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Desperate Remedies; A Novel (novel) 1871

Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School (novel) 1872

A Pair of Blue Eyes: A Novel (novel) 1873

Far from the Madding Crowd (novel) 1874

The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters (novel) 1876

The Return of the Native (novel) 1878

The Trumpet-Major: A Tale (novel) 1880

A Laodicean: A Novel (novel) 1881

Two on a Tower: A Romance (novel) 1882

The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character (novel) 1886

The Woodlanders (novel) 1887

Wessex Tales: Strange, Lively, and Commonplace (novel) 1888

A Group of Noble Dames (novel) 1891

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (novel) 1892

Life's Little Ironies: A Set of Tales with Some Colloquial Sketches Entitled "A Few Crusted Characters" (novel) 1894

Jude the Obscure (novel) 1895

The Well-Beloved: A Sketch of a Temperament (novel) 1897

Wessex Poems and Other Verses, with Thirty Illustrations by the Author (novel) 1899

Poems of the Past and the Present (poetry) 1901

The Dynasts, Part First (novel) 1904

The Dynasts, Part Second (novel) 1906

The Dynasts, Part Third (novel) 1908

Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses (poetry) 1909

A Changed Man, The Waiting Supper, and Other Tales (short fiction) 1913

Satires of Circumstance: Lyrics and Reveries with Miscellaneous Pieces (short fiction) 1914

Selected Poems (poetry) 1916

Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (poetry) 1917

Collected Poems (poetry) 1919

Late Lyrics and Earlier with Many Other Verses (poetry) 1922

The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall (novel) 1923

Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (poetry) 1925

Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (poetry) 1928

Chosen Poems (poetry) 1929

Thomas Hardy's Personal Writings: Prefaces, Literary Opinions, Reminiscences [edited by Harold Orel] (biography) 1966

The Literary Notes of Thomas Hardy [edited by Lennart A. Björk] (nonfiction) 1974

The Complete Poems [edited by James Gibson] (poetry) 1976

The Personal Notebooks of Thomas Hardy [edited by Richard H. Taylor] (autobiography) 1978

The Variorum Edition of the Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy [edited by Gibson] (poetry) 1979

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Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy - Essay - eNotes.com

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Desperate Remedies; A Novel (novel) 1871 Under the Greenwood Tree: A Rural Painting of the Dutch School (novel) 1872 A Pair of Blue Eyes: A Novel (novel) 1873 Far from the Madding Crowd (novel) 1874 The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters (novel) 1876 The Return of the Native

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Petrie, Charles.  “Victorian Women Expected to Be Idle and Ignorant.”  Victorian England.  Ed.  Clarice Swisher.  San Diego:  Greenhaven Press, Inc., 2000.  178-87.

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Introduction
Under the rule of Queen Victoria, the place of the woman was mostly limited within the domestic level; this is due to the viewpoint that domesticity and motherhood was viewed as being adequate for the emotional fulfillment of the woman. This implied that women influence in the public sphere was limited (Shmoop Editorial Team Para. 8). The Victorian era is usually described as the domestic age, which was epitomized under the rule of Queen Victoria, which resulted to marital stability and the establishment of domestic virtue. In the light of these circumstances, a number of classics literatures idolized the feminism during this period, while others presented their own views relating to the roles of women beyond the domestic and motherhood limits. One of such literatures includes the play "The importance of being earnest" by Oscar Wilde, which is one of the most famous plays that debuted in London during 1895. The play served to indicate a modern understanding of the mercurial nature of names and identity, marriage, and the nature of relationships between men and women in the modern world. The dominance of women in the play indicates the Wilde's views towards feminism (Shmoop Editorial Team Para. 10). This paper analyses how the feminism of the Victorian Era relates to the play "The importance of being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde. The paper elaborates on the main feminists in the play such as Lady Blackwell, Gwendolen, Cecily and Miss Prism. The paper also discusses the issue between marriage and the importance of name and identity.

