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The Mayor of Casterbridge

January 27, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, characters, criticism, video, study resources

Thomas Hardy

He is also locked into a psychological contest with an alter-ego figure with whom he battles both metaphorically and realistically. Henchard falls in the course of the novel from civic honour and commercial greatness into a tragic figure, a man defeated by his own strengths as much as his weaknesses. There are strong echoes of King Lear here, and some of the most powerfully dramatic and psychologically revealing scenes in all of Hardy’s work.

Hardy is one of the few writers (Lawrence was another) who made a significant contribution to English literature in the form of the novel, poetry, and the short story. His writing is full of delightful effects, beautiful images and striking language.

He creates unforgettable characters and orchestrates stories which pull at your heart strings. It has to be said that he also relies on coincidences and improbabilities of plot which (though common in the nineteenth century) some people see as weaknesses. However, his sense of drama, his powerful language, and his wonderful depiction of the English countryside make him an enduring favourite.

The Mayor of Casterbridge – plot summary

At a country fair near Casterbridge, a young hay-trusser named Michael Henchard gets drunk and quarrels with his wife, Susan. He then auctions off his wife and baby daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, to a sailor, Mr. Newson, for five guineas. Remorseful at his stupidity and loss, he next day swears not to touch liquor again for as many years as he has lived so far (twenty-one). Nineteen years later, Henchard, now a successful grain merchant, has become Mayor of Casterbridge, known for his staunch sobriety. He is well respected for his financial acumen and his work ethic, but he is not well liked. Impulsive, selfish behaviour and a violent temper are still part of his character.

The people in Casterbridge believe he is a widower. He himself finds it convenient to believe Susan probably is dead. While travelling to the island of Jersey on business, he falls in love with a young woman named Lucette de Sueur. They have a sexual relationship, and Lucetta’s reputation is ruined by her association with Henchard.

When Henchard returns to Casterbridge he leaves Lucetta to face the social consequences of their fling. Yet just as Henchard is about to send for Lucetta, Susan unexpectedly appears in Casterbridge with her daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, who is now fully grown. Susan and Elizabeth-Jane are both very poor. Newson appears to have been lost at sea.

Just as Susan and Elizabeth-Jane arrive, so does an amiable Scotsman, Donald Farfrae, who has experience as a grain and corn merchant, and is on the cutting edge of agricultural science. He befriends Henchard and helps him out of a bad financial situation by giving him some timely advice. Henchard persuades him to stay and offers him a job as his corn factor. He also makes Farfrae a close friend and confides in him about his past history and personal life.

Henchard is also reunited with Susan and the fully grown Elizabeth-Jane, setting them up in a nearby house. He pretends to court Susan, and marries her. Both Henchard and Susan keep their past history from their daughter. Henchard also keeps Lucetta a secret. He writes to her, informing her that their marriage is off. Lucetta is devastated and asks for the return of her letters. Henchard attempts to return them, but Lucetta misses the appointment.

The new state of affairs sets in motion a decline in Henchard’s fortunes. His relationship with Farfrae deteriorates gradually as Farfrae becomes more popular than Henchard. In addition to being more friendly and amiable, Farfrae is better informed, better educated, and everything Henchard himself wants to be. Henchard feels threatened by Farfrae, particularly when Elizabeth-Jane starts to fall in love with him.

The competition between Donald Farfrae and Henchard grows. Eventually they part company and Farfrae sets himself up as an independent hay and corn merchant. Henchard meanwhile makes increasingly aggressive, risky business decisions that put him in financial danger. The business rivalry leads to Henchard standing in the way of a marriage between Farfrae and Elizabeth-Jane.

At this point Susan dies and Henchard learns he is not Elizabeth-Jane’s father: she is Newson’s daughter. Feeling ashamed and hard done by, Henchard conceals the secret from Elizabeth-Jane, but grows cold and cruel towards her.

In the meantime, Henchard’s former mistress, Lucetta, arrives from Jersey and purchases a house in Casterbridge. She has inherited money from a wealthy relative. Initially she wants to pick up her relationship with him where it left off. She takes Elizabeth-Jane into her household as a companion thinking it will give Henchard an excuse to come visit, but the plan backfires.

The details of how Henchard sold his first wife become public knowledge when a man who witnessed the sale makes the story public. Henchard does not deny the story, but when Lucetta hears a little bit more about what kind of man Henchard really is she no longer particularly likes what she sees.

Donald Farfrae, who visits Lucetta’s house to see Elizabeth-Jane, now becomes completely distracted by Lucetta, having no idea that Lucetta is the mysterious woman who was informally engaged to Henchard.

Henchard, although he was initially reluctant, now gradually realizes that he wants to marry Lucetta, particularly since he’s having financial trouble due to some speculations having gone bad.

He bullies Lucetta into agreeing to marry him – but by this point she is in love with Farfrae. The two run away one weekend and get married. Henchard’s credit collapses, he becomes bankrupt, and he sells all his personal possessions to pay creditors.

As Henchard’s fortunes decline, Farfrae’s rise. He buys Henchard’s old business and employs Henchard as a journeyman day-laborer. Farfrae is always trying to help the man who helped him get started, whom he still regards as a friend and a former mentor. He does not realize Henchard is his enemy even though the town council and Elizabeth-Jane both warn him.

Lucetta, feeling safe and comfortable in her marriage with Farfrae, keeps her former relationship with Henchard a secret. But this secret is revealed and the townspeople publicly shame Henchard and Lucetta. Lucetta, who by this point is pregnant, dies of an epileptic seizure.

Suddenly Newson, Elizabeth-Jane’s biological father, returns. Henchard is afraid of losing her companionship and tells Newson she is dead. Henchard is once again impoverished, and as soon as the twenty-first year of his oath is up, he starts drinking again. By the time Elizabeth-Jane, who months later is married to Donald Farfrae and reunited with Newson, goes looking for Henchard to forgive him, he has died and left a will requesting no funeral and that no man should remember him.

Study resources

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Everyman Library Classics – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Everyman Library Classics – Amazon US

The Mayor of Casterbridge – York Notes – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – Cliffs Notes – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – 1978 BBC TV version on DVD – Amaz UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – 2003 BBC TV version on DVD – Amaz UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – CD-ROM and audio pack – Amazon UK

The Mayor of Casterbridge – audioBook version at LibriVox

The Mayor of Casterbridge – eBook versions at Gutenberg

Thomas Hardy: A Biography – definitive study – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Authors in Context – Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Thomas Hardy’s Complete Fiction – Kindle eBook

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Hardy – Amazon UK

Principal characters

Michael Henchard	the Mayor of Casterbridge, a corn-dealer
Susan	his wife, who he sells at auction
Elizabeth-Jane	their daughter, who dies in infancy
Richard Newson	a sailor who ‘buys’ Henchard’s wife
Elizabeth-Jane	Susan’s second daughter, with Richard Newsom
Donald Farfrae	a scientific corn merchant, who also becomes the Mayor of Casterbridge
Lucette Le Sueur	French-speaking woman from Jersey

Film version

opening of 2003 BBC TV version

music by Adrian Johnston

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.
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Jude the Obscure is Hardy’s last major statement before he gave up writing novels for good. Hero Jude is intellectually ambitious but held back by his work as stonemason and his dalliance with earthy Arabella. When he meets his spiritual soulmate Sue Brideshead, everything seems set fair for success – except that she is capricious and sexually repressed. Jude struggles to do the right thing – but the Fates are against him. The outcome is heart-rendingly bleak and tragic. This novel reveals the deep-seated social and sexual tensions in Hardy – himself a self-made man from a humble background.
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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

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.

