them have had access to the castle. Hardy clearly inserts George’s observation into the text to create a little mystery, but no subsequent explanation is given for how the names got there. Moreover, the incident and its implications are never mentioned again throughout the whole of the novel.

We know that as a result of an illness, Hardy was forced to complete the novel by dictation rather than longhand composition, and he may have simply forgotten this detail.

But in the second example at the other end of the novel Abner Power threatens to expose William Dare and his creation of a bogus telegram and a faked photograph to smear the reputation of George Somerset. Dare counters this attack by saying he will reveal Power’s role in the fabrication of an explosive device for a group of revolutionaries.

The result of this confrontation is a stalemate which does not affect the plot in any way. More importantly however, no explanation is given for how either of these characters came to have detailed knowledge of the other’s doings.

There are also ambiguities or elisions in the plot that seem to suggest that Hardy himself was not sure about the logic and coherence of his story. The destruction by fire of the castle contents at the close of the novel are the work of an arsonist described as a ‘flitting’ figure, who is not named.

This term ‘flitting’ immediately suggests a female – who might be Charlotte, putting an end to the burden of family history before she retires into a convent. But this would be uncharacteristic of such an honest, principled, and self-effacing young woman.

The other suspect – with a powerful motive of resentment – would be Dare, who we know has been denied his ambition to become a genuine de Stancy, and is still in the vicinity at the time. But it is hard to believe that a penniless and unscrupulous confidence trickster would burn paintings by Vandyck, Kneller, Tintoretto, Titian, and Giorgione when he could just easily steal and sell them.

Hardy does not seem to have made up his mind on this issue, and is content to leave an ambiguous, unresolved mystery hovering over the uncharacteristically ‘happy ending’ to the novel.

The basic plot is quite reasonable. An indecisive young woman is caught between competing interests – her instinct for love and a desire for social advancement. But the events of the narrative are stretched out to aesthetically unacceptable lengths. Perhaps this is a case where serial magazine publication worked against the best interests of the author. Hardy met his monthly quotas, but the net result is a novel that very few people bother to read – and one cannot blame them.

Wessex

Hardy makes very little effort to root the events of A Laodicean in a realistic manner. It seems that the location of de Stancy castle might be anywhere in southern England. It is certainly within easy reach of London by train.

But the local town of Markton in the novel is not mentioned in any of the other ‘Wessex’ works that constitute his essential oeuvre. Hardy was of course at liberty to produce fiction which stood independently of his other major productions. But the fictional world of ‘Wessex’ that he created in novels stretching from Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) to Jude the Obscure (1895) is of such power and is so vividly realised that it forms a gravitational field of an enduring intensity that affects judgements of all his works.

Structure

There are at least three major structural weaknesses in the narrative. The first is that the sub-plot of the villainous William Dare is set up successfully enough in the opening part of the story. Dare infiltrates George Somerset’s professional and romantic endeavours; he steals his designs for the rival architect Havill; and he has a secret desire to become a legitimate de Stancy. Indeed, he even has the name tattooed on his chest.

Yet in the middle sections of the novel, this Dare sub-plot disappears completely. The story switches to Somerset’s frustrations in trying to wring an emotional response out of the seemingly coquettish Paula Power. This section of the novel also embodies another subsidiary plot weakness – the over-elaborated passages of the theatricals and George’s adolescent torments of jealousy.

But these weaknesses pale into insignificance compared with the endlessly repetitive will-she-won’t-she pursuit of Paula by de Stancy during their excursion around Europe.

It is clear that Hardy wishes to show Paula under enormous pressure. George Somerset has been maligned by both Dare’s bogus telegram asking for money and the faked photograph apparently showing him in a state of intoxication. Paula is also being offered marriage into a family of pedigree. She will become Lady de Stancy if only she says “Yes”.

Dramatically, this is a credible plot, but de Stancy’s pursuit of Paula and her refusal to yield to his entreaties goes on and on, from one town to another, with no change, no development, and no new arguments – until the reader could be excused for losing the will to live.

It is astonishing to realise that only a few years before, Hardy had written a work as psychologically insightful as The Return of the Native (1878) and only a few years hence he was to produce his all-inclusive masterpiece The Mayor of Castebridge (1886) which bears fruitful comparison with King Lear in terms of universal scope and tragic intensity.

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A Laodicean – study resources

A Laodicean – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

A Laodicean – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

A Laodicean – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

A Laodicean – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

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A Laodicean – plot summary

Book the First. George Somerset

I.   George Somerset is refreshing his studies of English Gothic architecture under pressure from his father, a painter and academician.

II.   George comes across a modern chapel built in an ugly style. A baptism ceremony is taking place, but the attractive young celebrant refuses to go into the pool. He follows a telegraph wire that leads him to an old castle.

III .   Next day he looks over Castle de Stancy and its ancient contents. The ancestral portraits are decaying.

IV.   Charlotte de Stancy shows him round the castle and relates its history. It was bought by engineer John Power and is now being restored by his daughter. Paula Power has had a telegraph line installed and has contact with contemporary culture. The two young women are close friends.

V .   Next day George is invited to lunch with Sir William de Stancy (the previous owner) in his modern suburban villa. Sir William is obsessed with frugality and ‘luck’ He has lost all his money by extravagance and bad investments.

VI.   The following day George meets William Dare who wishes to photograph the castle. He then encounters the Baptist minister who is berating Paula theologically.

VII .   George debates biblical niceties with the minister, who gives up the argument. Paula speaks positively on Mr Woodwell’s behalf, and afterwards the two men are reconciled.

VIII.   George has lunch at the castle. He gets into an argument with fellow architect Mr Havill. There is general agreement that Mr Dare is an unreliable entity.

IX.   George falls into a pit in the castle turret, where he sees Dare’s name recently carved into the wall. Paula asks him to supervise the castle restoration. He proposes a competition with Mr Havill.

X.   Paula takes him round the castle whilst they discuss plans – without Havill. George moves to lodge in local village Markton.

XI.   Paula creates a studio for George in the castle. He feels more powerfully drawn to her – even though she appears enigmatic and even contradictory.

XII.   George goes to inspect Mr Power’s famous railway tunnel. He meets Paula there, and they are frightened by trains travelling up and down the line. Dare steals George’s correspondence and puts himself forward as his assistant.

XIII.   Paula holds a dinner party which George does not attend. She changes her mind about creating a Greek courtyard – then invites him to a garden party.

XIV.   An anonymous newspaper article appears, accusing Paula of desecrating the castle and its historic value. She tells George she wishes she were a de Stancy. They are spied on by Dare.

XV.   At the garden party George sacks Dare for idleness, then shelters from a rainstorm in a hut with Paula, to whom he declares his love.

Book the Second. Dare and Havill

I.   Dare finds Havill’s notebook containing the draft of the newspaper article. They then spy on George and Paula in the hut. Dare proposes a pact between them to steal George’s designs and cause trouble between George and Paula..

II.   Dare calls at Havill’s office and helps to bamboozle one of his creditors. Dare and Havill copy George’s designs in his studio. They then dine together, staying overnight at an inn.

III.   Havill wakes in the night and discovers Dare is carrying a gun. Dare then takes a close interest in an army brigade that arrives in the town.

IV.   George meets Charlotte with her brother Captain de Stancy and gives him Dare’s photo to show to the police. De Stancy is shocked on recognising Dare, and burns the photo.

V.   Captain de Stancy meets Dare, his illegitimate son, who is blackmailing him. Dare proposes that de Stancy should marry Paula and reclaim the castle and estates for the de Stancy family – of which he considers himself a member. However, de Stancy has taken a vow of adult celibacy.

VI .   The architecture competition is a tie. Dare explains to Havill his plan to bring Paula and de Stancy together. He discovers that Paula will look her most attractive when taking morning exercises in her private gymnasium.

VII.   Dare takes de Stancy to the gymnasium, where he is enchanted by the sight of Paula exercising.

Book the Third. De Stancy

I.   William de Stancy immediately becomes a changed man. He abandons his vows of teetotalism and avoiding women. He wants his sister Charlotte to help him in his pursuit of Paula, and he takes a sudden interest in the family history.

II.   William visits the castle and shows off his (very recently acquired) knowledge of the de Stancy family to Paula. Dare arrives, and they plan to make copies of all the family portraits.

III.   The copying begins, but William wants a portrait of Paula herself, which she refuses. Havill goes bankrupt and his wife dies. Paula is persuaded to split the project into two parts out of sympathy for Havill.

IV.   Havill has pangs of conscience and resigns from the project. Dare and de Stancy fear that the return of Somerset will spoil their plans.

V.   George wonders if his own family has a ‘pedigree’. When he goes to recover a genealogical document from the bank he sees Paula collecting a jewelled necklace.

VI.   George follows Paula to the Markton Hunt Ball. Charlotte is taken home in a faint when she sees Somerset. George learns that there are to be theatricals (Love’s Labour’s Lost) for which he designed the costumes.

VII.   George returns to the castle, but he jealously objects to Paula taking an active part in the theatricals.

VII.   He is further distressed when parts are changed and romantic scenes from Romeo and Juliet are interpolated.

IX.   A mysterious stranger enters, makes enquiries about Paula and de Stancy, then pays people to applaud them. George reproaches Paula for taking part in the final love scene in the play.

X.   Next day Paula hires a professional actress to take her part. After the performance she introduces the mysterious stranger as her uncle Abner Power – which gives George further cause for jealous worry.