Among the most notable themes in the play is the issue of marriage, in the sense that whether marriage is considered as pleasurable or viewed as a restrictive social duty of the woman. In the wider perspective, people from the older generation are of the opinion that marriage is somewhat a means to an end, which is used in the maintaining of social position. If an individual wants to get married, one must submit to an interrogation, which may include stating one's name, rank and the serial number (David 108). The number that is of ultimate significance in this case is the level of income; this implies that is necessary to have a bank. It is also important to have a respectable and acceptable title and the corresponding parents to prove the title. The youngsters who are depicted as hot-blooded in the play are more interesting in love. This is one of the significant ironies in the play, which makes it satirical towards the feminism in the Victorian feminist. At the end of the play, there is no one who breaks the rules in the sense that they marry the exact kind of persons of their wishes. The difference in the valuation of marriage by the older generation and the new generation as depicted in the play is also an indicator of the irony in the play and serves as satire to the feminism in the Victorian society. This was not the case in the Victorian society due to the fact that marriage was viewed as a form of attaining of social status, which is not the case depicted in the play whereby the younger generation are marrying for the sake of love.

Gender roles depicted in the play can also be used in ascertaining its relationship with the feminism during the Victorian era. In the play, the question of the role of each gender lays emphasis on power. In relation to the Victorian society of the play, men have been depicted to have stronger influence compared to the women. This is because the men are in charge of making the political decisions within the households while women are involved in the domestic chores within the family set up and taking good care of the children. Men are usually valued basing on their intelligence and judgment; women on the other hand are valued basing on their attractiveness, beauty and chastity. In the play, Wilde poses a number of questions regarding to the roles of the genders in the society, this is evident by his placing of women such as Lady Bracknell in power positions and depicting irresponsibility and poor decision making by men such as Jack and Algernon. This denotes the satirical nature of the play in relation to the feminism of the Victorian era (David 104).
Main feminists in the play
Various characters in the play help in the development of the major themes of the play, especially in relation to Wilde's depiction of feminism in relation to the Victorian era. Lady Bracknell Alone is one of the feminist characters in the play, who Wilde uses to depict the variation in gender roles and the capacity of woman to function within the constraints imposed by domesticity. Every character in the play has a partner except for Lady Bracknell, who is used by Wilde to symbolize the Victorian ethic. This makes her the most overbearing and powerful personality in The Importance of Earnest. Lady Bracknell's demand for Jack to look for a good family played an integral role in setting the pace for the play. Her decisions are precise and always sticks to them, for instance she maintained her decision of no marriage. The society depicted in the play is somewhat closed and Lady Bracknell has given herself the responsibility of watching and judging the youngsters irrespective of the fun that they are having. Lady Bracknell is also depicted as symbol of the upper class in Britain, and she is involved in passing down the rules and traditions to younger generations. Lady Bracknell the judge can be argued to be a no non-sense woman, as evident when administering judgments. For instance, she tells Jack that he is not on his list of young men who are eligible. Lady Bracknell is also portrayed as the protector of the great and good associated with the Victorian society.

Another feminist character in the play by Oscar Wilde is Miss Prism, who is depicted as the heroine of the Victorian era. Miss Prism is given the role of an educator, which she holds seriously and dearly. Miss Prism is unmarried in a Victorian society, whereby marriage is taken seriously, she focuses on her job as an educator as her identity. Miss Prism job helps her in attaining some status in the society and makes use of flashy vocabulary to emphasize on her status on the society (David 104).

Another feminist character in the play that Wilde uses in comparison with the Victorian era is Cecily Cardew. Algernon is attracted to Cecily because her simplicity. She is not depicted as being intellectual as Gwendolen, as evident all her attempts to avoid being educated by Miss Prism. Cecily is also depicted as innocent and waits for the time that the Ernest will avail himself and propose to her. The determination and the wits of Cecily in entering the London society in the place of Algernon's wife depict the nature of feminism in the Victorian era. Her relationship with Algernon also denotes the nature of the relationship between men and woman; ironically, Algernon fell in love with the eccentric behavior and attitude of Cecily as the right girl for him. This is not the case for the Victorian society.