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

The Return of the Native

October 23, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, web links, and study resources

The Return of the Native first appeared as a serial in Belgravia magazine between January and December 1878. This was a publication which specialised in sensation fiction. It was then published in the popular three-volume novel format later the same year by Smith, Elder. Hardy made extensive revisions to the text when it was reprinted as part of the first collected edition of his works in 1895 and later for Macmillan’s Wessex Edition in 1912. These revisions however do not affect the substance of the plot: they were mainly to do with substantiating the geography of the story and drawing the fictitious place names more closely in line with the topography of Dorsetshire which Hardy had re-imagined as Wessex.

‘Something was wrong with her foot’

original illustration by Arthur Hopkins

The Return of the Native – critical commentary

Setting

One of the features that concentrates the novel and its drama is that every single scene is set in Egdon Heath and its immediate surroundings. The heath is shown in all seasons, and its vegetation and wild life is documented with almost scientific accuracy.

It is interesting to note that for those who wish to escape rural isolation, Budmouth is the nearest urban centre. Eustacia has come from there, and it is the town with its ‘promenades and parades’ to which she wishes to escape in the novel’s finale.

Hardy makes no attempt to glamourise the countryside: it is harsh terrain; people get soaking wet when it rains; and even those who make their living from it have to wear protective clothing to guard against the furze.

Melodrama

It was very common in the nineteenth century for novels to have complex plots and lots of dramatic tension. Novels first appeared in serialized form, and performed a similar function to television soap operas today. Even though Hardy is now seen as a bridge between these conventions and those of the modern era, he was repeatedly drawn to arrange his stories in a way in which drama tips over into melodrama. A central scene from the novel illustrates this point very well: the episode in which Mrs Yeobright is refused entry to Clym’s house.

She has decided to seek reconciliation with her estranged son, but when she arrives at the house Clym is asleep, and Eustacia is entertaining her ex-lover Wildeve. Hardy devises clever plotting in order to make these circumstances and coincidences to seem plausible to the reader. But when Mrs Yeobright turns to go back home, full of anger and resentment at being refused admission, it is tipping over into melodrama to have her then bitten by a snake. Though it has to be said that Hardy had flagged up their presence on the Heath earlier in the novel.

Sexual liberties

It is also interesting to note how often in his fiction Hardy explores the boundaries of sexual liberty. At a time when both men but particularly women were supposed to remain chaste until marriage, Hardy is adept at exploiting circumstances in which these restraints could be circumvented or challenged.

In a scene which takes place outside the time frame of the narrative, Thomasin Yeobright and Damon Wildeve have travelled to Southerton in order to be married. The marriage does not take place because the paperwork was made out for Budworth.

The importance of this detail is that they have stayed somewhere away from home, as a couple, without being married. It is not clear if sexual intimacy took place or not, but the mere possibility that it could have done puts a stain on Thomasin’s character, for which her aunt reproaches her: “It is a great slight to me and my family and when it gets known there will be a very unpleasant time for us”.

A very similar set of circumstances obtain in Hardy’s earlier novel of 1872, A Pair of Blue Eyes in which the protagonists Stephen Smith and Elfride Swancourt have a failed elopement to Plymouth (then London) which results in their being absent from their home town for one night together (which they spend travelling on trains) – but this is enough to put her social reputation entirely at risk.

original three-volume 1878 edition

The Return of the Native – study resources

The Return of the Native – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Return of the Native – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Return of the Native – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Return of the Native – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Return of the Native – York Notes (Advanced) – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

The Return of the Native – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

The Return of the Native – 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

The Return of the Native – characters

Diggory Venn	young handsome man (24) covered in red dye for most of the novel, and a persistent peeping tom and eavesdropper
Grandfer Cantle	a yokel who reminisces about his role in Napoleonic wars
Chistian Cantle	a young unmarried man (31) who is a self-elected loser
Mrs Yeobright	a proud and strict woman, the daughter of a curate
Clement (Clym) Yeobright	her son, ex-jewellery salesman, would-be schoolmaster
Thomasin (Tamsin) Yeobright	Mrs Yeobright’s niece
Damon Wildeve	an inn-keeper and former engineer
Eustacia Vye	a passionate and romantic woman, Wildeve’s former lover
Susan Nonsuch	a country woman
Johnny Nonsuch	her son, young boy who carries messages
Captain Drew	a retired seaman, Eustacia’s grandfather
Olly Dowden	a country woman, maker of brooms
Timothy Fairway	a rural worker

The Return of the Native – plot summary

Book the First – The Three Women

November bonfire celebrations are taking place on Egdon Heath. A group of locals decide to celebrate the nuptials of Thomasin Yeobright and Damon Wildeve, but it turns out that they were not married because of irregularities in the marriage licence. Damon goes to meet Eustacia Vye, his former lover, who has been waiting for him on the Heath. She charges him to remain faithful to her.

Their conversation is overhead and transmitted to Diggory Venn, who has been turned down as a suitor to Thomasin, but has remained faithful in his love for her. He spies on Damon and Eustacia, who cannot resolve their feelings for each other. Venn then asks Eustacia to leave Damon for Tamsin, which she refuses to do. Mrs Yeobright intervenes to protect her niece’s good name by telling Wildeve that Tamsin has another suitor (Venn). Damon and Eustacia continue to equivocate.

Book the Second – The Arrival

Eustacia hears her name linked with the absent Clym Yeobright, and becomes fired up romantically by his reputation alone. Tamsin continues to worry about her local reputation since she and Wildeve are still not married. Eustacia tries to meet Clym on his return to Egdon Heath, but fails in her attempt.

She arranges to take part in the Christmas mummers play, where she meets Clym, falls further in love with the mere idea of him, and becomes jealous of Tamsin. She breaks off her relationship with Wildeve, who goes back to Tamsin again and is accepted by him. Tamsin finally marries Wildeve, and is given away by Eustacia (all of which is arranged by Diggory Venn).

Book the Third – The Fascination

Clym has returned from being a jewellery shop salesman in Paris with the intention of setting up a school, despite his mother’s disapproval. He recruits Eustacia to his scheme, and his mother criticises both his lack of ambition and his connection with a flirt who has no money.

Clym falls for Eustacia and decides he wants to marry her, but she thinks that their love might not last. Eventually they agree to marry in fourteen day’s time. Clym leaves home and sets up a small rented house on the Heath. His mother is full of bitter disappointment. She sends inherited money to Tamsin but Christian loses it all gambling against Wildeve, who then loses it all in his turn to Diggory Venn, who gives it all back to Tamsin (though half was intended for Clym).

Book the Fourth – The Closed Door

Mrs Yeobright checks on the money with Eustacia and they argue about Clym. The money is eventually distributed fairly, but Clym becomes estranged from his mother and Eustacia argues more virulently with Mrs Yeobright. Eustacia wants social advancement and the glamour of a life in Paris, but Clym wishes to stay in his local parish and start the school.

