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The Woodlanders (1887) was Thomas Hardy's elventh published novel and the one he claimed to like 'as a story, the best of all'. It is a story of wide appeal, having much to say on themes such as marriage and social class, and with a background revealing its author's profound knowledge and appreciation of many matters, particularly nature and country life. As part of The Cambridge Edition of the Novels and Stories of Thomas Hardy, this edition of the novel provides an authoritative and accurate text which aims to reflect Hardy's original artistic intention and represent the novel as it would have been read by his Victorian readers. The novel is supported by a comprehensive introduction, chronology and accompanying textual apparatus which allows the modern reader to trace the novel's evolution from composition to first publication and through several stages of revision in succeeding editions in the quarter of a century following its first publication.… (more)
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My literary home-ground is 19th century England. It just is, I can't help it. And this is bucolic 19th century England - a place where the towering
It's a story about one's 'rightful place', and about love, which is a typical combination of Victorian literary themes. It's told with simplicity, and with some beautiful passages of prose that made me stop in my tracks and read over again with joy. The characters are fresh and well-drawn, though it took more than half the book for Grace to develop much of a personality. Various people make wrong choices for the best reasons, and, this being Hardy, tragedy and sorrow are pretty evenly distributed to everyone. I was interested to find, though, that it didn't end where I would have expected it to end, but kept going for a while, bringing what was for me an unexpected new development, which I rather liked.
This was apparently Hardy's own favourite of all his novels, and I for one certainly value it much more than Tess of the D'Urbevilles. It's inspired me enough to raise some of his other novels higher on my To Read list.
My resolution to read more missed classics this year saw me scouring my shelves for unread possibilities. I pretended not to see The Woodlanders sitting there on the first two passes, but on the third I mustered my courage and, having stared it down for a few minutes, addressed fifteen years of neglect.
Grace Melbury is young, educated beyond her class, beautiful; her father is now unsure of the suitability of her intended, Giles Winterborne, despite his earlier bias towards the man. Grace is influenced, perhaps too much, by her father’s views, and further swayed by the attention of the handsome doctor recently come to the area. What follows is a more rewarding look at one of Hardy’s favourite themes, this passive reaction to coincidence and fate that one might call ‘doom’, than is suggested by similarities to Tess.
As with all Hardy, it’s worth wading into anything for the rural atmosphere and description alone, but I was relieved to find an engaging story with characters who, while –with the noticeable exception of Giles Winterborne – are not overly imbued with strength of character, are at least shown to think, if not always act, for themselves.
It is a tragedy, yes, but it is also moving in other ways... and Hardy is cruel to his characters, but it is only by exposing real hardships of health, societal expectations, indifference from a church-drugged legal system; for all that, there is a hopeful renewal that is left to the reader to cheer or deplore at the end, and the tale is seeped in Hardy’s love of nature... where Tess’s fate made me grit my teeth that it had not descended a hundred pages sooner, the lives of the residents of Little Hintock inspired pity, hope and interest, to the very end.
I also found the character of Dr. Edred Fitzpiers fascinating. He's a scientist as well as a surgeon, but that's his problem: he spends too much time dealing with "useless" abstract information, unlike the pseudo-hero of the novel, a naturalist named Giles. But his need to experiment and find knowledge for knowledge's sake doesn't just condemn him professionally, it also bleeds over into his personal life and condemns him there. I feel like there's some discomfort with the emerging figure of the scientist being expressed here. It probably doesn't help that he keeps on trying to buy people's brains, though. Not just a scientist, but a mad scientist!
In truth I've been very pleasantly surprised - so much so that I've already picked up a couple of his other novels for future reading.
It seems unfortunate that Hardy was driven to give up writing novels following concerted criticism of the perceived pessimism and "immorality" of his work. It's difficult to see how a perceptive writer could be anything other than pessismistic when faced with the reality that life was hard and uncertain for almost all of the poor of 19th century England.
While much has been written about the horrors of the industrial cities for the urban poor, much less has been said or written about life for the rural poor. It's important to remember that the decades during which Hardy was writing his novels were dominated by one of the worst agricultural depressions England has ever seen. Stretching from around 1870 to the end of the century, it saw a huge rise in unemployment in rural areas, driving off the land a generation whose parents had managed to hang on in the face of earlier waves of migration to the cities during rapid industrialisation or despite the attractions of emigration. For those who remained, agricultural wages, never high at the best of times, fell to near-starvation levels, and destitution and the workhouse or emigration became the only options for many.
