Student Companion to Thomas HARDY Recent Titles in Student Companions to Classic Writers Jane Austen by Debra Teachman Charlotte and Emily Brontë by Barbara Z. Thaden Willa Cather by Linda De Roche James Fenimore Cooper by Craig White Stephen Crane by Paul M. Sorrentino Charles Dickens by Ruth Glancy F. Scott Fitzgerald by Linda C. Pelzer Nathaniel Hawthorne by Melissa McFarland Pennell Ernest Hemingway by Lisa Tyler Zora Neale Hurston by Josie P. Campbell Herman Melville by Sharon Talley Arthur Miller by Susan C. W. Abbotson George Orwell by Mitzi M. Brunsdale Edgar Allan Poe by Tony Magistrale John Steinbeck by Cynthia Burkhead Mark Twain by David E. E. Sloane Edith Wharton by Melissa McFarland Pennell Elie Wiesel by Sanford Sternlicht Tennessee Williams by Nancy M. Tischler Richard Wright by Robert Felgar Student Companion to Thomas Hardy Rosemarie Morgan Student Companions to Classic Writers GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Morgan, Rosemarie. Student companion to Thomas Hardy / Rosemarie Morgan. p. cm. — (Student companions to classic writers, ISSN 1522–7979) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–313–33396–3 (alk. paper) 1. Hardy, Thomas, 1840–1928—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Hardy, Thomas, 1840–1928—Examinations—Study guides. I. Title. PR4754.M58 2007 823'.8—dc22 2006031758 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2007 by Rosemarie Morgan All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2006031758 ISBN: 0–313–33396–3 ISSN: 1522–7979 First published in 2007 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Series Foreword vii Preface ix 1 The Life of Thomas Hardy 1 2 Hardy’s Career and Contribution to World Literature 15 3 Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) 35 4 The Return of the Native (1878) 59 5 Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) 85 6 Jude the Obscure (1895) 113 7 The Poetry—An Overview 141 8 Afterword: Hardy’s Last Novel 193 Appendix: The Evolution of Wessex 197 Bibliography 201 Index 217 Series Foreword This series has been designed to meet the needs of students and general readers for accessible literary criticism on the American and world writers most frequent- ly studied and read in the secondary school, community college, and four-year college classrooms. Unlike other works of literary criticism that are written for the specialist and graduate student, or that feature a variety of reprinted scholarly essays on sometimes obscure aspects of the writer’s work, the Student Compan- ions to Classic Writers series is carefully crafted to examine each writer’s major works fully and in a systematic way, at the level of the nonspecialist and general reader. The objective is to enable the reader to gain a deeper understanding of the work and to apply critical thinking skills to the act of reading. The proven format for the volumes in this series was developed by an advisory board of teach- ers and librarians for a successful series published by Greenwood Press, Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers. Responding to their request for easy-to-use and yet challenging literary criticism for students and adult library patrons, Greenwood Press developed a systematic format that is not intimidating but helps the reader to develop the ability to analyze literature. How does this work? Each volume in the Student Companions to Classic Writers series is written by a subject specialist, an academic who understands students’ needs for basic and yet challenging examination of the writer’s canon. Each volume begins with a biographical chapter, drawn from published sources, biographies, and autobiographies, that relates the writer’s life to his or her work. The next chapter examines the writer’s literary heritage, tracing the literary infl u- ences of other writers on that writer and explaining and discussing the literary genres into which the writer’s work falls. Each of the following chapters examines Series Foreword a major work by the writer, those works most frequently read and studied by high school and college students. Depending on the writer’s canon, generally between four and eight major works are examined, each in an individual chapter. The discussion of each work is organized into separate sections on plot development, character development, and major themes. Literary devices and style, narrative point of view, and historical setting are also discussed in turn if pertinent to the work. Each chapter concludes with an alternate critical perspective from which to read the work, such as a psychological or feminist criticism. The critical theory is defi ned briefl y in easy, comprehensible language for the student. Looking at the literature from the point of view of a particular critical approach will help the reader to