When he is struck with an eye ailment through reading too much, he decides to become a humble furze-cutter. Eustacia goes to a rural dance and meets Wildeve again – and is observed by Diggory Venn once more, who then begins an active campaign to distract Wildeve’s attentions towards Eustacia (all in order to protect Tamsin).

Venn encourages Mrs Yeobright to reconcile herself with Clym, and Clym feels he ought to do the same. Mrs Yeobright finally goes to Clym’s house, but arrives when he is asleep and Eustacia is being visited by Wildeve. Mrs Yeobright finds the door closed against her, and is mortified. When Clym wakes up he goes in pursuit of his mother and finds her collapsed on the Heath, having been bitten by an adder. Eustacia follows, meets Wildeve en route to discover that he has inherited eleven thousand pounds, and arrives at the Heath as Mrs Yeobright is dying from exhaustion, snake bite, and a broken heart.

Book the Fifth – The Discovery

Clym falls ill after his mother’s death and reproaches himself for not having made contact with her.Then he learns from Diggory Venn and young Johnny the true sequence of events that led to his mother’s failed visit. He confronts Eustacia, who admits to all except Wildeve’s identity as the person who was in the house with her. Clym is convinced that she is having an affair with someone, they argue, and eventually agree to separate. Eustacia goes back to live at her grandfather’s house and momentarily contemplates suicide.

Eustacia then plans to leave for Paris via Budworth, with Wildeve’s financial assistance. Clym writes to Eustacia inviting her back, and Tamsin has differences with Wildeve regarding Eustacia. Failing to receive Clym’s letter, Eustacia sets off to meet Wildeve and is caught in a storm on Egdon Heath. Susan Nonsuch curses Eustacia with a wax effigy. Tamsin seeks Clym’s help, and despatches him to check on Eustacia and Wildeve, who appear to be eloping. Eventually, Clym and Wildeve meet on the Heath. Eustacia falls into a weir, both men try to save her, but Eustacia and Wildeve are drowned.

Book the Sixth – Aftercourses.

Diggory Venn becomes a prosperous dairy farmer. Clym thinks to take up with Tamsin (as his mother once wished) but she marries Diggory Venn instead. Clym becomes an itinerant preacher, still devoted to the memory of his mother.

The Return of the Native – bibliography

Gillian Beer, ‘Can the Native Return?’ in her Open Fields: Essays in Cultural Encounter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 31-54.

Kristin Brady, ‘Thomas Hardy and Matters of Gender’, in Dale Kramer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 93-111.

Pamela Dalziel, ‘Anxieties of Presentation: The Serial Illustrations to Hardy’s The Return of the Native‘, Nineteenth-Century Literature, 51.1 (1996), 84-110.

Terry Eagleton, ‘Nature as Language in Thomas Hardy’, Critical Quarterly, 13 (1971), 155-172.

Joseph Garver, The Return of the Native, Penguin Critical Studies, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1988).

Jennifer Gribble, ‘The Quiet Women of Egdon Heath’, Essays in Criticism, 46.3 (1996), 234-257.

Nicola Harris, ‘”The Danse Macabre”, Hardy’s The Return of the Native, Browning, Ruskin and the Grotesque’, Thomas Hardy Yearbook, 26 (1998), 24-30.

Robert Langbaum, Thomas Hardy in Our Time, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995).

Phillip Mallet, ‘Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native‘, in Jay Parini (ed. and introd.), British Writers: Classics, vol. i (New York: Scribner’s, 2003), 291-310.

Mary Rimmer,’A Feast of Language: Hardy’s Allusions’, in Phillip Mallet (ed.), The Achievement of Thomas Hardy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 58-71.

Dennis Taylor, ‘Hardy Inscribed’, in Phillip Mallet (ed.), The Achievement of Thomas Hardy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 104-122.

Brian Thomas, The ‘Return of the Native’: Saint George Defeated (New York: Twayne, 1995).

Hardy’s WESSEX

The Return of the Native – 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.

Hardy’s study

reconstructed in Dorchester museum

Other works by Thomas Hardy

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

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

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 – 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.

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

The Son’s Veto

May 4, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Son’s Veto was first published as a serial in the London Illustrated News in 1891 and then later collected in Life’s Little Ironies (1894). It is a story dealing with three themes that occur throughout the whole of Thomas Hardy’s work – as a writer of short stories, as a novelist, and even as a poet. The themes are marriage, social class, and education.

Thomas Hardy

Hardy himself had relatively modest social origins, and despite being a gifted youngster, he did not follow the traditional upper class educational path of public school followed by Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, he trained as a draughtsman and worked for his living in architectural practices before becoming a writer. His marriage to Emma Gifford was not a happy one, and following his wife’s death a second marriage (to a woman forty years younger) was no more successful. He became celebrated as a writer, but was always very conscious of the possibilities of ‘downward class mobility’.

The Son’s Veto – critical commentary

Marriage

There are any number of injudicious, difficult, and failed marriages in Hardy’s work. It was a subject dear to his heart, since he felt that his own marriage to Emma Gifford had run onto the rocks of boredom and indifference once it had passed beyond its early days of romance.

Sophy at nineteen has a proposal of marriage from Sam the gardener which she refuses, but thinks is reasonable. She explains to Twycott ‘It would be a home for me’, which illustrates her social vulnerability. However, Twycott then proposes to her. She does not love him, but respects him and is flattered by an offer from someone she considers ‘august’ – that is, of higher social status.

But Twycott is twice her age; he dies first; and although he leaves provision for Sophy in his will, none of his financial affairs are made accessible to her. On his decease, his son Randolph becomes his principal legatee.

When Sophy (as a widow) receives a second proposal of marriage from Sam, she will have to forfeit her house if she accepts, and by implication her income as well. In other words, despite having moved upwards in the social class system on her marriage to Twycott, she becomes vulnerable to possible downward social mobility on his death.

The fact that Sam makes a success of his fruit and vegetable business merely reinforces the sad irony in the story. Sophy would have been socially secure in accepting his offer of marriage, if she had not been emotionally bullied by her own son.

Education

To become a vicar in the Church of England is to join the upper echelons of the Establishment, even at a modest level. A home and an income are provided for a minister of the church, and in addition it is common for the fees of a private education to be paid for any children.

Reverend Twycott has no children with his first wife, but when he marries Sophy they have a son Randolph, who is privately educated – first at a public school, then at Oxford University.

Thomas Hardy knew the value of education – particularly as one of the few mechanisms (along with marriage) to upward social mobility. And he knew how difficult it was to gain access to higher education for people of lower class origin – no matter how talented. Jude the Obscure is a novel devoted to this subject (along with the theme of injudicious marriage).

But Hardy also realised that absorbing the cultural values of an upper class institution such as a university might create social tensions. Randolph Twycott is upper middle class by birth, because his father is a vicar; but his mother remains an uneducated woman of humble origins.

The son chooses to adopt a snobbish sense of superiority over his mother – illustrated in the story by her trivial lapses in English grammar, which he corrects. But more seriously he maintains a completely groundless sense of emotional superiority over her by his tyrannical refusal to accept her proposed marriage to Sam.