XI.   Paula’s engagement is announced in a newspaper – but she denies it to George. She plans a trip to Nice. George discovers that the newspaper announcement was placed there by her uncle Abner.

Book the Fourth. Somerset, Dare, and de Stancy

I.   George and Paula exchange telegraph messages and letters. He continues to plead for signs of affection, and she continues to refuse.

II.   Abner Power wishes to influence his niece. George wants to visit her in Nice. She eventually stops writing to him – so he sends a message demanding to know what is happening.

III.   When he learns that de Stancy is also visiting Nice, George is inflamed with jealousy and immediately sets off to join them. The party has moved on to Monte Carlo, so he follows them there.

IV.   In the Casino George meets William Dare who tries to borrow money from him, which he refuses to do. Dare despatches a bogus telegram to Paula, claiming to be from Somerset and asking for money to pay a gambling debt.

V.   Paula despatches de Stancy with the money for Somerset. Dare turns up to collect it, but de Stancy refuses to hand it over.

Book the Fifth. De Stancy and Paula

I.   De Stancy joins Paula in Strazbourg where he returns the money. He declares his passion for her.

II.   They move on to Baden where de Stancy pesters Paula for attention and the reciprocation of his feelings. She refuses him, but he is supported by her uncle Abner.

III.   Dare catches up with de Stancy in Karlsruhe, flush with a recent gambling success. De Stancy advises him to return to England.

IV.   Paula asks to see Dare, who smears Somerset by implication then produces the doctored photograph apparently showing Somerset drunk.

V.   Somerset arrives and is treated coldly by Paula, who now accepts de Stancy as a potential suitor instead. Dare departs for England.

VI.   Somerset and Paula meet again by accident in Heidelberg, and they part with cold misunderstanding of each other.

VII.   Paula chooses to walk up a long hill with de Stancy, who continues to harass her with emotional demands. She continues to equivocate.

VIII.   The party sail down the Rhein on a pleasure boat. Paula and de Stancy discuss their relationship, and there are further supplications and equivocations.

IX.   De Stancy continues to court Paula as they journey through northern Europe. Somerset writes to say that he wishes to resign from the castle restoration project.

X.   Charlotte becomes ill in Amiens. Abner Power arrives from Paris saying that the proposed marriage must not go ahead. De Stancy harasses Paula yet again, then receives notice of his father’s death. Paula finally accepts him.

XI.   Dare checks on the marriage preparations and makes veiled blackmail threats. Abner Power arrives to expose the truth about Dare. But Dare counter-attacks with a history of Power’s making an explosive device for revolutionaries. They threaten each other with guns, then agree to call it quits. Abner Power disappears again.

XII.   Somerset meets Charlotte, who tells him about about the fake telegram. He goes next day to challenge Dare, but en route hears that the marriage has just taken place. He goes on holiday to Normandy.

XIII.   Charlotte is suspicious regarding Dare and uncovers the truth about the bogus photograph. Although she is in love with Somerset herself, she feels she ought to give the information to Paula.

XIV.   Charlotte reveals the truth to Paula on her wedding day. Paula threatens to have Dare arrested. When. De Stancy protests he is forced to admit that Dare is his son. The marriage is called off.

Book the Sixth. Paula

I.   Paula sets off for Normandy in search of Somerset. She traces him to Lisieux, where she just misses his departure for Caen.

II.   In the next town she meets Somerset’s father. When they move on to Etretat, George is seen in a dance hall. Paula feels she has been humiliating herself, and vows to go back home.

III.   Next day the two parties meet by accident. Paula re-appoints Somerset as architect, but does not reveal what she knows. George becomes ill. Paula visits him they are reconciled, and agree to marry.

IV.   A few weeks later Paula and Somerset return to Markton. De Stancy meets Dare, and they bemoan their separate lots.

V.   Charlotte retreats to a nunnery, and a fire consumes the contents of the castle. Paula and Somerset agree to build a new home alongside the ruins.

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A Laodicean – characters

George Somerset	a young architect
John Power	railway engineer, who bought the de Stancy estate
Paula Power	his daughter, current owner of the estate
Captain William de Stancy	a middle-aged bachelot
Charlotte de Stancy	Paula’s friend
William Dare	de Stancy’s illegitimate son
Mr Woodwell	a local Markston minister
Mr Havill	a local Markston architect
Mrs Goodman	Paula’s aunt and chaperon
Abner Power	Paula’s uncle

© Roy Johnson 2017

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More on Thomas Hardy
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

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tutorial, commentary, web links, and study resources

A Pair of Blue Eyes was Thomas Hardy’s fourth novel, the first to be published under his own name, and the first to be serialised. It was published in Tinsleys’ Magazine in eleven monthly instalments between September 1872 and July 1873. Then it was produced as a novel in three volumes by Tinsley Brothers later the same year. The three-volume novel was very popular during the nineteenth century – a publishing format largely dictated by the rise of the commercial circulating libraries. It is the most heavily revised of all Hardy’s novels.

Thomas Hardy

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A Pair of Blue Eyes – critical commentary

The principal features of interest in this early Hardy novel are its three main characters – Stephen Smith, Elfride Swancourt, and Henry Knight. It is fairly obvious that Hardy divided the two ‘sides’ of his own aspirations between Stephen and Knight. Stephen is the would-be architect – the profession which Hardy himself actually practised. But whilst working as a draftsman in London, Hardy also aspired to literature as a career – without knowing at first which would be successful. And interestingly enough, Henry Knight also has two occupations – as a barrister and as a literary editor, though we see precious little evidence of practical application in the first, and only vague reports of the second.

Stephen Smith

The main driving force behind Stephen is his desire for self-improvement. He comes from a humble, but reasonably respectable background. His parents are workers on the Luxellian estate. He has been educated at a National school – institutions which were established for the education of the poor in the early part of the nineteenth century. After that his learning has been conducted by correspondence with his friend Henry Knight – which leaves Stephen with no practical knowledge of how to hold chess pieces or how to pronounce words in Latin.

Although Stephen has embarked on a career in architecture, it is worth noting that he has done so as an ‘improver’ – what we would today call an ‘intern’. That is, his parents have paid for him to gain experience in the hope of future employment in the profession. This explains Stephen’s secrecy and mysterious movements in the early part of the novel. He is moving in circles well above his own class background and feels insecure about being found out. Reverend Swancourt has assumed that Stephen is a young professional, which explains the reversal in his opinions and his ban on Stephen when he discovers that he is from humble origins. It of course illustrates at the same time the arriviste snobbery of Reverend Swancourt, who goes on to marry an ugly woman he doesn’t love for the sake of her wealth.

Henry Knight

Knight is the epitome of academic book-learning with no comparable emotional development. He is university educated, presumably has qualifications in law since he practises as a barrister (theoretically) and is an editor on The Present which has the reputation of a leading intellectual journal. But emotionally he is a possessive child who cannot tolerate the idea that his chosen love object has any connection with previous admirers. He also subjects Elfride to an extensive bombardment of self-righteous emotional bullying to extract information about her ‘past’. As J.M.Barrie observed, he is “simply the most insufferable prig in fiction”.

Elfride Swancourt

Elfride is a typical Hardy heroine – and it must be said something of a fictional construct rather than a realistic piece of characterisation. She is a very talented young woman: she plays the piano (and the organ); she sings; she plays chess; she writes a novel; and she holds quasi-philosophic conversations with Henry Knight. These talents might endear her to readers (and especially critics) seeking early examples of ‘the New Woman’ in Victorian fiction – but they do not add up to an entirely credible character.

It has to be said that she is in summary rather inconstant. Within the timespan of the novel she has four lovers. First Felix Jethway, who dies of love for her, according to his mother. Then Stephen Smith, with whom she is prepared to elope – but then changes her mind at the last minute. Next comes Henry Knight, overlapping with Stephen emotionally, but who eventually wins the higher ground. But when he withdraws his attentions on an emotionally costive principle, she fairly soon switches her attentions to the untalented Lord Luxellian – then marries him. Psycho-analytic interpretations of the novel might well then observe that she is ‘punished’ by dying in childbirth.

Structure

The twinning, repetition, and parallelism in the novel should be fairly evident.

Elfride plays chess twice – first with Stephen, then with Henry Knight. She loses an ear ring when kissing Stephen on the cliff; she later accepts Knight’s gift of ear rings; and then recovers the lost ear ring when with Knight in the same location.

Elfride walks on the parapet of the church tower – and falls off it – whilst she is with Knight. He then falls off the cliff whilst he is with Elfride. She also sits on the grave of Felix Jethway when she is with Stephen, then later when she is with Knight.

Coincidence

Many of Hardy’s plots rely on coincidence to an extent that some modern readers find rather taxing to their credulity. The use of this literary device was fairly common in the fiction of the late nineteenth century (and had been since Dickens was so popular in the middle of the century).

When Stephen and Elfride return from their failed elopement to Plymouth and London, their surreptitious arrival together is witnessed by none other than Mrs Jethway. She is the one person who has a motive for exposing Elfride’s reputation to public scrutiny – since her son was Elfride’s first lover, and died because of it – according to her.

This secret knowledge creates an element of suspense in the plot until Mrs Jethway is crushed by the collapse of the church tower – but only immediately after having written the letter to Knight exposing what she knows, and enclosing proof in the form of Elfride’s letter pleading for secrecy.

The example is important because a great deal of the tension and suspense in the plot rests on the possible disclosure of this knowledge. Mrs Jethway flits in and out of events, appearing at crucial moments, but withholding her information until the last minute.

