The Return of the Native (Modern Library Classics)

Book Description

One of Thomas Hardy's most powerful works, The Return of the Native centers famously on Egdon Heath, the wild, haunted Wessex moor that D. H. Lawrence called "the real stuff of tragedy." The heath's changing face mirrors the fortunes of the farmers, inn-keepers, sons, mothers, and lovers who populate the novel. The "native" is Clym Yeobright, who comes home from a cosmopolitan life in Paris. He; his cousin Thomasin; her fiancé, Damon Wildeve; and the willful Eustacia Vye are the protagonists in a tale of doomed love, passion, alienation, and melancholy as Hardy brilliantly explores that theme so familiar throughout his fiction: the diabolical role of chance in determining the course of a life.

As Alexander Theroux asserts in his Introduction, Hardy was "committed to the deep expression of [nature's] ironic chaos and strange apathy, even hostility, toward man."

Customer Reviews:

The Return of the Native is a reader's return to the joys found in Hardy's Wessex.......2007-07-18

The Return of the Native is a great Victorian novel. It's author is Thomas Hardy who published the book serially in 1878 prior to book publication. The main characters whose live are interwoved into a tragedy of Greek proportions are:
1. Clyde Yeobright-He is the Wessex native who returns from his career as a jeweler in Paris. Clym returns to the bleak landscape of Egdon Heath to be plummeted into a maelstrom of passion, sex, suffering and deceit.
2. Eustace Vye-The sexy daughter of a bandsmaster in Budmouth (real name-Weymouth) she is a seductress who dreams of a life of luxury. Eustace will marry Clym; run away with Wildeve and die in a tragic manner. Whether her death is a suicide or accident is not stated. Eustace joins Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Bathsheba Everdene and other memorable femme fatales creates by Hardy's agile pen.
3. Thomasin Yeobright-She is the young cousin of Clym. She falls in love with Wildeve, marries him and bears the former engineer/present innkeeper a baby. As the novel ends she weds the reddleman Gregory Venn. She is a an uncomplicated woman who is a pale version of Eustace Vye.
4. Wildeve-A failed engineer he operates an inn. Though Wildeve loves Eustace he marries Thomasin. He will later leave Thomasin to run away with his true love Eustace. He will drown alongside his paramour.
5. Mrs. Yeobright-The bright, strong and virtuous mother of Clym who hates his marriage to Eustace Vye. She dies when Eustace refuses to open the door to let her into the Yeobright's home. Mrs. Yeobright is, probably, modeled on Hardy's own mother.
6. Gregory Venn-He is a reddleman (one who provides paint to shepherds who mark the sheep in their flocks) who is in love with Thomasin. He enjoys spying on the main characters. As the novel ends he is a respectable dairy farmer.
The characters are often compared to insects or animals who must exist in a godless world controlled by the uncaring fates. Coincidence and irony are used in the complicated plot. Hardy's vision is dark and forbidding.
This Hardy classic includes his usual close attention to the lives of the common people; descriptive pages on nature and criticisms of animal cruelty.
Perhaps the greatest character in the novel is Egdon Heath. Human characters love, suffer and die but it lasts forever.
Thomas Hardy is one of the best English novels along with such luminaries as Dickens, Eliot, Austen and Trollope. It is always a pleasure to read and reread his words.

Return of the Native.......2007-05-19

The book has been reviewed extensively. It is a modern classic and should be read. You will enjoy it. More important, the buying experience through Amazon was as expected. The books arrived earlier than I expected, in pristine, brand new, condition. What more could you ask for?

An opera of a book.......2006-10-24

I read this novel when I was living in Japan. There were no English books avaliable where I was living but a motley collection of classics in the local library.

I found the book somewhat long and slow but loved the language and character desciptions, for example Hardy decribes the main female character Eustacia Vye as "Queen of the night whose passions and instincts would make a model goddess but not quite a model woman" with "pagan eyes, full of noctural mysteries. It is a opera of a book, long and slow but with moments of great beauty

Eustacia and the Heath: Two Sides of the Same Coin.......2006-03-25

Yes, the Heath is the centerpiece, but no more than Eustacia, for they are mirrors of one another, by turns cold and aloof, brooding, mysterious, somewhat wild, tempestuous, and a place where at times man must tread carefully. Some are inexorably drawn to the contours, shades and subtleties of Egdon Heath (Mother Earth) while others seek shelter from its periodic wrath. So, too, the people of the Heath seem divided about their Earth Mother, Eustacia - reading the worst into her or - in the case of many of its men - hoping against hope that the vagaries of nature will look favorably upon them.

This is the most descriptive portrayal of both woman and nature that I have ever read.

absorbing atmosphere.......2005-08-31

This is the 1st Thomas Hardy novel I picked up and one of his most visually striking; in that, you can see and feel the environment in which the characters live. The landscape here both traps and releases the people inside it. Eustacia is one of Hardy's best heroines, vulnerable and cunning within minutes. And part of the Hardy pattern where tragedy invades before the end of the story; tragedy, as he writes it, that is often accidental rather than forced. (the forced tragedy usually follows the accidental one.) Clym and Damon may be the 2 main sources of Eustacia's downfall, but she brings on her own fate, so to speak, by remaining disillusioned with where she is. Key other players bissect the main characters in equally helpful and not so helpful ways. The main "character" still remains Edgon Heath, the harsh, often beautiful setting, where everyone is almost destined to be doomed...

The Mayor of Casterbridge (Modern Library Classics)

Average customer rating:

Allegory of the King Saul/David story
Powerful read, but not a happy one
Neither cheerful nor uplifting, but always compelling and moving!
Oedipus Updated
Compelling and Captivating

The Mayor of Casterbridge (Modern Library Classics)
Thomas Hardy
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0375760067
Release Date: 2002-05-14

Book Description

One of Hardy’s most powerful novels, The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a shocking and haunting scene: In a drunken rage, Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter to a visiting sailor at a local fair. When they return to Casterbridge some nineteen years later, Henchard—having gained power and success as the mayor—finds he cannot erase the past or the guilt that consumes him. The Mayor of Casterbridge is a rich, psychological novel about a man whose own flaws combine with fate to cause his ruin.

This Modern Library Paperback Classic reprints the authoritative 1912 Wessex edition, as well as Hardy’s map of Wessex.

Customer Reviews:

Allegory of the King Saul/David story.......2007-07-19

Thomas Hardy has a reputation for writing bleak, sad stories. The Mayor happens to be my first Hardy read, and I can't tell you how saddening I found the overall tale.