The Victorians, as we do today, tended to romanticise rural life. Most artists depicted happy and well-fed peasants, scenic cottages and the supposed continuing pleasures of Merrie England in images intended to brighten up the homes of the rising and prosperous middle class and edify their children. The reality for many was, however, captured by a smaller number of artists who depicted groups of the ragged and destitute resting by the sides of roads, being turned away from rural workhouses or attempting to beg food at the doors of cottages which were themselves little more than crumbling hovels; or small children shivering under scant shelters while employed as bird-scarers in the winter fields. For the rest it was a life of long hours of gruelling physical work, mostly outdoor in all weathers, of uncertain and insecure employment. This reality was one the middle classes were not to be enlightened or reminded about in case they found it distressing.
"Immorality", too, was not lacking in Victorian England. According to social historians the incidence of illegitimate births ranged from 5% to 15% or thereabouts depending on when and where the figures are drawn from, and almost anyone who has investigated their own family history will have discovered rather more illegitimacy than they might have expected.
The problem, I imagine, lies with the expectations, values and judgements of the largely urban and surburban middle class reviewers and critics of Hardy's novels. At what precisely, though, were they taking umbridge? At the educated and well-born Fitzpiers's all too easy seduction of the all too willing village girl Suke Damson, who presumably fancied a bit of not-so-rough for a change? At his willingness to take advantage of the power imbalance between them or at her naive imagining that she might get more than a few quick fumbles out of it? At his adulterous relationship with the young widow Mrs Charmond? Or at her admission that she has flirted with and encouraged her many lovers and admirers - or indeed at her eventual sexual surrender to Fitzpiers? Or was it all of these?
Whatever it was, it was clearly too much for the critics and the result was a loss to English fiction if it was a gain for English poetry.
At first I found this novel quite difficult. Having mostly been reading fairly contemporary books recently, it was quite tough getting reaccustomed with the sort of lengthy, ponderous sentences that are such a typical feature of nineteenth century writing. The pace is quite slow at first too, and whilst it never turns in to a rapid thriller, the dramatic tension does increase considerably in the final of the three volumes.
Hardy excels at depicting both the highs and lows of rural life in his time. As in the Madding Crowd, the more humble characters display the greatest ability to live moral lives, whereas their neighbours from slightly higher up the social ladder are more prone to go astray. My favourite character was the fairly marginal figure of Marty South, the pure and stoical young woman who cherishes an unrequited admiration for Giles Winterbourne, a simple man of modest means. I did not really warm to the other principle characters, the well-educated local beauty Grace Melbury, her father, and the doctor Fitzpiers, though I was nevertheless interested to see what fate Hardy had in store for them all.
Students of literature will enjoy decoding the allegorical references and observing how Hardy anticipates features of twentieth century novels. Students of both literature and social history will share amusement at the incredibly tame references to marriage and relationships that could only be added in later revisions.
Unlike some of Hardy's other heroines Grace Melbury is not some exotic piece of womanhood who clashes against her neighbours and family instead she is rather unremarkable, ordinary and quite shallow.Instead she becomes a symbol of the social differences between the rural inhabitants of Wessex gleaning a livelihood from the New Forest and the burgeoning educated middle classes. She is the daughter of a locally well respected timber merchant who is sent away to school but was never really accepted there due to he lowly upbringing however on her return home she finds that she is also dissatisfied with her role within her home community. Thus she becomes torn between the educated but fickle doctor Edred Fitzpiers and her childhood sweetheart,the kind hearted and thoroughly respectable Giles Winterborne. Encouraged by her father she takes the ill-judged decision to marry Edred Fitzpiers with tragic consequences for Giles Winterborne in particular.
The simple life of these country folk and their surroundings is beautifully written in typical Hardy style whilst the author deliberately avoids a happy twee ending. The minor characters are particularly well written. There is also certainly touches of rather humorous pathos and irony as well as a dig at the legal system of the time with its strict adherence to both social and religious norms. However,for me Hardy is in many respects just too subtle here and whilst the idea is sound I personally feel that he did not enlarge on these points enough.
Lovers of good period literature will enjoy this but it not the most enjoyable of his works that I've read.
In The Woodlanders, Grace's father decides to educate her, but then she is too good for everyone around her so she marries Giles, the city doctor who is working in their village. Everything falls apart and Grace and her father both regret her education and the loss of their idyllic life. Same theme as the other Hardy books I've read.
During her emotional development, Grace, I believe, finds physical and emotional comfort with her rival, Felice Charmond, in an unusual encounter which hints at a higher form of human affection than the 'conventional' heterosexual trysts elsewhere (notably Fitzpiers' seduction of the buxom Suke Damson). As they take shelter from the threatening forest, Grace is en-wrapped in the arms of one who needs her and trusts her implicitly. Does Hardy show Grace gaining more emotional fulfillment with those of her own sex? The possibilities are couched in the literary mores of the day but tantalisingly glimpsed all the same. This is a book which I believe challenges sexual conventions - where Hardy shows the hidden depths and complexities of human sexuality; where easy sexual labels are replaced by the 'sublimity...loftier quality of abstract humanism.'