A less important example, because nothing vital in the development of events rests upon it, is the coincidence that not only do Stephen and Knight get on the same train to revisit Endelstow, but the carriage transporting Elfride’s corpse is attached to it on the journey.

Similarly, there is a tension between probability and plot symmetry when Stephen and Knight visit the crypt to pay their last respects to Elfride – only to find Lord Luxellian there mourning his dead wife. So – all three of her lovers are brought together for the final scene, and the fourth is quite near too, in the graveyard outside. This is strained plotting on Hardy’s part, but nothing further in the story depends upon the melodramatic conjunction.

Loose ends

The issue of Elfride’s novel and Knight’s subsequent review of it brings the two characters together for the second dramatic strand of the novel – but once she has rescued him from hanging on the cliff, her literary skills appear to be forgotten. They form no further part of the drama.

Henry Knight has barrister’s offices in the City and a home out in Richmond. We are led to believe that he has been a reviewer on the magazine The Present but has risen to be something like a senior editor. His offices are littered with the impedimenta of an active editor – but there isn’t the slightest scrap of evidence that he practises as a man of law anywhere in the novel. It’s almost as if Hardy conceived Knight with one profession, changed his mind, and forgot to erase traces of his first choice.

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Study resources

A Pair of Blue Eyes – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

A Pair of Blue Eyes – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

A Pair of Blue Eyes – Wordsworth Classics edition – Amazon UK

A Pair of Blue Eyes – Wordsworth Classics edition – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

A Pair of Blue Eyes – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

A Pair of Blue Eyes – audiobook version at LibriVox.org

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Authors in Context – Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Hardy – Amazon UK

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A Pair of Blue Eyes – story synopsis

Chapter I.   Elfride Swancourt is in Endelstow, nervously awaiting the arrival of Stephen Smith from London.

Chapter II.   Stephen arrives at the rectory to make a survey of the church aisle and its tower for a restoration project.

Chapter III.   The rector Christopher Swancourt is very enthusiastic about Stephen and thinks he must have aristocratic family connections (which is not true). Elfride sings for Stephen, and they are both very impressed with each other.

Chapter IV.   Stephen surveys the church with Swancourt and his helper William Worm. Stephen promises to signal Elfride from the tower, but fails to do so.

Chapter V.   Stephen receives news that he ought to be back in London, and Swancourt is asked to retrieve a document for the local landowner Lord Luxellian. Stephen, Swancourt, and Elfride go to Endelstow House, where she is the favourite of Mary and Kate, the Luxellian children. Stephen disappears briefly but mysteriously, and appears to meet a woman.

Chapter VI.   Elfride is mystified by Stephen, who appears to be hiding something. She tries to extract the secret from him without success. Stephen departs, promising to return.

Chapter VII.   At his next visit to the rectory, Stephen plays chess with Elfride, which he has taught himself from books. He has also learned Latin by post from his friend Mr Knight. Stephen tells Elfride that he loves her. They go together up onto the cliffs to continue their flirtations. They exchange their first kiss, she loses an ear ring, and they declare their love for each other. But Stephen suggests that there is something which will prevent their marrying.

Chapter VIII.   They return to the rectory. Stephen is due to ask the reverend Swancourt for permission to marry Elfride, but he changes his mind and delays. Instead, he reveals his humble family origins: his mother and father are workers on the Luxellian estate, and his education has been via National school and his friend Henry Knight.

Chapter IX.   Stephen’s father is injured in an accident at the church restoration. Whilst Stephen visits his family home, the reverend Swancourt upbraids Elfride for forming an attachment to a commoner and forbids any engagement.

Chapter X.   Stephen visits his parents and spars with his mother about marriage and social class. She does not approve of Elfride. As he prepares to leave the rectory, he and Elfride hatch a plan to marry in secret.

Chapter XI.   Elfride discovers that he father has been conducting a secret correspondence, and he has a plan in mind for making them rich. She leaves the rectory secretly and travels indecisively to Plymouth to be married. But Stephen has registered the marriage in London – so they travel on there.

Chapter XII.   As soon as they reach London, Elfride changes her mind and they travel back to Endelstow – observed as they arrive together by Mrs Jethway. When she reaches home, Elfride is met by her father, who has married Mrs Troyton, a rich and plain widow who has bought the neighbouring estate. He claims it was done for Elfride’s sake. Mrs Troyton is old and rather flamboyant.

Chapter XIII.   Two months later Stephen visits his old friend Henry Knight in his London offices and asks his advice about accepting a job offer in India in order to save up to get married. Knight thinks the decision turns on the issue of the fidelity of the individuals during such a prolonged absence. He also has Elfride’s romantic novel to review.

Chapter XIV.   Some months later Elfride is living in Kensington and mixing in upper-class society because of the wealth and connections of her new step-mother. Her romantic novel is being reviewed. Mrs Troyton (now Mrs Swancourt) meets her distant relative Henry Knight in Hyde Park and invites him to visit them in Cornwall.

Chapter XV.   Elfride reads Henry Knight’s review of her romantic novel, which contains some strong criticism.

Chapter XVI.   Elfride writes to the journal The Present and receives a reply from Knight, who is shortly to visit Endelstow.

Chapter XVII.   Henry Knight arrives at Endelstow and engages in some (rather improbable) philosophic discussions with Elfride, stemming from his review of her novel.

Chapter XVIII.   Elfride shows Knight the local church and walks round the parapet of its tower, where she falls off. She then plays chess with him, and is beaten. She flirts with him and tries to extract compliments, but he refuses to flatter her and will only tell her about his preferences and the truth as he sees it.

Chapter XIX.   Knight reads from the Bible in the local church service whilst Elfride plays the organ – both of them observed from the back of the congregation by Mrs Jethway. Elfride asks the rather pompous Knight for guidance on vanity and women’s nature – subjects on which he has lots of theory but no practical knowledge.

Chapter XX.   Knight travels to Ireland and realises that he has fallen in love with Elfride. He buys her some ear rings, but she feels that she should refuse to accept them. Meanwhile Stephen sends her £200 he has saved towards their marriage, and is then despatched on a visit back to England to make building procurements for his work.

Chapter XXI.   Elfride goes onto the cliffs to watch for Stephen’s arrival back in England. There she meets Knight, and they become trapped on the cliff top. Elfride climbs up Knight to safety, but he remains stuck on a ledge.

Chapter XXII.   Knight clings to the cliff edge expecting to die, but Elfride saves him by tearing up her underclothes and making a rope with which he is hauled to safety – after which they embrace passionately with relief.

Chapter XXIII.   Stephen lands ashore and walking home sees Elfride and Knight in retreat from the cliff. He arrives at his family house to be greeted by conversations amongst his family and locals about flowers and pig-killing. He feels snobbishly resentful of the company.

Chapter XXIV.   Elfride fails to turn up to a planned meeting with Stephen, and she returns the £200 he has sent. Next day he travels to Birmingham to order his procurements.

Chapter XXV.   On return from Birmingham Stephen sees Elfride with Knight. He is also intercepted by Mrs Jethway who warns him against Elfride. As he makes his way home in a state of desolation, he learns that Lady Luxellian has died.

Chapter XXVI.   There is a discussion in the Luxellian family crypt regarding family history, questions of inheritance, and Elfride’s personal history.

Chapter XXVII.   Elfride’s change of heart in choosing Knight is explained whilst they are out riding. They visit the Luxellian crypt and meet Stephen. Elfride is worried about not having told Knight about her past relationship with Stephen.

Chapter XXVIII.   Elfride plans to reveal the truth about her past to Knight, but cannot face it when the time comes. They ride out to a watery glade where she now accepts his gift of the ear rings. Mrs Jethway turns up to reveal that she has damaging information – but will not use it just yet.

Chapter XXIX.   The Swancourts go on holiday to Europe, returning from London to Cornwall via a boat journey in the Channel. Mrs Jethway makes an appearance, which worries Elfride. She discusses the subject of ‘previous romantic experience’ with Knight who has none and assumes she has none either.

Chapter XXX.   Elfride finally reveals in discussion with Knight that she has previously had a ‘lover’. She delivers a note to Mrs Jethway, pleading with her not to reveal details of her liaison with Stephen. Knight begins to put together fragments of her previous comments, and his suspicions make him unhappy.

Chapter XXXI.   Elfride and Knight go up onto the cliffs, where she finds her lost ear ring. Knight continues to harass her for information about her past and wants to know what she is keeping secret from him. He admits that he is jealous and can only accept a wife who has absolutely no previous experience. Meanwhile, the church tower collapses.

Chapter XXXII.   Knight and Elfride go into the churchyard and sit on Felix Jethway’s gravestone. Knight pesters her further about her past. She first of all she hides behind an ambiguous blend of information about Stephen and Felix Jethway. Then eventually she is forced to admit that there were two former lovers. Knight badgers her into giving him the full story.

Chapter XXXIII.   Stephen finds Mrs Jethway crushed in the tower ruins. Lord Luxellian turns up, and they take the body back to her house, where Stephen sees that she has been writing a warning letter to someone.

Chapter XXXIV.   Next day Knight receives the latter Mrs Jethway was writing, plus Elfride’s pleading note to Mrs Jethway. He challenges Elfride again, and she admits to having been away overnight with Stephen on her journey to London. Knight immediately breaks off their engagement and goes back to his chambers in London.

Chapter XXXV.   Next morning Elfride turns up at his offices, begging him not to leave her – but her father then appears and takes her away again. Knight is in deep conflict over his feelings for Elfride, but he ends up closing his offices and going abroad.