Many points are made by Hardy: dealing with the past and its haunting effects; pride before the fall; and even the folly of mental inflexibility.

I couldn't shake the parallel of the King Saul/David story from the Bible while reading this. You have the powerful man who takes in an apprentice then becomes overcome with jealousy and envy as his apprentice eventually outshines him. And rather than putting his usurped life in perspective, allows his anger and envy to make matters much worse.

I saw Michael as a flawed man who is redeemed by his sense of duty and obligation.

I think the theme of duty to world versus self is important here. Michael's duty to his first family overrides his desire to be with his new girlfriend Lucetta. He probably would have been happier with Lucetta; but wouldn't we as the audience have seen him as selfish if he had chosen her instead of Susan? Both women were manipulative, one aggressively, one passively, so it probably didn't matter. But it does raise the question of how much of our personal happiness should be sacrificed for societal duties.

Donald Farfrae, the Scottish apprentice is put here purely to provide Michael Henchard with a foil. I don't feel he is developed at all, and is kind of dull, as is Elizabeth Jane.

There are character driven stories and plot-driven stories. And in plot-driven stories, you know that the characters' personalities or decision-making won't really matter in how things end. That's an aspect of Mayor...that some may find the most frustrating. You never could shake the feeling that destiny was unalterable. I, however, had no problem with it. It was a good ride.

Powerful read, but not a happy one .......2007-07-10

Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge is a story about Michael Henchard attempts at redemption and the many sorrows, pain, and misery that comes with his decision to uphold his pride and name. To say that Henchard is the only character that suffers in this novel would be a misrepresentation; almost every character at some point suffers immensely in some trial of life, whether it is death of someone close, pain of separation, or the frustration of a relationship. For these reasons, this work is not a "light" read by any stretch of the imagination, and will probably test even the optimist's patience in getting through. Still, Hardy's story, the descriptions of the countryside and the characters' inner feelings, as well as the way he ties together every character in this book, is a remarkable feat and makes for a powerful read.

The story begins with Michael Henchard walking with his wife, Susan, to the fair as they cross the countryside. While there, in an act of drunkenness, Henchard sells his wife to a sailor, and seemingly sets in motion his irreversible bad fortune. Not being able to find his wife the next day, he makes an oath to not drink alcohol for 21 years, the exact amount of years he has lived. The novel then fast forwards 19 years to find Henchard the Mayor of Casterbridge, and a noteworthy man of respect. Susan finds him, marries him after forgiving him, but there are many secrets that both parties have and will have until the end of the novel. It seems that many of these secrets are the character's downfalls. Henchard, while Mayor of Casterbridge, meets a man named Donald Farfrae, who he comes to like and implores to stay in town; however, eventually he and Farfrae become bitter rivals in not only their business and society, but also in their relationship with Lucetta, a woman who had an affair with Henchard in the past.

Henchard's fallacy of character lay in his stubborn pride and his foolish belief that name and appearance is everything. He sometimes tries to create a façade, or cover up one sin with another secret or problem. When he tries to persuade Lucetta to marry him, so as to not destroy her name, he retorts: "But it is not by what is, in this life, but by what appears, that you are judged." He is a tragic individual who seems to not be able to change his views long enough to make something right occur; when something does go well, it is short lived. He even gets to a point where he connects himself with an ominous and unpreventable fate, at one point referring to himself as Cain. He never really heeds Elizabeth's attempts at love until very late in the novel when tragic occurrences seem to be set in motion.

Still, despite all his problems, and all his pride, he is a "likeable" character because he makes the effort at retribution and is sorrowful each time he gets hit with a dilemma or makes an unfavorable decision. He has the willingness and conscience to try to amend his deficiencies, but, in the end, he just makes too many mistakes, and has too much pride to reverse his fortunes.

Neither cheerful nor uplifting, but always compelling and moving!.......2006-12-26

Michael Henchard, a down-on-his-luck, unemployed hay trusser, succumbs to the siren call of alcohol at a country fair. Subconsciously feeling his wife, Susan, is holding him back from success in this world, he awakes to sobriety the next morning and realizes that, in a foolish fit of pique, he has auctioned her and his daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, off to a sailor. Despite his frantic efforts to find them, they have disappeared. Ravaged with guilt over his selfish, impulsive act, he swears he will not take another drink for twenty-one years.

Whether his wife was indeed one of Henchard's problems is left for the reader to ponder as Henchard moves to Casterbridge, prospers wildly in business and eventually becomes the town's leading citizen and mayor. Henchard's wheel of fortune, however, begins to spin on a wobbly axle as Donald Farfrae, an enterprising young Scot travelling to seek his fortune, enters his employ as the manager of his business. At the same time, Susan and Elizabeth-Jane, re-enter Henchard's life believing that Michael Newson, the sailor who had purchased them some nineteen years earlier, has perished at sea. Henchard's life truly begins to come apart when Lucetta Templeman, a former lover, also moves to Casterbridge and, ashamed of her past romantic entanglement with Henchard, seeks to hold him to his promise of marriage!

Hardy raises many issues but, not expressing his own opinion through an unequivocal direction in the story's plot line, seems content to leave these issues as topics for sober analysis by his readers. Hardy questions the conflict between the merits of tradition vs modernization. There is the enormous irony that Henchard's success as a business person seems clearly attributable in part to his tee-totalling vow but is founded upon the five guineas seed capital raised through the auction of his wife and daughter! Henchard seems to epitomize the constant personal conflicts we all face between decisiveness and strength of character as opposed to impulsiveness and stubborn bullheaded intransigence! One wonders whether Lucetta is flighty, coquettish, thoughtless and selfish or is she an early manifestation of modern woman sadly out of time and years ahead of the ladies around her? Is Farfrae to be admired or scorned for his meteoric rise to power in Casterbridge and his complete devastation of Henchard's place among his peers?

Perhaps the most powerful moment of the entire novel comes with the discovery of Henchard's will and his words directing that the world leave him to rest in forgotten isolation and that no person mark or mourn his passing in any fashion. Once again, we are left to decide for ourselves whether Henchard's life should be pitied, forgiven, admired or looked upon with scorn and disgust.

To the readers of the day, "The Mayor of Casterbridge" would have been perceived as a darkly pessimistic tragedy that might have evoked emotions akin to those raised by Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex". A classic worthy of the term, "The Mayor of Casterbridge", certainly never cheerful or uplifting, is however many, many things - compelling, moving, disturbing, thought-provoking and poignant. Above all, it is worthy of being read and enjoyed by any lover of classic 19th century British Literature.

