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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP AND INDIVIDUATION IN THE MAJOR NOVELS OF THOMAS HARDY "A Complexity of Opposites" DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Anita Willsie Kerr, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1993 Dissertation Committee: Approved by D-G. Riede J. Phelan Advisor B.H. Rigney Department of English Copyright by Anita Willsie Kerr 1993 To Jeannette and Catharine n ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I express sincere thanks to Dr. David G. Riede for his direction and critical insight throughout my research and writing of this dissertation. I also with to thank the other members of my dissertation committee, Drs. James Phelan and Barbara Rigney, for their advice and guidance. Gratitude is expressed to Drs. John 0. Stewart and Linda L. Wiggins, to Terry Cairo and to Colleen Hammers for their support and encouragement. I give sincere thanks to Vida H. Kerr for enabling me to focus on the completion of this dissertation. To Bertha and Robert Willsie, I extend abiding gratitude for introducing me to literary studies and for their invaluable support and inspiration therein. To my husband, David C. Kerr, I offer my deepest thanks for his continued support, encouragement, and endurance throughout my graduate program, and most particularly for his faith in me and my endeavors. m VITA May 19, 1955 ..........................................Born - Jamestown, New York 1977 .......................................................... B.A., The College of Wooster, Wooster, Ohio 1982 .......................................................... M.A., Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1982-3 ...................................................... Editorial Assistant, ASCP Press, Chicago, Illinois 1985 - 1990 .............................................. Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1990 - 1991 .............................................. Graduate Administrative Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1991 - Present ..................................... Lecturer, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English General Examination: Nineteenth-Century British Literature (David G. Riede), The Novel as Genre (James Phelan), Literature as Cultural Storage of Ojibway and Celtic Traditions (John 0. Stewart) IV TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION......................................................................................................................ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...................................................................; ....................................iii VITA ..................................................................................................................................iv INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER PAGE I. The Return of the Native: An Earnest Attempt at Reassimilation ............................................................................................ 22 1. The Detached Observation...........................................................23 2. The Community A p a r t...................................................................36 3. The Self in Isolation ...............................................................63 II. The Woodlanders: False Identities and Community Membership.........................................................................................................81 1. The Focus on A rtificiality.......................................................83 2. The Community Ingrown...............................................................91 3. The Self Sequestered.................................................................102 III. Tess of the d’Urbervilles: Beginnings of Community Redefinition ................................................................................................ 119 1. The Critique of Social Convention ................................. 121 2. The Community D ispersed.........................................................136 3. Victimization: The Self Fragmented .....................................156 IV. Jude the Obscure: The Emerging Ascendancy of the Self . 180 1. The Didacticism that Masks Despair...................................... 183 2. The Death of the Wessex Community ................................. 197 3. Abandonment: The Self in Alienation ..................................225 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................... 250 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................ 262 INTRODUCTION Community in its broadest definition connotes a "unified body of individuals," yet such a definition cannot begin to describe the multiform manifestations of the ideal. Participation in a community brings, of course, both privileges and responsibilities. It carries both advantages and disadvantages, but total rejection of community is rare. For most individuals, at least partial membership in some form of community is desirable. Victor Barnouw’s definition of the term culture provides one way of discerning the meaning of community: A culture is the way of life of a group of people, the configuration of all of the more or less stereotyped patterns of learned behavior which are handed down from one generation to the next through the means of language and imitation. The nub of this definition is the first clause: "the way of life of a group of people." (Barnouw 8) A subset of culture, community occurs with the (willing) participation of individuals in common language and behavior. Seen in this way, community becomes the connection of individuals through their immersion in a given manner of living, with its attendant political, social, and psychological world views. For many participants, the significance, or even the very concept of community is not questioned. For those who "belong," the view of community is considered, at best, through the comfortable smoke screen of complacency. In a very real sense, one who belongs can understand neither the full implications of community, nor the individual who does not belong. It is only when the individual’s 1 2 sense of community is disrupted by not belonging that the question of community becomes relevant to that person. If the rupture with community is involuntary, the question becomes paramount to the outsider’s view of both the self and the larger world view. As intimated by Barnouw’s definition of culture, the identity of the individual, his or her sense of self, does not completely become absorbed by the communal identity; the two must co-exist and achieve balance to create the desired wholeness: Just as man, as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors. (Jung 24) To gain an understanding of a given community, one must acquire an appreciation of the selfhoods of the individuals it comprises. In periods of stasis when the community, or the individual’s perception thereof, are not threatened, there is little reason to question either the need or the significance of community, or shared culture, but in times of rupture when the perceptions of self and one’s world become tenuous or unclear, community becomes the concern of all individuals