Chapter XXXVI.   Some time passes. Stephen’s parents move to St Launce’s where they hear news of his architectural success in India.

Chapter XXXVII.   Knight travels extensively but pointlessly in Europe. More than a year later Stephen and Knight meet by accident in London. They compare notes about the fact that neither of them is married; but they are very reserved with each other.

Chapter XXXVIII.   The two men meet again in the evening, and eventually Stephen reveals the whole story of his romance with Elfride to Knight. This rekindles the interest of both men in Elfride: Stephen still loves her and thinks Knight has been rejected; Knight ‘forgives’ Elfride retrospectively and thinks Stephen is no serious rival.

Chapter XXXIX.   The two men claim to have urgent business, but in fact they give each other the slip in order to get to Elfride as soon as possible. They meet on the same train, and admit that they are both en route to ask for her hand in marriage. They continue to argue about who has the more valid claim to Elfride. Meanwhile, the train has a ‘death coach’ attached to it. When they reach their destination, they are met by a hearse – and they discover it is for Elfride.

Chapter XL.   They then learn after the death of Lady Luxellian, Elfride became the ‘little mother’ to the two Luxellian children, as a result of which she eventually married Lord Luxellian. But after travelling abroad she died of a miscarriage in London. Stephen and Knight decide to visit the Luxellian vault in the church, but when they get there they find Lord Luxellian grieving for his dead wife – so they both leave.

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A Pair of Blue Eyes – principal characters

Reverend Swancourt	a deaf, widowed, and largely bankrupt rector
Elfride Swancourt	his pretty and clever young daughter
John Smith	a master-mason on the Luxellian estate
Stephen Smith	his young son, working in a London architect’s office
William Worm	a bumpkin, with noises in his head
Henry Knight	a barrister, literary editor, and distant relative of Mrs Troyton
Lord Spencer Hugo Luxellian	local landowner, with ‘no talent’
Mary and Kate	his two young daughters
Mrs Gertrude Jethway	a poor and embittered widow, mother of Elfride’s first lover
Felix Jethway	Elfride’s first lover
Mrs Charlotte Troyton	a rich but plain widow who buys an estate next to Swancourt
Robert Lickpan	a pig-killer
Martin Cannister	a sexton

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A Pair of Blue Eyes – bibliography

Laura Green, ‘”Strange [In]difference of Sex”: Thomas Hardy, the Victorian Man of Letters and the Temptations of Androgyny’, Victorian Studies 38/4 (1995), 523-50.

John Halperin, ‘Leslie Stephen, Thomas Hardy, and A Pair of Blue Eyes‘, Modern Language Review, 75 (1980), 738-45.

Rosemarie Morgan, Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy, (London, Routledge, 1988).

Angelique Richardson, ‘”Some Science Underlies All Art”: The Dramatization of Sexual Selection and Racial Biology in A Pair of Blue Eyes and The Well-Beloved‘, Journal of Victorian Culture, 3/2 (1998), 302-38.

Mary Rimmer, ‘Club Laws: Chess and Construction of Gender in A Pair of Blue Eyes‘, in Margaret R. Higonnet (ed), The Sense of Sex: Feminist Perspectives on Hardy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 203-20.

Robert Schweik, ‘”Life and Death are Neighbours Nigh”: Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes and the Uses of Incongruity, Philological Quarterly, 76/1 (1997), 87-100.

Rosemary Sumner, A Route to Modernism: Hardy, Lawrence, Woolf (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999).

Richard H. Taylor, The Neglected Hardy: Thomas Hardy’s Lesser Novels (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1982).

Jane Thomas, Thomas Hardy, Femininity and Dissent: Reassessing the Minor Novels (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999).

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Hardy’s WESSEX

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Further reading

John Bayley, An Essay on Hardy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Penny Boumelha, Thomas Hardy and Women: Sexual Ideology and Narrative Form, Brighton: Harvester, 1982.

Kristin Brady, The Short Stories of Thomas Hardy, London: Macmillan, 1982.

L. St.J. Butler, Alternative Hardy, London: Macmillan, 1989.

Raymond Chapman, The Language of Thomas Hardy, London: Macmillan, 1990.

R.G.Cox, Thomas Hardy: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1970.

Ralph W.V. Elliot, Thomas Hardy’s English, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984.

James Gibson (ed), The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy, London, 1976.

Florence Emily Hardy, The Life of Thomas Hardy, London: Macmillan, 1962. (This is more or less Hardy’ s autobiography, since he told his wife what to write.)

P. Ingham, Thomas Hardy: A Feminist Reading, Brighton: Harvester, 1989.

P.Ingham, The Language of Class and Gender: Transformation in the English Novel, London: Routledge, 1995,

Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist, London: Bodley Head, 1971.

Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006. (This is the definitive biography.)

Michael Millgate and Richard L. Purdy (eds), The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978-

R. Morgan, Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy, London: Routledge, 1988.

Harold Orel (ed), Thomas Hardy’s Personal Writings, London, 1967.

F.B. Pinion, A Thomas Hardy Companion, London: Macmillan, 1968.

Norman Page, Thomas Hardy, London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1977.

Rosemary Sumner, Thomas Hardy: Psychological Novelist, London: Macmillan, 1981.

Richard H. Taylor, The Personal Notebooks of Thomas Hardy, London, 1978.

Merryn Williams, A Preface to Hardy, London: Longman, 1976.

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Hardy’s study

reconstructed in Dorchester museum

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Other works by Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is probably the most popular of Hardy’s late, great novels. The sub-title is ‘A Pure Woman’, and it is a story which explores the tragic consequences of a young milkmaid who becomes the victim of the men she encounters. First she falls for the spiritual but flawed Angel Clare, and then the physical but limited Alec Durberville takes advantage of her. This novel has some of the most beautiful and the most harrowing depictions of rural working conditions which reveal Hardy as a passionate advocate for those who work the land. It also has a wonderfully symbolic climax at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. There is poetry in almost every page.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The Woodlanders (1887) Giles Winterbourne, an honest woodsman, suffers with the many tribulations of his selfless love for Grace Melbury, a woman above his station in this classic tale of the West Country. She marries the new doctor, Edred Fitzpiers, but leaves him when she learns he has been unfaithful. She turns instead to Giles, who nobly allows her to sleep in his house during stormy weather, whilst he sleeps outside and brings on his own death. It’s often said that the hero of this novel is the woods themselves – so deeply moving is Hardy’s account of the timbered countryside which provides the backdrop for another human tragedy and a study of rural life in transition.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Wessex Tales Don’t miss the skills of Hardy as a writer of shorter fictions. None of his short stories are really short, but they are beautifully crafted. This is the first volume of his tales in which he was seeking to record the customs, superstitions, and beliefs of old Wessex before they were lost to living memory. Yet whilst dealing with traditional beliefs, they also explore very modern concerns of difficult and often thwarted human passions which he developed more extensively in his longer works.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

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Thomas Hardy – web links

Thomas Hardy at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, book reviews. bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

The Thomas Hardy Collection
The complete novels, stories, and poetry – Kindle eBook single file download for £1.29 at Amazon.

Thomas Hardy at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

Thomas Hardy at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, the novels and literary themes, poetry, religious beliefs and influence, biographies and criticism.

The Thomas Hardy Society
Dorset-based site featuring educational activities, a biennial conference, a journal (three times a year) with links to the texts of all the major works.

The Thomas Hardy Association
American-based site with photos and academic resources. Be prepared to search and drill down to reach the more useful materials.

Thomas Hardy on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Thomas Hardy – online literary criticism
Small collection of academic papers and articles ‘favoring signed articles by recognized scholars and articles published in peer-reviewed sources’.

Thomas Hardy’s Wessex
Evolution of Wessex, contemporary reviews, maps, bibliography, links to other web sites, and history.

© Roy Johnson 2013

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More on Thomas Hardy
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

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tutorial, commentary, study resources, further reading

Desperate Remedies (1871) was Thomas Hardy’s first published novel. He wrote it following the disappointment of having his first work The Poor Man and the Lady rejected for publication by Chapman and Hall. To court commercial success he cast his second work in a genre that was very popular at that time – the sensation novel. These were tales which in the words of critic John Sutherland were ‘designed to jolt the reader’. They did this by the inclusion of topics considered very daring at that period – such as bigamy, sex outside marriage, fraud, disputed wills, and crime of all kinds.

Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon had written amazingly successful novels which we might now class as ‘thrillers’ – The Woman in White (1861) and Lady Audley’s Secret (1861) both exploited subjects such as dark family secrets, bigamy, and imprisonment.

Hardy was to have plenty of trouble with the censorship of his later and more famous novels, but even here in his first, he manages to include suicide, attempted rape, lesbianism, and murder.

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Desperate Remedies – a note on the text

The novel was first published anonymously by Tinsley Brothers in 1871 in the three-volume format which was common at the time. There was an American edition in 1874, a ‘New Edition’ in 1889, and a further edition for the first collection of Hardy’s work, the ‘Wessex Novels’ published by Osgood, MacIlvaine in 1896. This definitive edition was then superseded by the ‘Wessex Edition’ of 1912.

Hardy made many revisions to the original text of Desperate Remedies for these later editions, but they were largely minor issues concerned with distinctions of social class, the use of dialect amongst rural characters, and the topographical integration of the setting into what by the latter part of the nineteenth century had become known as ‘Wessex’.

For a full discussion of these textual revisions, see the bibliographical essay by Patricia Ingham that is part of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of the novel, which reprints the 1871 version of the text.