Gwendolen Fairfax is also another feminist character in the play that Wilde uses to depict the satirical nature of the play in relation to the feminism during the Victorian era. Gwen and Cecily have significant things in common such as the Ernest thing, which serves as the guiding principles for their lives. They view their Christian names as an insuperable barrier. In addition, the contrast with the Victorian tradition is evident by the fact Gwen is willing to do anything for whatever they want. Oscar uses the similarity between Gwen and Cecily to satirize the Victorian society that played an integral role in producing women with characteristics like theirs; something which is not derived from the individuals themselves.

In conclusion, it is arguably evident that Oscar Wilde makes uses of imagery to satirize the elements of the Victorian society. For instance, the imagery that is developed by the Jack and Algernon serves to indicate the deceit associated with the Victorian era. On a similar account, feminist characters such as Lady Bracknell symbolizes the greater good associated with the feminism of the Victorian society.
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Introduction Under the rule of Queen Victoria, the place of the woman was mostly limited within the domestic level; this is due to the viewpoint that domesticity and motherhood was viewed as being adequate for the emotional fulfillment of the woman. This implied that women influence in the public sphere was limited (Shmoop Editorial Team Para.

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My favourite moment in Far from the Madding Crowd is when Bathsheba Everdene is riding high along the lanes, both literally and figuratively, on top of a cart piled up with furniture. Gabriel Oak, who is in the fields, can see her above the hedge and she doesn't know that he is watching. When her waggoner runs back to pick up a lost tailboard, Bathsheba is left waiting for a moment. To pass the time, she pulls out a small looking glass and surveys herself attentively: "She did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a dimple into shape, or do one thing to signify that any such intention had been her motive in taking up the glass. She simply observed herself as a fair product of Nature in the feminine kind." The reader is then invited to imagine that her thoughts might be of "dramas in which men would play a part - vistas of probable triumphs".

This was written 100 years before second-wave feminism thought to coin the phrase "the male gaze", but what better illustration of the male gaze could there be? Oak, a 28-year-old bachelor whose mind is turning to marriage, clearly looks on Bathsheba in the lane (a scene of "peculiar vernal charm") as an erotic object. This is the first version of the male gaze. But also - the second version - Bathsheba looks at her own reflection through the eyes, we are told, of the men who may approve of her in the future. And - just to twist the screw one more time - she is roundly criticised for doing so: "Woman's prescriptive infirmity had stalked into the sunlight."

I remember feeling an incoherent embarrassment mixed with discomfort when I read this scene under the disapproving male gaze of my sixth form English teacher. I very much liked him, by the way. He was called Jim Cogan and he strode around the school with his gown flapping behind him like some kind of scholastic superhero. I think it was a wise act, giving me FFTMC to read - but still I squirmed - and was fascinated by it and didn't understand it. I was doing my A-levels at Westminster. This venerable public school, nestled into the precinct of Westminster Abbey, was - in those days (the 1980s) at any rate - a hotbed of febrile sexuality. The school had only recently started to accept a small number of girls and we were rare and exotic creatures among the libidinous adolescent boys in their tight black suits. To make things worse, the various houses were arranged around a small private courtyard, and this space became as much a showcase as Bathsheba's wagon. We sensed them sizing us up from their study windows. Lessons were similarly nerve-racking. Classes were small and we sat in the round, often 10 boys to two girls. And so the male gaze, or so it seemed, was on us at every moment.

No wonder I checked myself in mirrors all the time, but, unlike Bathsheba, it wasn't to admire myself, it was out of anxiety. I would try to hold my face in a way that made it look more like a face in a magazine, smooth, passive, appealing (chin down, eyes up - think Princess Diana). My "mirror face", my family called it. Oh yes, I knew it was vain, but how could I not care, when every pop song, magazine, film or TV programme was telling me that a woman is empowered by her beauty? I wanted some of that power. But the word vain comes from the Latin vanus, meaning empty, without substance. This is just what the fleeting sexual power of a young woman really is - empty and without substance. Reading FFTMC I felt a sense of foreboding. I was like Bathsheba on her wagon, riding for a fall and with no way to prevent it because I didn't fully understand what was happening.

