Works of Thomas Hardy discussion

Well, I much preferred this story of Barbara to that of Betty. Yet, there are some rather disturbing sentiments coming through regarding relationships and marriages.

My view is that Hardy really has some questions and strong views about marriages (and like Betty and Barbara Hardy also had two marriages, as we know). So, Im scouting for something deeper here. I would love to look into the relationship he had with his mother (as it is common psychology these days that our relationships with the opposite sex are most often a reflection of the relationship we had with our own opposite-sex parent.)

Do we marry for love? Or do we marry out of duty? Hardy's own marriages are quite complex arrangements also (he could have even written about his own situation - and maybe he has. Let me know the ND story if you can work out which one!) He did marry Emma when young only to have that marriage run its course and grow stale, and then marry Florence (after Emma's death) which appears to be more of a working partnership - yet we will never know the true intrigues of his marriages. If you've ever been to Emma's room at Max Gate - as I have - it is rather disturbing. Nothing more than a small room like a turret. Here she lived, prison-like, during the declining years of her marriage and health.

[Spoiler Alert!] This story is a cruel one. Cruel to Edmund, cruel to Lord Uplandstowers and then most cruel to Barbara as Uplandstower's actions impact on her. Then to pop out 11 children over 9 years rushed the story through to Barbara's death in Florence, of course where her first, and true love, also died (on the Continent as we assume). So the two lovers are joined in death, so to speak.

I think after reading this volume, I will have to get the academic study (book) of 'Hardy and his Women', and have a read of that to explore further Hardy's relationship to women. All of his stories appear to be a personal investigation into his psyche about women. As many writing tutors tell you, 'write what you know', 'write from your own experience'. If this is the case for Hardy then what a troubled man he was. Or, like Dickens, is he simply recording and reflecting on 19thC social norms of the day. It's hard to tell with this GND. Oh well, I read on and look forward to meeting Lady Caroline as told to me by the Rural Dean.

As an aside, the edition of the GND that I have has illustrations done by Patricia Ludlow. Does anyone else have illustrations in their copy?

For some reason, I feel I need to think of an appropriate proverb for Barbara eg Beauty is only skin deep, or Marry in haste, repent at leisure, or You don't know what you've got, until it's gone. They all apply to an extent to this story.
This is a more rewarding story with more well formed characters. The idea of idolising the sculpture in the secret cupboard is rather eccentric, but so is the act of defacing the sculpture. Uplandtowers is not a nice man and although I felt cross with Barbara for her reaction to poor, brave Edmund, she did have more than an adequate punishment! Stuck in a loveless marriage with constant pregnancies and lost children.
The section where Uplandtowers taunts Barbara with the statue in the bedroom and speaks to as if she is a baby is particularly disturbing from a 21st century perspective.

Maybe the need for a proverb is because these are like fairy tales and we want an Aesop lesson to learn. I do approach these stories with a more open mind than with contemporary Victorian tales, which may be why Hardy sets them in the 'long ago' 18th century when human behavior could differ.

I'm kind of enjoying them so far - the cupboard with the statue , the disfiguring of it to abuse his wife, the 10 of 11 kids in 8 years dying (you are too kind by a year, Alison). The macabre touches in this story are intriguing.

This story has a bit more of the good and evil for Hardy characters. Lord U is mean, but not so obviously at the beginning, and maybe not so bad overall as to deserve the weird life he gets - but close enough that he gets no sympathy. I think Barbara is naively good, but fairly shallow and not strong - it's all too much for her. Edmund is the most overall good of any Hardy character here, but he doesn't seem totally human - more like a Billy Budd.

So far, Hardy is presenting dames that are noble by title but are not very grand. Interesting portrayals. But the stories are more interesting than the Dames. As Martin points out, as these are tales told by a group of club men about long ago women, you can't expect much psychological insight into the women.

I myself found this story very chilling. If I'd read it as a child it would probably have given me nightmares. The horrific injuries of Edmond are not the result of war, and yet Hardy seems very prescient: just as Holst's Mars matches modern warfare before it had been unleashed on the world, Edmond is like one of the thousands who came back alive but disfigured from WW1. Barbara hardly knows him: they have been separated for several years, and apart from the physical change he has been mentally refined by European education. Her inability to accept him may seem weak but it is surely understandable.