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Desperate Remedies – critical commentary

The very nature of the sensation novel is to introduce mysteries and withhold crucial information to create suspense and drama in the narrative. The following commentary contains what are called ‘plot spoilers’ – that is, revelations about the secrets and concealed details in the story. These comments assume that you have read the novel – so if you have not, ‘look away now’ as they say in television sports reporting.

The sensation novel

This novel quite deliberately exploited the conventions of the sensation novel which had become very popular in the 1860s under the influence of writers such as Wilkie Collins and May Elizabeth Braddon. Yet Desperate Remedies was not a big success at the time of its publication, and it remains even now one of Hardy’s lesser-known works.

However, it throws a very interesting light onto his later, darker, and more tragic works. These more famous novels quite clearly use the elements of sensationalism, but are rarely recognised as doing so, because Hardy embedded these ingredients into a heavily sculpted world of pastoral realism that he made his own and called ‘Wessex’.

The sensation novel was called ‘a novel with a mystery’ and usually included elements of irregular sexuality, hidden relationships, deviant behaviour, and crime. These novels pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable in the literary novel at the same time as appealing to a popular audience – in much the same way that television soap operas and serial dramas do today.

The very foundation of the central mystery in the novel is one of illegitimate birth. Miss Aldclyffe was seduced as a young girl by her older cousin. She gave birth to a son, and then abandoned the child – who grew up to be Aeneas Manston – the central character and villain in the novel. The secret relationship between them is hinted at but not revealed until the very last pages of the narrative.

Manston blackmails his own mother into persuading Springrove to marry his cousin Adelaide rather than Cytherea. Blackmail was another favourite topic in sensation novels.

There is a hint of bigamy when Manston falls in love with Cytherea and asks her to marry him. He does this whilst he is still married to Eunice Manston – though nobody else knows about her at the time. Ironically in dramatic terms, Eunice suddenly reappears and is thought to die in the fire – but the truth is that she is murdered by Manston when she threatens to expose him,

It is therefore a double irony that as a result of this murder Manston becomes technically free to marry Cytherea, which he does – only to be thwarted in his attempts to consummate the marriage.

He then lives with a prostitute (Anne Seaway) whom he passes off as his wife Eunice – which is technically illegal and called personation. Finally, when his crimes are exposed, he commits suicide.

There is also what we would now call an attempted rape when Manston escapes capture and goes to the house where Cytherea is living. However, the incident is problematic in terms of interpretation across a time gap of one hundred and fifty years.

First it should be noted that technically he is married to Cytherea, and legitimately married, since his first wife is now dead. Second, he is well aware of his legal rights: “let me come in” he symbolically demands – “I am your husband”.

The interpretive difficulty here is tha he is not acting illegally. At that time in the mid nineteenth century the concept of rape within marriage would not be recognised, so Manston is acting within ‘rights’ that he is very keen to pursue.

Hardy is clearly exploring the boundaries of marriage, legality, sexuality, and moral behaviour, as he was to do in his later novels which often had similar elements of ‘false’ and unconsummated marriages, as well as perverse relationships – up to his very last novel Jude the Obscure.

If the legality of this incident seems amazing, so is the curious scene of lesbianism between Miss Aldclyffe and Cytherea on the girl’s arrival at Knapwater House. This episode is noteworthy for a number of reasons.

First, the abruptness of its occurrence. Miss Aldclyffe has met her new chamber maid Cytherea only two hours previously, on her retirement after dinner. Second, the very explicit nature in which it is described: Miss Aldclyffe actually gets into bed with Cytherea, where there is undressing and demands for more passionate kissing. Third, this burst of homosexuality has almost no bearing on what follows in the plot: there is no further evidence of any Sapphic inclinations on Miss Aldclyffe’s part.

But there are two further points worth making about the scene. At the time that Hardy was writing, there was hardly any public consciousness of sexual desire between women. When parliament made sex between two people of the same gender a crime (1885) the bill only included males, who would be accused of ‘gross indecency’. Women were not included because (it is now thought) to do so might draw their attention to it as a possible activity. The well-known story about Queen Victoria not being able to understand lesbianism is a myth generated during the 1970s.

Consequently, this now-famous passage in the novel passed without comment or outrage in 1871, but when Hardy came to revise the novel later in the century, he toned down the scene. Mrs Aldclyffe’s Sapphic lunges were made more ‘maternal’ – to fit with the vaguely protective behaviour she exhibits towards Cytherea during the later parts of the novel.

Hardy packs a number of sensation novel elements into Desperate Remedies, and it is worth noting how topics such as sex before marriage, bigamy, ‘false’ marriages, rape, and murder crop up in later works such as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874>, The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), and Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891).

Letters

It is amazing what a large part written communications play in the plot of the novel. Letters are written, stolen, forged, hidden, and in general form important links in the communications shared by the participants.

Miss Aldclyffe sets two major strands of the story in motion when she places advertisements for a house-maid and then a land steward. This brings both Cytherea and Manston into her household and under her influence – though it could also be argued that both Miss Aldclyffe and Manston (mother and son) fall in love with Cytherea.

Miss Aldclyffe also sends Manston a bogus letter which purports to come from the Society of Architects, to make sure that he applies for the job of steward.

A casual note written by Cytheria to Manston is used by Miss Aldclyffe to persuade Springrove that Cytherea is in love with the steward, and possession of the note is a crucial element in its persuasiveness.

A copy of a poem found in Eunice Manston’s sewing box written by her husband turns out to be significant. It mentions the colour of her eyes as ‘azure’, whereas the woman masquerading as Eunice (Anne Seaway) has black eyes. This helps to expose Manston’s guilt and duplicity.

Later, Manston himself places bogus adverts in London newspapers asking for news of his wife Eunice – whom he knows is dead, because he has killed her. He then composes fake replies to those adverts which purport to come from Eunice, but he has Anne Seaway transpose them into an imitation of his wife’s handwriting.

Manston also intercepts a letter written by Springrove to Owen Gaye. Manston changes some of the incriminating information it contains, then re-inserts it into the postal system. (It is worth noting that the credibility of the plot becomes rather strained at this juncture.)

Finally, Manston’s last contribution to written information is his prison confession. In this he explains the exact circumstances of murdering his wife and how he concealed the body. This is a neat resolution to the mystery – because this is information only he could know.

Sex in the novel

During the mid to late nineteenth century it was not possible to depict scenes of explicit sexual behaviour in English novels. There were unwritten conventions prohibiting the mention of such subjects, and these unofficial forms of censorship were most severely enforced by circulating libraries such as Mudie’s who accounted for a large proportion of book sales.

But like most skilful and inventive novelists, Hardy found a way round such prohibitions by writing about sex using symbolism and metaphor Two scenes from Desperate Remedies illustrate this point – and both involve Cytherea and the two men who wish to possess her.

In the first, Edward Springrove takes Cytherea rowing in the bay at Creston Harbour. They have only just met, and it is the first time they have been alone together.

They thus sat facing each other in the graceful yellow cockle-shell, and his eyes frequently found a resting place in the depths of hers. The boat was so small that at each return of the sculls, when his hands came forward to begin the pull, they approached so near to her bosom that her vivid imagination began to thrill her with a fancy that he was going to clasp his arms around her. The sensation grew so strong that she could not run the risk of again meeting his eyes at those crucial moments, and turned aside to inspect the distant horizon; then she grew weary of looking sideways and was driven to return to her natural position again.

In the second scene Cytherea is sheltering from a thunderstorm in the house occupied by Aeneas Manston, who is masquerading as an eligible bachelor. He entrances her by playing music on his home-made organ:

She was swayed into emotional opinions concerning the strange man before her, new impulses of thought came with new harmonies, and entered into her with a gnawing thrill. A dreadful flash of lightning then, and the thunder close upon it. She found herself involuntarily shrinking up beside him, and looking with parted lips at his face.
He turned his eyes and saw her emotion, which greatly increased the ideal element in her expressive face. She was in the state in which woman’s instinct to conceal has lost its power over her impulse to tell; and he saw it. Bending his handsome face over her till his lips almost touched her ear, he murmured without breaking the harmonies – “Do you very much like this piece?”

In both cases a young single woman is alone and unsupervised in the company of a man. Victorian conventions of protection and chaperoning went to elaborate lengths to prevent such situations. Cytherea is noticeably disturbed in both scenes. In fact Hardy brings his heroine into a state of almost orgasmic excitement just because her clothes are touching those of Manston. Hardy even theorises about it, as narrator:

His clothes are something exterior to every man; but to a woman her dress is part of her body. Its motions are all present to her intelligence if not to her eyes; no man knows how his coat-tails swing. By the slightest hyperbole it may be said that her dress has sensation. Crease but the very Ultima Thule of fringe or flounce, and it hurts her as much as pinching her. Delicate antennae, or feelers, bristle on every outlying frill. Go to the uppermost: she is there; tread on the lowest: the fair creature is there almost before you.
Thus the touch of clothes, which was nothing to Manston, sent a thrill through Cytherea, seeing, moreover, that he was of the nature of a mysterious stranger. She looked out again at the storm, but still felt him.

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Desperate Remedies – study resources

Desperate Remedies – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Desperate Remedies – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Desperate Remedies – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Desperate Remedies – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

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Desperate Remedies – chapter summaries

I.   Ambrose Graye falls in love with Cytherea, who turns down his offer of marriage for reasons she cannot explain. Eight years later he marries a woman who dies, leaving him a son Owen and a daughter also called Cytherea. She sees her father fall to his death, which leaves the siblings in debt. They move to the West Country to start new lives.