I loved Bathsheba immediately. She was a relief from dutiful Dorothea, earnest Jane and prejudiced Elizabeth. Here was a heroine for me and my times. Bathsheba is brave, ambitious, independent, unruly, high spririted. She is the type to lie down on the back of her horse when cantering under low-hanging branches. She makes it clear that she could never think of herself as a man's property. She is full of determined energy and enjoys running the farm she has inherited. She speaks her mind and has no interest in getting married - although she admits she wouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding if she could do it without having a husband. (How much divorce might that kind of self-knowledge prevent today?) All in all, she begins the book suffering from "chronic good spirits" and is pleased with herself in the best possible way. "There was a bright air and manner about her now, by which she seemed to imply that the desirability of her existence could not be questioned; and this rather saucy assumption failed in being offensive because a beholder felt it to be, on the whole, true."

She has her faults, of course. The yokel, Henery Fray, thinks her "too pronounced in her objectives" and her suitor, Oak, is under no illusion about her vanity. But to begin with, Bathsheba is strong and pure, "proud of her position as a woman", Hardy tells us. She turns down two marriage proposals, one from the solid Oak and one from a stern and well-to-do neighbouring farmer called Boldwood, only to be ensnared by an impecunious young man who wears "three chevrons upon his sleeve". She is walking through her wood at night, when the handsome soldier's spur becomes entangled in the silk cord that trims her dress. In the darkness, on the narrow path, she thinks him a dowdy villager - so when he seizes her lantern and opens it, she is astonished to find that: "The man to whom she was hooked was brilliant in brass and scarlet. He was a soldier. His sudden appearance was to darkness what the sound of a trumpet is to silence."

This is the clarion call of sexuality - "love at first sight". And immediately the element of danger is clear and present: the reader already knows that Sergeant Troy is cruel and unreliable and has promised himself to the servant girl Fanny Robin.

Even my naive teenage self got the gist here. Troy was bad news - the trouble was, I thought him very appealing. He was certainly far, far better than artless Oak and boring Boldwood. I dreaded the thought of glorious Bathsheba ending up with either of those. Oak's attempt to seduce Bathsheba early on features the famous line: "Whenever you look up, there I shall be - and whenever I look up, there will be you." It was quite hard to imagine anything less sexy. As for Boldwood - "he had no light and careless touches in his constitution ... he was serious throughout". So no LOLs there, then.

Hardy's description of Troy, on the other hand, is a breathtaking insight into exactly the kind of man that excited me in those days, the "wherever I lay my hat" type, the boy-man who would never turn into his dad. "He was a man to whom memories were an incumbrance, and anticipations a superfluity. Simply feeling, considering, and caring for what was before his eyes, he was vulnerable only in the present. With him the past was yesterday; the future, tomorrow; never, the day after." (I don't think this kind of living in the moment is quite what Eckhart Tolle has in mind in The Power of Now.)

If Troy was around today he'd be an actor or a DJ. He is charisma incarnate. He takes Bathsheba into a grassy hollow and seduces her with his swordplay, leaving her "as if aflame to the very hollows of her feet". Afterwards, she is in agonies of longing for him. She even drives to Bath to lay siege to him - very wanton in those days. And, oh, how she is punished for following her instinct. And, oh, how I gunned for Troy despite all that was wrong with him - which makes the book a very strange read.

Troy abandons the wretched Fanny Robin for Bathsheba's comparative wealth, and by the time their impetuous marriage has gone bad (partly because his heart - what he has of one - is still Fanny's) the girl has died in the poorhouse. Bathsheba orders the coffin to be brought into her house for the night and, suspecting foul play, she prises up the coffin lid to see if her suspicions are justified. They are. "The light slanted down, distinctly enkindling the cold features of both mother and babe." Fanny has died in childbirth and there is now no doubt that Bathsheba has yoked herself to a monstrous narcissist.

I see now that this is Bathsheba standing over the death of her innocence and self-belief. Her instinctive feelings have led her terribly astray and she must acknowledge that she has lost control of them because, even now, the less Troy loves her, the more she loves him - despite everything he has done, despite the knowledge of who he is. She cares nothing for her farm any longer, or her ambition. Her life is not her own. Her thoughts are not her own. She is truly conquered - her word - and she knows it. If you have suffered unrequited love, you will know how this feels.