Uplandtowers seems to me a monster of domestic cruelty and domination, treating Barbara in a way that might very well have driven her insane. I think it is worth looking at the first two paragraphs again when the story is over. They could be read as the description of a psychopath.

I think we are helped a bit in reading by the unrealistic features -- a certain fairy tale quality, as Brian says. They make it less painful. The statue may remind us of Shakespeare's Winter's Tale, or of the story of Pygmalion and Galatea, although nothing supernatural is involved. To deface such a thing, "the purest Carrara marble" (like Michaelangelo's Pieta), would have been to destroy something of great financial value.

The statue motif may seem unlikely but it is not impossible. So John Gibson sculpted this in Italy in the 1840s:

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1140/4...

shipped it back to England for the Great Exhibition of 1851, and it ended up in Norwich Museum. (I live in Norwich.) Perhaps he employed a young man as model. Hardy's story is in the 1780s (I think!), the time of the Romantic movement, when a sculpture might have been made in the same circumstances and ended up in the possession of a wealthy family.

Alison, I am intrigued by your illustrated GND. Did you come by it because both you and Ms Ludlow are illustrators? How wold you rate her illustrations? And could we bother you for the publisher and date?

To reciprocate, my edition is,

Thomas Hardy, A Group of Noble Dames, Macmillan and Co, London, 1917. The Wessex Novels, Volume XV of the "Macmillan Pocket Hardy".

There are four words in this story that well illustrate the puzzle I have with Hardy's disguised place names: how far is the reader encouraged to make the connection with a real Dorset map? Is it really just a framework for Hardy to use in creating his stories? The four words are "on his right hand" when we are told of Lord U's journey to Chene Manor:

". . . the sculptural repose of his profile against the vanishing daylight on his right hand . . ."

We are given the geography exactly. Melchester is Salisbury as everyone agrees. Other names are often close in form to the originals. So I can guess that Abbot's Cernel is Cerne Abbas, a place I once holidayed for a week. The "Great Western Highway" I guess is the A30 as it runs through Salisbury, and the new, macadamised road running to Warborne and Haverpool must be the A338 that runs south from Salisbury to Wimborne, and Poole, on the coast (although Wimborne is not exactly on the A338). Chene Manor has property around Warborne/Wimborne and so is further south than Lord U's place.

He travels in the evening, so the sun is in the west. And if the remains of daylight are to his right he must be travelling south. It is as if Hardy wants to give us a clue to help us understand his geography: the journey is south from Melchester/Salisbury towards the sea. The puzzle for me is why would I need to be told this. I mean, it would be the same story if he was travelling west would it not? And when I read of Tess's wanderings over the Wessex landscape, I did not then feel the need for any map, although presumably a map with a dotted line over it could be drawn.

Has anyone else wondered about this?

Martin wrote: "Alison, I am intrigued by your illustrated GND. Did you come by it because both you and Ms Ludlow are illustrators? How wold you rate her illustrations? And could we bother you for the publisher an..."

Apologies Martin for the delayed response. My edition belongs to an entire Hardy Set (including poetry) that I purchased off Ebay over 15 years ago. Alongside that I also purchased a book about Hardy's folklore and folk customs, and another set of two books which are a travelogue of Hardy's 'places' when driving through Dorchester. I used this last set when I travelled there two years ago and it was such fun to visit places where he'd either been or had used in the settings (even small walk trails and barrows!). So, my edition is by Heron Books in arrangement with Macmillan, 1970. And in immaculate edition.

Martin wrote: "Alison, I am intrigued by your illustrated GND. Did you come by it because both you and Ms Ludlow are illustrators? How wold you rate her illustrations? And could we bother you for the publisher an..."

Martin! A 1917 editon! How is it holding up??

Patricia Ludlow's illustrations are very competent. Soft graphite pencil illustrations with exceptional detail and shading of hair, clothing designs and textures. Illustrations of the time - 70's. We only get to see a partial (and rather buxom) view of Dame the Seventh. Apart from that, all illustrations are of the male characters, even the marble 'Mr Willowes' clothed by the devious Uplandtowers. The illustration of Uplandtowers is one of my favourites.