His formal education has done nothing to develop his sense of humanity or common decency. He might be clever enough to graduate from Oxford, but he has no common respect for his own mother.

Class

On what is Randolph’s claim to superiority based? For this we need to step back once again to the basis of his parent’s marriage in class terms. Twycott marries his servant Sophy, and in doing so he knows he is ‘committ[ing] social suicide’. That’s because as a minister and a member of the upper middle class, he would be expected to choose a wife at a comparable level in class terms.

He marries Sophy more or less in secret, then gets round the problem of social stigma by moving away from the rural community in which his ministry is located (in Aldbrickham) to a new living in an obscure part of south London.

This illustrates another feature of social life of which Hardy was acutely aware – the differences between rural and urban life. Twycott knows that in a village or town everybody’s social status will be known to other inhabitants, whereas he enjoys London for its ‘freedom and domestic privacy’ where the parishioners will not know his wife’s origins.

They were, however, away from every one who had known her former position; and also under less observation from without than they would have to put up with in any country parish.

Randolph is privately educated and develops into a snob and prig. But he is Twycott’s inheritor, and Sophy knows that she will lose all claims to her house and her income if she marries Sam. She does not like her isolated life in London, and Randolph is therefore condemning her to a sort of living death by forbidding her to escape it by marrying Sam.

The Son’s Veto – study resources

Life’s Little Ironies – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

Life’s Little Ironies – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

Life’s Little Ironies – Wordsworth Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

Life’s Little Ironies – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Life’s Little Ironies – audiobook version at Project Gutenberg

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

The Son’s Veto – plot summary

Part I. Sophy is working as a servant to rural vicar Reverend Twycott when she receives a proposal of marriage from gardener Sam Hobson, but she doesn’t accept him. When she injures her foot in a fall down stairs, she thinks she will have to leave the vicarage, but Reverend Twycott (recently widowed) suddenly realises her worth and proposes to her, an offer which she accepts. Feeling that he has committed ‘social suicide’ by marrying a servant, Twycott moves to a new ‘living’ in south London. They have a son, Randolph, who is sent to public school in preparation for Oxford or Cambridge, prior to taking up the ministry.

Part II. When Twycott dies, Sophy lives in a small house he had the foresight to provide for her. She is bored by the eventlessness of her existence, and estranged from her son, who has adopted a superior and critical attitude to his uneducated mother. Eventually she meets Sam again when he is transporting vegetables to Covent Garden market. She tells him she is unhappy and wishes she were living back in the countryside.

Part III. Their relationship comes to life again, and Sam proposes marriage to her for a second time. She accepts in principle, even though by doing so she would lose the home and the living Twycott has provided for her. But she needs time to break the news to her son. When she does so, he forbids her to marry Sam because the shame of it would downgrade him in the eyes of his friends. Sophy asks Sam to wait, and he does so for five years, after which he repeats his offer. Sophy renews her appeal to Randolph, who is now an undergraduate at Oxford. He forces her kneel down and swear that she will never marry Sam, claiming that he does this to honour the memory of his father. Five years later Sam has become a prosperous greengrocer. He stands in his shop doorway as Sophy’s funeral procession passes by on its way to her home village. Randolph who has now become a priest scowls at Sam from the mourner’s coach.

Principal characters

Reverend Twycott	widowed vicar in Wessex
Sophy Twycott	his parlourmaid, then second wife
Randolph Twycott	their son, a public school boy
Sam Hobson	a gardener, then shopkeeper

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Hardy’s WESSEX

Hardy’s study

reconstructed in Dorchester museum

Other works by Thomas Hardy

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 – 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.

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

The Well-Beloved

July 17, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Well-Beloved was first serialized in the London Illustrated News in 1892. It was then published as a complete novel in 1897 by Osgood, McIlvaine & Co. The full title was originally The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament, which emphasises the protagonist’s fixation on the ‘ideal woman’.

The Well-Beloved – critical commentary

Sex in the novel

Despite all Jocelyn’s romantic idealism and his incontinent fixations on younger and younger women, he actually spends the whole novel with no sexually consummated adult relations at all.

This is strange, because the events of the narrative begin with a typically Hardyesque appeal to old folk traditions of pre-marital sex. Jocelyn arranges to meet the first Avice at night in the castle, presumably with a view to taking advantage of this tradition. But she sends him a note canceling the rendezvous specifically on the grounds that she does not agree to the idea – which certainly confirms that she was conscious of this being the reason for their nocturnal meeting.

Jocelyn goes off instead with Marcia, a woman who just happens to be walking past at the time, and he proposes marriage to her as soon as they reach London. It’s true that he spends a few days in a hotel with Marcia when he is supposed to be arranging their marriage. This would have been unthinkable in his native environment, but could pass in the more socially advanced mores of the capital. Yet there is nothing in the text to suggest that they enjoy a sexual relationship.

Just as he thinks he is going to secure the second Avice, she reveals that she is already married to someone else, and there is a suggestion that as a couple they have taken advantage of the island custom, which rubs salt into Jocelyn’s emotional wound at the time.

The same happens with the third Avice, who when confronted by his offer of marriage, runs off with someone else of her own age. Jocelyn thus spends the whole novel (forty years plus) pursuing phantoms. It is to presumably part of Hardy’s purpose to reveal this emotional absurdity. Then in the end Jocelyn settles for a marriage of convenience with his old friend Marcia Bencomb in a union which he rather tastelessly points out to her is based on friendship and certainly not love.

Hardy explored the consequences of sexual desire and activity in many of his novels (as frankly as was permitted at the time) most notably in Jude the Obscure which he wrote only a few years later in 1895. But The Well-Beloved appears to explore nothing more than the futility of pursuing idealised concepts of the opposite sex, which Jocelyn does – three times over.

The result of Jocelyn’s experiences might be thought as Hardy’s warning against romantic idealization – yet there is very little evidence in the text to support this idea. Jocelyn’s life trajectory is not held up as a failure or an example of emotional under-development. He is simply driven by this impulse until his last attempt fails and he is prepared to settle for a sexless relationship based on an old friendship.

Readers embarking on psychological interpretations of novels and their authors might like to keep in mind that not long after the publication of The Well-Beloved Thomas Hardy married a woman (Florence Dugdale) who was forty years younger than him – possibly an instance of what Oscar Wilde claimed was ‘life imitating art’?

Social background

The practical working background of the novel is sensitively observed. Just as every aspect of woodcutting and the timber business informs The Woodlanders, and agriculture permeates Tess of the d’Urbervilles, here in The Well–Beloved the stone industries of Portland are carefully incorporated. The business of mining and cutting stone is the enterprise on which the Bencomb and Pierston businesses were founded, and Hardy pointedly reminds us in one part of the story that the local stone was used to build St Paul’s cathedral.

This is Hardy the son of a stonemason and himself an architectural designer underscoring the commercial life of Wessex out of which these lives have emerged. It is unfortunate that the fictional integration of the commerce and the business dynasties are not so well incorporated as they are in the other novels. They do not form essential parts of the narrative in the same way as the destinies of Giles Winterbourne and Tess are determined by their occupations in the rural industries in which they participate.

