Thomas Hardy

[Deathraystare]

Next book club we have deided to read Thomas Hardy.

I am going to read Far from the Madding Crowd, one fried will read the Woodlanders and the other I cannot remember the title! I read both Tess and The Mayor of Casterbridge already. Anyone else reading him/did read him/will read him??

Obvs we will read each others. I will probably go down the audible route.

Apologies for typos. I can barely see hence not reading physical books!

I adore Hardy and have read all of them although not for a while.

I'm in a rereading mood at the moment so I might read one next.

There is a very good dramatisation of The Woodlanders on BBC Sounds app atm

I love Tess…. Studied it at A level. My teacher always said Hardy slapped on the pathetic fallacy with a trowel and he always had a chip on his shoulder about not having gone to university. Also the male gaze being a creepy - Alec sensuously feeding Tess strawberries, and the way Angel gazes at the milkmaids. I didn’t get her scorn then, but do with hindsight! But I still love Tess anyway - it’s very readable and an interesting and heartbreaking example of how feckless parents and their lack of protection mess up their children’s lives.

To complement your reading - the BBC Gemma Arterton dramatisation of Tess is fantastic, as well as the Carey Mulligan film of Far From the Madding Crowd.

I studied The Return of the Native at A level. I'm not sure how to explain how I felt about it, it was 40 years ago. I love his description of the traditions etc. All in all I remember it as a bit depressing! There was a film adaptation I can't remember being that impressed with it

I have more recently (within 15 years) read the Mayor of Casterbridge and the Woodlanders. Enjoyed them but can't really remember that much about the story - bit worrying that 🤔

I’m midway through the third instalment of The Dynasts. It’s a first reading and why on earth have I never encountered this text before? It’s fascinating; not at all the dry historical account I was expecting.

I read them all about 40 years ago and did Woodlanders at O level

I loved Hardy when I was a teen - I don't think I've read one since! My favourite was always Two on a Tower, but I'm pretty fond of Far From the Madding Crowd as well.

I would need to be in the right mood for Jude or Tess.

This thread has reminded me I've been meaning to read the Claire Tomalin Hardy biography.

I'll never forget reading Giles Winterborne in The Woodlanders, saying of his wife "“I shouldn't object to her going away from me if she would be happier by doing so.”

My mind was truly boggled and it was one of the first clues that I was trapped in an abusive marriage.

"I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all"

"I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all"

Big Hardy fan in my youth and 20s. Not read them since.

Love it! Oh gosh, the number of times I have gone to bed with that resolution, and failed to carry it out 🤡

So good I posted it twice

To be fair, it WAS that good.

Don't neglect the poetry either:

https://www.simple-poetry.com/poems/in-a-wood-95789063581

Love TH, did hi. For O level, and then read everything he wrote. Don't think I could stomach Jude again though. And I got so cross with Angel Clare.
and I love his poetry - the ruined maid cracks me up, but the Darkling thrush and the Christmas Eve animals brings me to tears.
he was a bit of a pig to his wife though.

We read a couple at school and I can't say I was too keen but I quite liked The Woodlanders and The Return of the Native when I listened to them recently. I think they were both in the free members library on Audible. He isn't really my cup of tea, too melodramatic and depressing, but the language is interesting and the outdoorsy settings remind me of many wonderful childhood holidays down in Wessex.

Jude the Obscure is my favourite. I like a bit of tragedy.

I love TH. His short story, The Withered Arm, is wonderful.

I have just listened to The hand lof Ethelberta. Anyone that needs cheering up should listen to it/read it. I have no idea if it reads the same as I was listening to an audible from the Beeb. Basically a number of men are after her hand and it becomes almost a farce. She has been travelling and gets to her Aunt's expecting peace and quiet and men keep turning up!

I preferred her to Bethsheba who needed slapping I think.

I studied FFTMC at uni and fell in love with it then. I need to get a new copy as my uni one is full of so much highlighter and little notes that it’s impossible to read it just for fun now. 🙈

But don't throw it away. You can't.

Oh definitely not. They would just sit on the shelf together like twins.

That's OK then.

I don't know whether I should admit to this but the only poem that readily comes to mind if you say the words 'Thomas Hardy', is the one about the ruined maid, but I do myself a disservice there because I have read 'The Oxen' lots of times, and

Christmas: 1924
"Peace upon earth!" was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison-gas.

and others.

Great storyteller. If you read him, note a couple of things that you find again and again in his novels. First, the way individual tragedy is dwarfed/trivialised by the landscape. D H Lawrence admired this in Hardy. Hardy’s characters move through ancient landscapes (think of Tess waking up at Stonehenge, or the ancient heath in Return of the Native). He has a strong sense of history, of deep time, of how trivial and ephemeral human life really is.

Second, note how helpless many of his characters are. They have very little control over the horrible things that happen to them. Tess is a helpless victim of human evil, but also of sheer bad luck. It’s the same in all the novels. Things happen to people, but it’s out of their control. Hardy was deeply influenced by Schopenhauer, and you see it everywhere. Schopenhauer believed that life was drive by a cosmic will that was blind and merciless. And Hardy’s characters are the victims of that will. You never get the sort of happy ending you find in Dickens. For Hardy, human life is a tragedy, full stop.