II.   Owen works in an office, and Cytherea asks him about the young head clerk Springrove, who she meets on a boat excursion.

III.   Owen recounts a tale of the old Cytherea’s meeting with an older woman in Hammersmith. Springrove takes Cytherea rowing and declares his love for her – but there is something he will not tell her.

IV.   Cytherea is interviewed by Miss Aldclyffe who is attracted to her and employs her in the position of lady’s maid.

V.   Cytherea arrives at Knapwater House where Miss Aldclyffe reveals a locket containing the portrait of Cytherea’s father Ambrose Graye. They share the same first name, but they quarrel,

VI.   Miss Aldclyffe gets into bed with Cytherea and tries to seduce her. She rails against men, then reveals that Springrove is already engaged to be married. Her father Mr Aldclyffe dies the same night and Cytherea stays on as companion to Miss Aldclyffe/

VII.  Miss Aldclyffe decides to make improvements to the estate and wishes to appoint a steward. She advertises, but then writes to Aeneas Manston, who she appoints against the judgement of her solicitor.

VIII.   Relations between Cytherea and Miss Aldclyffe improve. Cytherea meets Adelaide Hinton who is engaged to Springrove. The locals perceive a connection between Manston and Miss Aldclyffe. Cytherea is enraptured when Manston plays his organ during a thunderstorm.

Volume II

I.   Manston is enamoured of Cytherea, who wonders at all the coincidences linking her and Miss Aldclyffe, who receives a letter from Manston’s estranged wife which is a threat and a plea. She confronts Manston and he agrees to take his wife back.

II.   Manston misses his wife’s train. She goes to the Three Tranters Inn where a fire breaks out at night and she is killed. Springrove and Manston arrive late and meet in the church as rivals for Cytherea.

III.   Next day Manston asks Miss Aldclyffe to help him win Cytherea by persuading Springrove to marry Adelaide. An inquest concludes that Mrs Manston’s death was accidental. However, old Springrove is obliged to rebuild the cottages his fire destroyed. Miss Aldclyffe argues with Edward Springrove that he has a duty to marry Adelaide. She produces evidence that persuades him.

IV.   Cytherea continues to pine for Springrove. Manston proposes to her, but she refuses. Her brother Owen has medical problems but Manston is kind to him. Miss Aldclyffe argues the case for Manston. When Manston proposes moving Owen into his house to recuperate, Cytherea agrees to marry him.

V.   On the eve of the wedding Adelaide suddenly marries a rich farmer. Springrove arrives at the wedding – but is too late. Cytherea loves him as much as ever, even though he appears to be dying. A railway porter then confesses to seeing Eunice Manston on the night of the fire. Edward jumps on a train to pursue the newlyweds. He locates Cytherea in Southampton. Owen arrives and takes his sister to a separate hotel.

Volume III

I.   Manston goes home, procrastinates, and then places an advert in London newspapers for his wife Eunice. She eventually replies, appearing to think he still loves her. Manston takes her back.

II.   Owen is promoted, and moves with Cytherea to a different town. Springrove proposes to Cytherea, but she refuses because ‘scandal’ is now attached to her name. Springrove believes Manston knew his wife was still alive. Owen wants to find proof.

III.   Owen and Cytherea make enquiries about Eurnice Manston at her former address in London. Springrove tracks down her sewing box and posts the contents to Owen, unaware that he is being followed by Manston.

IV.   Manston intercepts Owen’s letter and substitutes a photograph then posts it on. When the letter reaches Owen, he thinks a third party might be involved in the mystery.

V.  Owen checks the colour of Mrs Manston’s eyes, which are not the same as those mentioned in a poem found in the box. They seek the rector’s advice, but he is baffled. Springrove arrives from London with news that Mrs Manston is an impostor. Manston and his lover Anne Seaway fear that their plot will be exposed if the real Mrs Manston returns.

VI.   Anne breaks into Manston’s desk and reads complaining letters from Eunice. The rector presents the evidence on Manston to Miss Aldclyffe, but she refuses to accept it. Anne eavesdrops on Manston and Miss Aldclyffe. He is desperate for her help. He tries to give Anne a sleeping draught, but she follows him to an outhouse where he retrieves a sack and is then watched by a detective and Miss Aldclyffe, followed by Anne. He buries the sack then runs off. Anne and the detective dig up the sack, which contains the body of Eunice Manston.

VII.   Manston evades capture and goes to Cytherea where he attempts to ‘rape’ her, but she is rescued by Springrove. Manston is arrested.

VIII.   In prison Manston writes a confession of how he killed Eunice, then hangs himself. Miss Aldclyffe sends for Cytherea and reveals that Manston was her illegitimate son. Next morning she dies.

Epilogue.   Miss Aldclyffe leaves all her estate to Manston’s wife – so Cytherea inherits Knapwater House and marries Springrove fifteen months later.

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Desperate Remedies – principal characters

Ambrose Graye	an architect
Owen Graye	his son, also an architect
Cytherea Graye	his daughter
Edward Springrove	handsome head clerk
Miss Aldclyffe	mistress of Knapwater House
Mrs Morris	housekeeper at Knapwater
Aeneas Manston	estate steward at Knapwater
Eunice Manston	an American actress, his wife
Adelaide Hinton	engaged to Springrove
Mr Raunham	the rector at Knapwater
Anne Seaway	Manston’s mistress, a prostitute

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Other works by Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is probably the most popular of Hardy’s late, great novels. The sub-title is ‘A Pure Woman’, and it is a story which explores the tragic consequences of a young milkmaid who becomes the victim of the men she encounters. First she falls for the spiritual but flawed Angel Clare, and then the physical but limited Alec Durberville takes advantage of her. This novel has some of the most beautiful and the most harrowing depictions of rural working conditions which reveal Hardy as a passionate advocate for those who work the land. It also has a wonderfully symbolic climax at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. There is poetry in almost every page.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The Woodlanders (1887) Giles Winterbourne, an honest woodsman, suffers with the many tribulations of his selfless love for Grace Melbury, a woman above his station in this classic tale of the West Country. She marries the new doctor, Edred Fitzpiers, but leaves him when she learns he has been unfaithful. She turns instead to Giles, who nobly allows her to sleep in his house during stormy weather, whilst he sleeps outside and brings on his own death. It’s often said that the hero of this novel is the woods themselves – so deeply moving is Hardy’s account of the timbered countryside which provides the backdrop for another human tragedy and a study of rural life in transition.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Wessex Tales Don’t miss the skills of Hardy as a writer of shorter fictions. None of his short stories are really short, but they are beautifully crafted. This is the first volume of his tales in which he was seeking to record the customs, superstitions, and beliefs of old Wessex before they were lost to living memory. Yet whilst dealing with traditional beliefs, they also explore very modern concerns of difficult and often thwarted human passions which he developed more extensively in his longer works.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

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Thomas Hardy – web links

Thomas Hardy at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, book reviews. bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

The Thomas Hardy Collection
The complete novels, stories, and poetry – Kindle eBook single file download for £1.29 at Amazon.

Thomas Hardy at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

Thomas Hardy at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, the novels and literary themes, poetry, religious beliefs and influence, biographies and criticism.

The Thomas Hardy Society
Dorset-based site featuring educational activities, a biennial conference, a journal (three times a year) with links to the texts of all the major works.

The Thomas Hardy Association
American-based site with photos and academic resources. Be prepared to search and drill down to reach the more useful materials.

Thomas Hardy on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Thomas Hardy – online literary criticism
Small collection of academic papers and articles ‘favoring signed articles by recognized scholars and articles published in peer-reviewed sources’.

Thomas Hardy’s Wessex
Evolution of Wessex, contemporary reviews, maps, bibliography, links to other web sites, and history.

© Roy Johnson 2016

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More on Thomas Hardy
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

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tutorial, study guide, resources, and web links

Jude the Obscure (1895) was the last of Thomas Hardy’s novels, and it is generally regarded as expressing his most tragic vision of the world. The novel was subject to extensive censorship on grounds of blasphemy and indecency when it was first published. It was this interference with the creative process that led Hardy to give up writing novels. After this point he concentrated instead on writing poetry, and went on to produce some of the greatest and most influential poems of the twentieth century.

In the novel Hardy explores themes that had interested him throughout his career as a novelist – education, class, sexuality, craftsmanship and tradition, the condition of marriage, and the forces of society and conventions that thwart individual ambition.

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Jude the Obscure – a note on the text

The novel had a long and complex genesis. Hardy began its composition in 1890, writing from notes he had made in 1887. He worked on the narrative between 1892 and 1894, and it first saw light of day as a serial story in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine published simultaneously in London and New York.

During this time it had three separate titles – The Simpletons, Hearts Insurgent, and The Recalcitrants before Hardy settled on the final title. However, the text of this early version was heavily bowdlerised, and some of the incidents in the story were significantly different from the story in its final edited version.

The novel first appeared in volume form in 1895, published by Osgood McIlvaine. For this edition Hardy restored some of the missing scenes and put slightly different emphasis on the behaviour and motivation of his characters. It was not until Hardy revised the text for the 1912 edition of the ‘Wessex Edition’ of his novels published by Macmillan that the text became ‘stable’.

For a full account of the history of the text, see Patricia Ingham’s study The Evolution of Jude the Obscure.

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Jude the Onscure – critical commentary

Structural parallels

Most readers will have little difficulty spotting the structural elements of the novel that twin and echo each other. Jude Fawley marries Arabella Donn, and lives to regret it. Then Sue Bridehead marries Richard Phillotson, and the result is the same. These parallels constitute the first part of the novel.