Moreover, Jocelyn rises to fame as a sculptor, a shaper of this local stone – but without any credible evidence of his artistic talents or activity. None of his work is discussed, and the twenty year periods between each version of Avice are skipped over without comment. This reinforces the idea that all Hardy’s attention was focused onto Jocelyn’s obsession with his ideal woman, and it contributes to the overwhelming sense of weakness in The Well-Beloved compared with his other great novels.

The Isle of Slingers

Hardy chose to re-name the location of the novel, as he did in so many of his other works. But ‘The Isle of Slingers’ is actually an old name for Portland Island – given to it because of the habit of the local population to hurl stones at unwanted visitors – or ‘kimberlins’ or ‘foreigners from the mainland of Wessex’ as they are called in the text.

The total population of the island around that time was only about eighty households, which coupled with the xenophobia enshrined in its popular name, resulted in a great deal of inter-marriage and the fact that everybody knew everybody else’s business. These social factors are well reflected in the novel .

Avice Caro marries a cousin (which was legally controversial at the time); all three generations of women have the same first name (Avice); and the grand-daughter eventually marries someone with the surname Pierston – which is that of the protagonist, Jocelyn.

The three Avices, the second something like the first, the third a glorification of the first, at all events externally, were the outcome of the immemorial island customs of intermarriage and prenuptial union, under which conditions the type of feature was almost uniform from parent to child through generations.

The Well-Beloved – Study resources

The Well-Beloved – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Well-Beloved – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Well-Beloved – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Well-Beloved – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

The Well-Beloved – eBooks at Project Gutenberg

The Well-Beloved – audiobook 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

The Well-Beloved – plot summary

Part First

Chapter I. Would-be sculptor Jocelyn Pierston returns to his native Isle of Slingers [Isle of Portland] in Dorset to visit his father after three years living in London. He is greeted enthusiastically with a kiss by his childhood friend Avice Caro.

Chapter II. Jocelyn reassures the embarrassed Avice, and proposes marriage to her, then immediately regrets it. He has a romantically idealised image of Woman which is constantly shifting from one object to another. Avice has become a cultivated woman, and after a month’s sojourn they are understood to be engaged.

Chapter III. At the end of his holiday Jocelyn goes to meet Avice at night to say farewell, but she does not show up at the appointed place.

Chapter IV. She sends him a note excusing herself because she does not approve of the local tradition of pre-marital sex. He leaves nevertheless and meets Marcia Bencomb, who is running away from home and her father, who is a rival to Jocelyn’s father in the stone quarrying trade.

Chapter V. Jocelyn and Marcia shelter from a sudden storm under a boat, then they are forced to stay overnight at a hotel in Budmouth.

Chapter VI. They travel together to London where, having decided that Marcia is the latest incarnation of his ideal woman, Jocelyn asks her to marry him. They book into a hotel, and he goes to make the necessary marriage arrangements, then visits his friend Somers who is a painter.

Chapter VII. Jocelyn explains to Somers his personal theory of the idealised woman, up to his recent experiences with Avice and Marcia. He rationalises his fickleness, them temporises with Marcia regarding the marriage arrangements.

Chapter VIII. Jocelyn and Marcia squabble over their uncertain social status. She writes to her father, who refuses to endorse her proposed marriage on grounds of rivalry between the two families. Marcia leaves the hotel, and is subsequently taken back home by her father. Jocelyn later hears that Avice has married a cousin and that Marcia is to go on a world tour with her father.

Chapter IX. The years pass. Jocelyn becomes a successful sculptor, but he continues to flit from one example of his idealised woman to another.

‘The Isle of Slingers’

Part Second

Chapter I. When Jocelyn is middle-aged his father dies, leaving him quite wealthy. He attends a fashionable party, still in search of his ideal woman, and thinks he might have found her in the form of Mrs Nicola Pine-Avon, an intellectual widow.

Chapter II. But when he visits Mrs Pine-Avon he finds her rather remote, so he insults her and leaves. At another social event he reads a letter telling him that Avice has died.

Chapter III. This news inflames his old feelings for Avice, who he now realises he has undervalued, and he bitterly regrets the loss. He goes back to the island in time to see her buried in the local churchyard.

Chapter IV. He meets Avice’s daughter Ann, whose family fell on hard times, leaving her to work as a laundress. Jocelyn thinks of her as the reincarnation of her mother; he calls her by her mother’s name; and wishes he could live locally and pay court to her.

Chapter V. Back in London he meets Avice (Ann) at the docks and feels powerfully attracted to her, even though she is only a laundress. He decides to rent a manor-house on the island so as to be near her.

Chapter VI. He arranges for Avice to visit his house daily to do his laundry. He thinks of her as the original Avice – and realises that he is hopelessly in thrall to a woman who he ‘despises’ intellectually.

Chapter VII. Jocelyn pursues Avice in her daily life on the island. She reveals her knowledge of her mother’s sad history (deserted by her intended) and even though she seems indifferent to him, Jocelyn decides he wants to marry her.

Chapter VIII. When he next confronts her she reveals that she rapidly tires of men after first finding them attractive. But he still intends to pursue his plans.

Chapter IX. Jocelyn is jealously watching Avice take washing to a soldier-lover when his friend Somers suddenly arrives. Jocelyn admits he is completely in thrall to Avice. He is then visited by Mrs Pine-Avon, who pays court to him, but he is completely consumed by his current obsession.

Chapter X. Somers sees Mrs Pine-Avon and wants to marry her. Avice is upset about something, and Jocelyn offers to take her on as a temporary help in London.

Chapter XI. When they get there his housekeepers have drunk his wine and absconded. Avice keeps herself separate from him, even though he feels completely responsible for her welfare.

Chapter XII. Eventually he asks her to marry him. She refuses, revealing that she has already married Isaac Pierston, with whom she has quarrelled and separated. Jocelyn reveals his former relationship with her mother, and he takes Avice back to the island.

Chapter XIII. Isaac is brought back and reconciled with his wife, who then has a baby she christens Avice. Jocelyn goes back to London, where Somers is due to marry Mrs Pine-Avon.

‘The Isle of Slingers’

Part Third

Chapter I. Twenty years later Jocelyn is in Rome, having sent Avice money from time to time. He receives a letter from her telling of her husband’s death, and he decides to visit the island. She is living in his old house, and he immediately entertains the idea of marrying her – until he sees her daughter, who he regards as the reincarnation of her grandmother.

Chapter II. Jocelyn has misgivings that the old curse is still upon him. He rescues the young Avice when she is stuck on some rocks and feels that he detects a direct connection running from grandmother to grand-daughter.

Chapter III. He revisits young Avice’s mother and proposes to marry the girl. She agrees to help him in such a plan. They all visit the castle where Jocelyn was supposed to meet young Avice’s grandmother. Avice’s mother encourages her daughter to favour Jocelyn, but the girl is not really interested – and so far she has only ever seen him at night.

Chapter IV. An aged Somers suddenly appears along with his matronly wife (Mrs Pine-Avon) and several children. Jocelyn stays away from young Avice during their visit. Mother Avice falls ill, but she persuades her daughter to accept Jocelyn because he is kind, rich, and upper class. Jocelyn reveals to her his connections with her mother and grandmother – and at the same time he begins to think that the marriage might not be a good idea.