Paul Weiss

Oedipus Updated.......2006-08-25

In the novels of Thomas Hardy, tragedy can be an externalized force like Egdon Heath in THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE or it can be of the internalized sort, the kind that Michael Henchard brings on himself in THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE. In either case, nature is unforgiving, a quality which is a given in any of Hardy's works. When tragedy is of the latter kind, then the protagonist is not unlike the doomed tragic hero from classical Greek drama wherein he is first seen as a great or simply a good man who suffers from a tragic flaw, the results of which drag him down so that by the end of the action, his state is so miserably pathetic that the reader/audience can do no more than shake their heads in sorrow at his downfall, that in another and less proud man need not have happened at all.

Michael Henchard is the post-Victorian man of mixed qualities who like Oedipus, commits a sin and then spends the rest of the book trying to make amends. His sin is maudlin self-pity. He allows his current debased financial position to lead him to drink, all the while blaming his wife and child. At an auction, he offers his family for the sale to the highest bidder. He ignores the warnings from those present that he is courting disaster. An unknown man offers the highest bid and off he goes, taking Henchard's wife and child with him. Hardy takes pains to place Henchard squarely in the middle of this somber farce. Hardy gives no name to the successful bidder nor does he allow the reader to note the wife's actions. She, surprisingly, remains silent, but weeping. Henchard, by contrast, is loud, crude, and obnoxious. He occupies central stage until the next chapter when he sobers up, is filled with remorse, and then tries to set things right. He fails and winds up the leading citizen of Casterbridge. The image of the drunken Henchard and the mayor Henchard are startlingly unlike. The latter is sober, industrious, and respectable, causing the reader to commiserate with him. But the tragedy of Henchard does not lie merely in a series of vain regrets. Just as he seems to undergo permanent rehabilitation of self, his ex-wife shows up again, with a new child from the now dead bidder. Hardy complicates the plot with his usual unwieldy complications. As a result, Henchard plunges again into the depths of despair; this time he shows that his old sins of false pride and egotism have returned with a vengeance. He tries to bankrupt his business partner Farfrae, for reasons purely of jealousy. It becomes progressively more difficult for the reader to maintain the same sympathy that they had earlier. Later, at the novel's close, Henchard is made to wander like a wounded Lear, and this alone partially elevates him back to his previous stature of a tragic figure. He, like Lear, dies repentant. From his death, the audience discovers that the essence of a tragic fall lies not so much in how much sympathy that protagonist garners during that fall but rather in how true to life his fall was. Michael Henchard was neither saint nor reprobate sinner. He was the Victorian Everyman with a mixture of goodness and mean-spiritedness, either of which could emerge under the right circumstances. At his fall, the reader saw that the "right" circumstances were sufficiently ordinary so that anyone of us might have done the same. This is the essence of the tragedy of THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE.

Compelling and Captivating.......2006-03-24

The first book I read out of Thomas Hardy's many works was "Far from the Madding Crowd" back in my secondary school days. I immediately fell in love with Hardy. Reading "The Mayor of Casterbridge" only confirmed that my liking for Hardy's works was not misplaced. The Mayor of Casterbridge is absolutely brilliant as the author uses his perceptive insights into the human nature to create very realistic characters with complex personalities. For example, Henchard is an alcoholic who suffers from many of the accompanying afflictions that include low self-esteem, shame, guilt, self-castigation, self-punishment, loneliness, a death wish, and a tendency to depression.

The book starts in the first chapter with a dramatic masterpiece that perfectly sets the tone and theme for the rest of the novel. A young man named Michael Henchard and his wife Susan and baby daughter Elizabeth-Jane enter a village where Henchard hopes to find work. They go to a country fair where Henchard, an alcoholic, gets drunk and sells his wife and baby to a sailor. Once Henchard sobers up, he realizes his mistake, and searches, in vain, to retrieve his family. Abhorred at what he has done, he swears off liquor and decides to make something of his life. The story unravels nineteen years later, when his wife and daughter come back to present themselves to him. In the course of the rest of the novel, Henchard who was now the Mayor of Casterbridge falls from grace, this being a result of his own character flaws and the hand of fate.

I enjoy reading Hardy's impressive prose, which is strong, sharp and descriptive. The various scenes the author describes are filled with vivid and compelling imagery that leave one wanting to read more and more. Thomas Hardy is especially adept at describing the environment which he has a deep seated love for. The ironic twists of fate provide a setting that demonstrates the brilliant writer that Hardy is where he expertly weaves a plot that shows the themes of the balance between fate and individual choice. That makes The Mayor of Casterbridge very pleasant to read despite the sad story.

For those who wish to study English Literature, The Mayor of Casterbridge is on the top of the recommended list. The book provides exceptional descriptions of England and its culture as well as exposing the student to themes of profound gravity and importance. The book provides clear and concise explanations, dialogue and emotional energy. It is well-written, is easy-to-understand and to follow.

Far from the Madding Crowd (Modern Library Classics)

Average customer rating:

HARDY CLASSIC
Forces of Nature
No need for titles
A masterpiece of brilliant fiction
Far From Ordinary

Far from the Madding Crowd (Modern Library Classics)
Thomas Hardy
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 037575797X
Release Date: 2001-12-11

Book Description

Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy’s passionate tale of the beautiful, headstrong farmer Bathsheba Everdene and her three suitors, firmly established the thirty-four-year-old writer as a popular novelist. According to Virginia Woolf, “The subject was right; the method was right; the poet and the countryman, the sensual man, the sombre reflective man, the man of learning, all enlisted to produce a book which . . . must hold its place among the great English novels.” Introducing the fictional name of “Wessex” to describe Hardy’s legendary countryside, this early masterpiece draws a vivid picture of rural life in southwest England.

This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the 1912 Wessex edition and features Hardy’s map of Wessex.

Customer Reviews:

HARDY CLASSIC.......2007-05-07

EXCELLENT-HARDY DOES A WONDERFUL JOB OF DEVELOPING CHARACTERS AND PLOT-HE'S AN EXCELLENT WRITER

Forces of Nature.......2006-07-10

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD, the first of Thomas Hardy's 'Wessex' novels, tells the story of a small troupe of farmers and their workers in a sheep-farming community in the fictitious county of 'Wessex'.

Gabriel Oak has been a shepherd since his teenage years, as his father was before him, but he's moved up and purchased, on credit, his own farm. The work is hard, but he is confident that he will succeed, and takes pride in being his own man. Then one day, a new woman arrives in town. Bathsheeba Everdene is beautiful, headstrong, intelligent, but incurably vain; Farmer Oak falls in love with her immediately. A few months later, he proposes, and is utterly rejected. Bathsheeba moves on to care for her dying uncle, and take over his farm. Gabriel continues farming - until tragedy strikes.