I don't think Grace elicits the reader's sympathy in the way that Sue Bridehead does. The link between the two is the burgeoning conflict between their social status, their acquired education and the messy business of human sexuality. Grace certainly doesn't exude sex appeal and Giles, to his tragic cost, remains in love with the ideal of her girlhood. He cannot love this newly discovered flesh and blood although a forlorn encounter between the two sees him awaken to her sexually in a brief gesture that strikes against her recently gained superiority.
Grace, I feel, isn't even a very likable character but there is something tough and ineluctably modern in the woman she becomes - the de-fanging of her menfolk in different ways - the overbearing father cast adrift, the errant husband brought to heel and the romantic lover of her youth consigned to the grave. Underneath the coy exterior is a complex human being whom Hardy lets us glimpse but who cannot be boxed in any certainties.
The introduction by Patricia Ingham reveals most of the plot, and as the plot has that common Victorian failing of being more than a little contrived, I struggled with the text. I have enjoyed Hardy in the past, and I expect to go back to this book some time
100 pages read March 2015
Grace Melbury has been effectively engaged to Giles Winterborne for years. But Grace has been sent off to school for a better education, while Giles has stayed in the tiny
There are several other local characters tied up in this tangled story of love, betrayal, and infidelity, but these are the primary ones. One of the reasons I've loved Hardy's "big four" is the mood of the rural English countryside at the end of the 18th century. Little was devoted to the setting in The Woodlanders. Hardy dives almost instantly into the plot, and sticks with that almost enirely, leaving the setting to whatever the reader imagines. For me, this made it a weaker, less enjoyable novel.
This book is a classic Victorian novel. The pastoral setting is vividly described. It contains long descriptive sentences with somewhat archaic construction, requiring some re-reading along the way. It is focused on the characters, and their interactions and motivations. There is not much in the way of “action” especially the way “action” is emphasized in contemporary fiction. It is well-constructed and flows pleasantly. Hardy has something to say about happiness, such as finding it in a simple and honest life and being content with what we have. Hardy employs themes typical of his novels, such as marital fidelity, social class, the erosion of values that come with “progress,” and unsuitably matched pairs. He appears to take issue with the way women were typically treated and examines the double standards of the time. Hardy provides hints of upcoming events and outcomes through the use of snippets of quotes from prominent poets and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.
I enjoy reading about life in the 19th century from those that lived it. While we can always read historical fiction written in current times, it is particularly insightful to read it from a point of view of someone who never knew life in its modern form, where carriages and horses were modes of transportation, candles or lanterns used as sources of light, and goods were hand-made. It is apparent in reading this novel that even though technology and change have made the world into a much different place, human nature remains much the same. Recommended to those that enjoy Victorian-era literature.
This is considered one of the six masterpieces of Hardy's Wessex novels. The other five are The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, and The Return of the Native. This is the only one of those novels that I had not yet read (though to be fair other than Jude which I have read multiple times, I read them all many years ago, so perhaps they are due a reread). Of the group, this is my least favorite, though it is still a good read, and Hardy himself described it as his favorite of his novels.
Grace Melbury, daughter of a rural timber dealer from the village of Little Hintlock, was sent away to school by her father to be educated as a "lady." Before she left, she had a loose understanding with local apple farmer Giles Winterbourne. Now that she has returned, her father believes that marrying Giles would be beneath Grace and he wants her to marry someone of a higher social status. There is a new doctor in the area, Edred Fitzpiers, and this is who Grace ends up marrying. Although she suspects before the marriage that Edred is a philanderer and of low moral character (and knows that Giles is true-hearted and honest), Grace marries Edred anyway to please her father. The marriage rapidly deteriorates, and Edred becomes infatuated with a wealthy local widow who owns most of the land in the area, Felice Charmond. And always hanging in the background observing is another true-hearted villager, Marty South, who is secretly in love with Giles.
Hardy considered this one of his Novels of Character and Environment, and the message he is seeking to get across is loud and clear: Valuing social status over good character can only lead to tragedy. Unlike some of his other novels, we have characters dealing with the consequences of the wrong choices they have made in life, rather than characters being constantly downtrodden by fate. It's a novel about the conflicts wrought in society by class privilege and wealth, and Hardy comes down on the side of the honest and hard-working villagers rather than the gentry.
I mostly enjoyed this, although as I said it's not my favorite Hardy. One thing people have really liked about the book is its many lyrical descriptions of Nature, which I was not particularly interested in. But I'm glad I read it.
3 1/2 stars
As always, a terrific web of storytelling from Hardy. Although supposedly his personal favourite of all his novels, I preferred Tess and The Mayor of Casterbridge, but it was a great read nonetheless.
3.5 stars - probably quite a harsh rating, but I'm comparing this book with Hardy's other work rather than on a par with other novels.