Chapter V. Jocelyn takes Avice and her mother to his new house and studio In London, but Avice is still not enthusiastic about him. He goes back to the island on what is supposed to be the eve of his wedding day.

Chapter VI. Mother Avice is ill, but glad to have her plans for her daughter’s wedding almost fulfilled. However, young Avice elopes with young Henri Leverre the same night, and her mother dies with the shock of events.

Chapter VII. Marcia Bencomb (Leverre’s stepmother) arrives [after forty years] to seek out Jocelyn via the odd connection between them. Jocelyn accepts what has happened, and promises to settle a handsome dowry on young Avice.

Chapter VIII. Mother Avice is buried, then Jocelyn falls ill, after which he loses his interest in aesthetics. Marcia nurses him, and reveals herself as the older woman she now is. They move back to the island and eventually get married (as old friends, not lovers). Jocelyn devotes himself to improving local living conditions.

Hardy’s WESSEX

The Well-Beloved – principal characters

Jocelyn Pierston	a young would-be sculptor
Avice Caro	his childhood friend
Mrs Caro	a widow, her mother
Marcia Bencomb	daughter of rival family to Pierstons
Alfred Somers	Jocelyn’s friend, a painter
Mrs Nicola Pine-Avon	a young intellectual widow
Ann Avice Caro	Avice’s daughter, a laundress
Avice Pierston	Avice Caro’s daughter, a governess

Hardy’s study

reconstructed in Dorchester museum

Other works by Thomas Hardy

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 – 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.

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

The Woodlanders

October 10, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, characters, commentary, and study resources

The Woodlanders. There were no less than ten versions of this novel during Hardy’s lifetime. The first appearance of the text was as a serial which ran in the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar between May 1886 and April 1887 and in Britain in Macmillan’s Magazine at the same time. It was then published as a one-volume novel later in 1887. There followed subsequent editions in England, America, and a ‘colonial’ edition – all of which Hardy edited, making small changes in locations and emphases to the story. There were also numerous pirated editions in America – because International Copyright agreements did not come into effect until 1891.

The Woodlanders – commentary

Melodrama

The crucial dramatic scene in which Grace goes to seek help from Giles is a classic instance of Victorian melodrama writ very heavily indeed. Modern readers can be forgiven for feeling that the situation in the novel at this point has been especially constructed to wring every last drop of pathos from the story.

We know that Giles has been in love with Grace from their earliest days – and has remained loyal to his feelings of respect for her. He has seen her choose Fitzpiers as a husband for reasons of social aspiration, and has simultaneously lost his own precarious social status because his house has been ‘repossessed’. He lives as an outcast, on the fringes of Hintock society, and the repossession of his home is symmetrically in favour of Mrs Charmond, his rival’s lover.

But at this point in the narrative Grace realizes that Giles is a worthy man who she loves after all. Fitzpiers has deserted her with the seductive Felice Charmond and Grace has nobody else to turn to. Fitzpiers returns to Hintock (Felice having been shot in the meantime) hoping for a reconciliation and Grace is in flight from him.

Grace is taken in and protected by Giles, but he is so scrupulous about protecting her reputation he offers to give up his own primitive lodgings and to sleep somewhere else himself. To emphasize his recognition of social boundaries, he even locks her in the house and gives her the key.

Moreover, since Giles is in fact very ill, he protects Grace from the knowledge of his condition by talking to her through a window, so that she will not see his emaciated face. And the somewhere else he goes to sleep is no more than a rustic bivouac which offers him no protection from the storm. As a result of exposure to the rain (on top of his already fevered condition) he dies.

This saintly self-sacrifice may be regarded as a form of voluntary martyrdom on Giles’s part, or alternatively as an almost pathological degree of masochism. The result in either case is the logical extension of such attitudes – which is death.

Literature and morality

It is worth noting that whilst Hardy generally accepted the censorship imposed by publishers, he manages to work into the novel what would be considered at the time a number a risqué scenes.

When Grace meets Felice Charmond when they are both (symbolically?) lost in the woods, Felice reveals the true state of her relations with Grace’s husband Fitzpiers. Hardy has Felice whisper the information (quite unnecessarily) into Grace’s ear – whereupon Grace exclaims ‘O my great God! … He’s had you! Can it be – can it be!’

When Fitzpiers elopes with Mrs Charmond and her divorce is refused, Grace ‘realises’ that she loves Giles after all. So when they meet to consider their bleak future prospects she decides that it would not be wrong to enjoy some sort of physical intimacy with him after all, and she offers herself to him in a manner which would undoubtedly be seen as sexually provocative at the time: “Why don’t you do what you want to?”

Then when Grace is hiding in the cottage she drags Giles’s dying body back into the hut, removes his wet clothes, and puts him into the bed – a scene of intimacy which Hardy emphasises by calling it ‘her bed’.

When Grace miraculously (improbably?) avoids getting caught in the man-trap at the end of the novel, she is forced to remove her skirt in order to escape – immediately after which she decides to give herself up to Fitzpiers again.

Textual history

The genesis of the text presents an interesting picture of authorship and publishing history at the end of the nineteenth century. Hardy might have been frustrated by the prudishness of his publishers (which is one reason why he eventually gave up writing novels) but he took every opportunity to revise his work and to sharpen the focus of his stories, and he was also a practical businessman so far as exploiting the commercial value of his work was concerned. The Woodlanders went through a number of versions before the text was stabilized.

1. The original conception was planned as what he called ‘a woodland story’ in 1874 as a successor to Far from the Madding Crowd, but Hardy put the idea to one side whilst he was writing The Hand of Ethelberta, The Return of the Native, The Trumpet Major, Two on a Tower, and The Mayor of Casterbridge.

2. Ten years later Macmillan’s Magazine wanted a new novel to be serialized. Hardy produced the original manuscript, which is now in the Dorset County Museum.

3. But after revising the galley proofs for Macmillan, Hardy astutely sold the novel to the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar. He revised the version which they serialized and then made more substantial changes to the one-volume version of the novel produced by the parent company Harper and Brothers in 1887.

4. Hardy made further revisions to the galley proofs before returning a third set to Macmillan for their first UK publication between May 1886 and April 1887. [It should be noted that at the time, nobody would be keeping track of all these revisions, ‘improvements’, and changes. That sort of literary scholarship would only come much later.]

5. The first three-volume UK edition of the novel was published by Macmillan in 1887, and at the same time a ‘Colonial’ edition was prepared for sale in the English-speaking colonies such as Canada, Australia, and South-Africa. The purpose of these editions was to reach these outlets first, before the American editions could capture the market.

6. A number of pirated editions also appeared in America – which proves the popularity of Hardy’s work on both sides of the Atlantic. The establishment of International Copyright agreements did not take place until 1891, which helped to put an end to this practice. Hardy naturally had no hand in the preparation of these editions.

7. Hardy changed publisher to Osgood, McIlvaine, who in 1896 issued the collected edition of Hardy’s work called the Wessex Novels. This enabled Hardy to make yet further revisions to the text.