He and Bathsheeba will cross paths again, this time not as lovers, but as mistress and servant. Bathsheeba's beauty, vanity and impetuousness leave a trail of carnage in her wake, and Gabriel can only watch on as lives are destroyed, farms are ruined, and his own heart is crushed repeatedly.

Hardy is famous for his fatalism, and this is displayed no more than in the character of Bathsheba Everdene. She is not an evil person, as the above summary would suggest - but her stunning beauty and fierce intelligence combine with her vanity and impulsivity to create something like a force of nature, and though she means only good she seems to be able to do nothing but wrong by those who care for her. She has no more control over her nature than she does over the weather. One of the most interesting aspects of this character is that her vices - vanity, impulsivity, which Hardy attributes to her being young and beautiful - lead to the downfall of others, but she is continuously saved from downfall by her own intelligence and inner personal strength.

REal tragedy finally does strike Bathsheba, but rather than let it destroy her as retribution for her wicked ways, she grows from it. We may not be able to escape the hardship of life, Hardy seems to be saying, but we can grow and prosper by learning from it.

This was a fantastically entertaining book. The only warning that I could give with it is that it is slow-moving. The action comes in fits and spurts, and Hardy has a penchant for elaborate descriptions of the countryside, for farmhouses, churches and festivals. They are beautifully written, but take time to digest fully. Highly recommended.

No need for titles.......2005-11-30

vivid, lucidly written, conjuring up images of serene hillsides and country life at every opportunity; you never feel less than a central part of the story, being able, thanks to Hardy's joyous descriptions, to picture every scne and character in the greatest of detail and desiring nothing more than to join the number of Wessex's inhabitants. Truly a wonderful book.

A masterpiece of brilliant fiction .......2005-10-04

This book has everything - sumptuous and beautiful prose, brilliantly realized characters, a magnificent page-turning plot, superb use of the English language, and a relatively happy ending. If you ever thought Thomas Hardy was not for you, read this book, it will change your mind forever. A classic among classics. Hardy's ability to construct sentences that perfectly convey the message is second to none. His use of vocabulary, his powers of decription, and his uncanny insight into human nature will make you practially weep with envy.

Far From Ordinary.......2004-03-27

Hardy is not my favorite author by any stretch of the imagination, but this is a work of beauty. Unlike other Victorian works (like those of Jane), "Far From the Madding Crowd" leave the chattering jiberish of scheming aristocrats behind to focus on the drama of the country and the working class. Also, this novel explores the "Woman Question" of the day (place in society) and presents a strong willed lead that breaks many of the molds of the time. Loyalty, love, loss, and understanding are all very beautifully and strongly discussed as well. A novel that should be required reading for all students.

Far from the Madding Crowd (Signet Classics)

Average customer rating:

My favorite English Novelist
We Pull Our Own Strings
Forces of Nature
Far from the Madding Crowd
Literature after all, moreover nostalgic

Far from the Madding Crowd (Signet Classics)
Thomas Hardy , and Suzanne Keen
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0451528565

Book Description

A young man falls victim to his own obsession with an amorous farm girl in this classic novel of fate and unrequited love. Published anonymously and first attributed, erroneously, to George Eliot, this Signet Classic version is set from Hardy's revised final draft-the authoritative Wessex edition of 1912.

Customer Reviews:

My favorite English Novelist.......2006-09-04

Why?--Because there is the class struggle, the positioning for marriage, sexual passion, and jealousy and characters that relate to the common man. There are too many coincidences in this book and there seems to miss the tragic inevitability of Tess or Jude but still a wonderful book.

We Pull Our Own Strings.......2006-08-25

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD is the only novel by Thomas Hardy in which the majority of the characters do not crash into chaos and tragedy. In fact, it ends on an up note with a long anticipated marriage. This is not to say that this is a comic novel; there is no such thing for Hardy, but before his world view had totally ossified in his later books, here at least he was able to end with his major characters reaching some happy resolution.

The setting of the book is the village of Weatherbury, a place that resonated nostalgically with his readers as a recently lost pastoral Eden, where mechanization and industrialization had not yet taken sway. It is here that his characters, as always, either rise in harmony with the immemorial earth or fall in conflict with it. The novel opens with the appearance of Gabriel Oak, whose name allies him to the eternal rich soil underneath his farmer's soiled boots. He is in harmony with nature and lives by its natural laws. Enter Bathsheba Everdene, the heroine, who does not. She is proud, willful, and more than a bit of a flirt. When he proposes marriage, she rejects him. Later, she flirts outrageously with the wealthy older William Boldwood, and when he understandably responds, rejects him too. Later she meets the handsome, dashing soldier, Sergeant Troy, but decides to marry him, mostly because of his sexual appeal, which Hardly emphasizes in Troy's Freudian penchant for twirling his sword directly under her nose. Hardy injects what soon proves to be his usual tragic plot complications and lethal coincidences. Bathsheba encounters Fanny, the former lover of her husband, who has a child by him and conveniently and melodramatically dies right in front of her house. Troy dashes off for parts unknown in disgrace over the incident only to reappear a year later where he is shot to death by Boldwood, who in turn winds up as insane in a mental institution. The concluding marriage between the now widowed Bathsheba and Oak seems forced and totally unconvincing, especially since she spent the better part of the novel expatiating on their inherent incompatibilities.

In this early work, Hardy was setting in motion those forces that in future books would have a tragic hue much more somber than here. For Hardy, the essence of tragedy is the complex relationship that his characters maintain with nature. Those who call him the poet/novelist of gloom and doom are slightly off the mark here. In the actions that they take, they choose to throw pebbles into a pool that is deceptively and lethally shallow. As the pebbles land, the waves spread out and intersect with other and similar waves, causing unexpected tragic complications. Nature is that pool and the pebbles are the purposeful actions taken by those who ought to know better, but in Hardy's world, of course, they do not. His people suffer all the time, but they do so in a manner for which they must assume partial blame. The marriage of Gabriel and Bathsheba will be the last happy moment for any of Hardy's characters in all the rest of his books.

Forces of Nature.......2006-07-10

Far from the Madding Crowd.......2006-02-12

Thomas Hardy, born in Dorset, England in 1840, is one of the greatest writers from the United Kingdom. He wrote "Far from the Madding Crowd" when he was 34 and the book was an instant success.