understand and apply critical theory to the act of reading and analyzing literature. Of particular value in each volume is the bibliography, which includes a com- plete bibliography of the writer’s works, a selected bibliography of biographical and critical works suitable for students, and lists of reviews of each work examined in the companion, both from the time the literature was originally published and from contemporary sources, all of which will be helpful to readers, teachers, and librarians who would like to consult additional sources. As a source of literary criticism for the student or for the general reader, this series will help the reader to gain understanding of the writer’s work and skill in critical reading. viii Preface This book is designed primarily for students of every stripe, from high school to college and beyond but with lay readers, teachers, and scholars also in mind— those seeking either a classroom tool or a perspective on areas previously un- explored in Hardy’s prose and poetry. There are various useful, informational handbooks on Hardy, from Notes booklets to Sarah Bird Wright’s A–Z, but none provides critical analyses and insights into Hardy’s fi ction and poetry. The Oxford Reader’ s Companion to Hardy (2000) supplies excellent overviews of Hardy’s life and work, but these range from notes to surveys with considerable overlap of material and some scholarly inconsistency, inevitably the consequence of entries coming from 40 different contributors. This Hardy companion seeks to fi ll the gap between the informative and the specialized text, offering—with the benefi t of current scholarly research—re- ceived interpretations augmented by new perceptions of Hardy’s life and career, exemplary critiques of four major novels, and easily accessible approaches to his poems—that is to say, ways of thinking and talking about his poems that are jargon free and devoid of the changing fashions in critical theory. Hardy is matchless among writers in English. His uniqueness lies fi rst and foremost in achieving greatness in two separate genres—fi ction and poetry. Ad- ditionally, his life and work spanned two contrasting ages, the Victorian and the modern, beginning (as a teenager) as a poet and ending as the Grand Old Man of English Letters 70 years later with more than a thousand poems, 14 novels, and the epic drama The Dynasts to his name. Predictably, Hardy’s following is broad, wide, and global. To encompass his achievements in one single volume where the work of scholars extends to Preface thousands of publications is an enormous challenge. I have sought to meet that challenge by focusing on selectivity of material and close readings. I have not attempted to include any background of literary infl uence (Shelley, Greek drama- tists, etc.), although I have devoted time and space to the historical, social, and cultural contexts of his work (as refl ected, for instance, in his use of allusions). Cultural context also takes into account the publishing scene of the day—an especially important element in Hardy’s literary life and one that forcibly shaped his career (notably censorship and the opinion of critics) and embattled him personally for all his days. The extensive bibliography at the end of this book, which provides the most up-to-date, comprehensive list of modern critical works currently in existence, will more than adequately serve those who wish to pursue their interest in Hardy beyond these pages. “Selectivity” means, for my own purposes, three things. First, it means the particular rather than the general. That is to say that the four major novels and the numerous poems I have reserved for closer scrutiny represent a unique aspect of Hardy’s achievement as opposed to a general representation of his work. The Woodlanders, for example, was Hardy’s favorite novel: structurally, thematically, and poetically it pleased him. With great reluctance I decided not to include it, despite its accomplished symmetries, because these symmetries remain, in gen- eral, a feature of all his novels, albeit in varying degrees of accomplishment. Take, for example, Hardy’s other great pastoral novel, Far From the Madding Crowd. This may not possess an aesthetic of comparable excellence, but it is in many ways more innovative. Here, Hardy experiments for the very fi rst time with the trials and tribulations of a young woman entering the world of work—a world made for men by men, as Bathsheba puts it; she will be followed, in Hardy’s oeuvre, by Tess ( Tess of th e d ’ Urbervilles) and Sue (Jude the Obscure ) and also by her antithetical counterpart, Eustacia ( The Return of the Native), who, in com- mon with countless middle-class women in the real world, remains trapped in a “do-nothing” existence with no opportunities for work or action of any kind.