8. But in 1903 Hardy returned to his previous publisher Macmillan, who also wanted to produce a ‘definitive’ edition of Hardy’s work, which they called the ‘Uniform Edition’. Once again, Hardy took the opportunity to revise the text.

9. This process of revisions and new editions continues through Macmillan’s ‘Wessex Editions issued between 1912 and 1914. These are now considered the more or less definitive editions. There was also a commemorative ‘Mellstock Edition’ issued in 1920, but Hardy did not revise the Woodlanders volume.

10. There were two levels of revision made to the work at each of these stages. The first were minor issues of emphasis to the story which Hardy made in response to reader’s criticism. In editing terms, these are called substantives. The second level is matters of punctuation and text presentation (such as capitalization, spelling, speech marks, and italics). These might have been Hardy’s revisions, but they would often be governed by the publisher’s house style.

The Woodlanders – study resources

The Woodlanders – (xford Classics – Amazon UK

The Woodlanders – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Woodlanders – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Woodlanders – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

The Woodlanders – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

The Woodlanders – audiobook version at Project Gutenberg

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

The Woodlanders – principal characters

Mrs Dollery	a horse drawn van driver
Mr Percomb	a master barber
Marty South	a young woman who is in love with Giles
John South	her father (55)
Mrs Felice Charmond	a rich landowner, mistress of Hintock House, a former actress
Giles Winterborne	a dealer in apple trees and cider pressing
George Melbury	a timber merchant
Grace Melbury	his young and educated daughter (20)
Mrs Lucy Melbury	his second wife, Grace’s ex-nurse
Grammer Oliver	old servant of the Melburys
Edred Fitzpiers	a country doctor and would-be scientist
Robert Creedle	assistant worker to Giles
Suke Damson	a hoyden
Tim Tangs	her fiancé, a wood turner
Fred Beaucock	an ex lawyer’s clerk

The Woodlanders – plot summary

Chapter I. Master-barber Percomb gets a lift in Mrs Dollery’s van to Little Hintock.

Chapter II. Percomb tries to persuade Marty South to sell her long chestnut hair, which has been seen and requisitioned by rich landowner Mrs Charmond. He offers Marty two guineas, but she refuses, because she thinks her hair is an essential asset in trying to attract Giles Winterborne.

Chapter III. At night Marty takes the spars she has made to the local timber dealer, George Melbury. There she overhears his worries about his daughter Grace and his plans to marry her to Giles. She goes home and cuts off her hair. In the morning Giles calls for her and they load up the spars.

Chapter IV. Melbury despatches Giles to collect his daughter Grace, who is returning from college. Melbury would like her to marry Giles, even though he doesn’t think him high enough in class terms. He thinks of this as compensation for having won his first wife from Giles’s father.

Chapter V. Giles gives Marty a lift to Sherton Abbas, then is met by Grace. On her way back on foot, Marty is given a lift by Mrs Charmond.

Chapter VI. Giles drives Grace home, trying to revive their past relationship as sweethearts – without success. Grammer Oliver tells Grace about Fitzpiers, a doctor who experiments in science and anatomy who has moved into the locality.

Chapter VII. Giles follows Melbury and Grace into the woods where there is a sale of Mrs Charmond’s timber. Wishing to energize their ‘understood’ engagement, he calls to see Grace, but she is busy getting dressed for a visit to Mrs Charmond.

Chapter VIII. Grace visits Mrs Charmond in her gloomily placed house and makes a very good impression. Mrs Charmond invites her to be a traveling companion on her planned European tour. Meanwhile, Giles plants fir trees with Marty South.

Chapter IX. Giles invites the Melburys and Grace to a Christmas party in the hope of advancing his unofficial engagement with Grace. But his planning is inept, and they turn up far too early.

Chapter X. The party is a mixture of homespun friendliness and social disasters. Giles is chagrined at his failure to impress Grace, and Mr Melbury is ambivalent about Giles as a partner for his daughter.

Chapter XI. Mr Melbury continues to think that having invested a lot of money in Grace’s education, she could marry somebody socially superior to Giles. Yet his conscience troubles him regarding the debt of honour he feels he owes to Giles’s dead father.

Chapter XII. After being insulted by a passing huntsman, Melbury forbids Grace to meet Giles any more. Mrs Charmond is due to leave on her foreign tour, but has not contacted Grace. Meanwhile, Marty’s father John South is dying.

Chapter XIII. John South is worried that a tall tree in his garden might fall on the house and kill him, so Giles prunes the tree. Grace breaks off their engagement, and Mrs Charmond sets off for Italy, without Grace.

Chapter XIV. John South gets worse, so Dr Fitzpiers insists that the tree be cut down. It is done overnight, so as not to alarm South. But next morning the shock of its disappearance kills him.

Chapter XV. Because of old conditions in the house lease (and his father’s negligence) Giles looses the right to his house, which reverts to Mrs Charmond. Giles accepts that his engagement is no longer possible, just as Grace begins to take a renewed romantic interest in him again.

Chapter XVI. Giles meets Dr Fitzpiers and accepts a ride in his gig. Fitzpiers quizzes him about Grace, who he finds attractive. Giles gives away very little information.

Chapter XVII. Grammer Oliver falls ill and reveals to Grace that she has sold her brain to Dr Fitzpiers for ten pounds. Grace is sent to the doctor to cancel the arrangement. Fitzpiers is deeply bored and frustrated with the stagnant social life in the district.

Chapter XVIII. Grace finds Fitzpiers asleep and leaves. He brings her back and agrees to cancel the arrangement with Grammer Oliver. He shows her a fragment of John South’s brain under a microscope.

Chapter XIX. Fitzpiers plans to marry in his own class, but he is attracted to Grace. He thinks she is a rarity with whom he can temporarily amuse himself. He joins the bark-stripping workers, helps Grace find her lost purse, and learns that she as had an ‘admirer’.

Chapter XX. At the Midsummer”s Eve folk rituals Fitzpiers lays ‘claim’ to Grace, displacing Giles. After this he pursues Suke Damson and spends the night with her.

Chapter XXI. Giles is in retreat from the midsummer celebrations when he meets a mysterious stranger from South Carolina who wants to be directed to Mrs Charmond in secrecy.

Chapter XXII. Melbury visits Fitzpiers and agrees to let him pay court to Grace, based on nothing more than a snobbish regard for the doctor’s family name and reputation.

Chapter XXIII. Melbury pressures Grace to accept Fitzpiers so as to enhance her social status. Fitzpiers is accepted by Grace, but he wants a registry office wedding so as to keep her lower class origins quiet.

Chapter XXIV. Grace sees Suke Damson coming out of Fitzpiers’ house at dawn. When confronted by her, he claims it was an emergency medical visit for a tooth extraction. Grace accepts the explanation, but insists on a church wedding. Her wedding dress arrives – and she is married to Fitzpiers.

Chapter XXV. Returning from her honeymoon, Grace meets Giles at an inn, working his cider press. She is upset by the encounter. Grace and Fitzpiers live with the Melburys, but Fitzpiers thinks they ought not to mix socially with her parents. Mrs Charmond sends for Fitzpiers after a fall from her carriage.

Chapter XXVI. Fitzpiers attends Mrs Charmond, who is not hurt at all. She has sent for him because she is bored. It transpires that they have met before, when Fitzpiers was a student in Heidelberg.