The book reflects the author's affection for rural (country) people (rustic folk) at a time when the industrial revolution was in full swing. Thomas Hardy lived in London and he and his middle class town dwellers liked to escape from the madding crowd of the city to the rural fantasy land. With the hustle and bustle of living in growing towns and cities, Hardy and many in the middle class yearned for the serenity of rural life, although Hardy tended to idealise such life. However, even the rural life was changing with new railway lines cutting through the countryside.

The book is set in Weatherbury, where most people had never left the village. Hence there is continuity of rural life without much disturbance until newcomers like Troy and Bathsheba arrive.

Life in the rural areas is tough characterised by long working hours and few holidays. People hardly have the opportunity for advancement and poverty was always a threat. The poor could get refuge in the dreaded workhouse where one could get the bare minimum food and shelter and highlighted by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist.

The main characters in the book are:

* Gabriel Oak, a young farmer who is practical and is outdoor most of the time. He is good humoured, hard working and expert in farming. He is ruined when most of his sheep die. He has to go and seek work and on his way, he fights a straw-rick fire and is hired by Bathsheba, the owner.
* Bathsheba Everdene is a beautiful but vain lady who inherits a farm in Weatherbury. She sends a valentine as a joke to Boldwood, a serious minded farmer. Boldwood falls in love with Bathsheba, after receiving her valentine, but Bathsheba rejects him and this sets in motion a series of events that ultimately leads to tragedy in the usually serene Weatherbury.
* Troy, a flirtatious visitor from the Army, with a dashing red uniform that has a powerful romantic appeal to young Bathsheba, seduces her with his charm, flattery and swordplay.

The book ends on a happy note when Gabriel and Bathsheba marry, with the approval of the rural folk.

Literature after all, moreover nostalgic.......2005-09-07

This book is always successful to give you an idea about humour that is not ethno-specific and is in keeping with the airs of classic literary treatments of all forms. Humour elicited by a kind of enlightenment and a vision. For us, in the once colonized parts of the world, it paints an England which is real but still evocative of dreams we had of the landscapes through children`s books. If literature is to be popularized again, if classics are to be introduced again,well, this book has clues in it as to what fascinates people and at the same time help them grow with literature. Diversity of civilizations are disappearing, conflicts notwithstanding. World has lost something in terms of its charms. The migratory workers are making it uniform, faceless, convenience driven. Language, expression, social relations are becoming indistinct and dull. The book evokes nostalgia in good measure.
The main characters are not main, the plot is trivial but the sincerity and dexterity with which the characters are created, the dialogues are planned and every bit of action interpreted refering to the psychological elements involved, is classical and timeless. Every lover will learn or understand something from it and remember many situations and for everybody are Hardy's quips in a lighter vein.A model!

Under the Greenwood Tree (Penguin Classics)

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CHOIR AND A PRETTY GIRL
Excellent characterizations!

Under the Greenwood Tree (Penguin Classics)
Thomas Hardy
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140435530

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CHOIR AND A PRETTY GIRL.......2005-02-17

Under the Greenwood Tree is Thomas Hardy's first Wessex novel, a world that rivals that of Balzac and Dickens, but instead of focusing on life in the city, Hardy instead focuses on the happenings of rural life. Dick Dewy doesn't have many prospects in life except his good looks. That is, until he meets the new female schoolteacher, Fancy Day, whose father is rumored to have a small fortune saved up for his beloved daughter when she gets married. That's not to say that's why Dick is attracted to her. It's love at first sight, for him, at least. There's other men interested in Fancy too, particularly, the prosperous Mr. Shiner, and even the local vicar, Mr. Maybold! It's up to Dick to convince Fancy that he is the man for her, while overcoming both her and her father's reservations that he's not quite in the same social class. Not to mention his own doubts of self-worth.

Under the Greenwood Tree is a pretty straightforward early work by Thomas Hardy, the greatest English novelist. I maybe found it a little too simple, and the characters did not seem to be fleshed out very well. I didn't care much for Fancy, a woman who seemed caught up in her own vanity and whose love seemed to waver back and forth according to who asked for her hand in marriage, even though this is human nature. The local dialogue, as written by Hardy was a little hard to get used to, but you don't notice it after a while. This novel was sunnier in disposition than a lot of Hardy novels and should be seen as a work to be read by his fans, while the casual reader would be better served by his more famous titles.

Other titles I would recommend by Hardy are Jude the Obscure, A Pair of Blue Eyes, Mayor of Casterbridge. Other titles with a similar pastoral settings are Harvest by Jean Giono, and Dreamers by Knut Hamsun.

Excellent characterizations!.......2000-12-13

Thomas Hardy's family had a long history as players of instrumental music in the local church, and here Hardy creates an entertaining novel involving a fictional church choir.

The characterizations and dialogue of his "Mellstock Quire" are detailed and interesting. The plot includes some very funny scenes--with the scene involving the visit to the vicar being among the best.

Book Description

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wilson.

Customer Reviews:

favorite Hardy book.......2007-08-23

Reread this one recently - what a great book. This is my favorite of all Hardy's books. The fascinating part of this novel is the protagonist, because he is such a mix of good and bad. He has good and even heroic impulses and acts, and bad and even evil impulses and acts. The way he manages to sabotage the good things he could get reminds me of Lily in the House of Mirth, although Henchard's sabotage is due to through bad temper and anger and insecurity, while Lily's are due to ambivalence. But the trip downward is quite similar. Basically it ends up being the story of a man's self-destruction. What a crime that Hardy's novels were unpopular when he first wrote them, and the bad reviews discouraged him from writing more! I have them all but wish there were more.