Sue and Jude then begin to live together, even though they are not married, but society puts obstacles in their way, because of the prejudice against ‘living in sin’. At this stage both Sue and Jude are both technically still married to other people. Jude is married to Arabella who has gone to Australia, and Sue is married to Phillotson, but has separated from him.

In an attempt to break the prejudice that society has against them, Jude and Sue both secure divorces, but they then live in a state of ambiguity. Many of the other characters they live amongst continue to imagine that they are either adulterous or bigamous. The couple make matters worse for themselves by pretending to get married, but they do not actually go through a formal ceremony. These events constitute the two main central sections of the novel.

Finally, Sue decides she must re-marry Phillotson even though she does not love him and finds him physically repulsive. Then Jude too re-marries Arabella (in a drunken stupor). The outcomes are equally disastrous for both characters. For Sue it is a living death, and for Jude it is death itself. These are the closing chapters of the novel. It is not surprising that many readers find these outcomes unbearably tragic – especially so since Jude’s son murders his brother and sister, then hangs himself.

The sensation novel

In the latter part of the nineteenth century there was a vogue for what was called the ‘sensation novel’. These were novels which featured plot elements of murder, disguise, bigamy, madness, blackmail, fraud, theft, kidnapping, incarceration, or disputed wills. They were a sort of half-way house between the conventional novel of social life and the Gothic horror story which also might include ghosts, vampires, ruined castles, and dead bodies.

Hardy steers clear of the Gothic, but he comes close to the sensation novel in his exploration of personal relationships, sexuality, and the conventions of marriage in Jude the Obscure. All the problems of censorship he endured at the first publication of the novel hinged on infractions of what were considered acceptable topics for polite literature.

At a very minor level, Arabella traps Jude into marriage by pretending to be pregnant after they first start their relationship. In other words, they have had sex before marriage – a phenomenon Hardy had featured in many of his other novels and stories – often citing ‘rural customs’ as justification.

Arabella leaves Jude, goes to Australia, and marries another man. She is therefore committing bigamy – but she argues on return that nobody worries about such matters “in the Colony”. When she returns to work at the modernised bar in Christminster, she and Jude spend the night together. The situation is morally problematic: she is technically bigamous – married to two men at the same time. But Jude has a sexual encounter with her that night (about which he later feels ambivalent). Actually, they are married to each other, but since she is also married to someone else (illegally) Jude is guilty by association. Jude however has the slim moral consolation that he does not know she is married to someone else until the next morning.

Jude and Sue spend a number of years living together even though they are not married – during which time they have two children. Hardy’s ‘argument’ against the conventions surrounding conventional marriage are that this period of their lives represents a ‘marriage of true minds’ [Shakespeare: Sonnet 113] as well as bodies (though these are not mentioned). Jude abd Sue are harassed for defying conventions, but they truly love and understand each other.

However, to live in defiance of society has its costs. They find it difficult to find accommodation, and eventually Sue undergoes a religious conversion that leads her into a state of mind in which she feels compelled to obey the letter of the law which she swore in marrying Phillotson. Since she does not love him and feels physically repelled by him, this a form of masochistic self-punishment.

In reaction to this turn of events, Jude does the same thing in re-marrying Arabella – a woman who he does not love, and the results are similarly negative. Hardy is using elements of the sensation novel to highlight his criticisms of the conventions and taboos surrounding marriage. The sensation elements are – bigamy, people ‘living in sin’, children born out of wedlock, and even the murder of children and suicide at the hands of Little Father Time.

Education

The most important secondary theme of the novel is education – and its relation to social class. Jude is the brightest student of the schoolmaster Phillotson, who at the start of the novel is leaving Marygreen to go to Christminster (Oxford) with the ambition of graduating and becoming a clergyman. Hardy accurately captures the relationship between the church and higher education that existed at that time. The sons of middle and upper class families would be privately educated, then expected to go to university as a natural step towards joining the professions – the church, law, medicine, or the army.

Phillotson does not make the grade. He remains a school teacher, and is even demoted to a teaching assistant because of his unorthodox personal life when he condones Sue’s leaving him to live with Jude. This is frowned upon socially, and it is significant that one of his reasons for re-marrying Sue is that it will enhance his chances of professional promotion.

Jude is a similar case – trapped as he is in an upper working class existence, He has the natural talents to teach himself Latin and Greek, which at that time were thought to be the natural subjects of study in what we now call higher education. As a stonemason he knows he has little chance of escaping his social status, yet he is aware that some provision was being made for working students in the universities

Once again Hardy was entirely accurate historically. Ruskin College Oxford was established in 1899 for the education of working men, and the Cambridge ‘extension classes’ were instituted around the same time – though these were to ‘offer’ academic lectures to working people, rather than enrolling them as students who might graduate.

Jude is enterprising enough to write to one of the college masters for advice on gaining entry – only to be rebuffed by a reply telling him he would do better to remain in his present station. Jude is mortified by this response, and it contributes to his growing sense of disillusionment.

Ultimately he is employed in repairing the stonework of the very buildings that have housed the rejection of him intellectual aspirations. The tragic decline of his hopes reaches its nadir when he denounces the former university luminaries who were formerly his cultural heroes.

This thwarting of intellectual ambitions, combined with the problems of his personal life, contribute powerfully to the tragic sense of resolution in the novel. This double sense of disappointment for the characters may be one of the reasons many readers find the novel a difficult literary experience to endure.

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Jude the Onscure – study resources

Jude the Obscure – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Jude the Obscure – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Jude the Obscure – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Jude the Obscure – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Jude the Obscure – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Jude the Obscure – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Jude the Obscure – York Notes – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

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Jude the Onscure – chapter summaries

Part First- at Marygreen

I – i   Richard Phillotson takes leave of his favourite pupil Jude Fawley as he goes to Christminster to pursue his ambition of obtaining a degree and becoming a clergyman.

I – ii   Farmert Troutham beats and sacks Jude from his job of scaring birds off the corn. Jude’s great-aunt reproaches him, and he feels he does not want to be grown up. He walks out of the village to look towards Christminster.

I – iii   Jude looks on Christchurch from afar, investing it with romantic powers. A group of wagoners he meets reinforce the notion that life there is lived on a higher plane.

I – iv   The quack physician Vilbert promises to bring Jude his old Latin and Greek primers – but fails to do so. Jude writes to Phillotson for grammar guides, but is disappointed when they do not offer simple formulas for translation.

I – v   Jude expands his aunt’s bakery business and reads classics whilst making his deliveries. He then becomes an apprentice stonemason in a nearby town.

I – vi   Whilst dreaming of Christminster Jude meets Arabella when she throws a pig’s penis at him. He is powerfully attracted to her.

I – vii   Next day despite his wish to study, he goes out with Arabella and they very rapidly become close. Arabella discusses her success with friends, who advise her to secure such a good prospect of marriage by entrapment.

I – viii   Arabella flirts with Jude and leads him on. Arranging for her parents to be absent, she and Jude end up in her house alone at night – upstairs.

I – ix   Two months later Arabella announces that she is pregnant. Jude is only nineteen when he marries her. However, she later reveals that she was ‘mistaken’. Jude immediately feels trapped.

I – x   Jude and Arabella inefficiently kill the pig they have been fattening. They argue about the origin and the state of their marriage.

I – xi   Next day they quarrel again. Jude feels that his marriage is a disaster. He learns from his aunt that bad marriages are a feature of the Fawley family. He thinks of suicide, then gets drunk. When he arrives home Arabella has left – and she emigrates to Australia with her parents.

Part Second – Christminster

II – i   Three years later Jude arrives in Christminster (prompted by a photo of Sue Bridehead, his cousin). He wanders through the city at night, invoking the spirit of its former luminaries.

II – ii   Jude looks for work as a stonemason and also locates Sue Bridehead. He has promised his aunt he will not pursue any sort of romantic liaison with her

II – iii   Jude traces Sue to a Sunday service in church, but still does not approach her, mindful of his still being married. Sue buys two figures of pagan gods Venus and Apollo and keeps them in her room.

II – iv   Jude is consumed by his sexual desire for Sue, but he still regards his marriage vows as a hindrance – until he gets a note form Sue introducing herself as his cousin. They visit Phillotson, who goes on to hire Sue as an assistant teacher.

II – v   Sue is successful as a teacher, and Phillotson begins to develop a romantic interest in her. Jude is disappointed, but feels he is hamstrung because of his marriage to Arabella.

II – vi   Jude is warned again by his aunt to stay away from Sue. He despairs of his plans to become a student, and receives a crushing reply to a letter requesting advice from a college Master.

II – vii   Jude is completely despondent. He resorts to drink, recites Latin in the pub, and goes back to. Marygreen, where he talks about joining the church.

Part Third – at Melchester

III – i   Jude and Sue both move to Melchester to study. She tells him she is engaged to Phillotson, who she will marry after her two years of study.

III – ii<   Jude and Sue spend a day in the countryside and miss the last train home. They stay overnight in a shepherd’s cottage.

III – iii   The next day Sue is reprimanded by her college for staying out. She escapes from confinement, crosses a river, and goes to Jude, who dresses her in his spare clothes.

III – iv   Sue tells Jude about her sexless relationship with a young undergraduate. They exchange criticisms of Christminster, and she promises not to vex him with her religious scepticism.

III – v   Sue moves to Shaston a nearby town and she is dismissed from the college for disgraceful behaviour with Jude. He visits her, even though she is very capricious towards him. He has still not told her he is married.