Which has me thinking that this volume is largely targeted toward a male audience. The male narrators, the illustrations of the male characters....??

Alison, very interesting. Macmillan, quite early on, was producing a uniform edition of Hardy that amounted to the "complete works", small, elegant books, but quite plain. (My 1917 volume is holding up fine, thanks.) Heron books worked with them to produce something more sumptuous. But how strange for P Ludlow not to have illustrated the ten "noble dames" with pictures of the dames!

Ah, Brian and Emlymom are kindle readers, Alison and I paper readers! I've put up a picture in the photos section,

https://www.goodreads.com/photo/group...

These are the prose works except for two which I have yet to find in the second hand bookshops (A Pair of Blue Eyes and A Changed Man and other tales.) The pile to left I've read; the much bigger one to the right I have to read before I die.

Martin wrote: "Ah, Brian and Emlymom are kindle readers, Alison and I paper readers!

Don't label. Currently I'm reading 2 paper and 2 Kindle's going, as the GND read is only one day per week.

I always try to be reading one book on a Kindle since it is lit and I can read it in darker places and in the car waiting while my wife shops. There are advantages to Kindle.

However, I also always have one to three paper books going, including all foreign language translations I read- Kindle ones can be poor quality. My Kindles are all free or $.99. I refuse to pay $13 for a Kindle and will instead buy the paper copy, something to hold, smell and look longingly at on the bookshelves shelves after I finish.

I often have paper copies of my Kindle reads. Victorians make for good cheap Kindles. The last 5 years, I have re-read Hardy's big 5 on Kindle, though I have hard copies from my first read, and all 12 of Trollope's Pallisers and Barsetshire series, even though I have hard copies from my first read 20 years ago. This helps with my desire to have at least one Kindle available to read.

My wife would laugh at me being called a Kindle reader as she gave it to me to stop my book collecting and is frustrated that I'm still buying more and more books. at least 2 to 3 paper books per month. I bought 2 new bookcases last month. Paper books are my precious.

If you must label, I'm book-bi.

Very sorry Brian . . .

Martin wrote: "Very sorry Brian, I did not mean to label. I was thinking rather who's reading what versions of GND.

Nothing to be sorry for, I just used your post as a springboard to have a little fun, at least for me. So I should say I'm sorry for making you feel sorry, but I actually am not. I'll just say happy reading, whether on Kindle, paper or both.
As to audible readers, that's NOT reading, that's listening! A different form of entertainment.

I'm definitely a purist and love the feel of paper. I do, however, have The Brothers Karamazov on my iPhone (iBooks) but not having enough text on the screen annoys me somewhat. I usually read that when seated in some waiting room surrounded by trashy magazines. Needless to say, it's an ongoing read and I can be quite put-out when my name is called and I have to switch off.

I have uploaded photos of my precious set as well as some of Patricia Ludlow's illustrations. In a kind of 'spoiler alert' fashion I have only posted those illustrations from the books that we have read so as not to destroy your imaginative experience. Let me just stand on my soapbox.....this is one of the detriments of children seeing movie characters and not reading books first - the development of the imagination. I read Tolkein in my teens (as we all did) and saw my characters so vividly. How disappointing it was to see the Hollywood version of my characters. Thankfully, my characters were far superior in development than anything on the screen (as I'm sure yours were too!!!) My 'Gollum' was nothing like the screen version. How unfortunate for many readers to be robbed of this indulgence if they see the movie before reading the book ....now Ill just step down off the box!

I remember hearing Sting (from the Police - aka Gordon Sumner) once say that books would never go out of print because one cannot read a laptop while bathing (well, this was before smart devices) so I'm sticking with him. Even though my husband reads his iPad in the bath, I don't think I'll be coming around to that rather bacchanalian behaviour!!

The photos are up now to view.

Alison wrote: "The photos are up now to view."

I will view as long as you don't mean photos of your husband reading his iPad in the bath.

Hahahaha...