The Mayor of Casterbidge is a Tragic Tale of a Tormented Soul........2007-08-03

An early fall afternoon in the 1840s bucolic world of Wessex. Michael Henchard, a young hay trusser, sells his wife Susan to another man for the paltry sum of five guineas. The 400 page classic by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) goes on to chronicle the rise and fall of Henchard. The main characters are:
1. Michael Henchard-The tragic Mayor of Casterbridge who loses all he values in life and all those people he loves to his rival. Henchard is a visible proof of the fact that fiction displays "the human heart in conflict with itself.' He is a Faustian striver who is ambitious in business as a corn chandler; politics as he becomes mayor and love losing the three women who have meant most to him. Henchard dies in an obscure hut near Egdon Heath desiring to be completely forgotten by the world. He has a death wish and wishes to achieve the oblivion of death in a universe controlled by fate, chance and irony. He is one of Hardy's great creations.
2. Sue Henchard is the wife sold by Henchard to a sailor. She emigrates with him to America. When she returns 20 years later to Casterbridge she remarries Henchard but dies soon after the wedding. She is a simple-minded country woman lacking in knowledge and sophistication.
3. Donald Farfrae-While Henchard represents ancient Wessex in folkways and beliefs, Mr. Farfrae is a young Scotchman who soon steals Henchard's supremacy in Casterbridge. He is hired by Henchard to straighten out the latter's business affairs but leaves him to start a successful rival business firm. Farfrae is the second Mayor of Casterbridge in this novel. He marries Henchard's mistress Lucetta. When Lucetta dies after being the center of a scandal caused by old loves letters to Henchard being revealed, Farfrae weds Henchard's stepdaughter Elizabeth Jane. He is a kind man who seeks to help Henchard to no avail.
4. Eliaabeth-Jane-She is an intelligent person who returns from abroad with her mother Sue. She has been raised to believe that Michael Henchard is her father. Elizabeth-Jane becomes a hired companion to Henchard's quondom mistress Lucetta. Elizabeth Jane later weds Farfrae. This young lady learns her real father is the sailor Newson and Sue.
5. Seaman Newson-The real father of Sue who returns to find her twenty years after the deal of exchange he made to purchase Sue as his wife from Michael Henchard.
6. Lucette-The Jersey miss who had an affair long ago with Michael Henchard. Lucette is sexy and exotic. She weds Donald Farfrae dying after details of her affair with Henchard lead to scandal.
The characters in this ironical novel are all puppets in an uncaring universe.The last word in the novel is "pain"! There is plenty of pain to share among all the characters.
As with all of Hardy's classic novels, the descriptions of the town folks and the flora and fauna of Wessex are beautifully written. Hardy is the best regional novelist in all of English literature.
The Penguin Edition of the novel contains excellent illustrations by Robert Barnes which were included in the original edition. A helpful chronology of Hardy's life; discussion of the textual history of the novel and a useful introduction by Dr. Keith Hardy are included. The novel is one you should read and enjoy.

Dark, depressing, and fascinating.......2004-10-06

Read this novel after Far From The Madding Crowd and Return of the Native. It's a very bleak and depressing novel - without the comic flourishes and moments of his earlier work.
The story follows Michael Henchard, a hay-trusser, who sells his wife and child for five guineas in an 'auction' during a fit of inebriety. He spends the next 21 years regretting his action, but during that time he does well for himself, becoming mayor of Casterbridge, a rural town. Years later, his wife and daughter reappear. This starts a chain of events that leads to Henchard's fall. He eventually ends up losing everything because of his pride, passion and stubborness. The main character isn't very likeable, but there is something of the tragic about him that commands your attention.

The Downward Spiral.......2004-09-16

Michael Henchard (yep - - later he's the Mayor, all right), having sold his wife and baby early in the novel for 5 guineas while in a drunken rage, gets what he deserves despite his valiant efforts at atonement years later after an initial rise in fortune and a 'chance' reunion with his long-abandoned wife and daughter. Not that an example of Divine retribution is Hardy's intention; Hardy was an atheist. But he stacks the cards so heavily against Henchard that it's hard to believe he isn't a True Believer after all. Chance? Irony? Coincidence? (Synchroncity?? Gadzooks!) Divine retribution? All grist for Hardy's deterministic mill, and a grinding mill it is for Henchard. It ultimately doesn't matter - - to prove his point Hardy orchestrates the narrative so obviously and nothing can stop Henchard's downward spiral, of course. Everywhere in the novel, it's plain he's doomed. Hardy created this character whose final wish, as Hardy has him spell out in his will, is that he be forgotten. And then Hardy titles the novel after him for the ages. Did I hear someone say 'Omniscient Narrator'? Pretty divine, I'd say.

"He sold his wife and baby daughter for 5 guineas.".......2004-08-10

The Mayor of Casterbridge, focused and simple the premise has been in itself, affords a quite convoluted plot that packs with events as the memorably niched characters play out their lives and unravels the novel. The book is riddled with a well-faceted theme of conscience: the purging of conscience and its reconciliation through an allusion to deceit and characters' shameless past that ceaselessly haunt them and render them despondent and guilty. The tragic actions revolve around one man who manages to establish prestige, wealth, and authority over Casterbridge and ironically the very elite status leads to the fall of the deeply flawed man.

In a fit of drunken anger and delirium, young Michael Henchard sells his wife Susan and baby daughter Elizabeth-Jane to a sailor for 5 guineas at a county fair. Over the course of the years, though he manages to establish himself as a respected and prosperous pillar of the town from literally nothing, Henchard still affords a ray of hope in reuniting with his family, until he meets Lucetta Templeman who nurses him in America. Such black spot of his youth as wife-sale caused by his fits of spleen not only renders him ashamed of himself but also wears an aspect of recent crime: something that will shame him until his dying day. Behind his success is always lurking such shameful secret of his troubled past shielded from the public and a personality prone to self-destructive pride and temper.

Contributing to the suspenseful nature of the novel is the return of the mayor's wife and daughter some 18 years later whom Michael Henchard believed to have perished at the sea. The sentimental reunion, which marks Henchard respectable 20-year abstinence from alcohol, brings about a heartrending revelation and an ironical sequence of events that irritate Henchard. The very truth cruelly leaves in him an emotional void that he unconsciously craves to fill. At the same time, the regard he has acquired for Elizabeth-Jane has eclipsed by this revelation. The new-sprung hope of his loneliness (or "friendless solitude" in Hardy's own words) that she will be to him a daughter of whom he can feel as proud as of the actual daughter she believes herself to be, has been stimulated by the (yet another) unexpected arrival of the sailor to a greedy exclusiveness in relation to her.

All these ineluctable consequences of his past shameful transaction at the fair take a stupendous toll on Henchard and his conscience. He is also uneasy at the thought of Elizabeth-Jane's passion for Donald Farfrae, whose rising prestige and success in his independent business provoke in Henchard enmity and envy. Henchard quails at the thought that Farfrae shall utterly usurp her mild filial sympathy with him, that she might be withdrawn from him by degrees through Farfrae's influence and learns to despise him. The pricking of conscience subtly manifests in Henchard's solicitous love and growing jealousy. His fear of losing tie after the death of his wife is sympathetically understandable. Though he in his effrontery has been weaning Elizabeth-Jane from the sailor by saying he is her father, she understands that Henchard has himself been deceived in her identity.