III – vi   Richard Phillotson has also moved to Shaston. He visits Melchester and learns that Sue has been expelled. At the cathedral he meets Jude, who explains the truth about what happened. Jude meets Sue and tells her about Arabella. They part as friends, not lovers.

III – vii   Sue decides to marry Phillotson, and asks Jude to give her away at the wedding. She rehearses the ceremony with Jude in an empty church.

III – viii   On a visit back to Christminster Jude meets Arabella working in a modernised pub. She persuades him to stay overnight in a nearby village.

III – ix   Next day Arabella reveals that she contracted a bigamous marriage whilst in Australia. They part inconclusively. He meets Sue and they travel to Marygreen where their aunt is ill. Sue reveals that whilst Phillotson is honourable, she regrets marrying him. Jude gets a letter from Arabella, telling him she is re-joining her Australian husband in London

III – x   Jude visits the composer of an affecting hymn, hoping to share spiritual confidences – only to find him setting up a wine franchise.

Part Fourth – at Shaston

IV – i   Jude visits Sue at her school in Shaston. They are very close, but then she capriciously makes him leave.

IV – ii   Jude’s aunt dies. He meets Sue for the funeral. She reveals her ‘repugnance’ for Phillotson, and she feels trapped in the conventions of marriage.

IV – iii   Jude cannot reconcile his sexual desire for Sue with his religious aspirations – so he burns his books. Sue asks Phillotson if she can go to live with Jude. They exchange notes between their classrooms discussing the matter.

IV -iV   Phillotson consults his friend Gillingham, who advises him to avoid scandal. But Phillotson has come round to a full understanding and acceptance of Sue’s position, and he agrees to let her leave.

IV – v   Jude and Sue elope together. She insists that they are to be ‘just ‘good friends’ and she behaves in a tantalising, contradictory manner towards him. They stay in separate rooms. Arabella has meanwhile asked for a divorce.

IV – vi   Phillotson is asked to resign because of the scandal, but he refuses and defends himself at a public enquiry, then becomes ill. Sue visits him compassionately He asks her to stay, but she refuses – so he thinks to divorce her.

Part Fifth – at Aldbrickham

V – i   The following year both Arabella’s and Phillotson’s divorces become absolute, but Sue does not want to marry Jude. They live together chastely, in separate rooms in the same house.

V – ii   Arabella calls at the house asking for help. When Jude offers to see her, Sue puts up a jealous protest, and in the end offers herself sexually to Jude if he agrees not to help Arabella. Next day Sue exchanges views on Jude and marriage with Arabella, who is going back to her Australian husband.

V – iii   Sue and Jude agree to delay getting married. A letter from Arabella reveals the existence of Jude’s son, who turns up the very next day – an old man in a boy’s body. Sue agrees to be like a mother to him.

V – iv   Sue and Jude go off to the registry office to get married, but they are frightened off by the bad state of other couples there. They go into a church to watch a religious ceremony and come to the same conclusion – that for them marriage would be a dangerous and bad risk.

V – v   Arabella and her husband see Sue and Jude at an agricultural fair. Despite their closeness, Arabella thinks she intuits Sue’s lack of passion. She buys a quack love philtre from Vilbert.

V – vi   Sue and Jude go secretly to London and let it be known they are married. They secure a church restoration commission together, but are dismissed because the locals think they are not married. Jude. Is forced to auction the family furniture.

V – vii   Three years later Sue has two children, Jude is ill, and they have the widow Endlin living with them. Arabella, now a widow, meets Sue whilst she is selling ginger cakes at an agricultural fair at Kennetbridge.

V – viii   Driving back from the fair, Arabella decides she wants Jude back again. She meets Phillotson, who is living in reduced circumstances. Jude decides he wants to go back to Christminster.

Book Sixth – at Christminster again

VI- i   Jude and family arrive in Christminster on Founders’ Day and he is humiliated again over his academic ‘failure’ They cannot find accommodation, and Sue is asked to leave one house because she admits to not being married.

VI – ii   Father Time reproaches Sue for having so many children, then he hangs her son and daughter and himself ‘because we are so many’. When the children are buried Sue wants to open the coffins to see them one last time. Later the same day she gives birth to a dead child.

VI – iii   Sue and Jude recover financially, but Sue falls into intellectual despair and wishes to punish herself. She feels that their relationship has been wrong, self-indulgent, and that she really still belongs to Phillotson. She and Jude argue over this reversal in her beliefs. She insists that Jude leave her and that they revert to being just friends.

VI – iv   Phillotson is brought abreast of events by Arabella. He thinks to accept Sue back again, and writes to tell her so. Sue announces to Jude that she is going to re-marry Phillotson, even though she does not love him.

VI – v   Sue returns to Phillotson, but is forcing herself on principle. He plans a wedding for the next day. Widow Edlin thinks it is an ill-advised venture. They marry in a joyless manner, and Phillotson accepts that the marriage will be loveless and sexless – but good for his career prospects.

VI – vi   Arabella argues with her father and asks Jude for temporary shelter. She brings him news of Sue’s marriage, which sends him back to the public house to drown his sorrows. Arabella gets him drunk, then seduces him.

VI – vii   Arabella moves Jude into her father’s house with an intention of re-marrying him. She organises an all-night drinking party, then the following morning Jude marries her for a second time whilst he is still drunk.

VI – viii   Jude falls ill, and gets Arabella to write to Sue, asking to see her again. But Arabella doesn’t post the letter. Jude goes in the rain to see Sue. They reproach each other, declare their enduring love, then separate.

VI – ix   Arabella meets Jude at the station, and they walk through Christminster whilst he repudiates all his old intellectual heroes. Sue thinks she must make the ultimate sacrifice of making herself sexually available to Phillotson – which she does with great reluctance and distaste.

VI – x   Jude becomes ill again. Mrs Edlin tells him about Sue’s capitulation to Phillotson, and it breaks his spirit. Arabella flirts with the quack doctor Vilbert.

VI – xi   Arabella checks on Jude, and finds he is dead. She nevertheless goes out to the boating party in Christminster with Vilbert. Two days later Mrs Edlin and Arabella exchange views across Jude’s open coffin. Mrs Edlin reports that Sue is worn down and miserable. Arabella thinks that Sue will not feel any peace until death finds her.

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Jude the Obscure – principal characters

Jude Fawley	young stonemason with academic ambitions
Sue Bridehead	Jude’s free-spirited but frigid cousin
Arabella Donn	sensuous daughter of a pig farmer
Richard Phillotson	a rather puritanical schoolmaster
Little Father Time	Arabella and Jude’s melancholy son
Pruscilla Fawley	Jude’s great-aunt
Mr Vilbert	a quack physician
Mr Cartlett	Arabella’s Australian husband

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Hardy’s study

reconstructed in Dorchester museum

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Jude the Obscure – further reading

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Authors in Context – Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Hardy – Amazon UK

Thomas Hardy: The Tragic Novels – Amazon UK

Thomas Hardy: The Tragic Novels – Amazon US

A Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Palgrave Advances in Thomas Hardy Studies – Amazon UK

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Other works by Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is probably the most popular of Hardy’s late, great novels. The sub-title is ‘A Pure Woman’, and it is a story which explores the tragic consequences of a young milkmaid who becomes the victim of the men she encounters. First she falls for the spiritual but flawed Angel Clare, and then the physical but limited Alec Durberville takes advantage of her. This novel has some of the most beautiful and the most harrowing depictions of rural working conditions which reveal Hardy as a passionate advocate for those who work the land. It also has a wonderfully symbolic climax at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. There is poetry in almost every page.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The Woodlanders (1887) Giles Winterbourne, an honest woodsman, suffers with the many tribulations of his selfless love for Grace Melbury, a woman above his station in this classic tale of the West Country. She marries the new doctor, Edred Fitzpiers, but leaves him when she learns he has been unfaithful. She turns instead to Giles, who nobly allows her to sleep in his house during stormy weather, whilst he sleeps outside and brings on his own death. It’s often said that the hero of this novel is the woods themselves – so deeply moving is Hardy’s account of the timbered countryside which provides the backdrop for another human tragedy and a study of rural life in transition.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Wessex Tales Don’t miss the skills of Hardy as a writer of shorter fictions. None of his short stories are really short, but they are beautifully crafted. This is the first volume of his tales in which he was seeking to record the customs, superstitions, and beliefs of old Wessex before they were lost to living memory. Yet whilst dealing with traditional beliefs, they also explore very modern concerns of difficult and often thwarted human passions which he developed more extensively in his longer works.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

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Thomas Hardy – web links

Thomas Hardy at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, book reviews. bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

The Thomas Hardy Collection
The complete novels, stories, and poetry – Kindle eBook single file download for £1.29 at Amazon.

Thomas Hardy at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

Thomas Hardy at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, the novels and literary themes, poetry, religious beliefs and influence, biographies and criticism.

The Thomas Hardy Society
Dorset-based site featuring educational activities, a biennial conference, a journal (three times a year) with links to the texts of all the major works.

The Thomas Hardy Association
American-based site with photos and academic resources. Be prepared to search and drill down to reach the more useful materials.

Thomas Hardy on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Thomas Hardy – online literary criticism
Small collection of academic papers and articles ‘favoring signed articles by recognized scholars and articles published in peer-reviewed sources’.

Thomas Hardy’s Wessex
Evolution of Wessex, contemporary reviews, maps, bibliography, links to other web sites, and history.

© Roy Johnson 2016

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More on Thomas Hardy
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

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