Chapter XXVII. Fitzpiers and Mrs Charmond flirt with each other, and he pulls out of the purchase of a medical practice in Budmouth so that he can stay in the vicinity. She decides to go away, but first learns of Giles Winterborne’s plight and feels sympathetic towards him.

Chapter XXVIII. Fitzpiers rides late at night to visit Mrs Charmond in a nearby town. Grace’s suspicions about her husband’s infidelity are confirmed when she meets Giles returning from Middleton Abbey where he has seen both Fitzpiers and Mrs Charmond.

Chapter XXIX. Grace learns that Fitzpiers has lied about extracting Suke Damson’s tooth. Fitzpiers stays out until dawn. Grace retreats from him emotionally, and returns into the parental home. Melbury regrets not having stuck to his original plan of marrying Grace to Giles Winterborne.

Chapter XXX. Melbury begins to spy on Fitzpiers and Mrs Charmond on his daughter’s behalf. Grace bears Fitzpiers’ infidelity without jealousy, largely because she has decided that she loves Giles after all.

Chapter XXXI. Melbury discusses his problems with Giles, revealing his sense of guilt about having been disloyal to the memory of Giles’s father, and wishing that Grace had married Giles. It emerges that Mrs Charmond has been an actress.

Chapter XXXII. Melbury goes to see Mrs Charmond and asks her to have pity on Grace, and to befriend her again so as to quash the scandalous rumours about an illicit relationship with Fitzpiers.

Chapter XXXIII. Grace meets Mrs Charmond in the woods. They argue about Fitzpiers, and Grace predicts that Mrs Charmond will suffer from her love with Fitzpiers. They both get lost in the woods, then find each other again. Mrs Charmond confesses that she loves Fitzpiers and that they are lovers.

Chapter XXXIV. Grace goes to visit friends and falls ill. Her father follows Fitzpiers when he goes to visit Mrs Charmond, but doesn’t get a chance to reproach him for neglecting Grace. Fitzpiers falls off his horse in the dark and is rescued by his father-in-law.

Chapter XXXV. Whilst on Melbury’s horse, Fitzpiers is befuddled by the rum Melbury has given him. He ‘confesses’ his wish to be free to claim Mrs Charmond. Melbury pushes him off his horse, whereupon he bangs his head. Hearing that Fitzpiers has had an accident, Grace, Suke Damson, and Mrs Charmond all assemble in Fitzpiers’ bedroom at the house – but he does not come back home.

Chapter XXXVI. Fitzpiers, his head bleeding, retreats to Mrs Charmond’s house, where she hides him in her attic. He makes plans to ‘disappear’ from Hintock altogether.

Chapter XXXVII. Fitzpiers leaves Hintock, followed closely by Mrs Charmond, and they are later reportedly seen together in Baden. Melbury hears that easier divorce is now possible, and goes to London to arrange a termination of Grace’s and Fitzpiers’ relationship. He also rather precipitately encourages both Giles and Grace to recommence their romance.

Chapter XXXVIII. Giles and Grace meet in Sherton. They re-open their relationship in the Abbey, but are both cautious regarding Grace’s legal position. Giles then blunders socially by ordering her lunch in a workman’s tavern.

Chapter XXXIX. Back in Hintock Giles and Grace are both worried that they might be doing the wrong thing morally. Then Giles gets a letter telling him that the divorce application has failed. He does not reveal this to Grace and accepts her invitation to kiss her. Melbury returns from London with the news that Grace must remain wife to Fitzpiers.

Chapter XL. Three months later, Giles is ill. Grace receives a letter from Fitzpiers asking her to meet at the coast and return with him to France. She refuses, so he comes back to Hintock, where Melbury is prepared to accept him. Grace flees the house and goes to Giles for help.

Chapter XLI. Grace wants to go to the house of a friend, but rain drives them back. She stays in Giles’s cottage whilst he sleeps in a lean-to shelter in the pouring rain. They decide that Grace should hide there. Autumn storms and rain arrive, but Giles remains outside to protect her social reputation.

Chapter XLII. Giles does not appear one morning, and by nightfall Grace is driven out to find him in a delirious state in his shelter. She puts him to bed, then goes to summon the nearest doctor – who is Fitzpiers.

Chapter XLIII. Fitzpiers arrives at the cottage and confirms that Giles is dying – which he does. Grace lets Fitzpiers believe that she has been living in the cottage with Giles as lovers. He reveals to her that Mrs Charmond is dead. [She was shot by a jealous lover.] Marty South appears, and the two women pray for Giles. Mr and Mrs Melbury arrive and take Grace back home – on her condition that Fitzpiers leaves.

Chapter XLIV. Grace and Marty visit Giles’s grave, and Fitzpiers visits Hintock, learning from Marty the truth about Grace’s occupation of the cottage.

Chapter XLV. Some months later Fitzpiers writes to Grace asking to see her again. When they meet he wants to be forgiven and live together again. She does not accede to the idea, and asks her father for advice. He says she is better off without Fitzpiers.

Chapter XLVI. Fitzpiers visits Grace in her garden and presses his case again. She tells him she will remain loyal to the memory of Giles. Meanwhile Tom Tangs is suspicious of Suke’s interest in Fitzpiers, and wishes to strike back against him on the eve of his departure for New Zealand.

Chapter XLVII. Tangs sets a huge man-trap for Fitzpiers on the night he is due to visit Grace. But Grace’s skirt is caught in it when she gets to the spot first. Fitzpiers has bought into a medical practice in the midlands with money from an inheritance. He presses his argument for reconciliation harder than ever.

Chapter XLVIII. Grace submits and returns to Sherton with Fitzpiers. Melbury goes with friends in search of his daughter and finds her at the inn. On their return to Hintock, they pass Marty who is tending Giles’ grave alone, now ‘united’ with the man she loved.

Hardy’s study

reconstructed in Dorchester museum

The Woodlanders – bibliography

John Bayley, ‘A Social Comedy’ On Re-Reading The Woodlanders, Thomas Hardy Annual, 5 (1987), 3-21.

Penny Boumelha, ‘The Patriarchy of Class: Under the Greenwood Tree, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Woodlanders‘. in Dale Kramer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 130-44.

Peter Casagrande Jr., ‘The Shifted “Centre of Altruism” in The Woodlanders: Thomas Hardy’s Third “Return of the Native”‘, Journal of English Literary History 38 (1971), 104-25.

Annette Frederico, ‘Pathalogical Gentlemen: Far from the Madding Crowd and The Woodlanders‘, in her Masculine Identity in Hardy and Gissing (London and Toronto, Associated University Presses, 1991), 55-75.

Frank R. Giordano, ‘The Martyrdom of Giles Winterborne’, Thoma Hardy Annual, 2 (1984), 61-78.

Patricia Ingham, ‘Introduction’, in Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders, ed. P. Ingham (London: Penguin, 1998).

Mary Jacobus, ‘Tree and Machine: The Woodlanders‘, in Dale Kramer (ed.), Critical Approaches in the Fiction of Thomas Hardy (London: Macmillan, 1979), 116-34.

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).

Hardy’s WESSEX

The Woodlanders – further reading