Lucetta Templeman, inescapably torn between her past disgraceful entanglement with Henchard and her love for a more refined gentleman, is also pricked by her conscience. In an impulsive moment, purely out of gratitude, Henchard proposes to the Jersey woman who has been so far compromised to him. But as the years gone by, Lucetta is more convinced that she has been forced into an equivocal position with Henchard by an accident. She has discovered some quantities in Henchard, who is either well-educated nor refined in manner, that irretrievably renders him less desirable as a husband than she has at first thought him to be, notwithstanding there remains a conscientious wish to being about her union with him.

When Lucetta learns of the wife-sale, she immediately dismisses any possibility of being with him and realizes she cannot risk himself in his hands. It will have been letting herself down to take Henchard's name after such an ignominious scandal. But her past which she diligently seals, if not expunge altogether haunts her. The surreptitious history with Henchard becomes the torture of her meek conscience and the reconciling of which through a marriage with a second man remains also her secret alone.

Subtitled "A Story of a Man of Character", Henchard's origins remain unexplained but he literally begins and ends the novel away from Casterbridge, where he achieves his prominent status ironically destines his downfall, through the lampooning and skimmity-ride. A psychological study, the novel accentuates the fury that causes him to lash out against both himself and those who stand closest to him. It depicts to the fullest the very self-destructive nature of the power that causes Henchard's fall, which is so obvious through his louring invidiousness.

2004 (46) ©MY

The Hand of Ethelberta (Penguin Classics)

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Hardy with a happy ending.
A novel for die-hard Hardy fans and academics

The Hand of Ethelberta (Penguin Classics)
Thomas Hardy , and Tim Dolin
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140435026

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Hardy with a happy ending........2003-12-04

I liked this book very much. Sure, critics have scorned it since it was first published, over a hundred years ago, but it is still a good read. Ethelberta is a complex character; she is a woman supporting her mother and ten siblings by finding profitable work as a poet and a storyteller. She is usually criticized for her coldness (so unladylike) when she considers marrying a rich man in order to solve her family's financial problems, but I see it as courage. Ethelberta dreams of her own success and freedom, but her first thought is the safety and comfort of her family, especially the younger children. She is the brains of the whole operation; they support her plans by following her orders.

In addition, Hardy uses this book to explore class distinctions in Victorian England, one of his recurring themes. Since Ethelberta's father is a butler, her family belongs eternally to the working class, and the only way she can mingle freely with the gentry is by drawing on her late husband's name and pretending to be what she is not. The charade works, but exacts a severe mental toll. She says that she feels like two people and she wakes up in the night terrified that someone will find out the truth and expose her. What kind of society is so stratified that this type of discovery causes such strong fear?

Unlike the better-known Hardy novels, this one has a happy ending for nearly all of the characters. Some critics say that it has a weak, "happily ever after" fairy tale quality. But I think Hardy didn't need Ethelberta to meet the usual tragic fate. The story isn't about her inability to accept the realities of life; Ethelberta accepts her world as she finds it, but she twists the rules of society in order to reach her goals. Therefore, she expects those rules to continue working perfectly, and this leads to the happy ending when she marries the rich man and provides for her family while at the same time gaining legitimate entrance to upper class society.

A novel for die-hard Hardy fans and academics.......1998-09-02

Ethelberta is not a book I would recommend to most people, and certainly not to someone who has never read Hardy. The novel is tediously written and lacks the depth pervasive in other works set in the country. Only in the last hundred or so pages did the story become engrossing. Why then did I continue reading? Deriving some measure of enjoyment from this book requires that the reader look at it as an example of Hardy's development as an author. The scholarly introduction and notes provide explanations that help with this analysis and make the novel more interesting.

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

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The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy (Cambridge Companions to Literature)

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521566924

Book Description

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy is an essential introduction to this most enigmatic of writers. These newly commissioned essays from an international team of contributors comprise a general overview of all of Thomas Hardy's work and specific demonstrations of his ideas and literary skills. Individual essays explore Hardy's biography, aesthetics, his famous attachment to Wessex, and the impact on his work of developments in science, religion and philosophy in the late-nineteenth century. The volume also contains a detailed chronology of Hardy's life, and a guide to further reading.

So You Think You Know Thomas Hardy?: A Literary Quizbook (Oxford World's Classics)

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So You Think You Know Thomas Hardy?: A Literary Quizbook (Oxford World's Classics)
John Sutherland
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 019280443X

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How well do you really know your favourite author? Ace literary detective turned quizmaster John Sutherland challenges the reader to find out. Starting with easy, factual questions that test how well you remember a novel and its characters, the quiz progresses to a level of greater difficulty, demanding close reading and interpretative deduction. What really motivates the characters, and what is going on beneath the surface of the story? From Bathsheba's valentine to Tess's favourite cows, the subjects range across six of Hardy's most popular novels. Designed to amuse and divert, the questions and answers take the reader on an imaginative journey into the world of Thomas Hardy, where hypothesis and speculation produce fascinating and unexpected insights. Whether you are an expert or enthusiast, So You Think You Know Thomas Hardy? guarantees you will know him much better after reading it.

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Foreshadowing Tess
Visit Wessex in the Woodlanders and Savor the prose of Thomas Hardy
NOT PART OF THE "BIG 5" EH...WELL MAKE IT THE "BIG 6!"
Disaster at the altar in the church of Hardy.
Hardy gone berserk

The Woodlanders (Everyman's Library)
Thomas Hardy
Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0375400826
Release Date: 1998-06-09

Book Description

Set in the secluded forest community of Little Hintock, Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders inextricably links the dramatic English landscape with the story of a woman caught between two rivals of radically different social statures. Grace Melbury is promised to her longtime companion, Giles Winterborne, a local woodlander and a gentle, steadfast man. When her socially motivated father pressures her to wed the ambitious doctor Edred Fitzpiers, Grace’s loyalties shift—and her decision leads to tumultuous consequences. With its explorations of class and gender, lust and betrayal, The Woodlanders is one of Hardy’s most vivid and powerful works.

This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the text of the 1912 Wessex edition and includes Hardy’s map of fictional Wessex.

“The finest English novel.”—Arnold Bennett

From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and without discomposure. Had he regarded his inner self spectacularly, as lovers are now daily more wont to do, he might have felt pride in the discernment of a somewhat rare power in him--that of keeping not only judgment but emotion suspended in difficult cases. But he noted it not.

Customer Reviews:

Foreshadowing Tess.......2007-03-28

The Woodlanders is said to be one of Hardy's more descriptive novels and Hardy is also said to have a love for this part of the country. I thought this was a beautiful passage:

"From the other window all she could see were more trees, jacketed with lichen and stockinged with moss. At their roots were stemless yellow fungi like lemons and apricots, and tall fungi with more stem than stool. Next were more trees close together, wrestling for existence, their branches disfigured with wounds resulting from their mutual rubbings and blows. It was the struggle between these neighbors that she had heard in the night. Beneath them were the rotting stumps of those of the group that had been vanquished long ago, rising from their mossy setting like decayed teeth from green gums. Farther on were other tufts of moss in islands divided by the shed leaves--variety upon variety, dark green and pale green; moss-like little fir-trees, like plush, like malachite stars, like nothing on earth except moss."

And this description of Winterborne as a wood-god really stood out for me:

"He rose upon her memory as the fruit-god and the wood-god in alternation; sometimes leafy, and smeared with green lichen, as she had seen him among the sappy boughs of the plantations; sometimes cider-stained, and with apple-pips in the hair of his arms, as she had met him on his return from cider-making in White Hart Vale, with his vats and presses beside him."

It is said that Winterborne was a creation derived from Hardy's own father.

The book also has the typical Hardy realism and tragedy based on innocence and wrong choices, the unfair position of women, mere chance, or should I say Chance, in keeping with the way Hardy uses it. For me, somehow, the more descriptive nature of the book, while not that descriptive--Hardy is a realist not a romantic, gave the book a hazy, almost somnolent quality that almost distracted from the clarity and meaning of the book. Maybe it was Hardy's intention to have the woods form a kind of shadowy hold over the characters, the readers--there's the strange effect a single tree had on Winterborne's father, and another on Grace. But Hardy's description of the moors in Return of the Native had more power for me. Also, the characters seemed undeveloped to me, especially Grace, who was a main character. Marty seemed more real, though maybe that was intentional as the book ends with her, and poor Grace floated un-fixedly in the non-place between two classes.

I love Hardy's novels and poetry otherwise I may have given it 3 stars. I just read it--it may be I need to ruminate on it for awhile.

Visit Wessex in the Woodlanders and Savor the prose of Thomas Hardy.......2006-12-11

The Woodlanders is the eleventh novel by Thomas Hardy. Hardy takes us to an obscure village in his mythical Wessex. The novel portrays the beautiful Grace Melbury a nubile young miss coddled by her parents; eager for glamour and disdainful of bucolic boredom. Grace is courted by Giles Winterbourne a local rustic but cast him off to wed Dr. Edred Fitzpiers the local doctor. The marriage is a disaster for Fitzper lusts for Madame Charmond. He also has a fling with Suke a local girl.
Fitzpiers flees to the Continent while Grace seeks reconciliation with
Winterborne. The couple hope to wed under a newly passed Parliamentary
law dealing with the right of women to obtain a divorce.
All goes wrong. Accidents occur as chance and fortune always play a part in the Hardy world. The novel does end happily which is rare for Hardy.
Hardy knew the English countryside as it moved from spring to winter.
His description of nature is beautifully written. Hardy also knew the south of England as it was moving from the rural nineteenth century to the modern world of the coming twentieth century.
The Woodlanders is one of the lesser known Hardy novels that is well worth your attention. The story is well told with many interesting and exciting plot developments which will hold the attention. Well recommended.

NOT PART OF THE "BIG 5" EH...WELL MAKE IT THE "BIG 6!".......2005-08-15

The Woodlanders (1887) is one of Thomas Hardy's finest novels, which deals with doomed love in a gloomy rural "partly real and partly dream" country of Wessex.

It is one of Hardy's favorite and if Hardy liked it, I do to, especially since I have never read this novel....I liked The Return of the Native...

THE BIG 6

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD -1874
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE - 1878
THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE - 1886
THE WOODLANDERS - 1887
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES - 1891
JUDE THE OBSCURE - 1895

Disaster at the altar in the church of Hardy........2004-07-25

"It would have made a beautiful story," Thomas Hardy said about this novel, "if I could have carried out my idea of it; but somehow I come so far short of my intention."

"I wish you had never thought of educating me," Thomas Hardy's protagonist tells her father at one point in this novel, "because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and troubles" (pp. 232-33). Hardy (1840-1928) wrote his eleventh novel in 1887, before his better-known masterpieces, TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES (1891) and JUDE THE OBSCURE (1895), and a year after THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE (1886). Set in the "partly real and partly dream country" of Hardy's Wessex, in the "sequestered" forest community of Little Hintock (located "outside the gates of the world," p. 6), a place where "loneliness is not so very lonely after a while" (p. 83), THE WOODLANDERS is about doomed love, betrayal, and social restraints, and like Hardy's other work, it succeeds as a satisfying story of a romantic disaster in Hardy's cruel universe. The novel tells the sad tale of a woman, Grace Melbury, forced to choose marriage between two suitors of different social statures, Giles Winterborne, a local woodlander with a gentle, virtuous nature, and Edred Fitzpiers, an ambitious doctor and a scoundrel. Influenced by her well-intentioned though meddling father, Mr. Melbury, who only wants his daughter to "marry well" (p. 89), Grace's decision ultimately leads to disastrous consequences and, in the end, to a lonely woman worshipping at a dead man's grave. Once again, we discover the course of love is never happy in Hardy's universe.

Rather gloomy for a Victorian romance novel? Well, yes. But reading Victorian fiction does not get any better than reading Thomas Hardy's extraordinary novels. Returning to Hardy's brooding, melancholy fiction after my first encounter with his novels more than twenty five years ago, I am re-discovering Hardy's brilliant ability to convey familiar, primordial truths through his fiction, making him worth reading again and again.

G. Merritt

Hardy gone berserk.......2003-08-30

Hardy classified THE WOODLANDERS with his Novels of Character and Ingenuity, which category included his very best novels (TESS, THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE, THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE). This 1887 novel is so bizarre, however, that you might feel it belongs more properly with his Romances and Fantasies. In the secluded rustic community of Little Hintock all manner of things are a-brewing: simple Marty South has a thing for cider-merchant Giles Winterbourne, who has been promised for years to marry well-educated Grace Melbury, but Grace's father marries her off instead to philandering Edred Fitzpiers, who has a thing for local wealthy widow Felice Charmond. In this circle of desire all manner of things can go wrong--and, this being Hardy, of course they do. Some of his wildest plot contrivances (including two bizarre scenes wherein the Widow Charmond must convey crucial information to Grace, and Fitzpiers even more crucial information to Grace's father) occur without the redeeming Shakespearean scope of a novel like THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE which allows you to overlook the wackiness. Still, even if this is lesser Hardy, it's still Hardy, so the novel has such poetically gorgeous evocations of landscape and character as to make everything worthwhile in the end.

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