Bathsheba the career woman is lonely, desolate and lost to herself, while Fanny is a victim of her sex in a more conventional way. And the career woman can't help thinking that the dead girl has triumphed: "the one feat alone - that of dying - by which a mean condition could be resolved into a grand one, Fanny had achieved." If love is everything then Fanny has triumphed - that's the madness of romance. This is what romantic love will do for a woman, Hardy is saying. This is where sexual desire will lead you. Bathsheba is so terrified by her state of mind that she looks around "for some sort of refuge from herself".

I've had a few nights like that. The coffins I've prised open in the dark watches of the night may have been fanciful ones, but to feel that I had lost myself completely and that part of me had died was very painful. I despaired of ever having a successful relationship. How on earth, if you fancy the wrong people, do you reconcile burning desire with the mundane need for companionship? If only I had understood the lessons in FFTMC ... But asking me to believe that my "agonies" of youthful longing were a dangerous affliction - like Bathsheba's - rather than a flowering of true love was asking too much. How could something that feels so right be so wrong? And anyway, who wants to marry if you're going to end up like your parents? A few pages later Bathsheba, in one of her most gloriously Bathsheba-ish moments, tells her maid: "Liddy, if ever you marry - God forbid that you ever should! - you'll find yourself in a fearful situation; but mind this, don't you flinch. Stand your ground, and be cut to pieces. That's what I'm going to do." Troy's sword is now playing a very different role indeed.

Bathsheba's reprieve is unexpected. Troy runs down her estate and then disappears - presumed dead - only to reappear when Bathsheba looks as if she might marry the agonised Boldwood. The sight of his rival pushes Boldwood to madness and he shoots Troy dead, afterwards giving himself up at the local prison. The field is now left clear for the trusty Oak to spread his branches and invite Bathsheba to shelter under them.

To this extent, FFTMC has a classic "marriage plot". A misguided heroine overlooks or misunderstands sensible Mr Right, goes off with imprudent Mr Wrong, learns the error of her ways, and returns to settle safely. Even when this story is told the other way round - it's the man who has been with Miss Wrong and must be converted (think Jane Eyre or Rebecca) - the marriage plot is nearly always told from the woman's perspective; it served to protect inherited wealth, no doubt, and warned many a young heiress away from an unreliable husband. When the man is the protagonist, on the other hand, he is rarely shown to pass over the sexy beauty for the plain Jane. Quite the opposite. He is encouraged to aim high and win the girl who seems impossibly out of reach - as with Gabriel Oak in FFTMC.

But Hardy doesn't present Bathsheba as entering into a happy ever after. He is more concerned, I think, with Bathsheba's disillusionment than who she marries. The romping girl of two years ago, he tells us, is much reduced: "she never laughed readily now". Her eyes are miserable and she is heartbreakingly "bewildered by the prospect of having to rely on her own resources". After the death of Troy, Oak conducts the business of her farm and attends all the sales and fairs for her. In one sense, the book is a feminist tract. Bathsheba's lesson is hard-learned and there is a permanent loss. Such was the cost to a woman of the capitalist patriarchy.

Things are different these days. But not so different. Despite being married, I still laugh. But like Bathsheba, my journey wasn't easy. I suffered because of my independence and I struggled to reconcile sex and ambition. Luckily, it's no longer the case that unreliable men are much of a threat to one's property portfolio, but they do mean that intimacy and commitment are unlikely to be along any time soon. They're a good way to avoid all the difficult decisions that traditional domesticity will bring a woman. Perhaps that's why I picked wrong-uns in my 30s. The price I paid - until I was ready to stop paying it - was that part of my destiny remained unlived, so to speak, my potential babies unborn. This is what I now see in Fanny's coffin. I married at 40. I'd probably have more than one child if I'd been capable of settling down sooner.

Like Bathsheba, I learned the hard way to see the wonder of the Gabriel Oaks of this world. These days, when I read the novel, I delight in his constancy and his straightforwardness, and the way he defends the hayricks not once but twice (the 19th-century equivalent of putting up shelves). So his seduction skills aren't the best to begin with - but he learns. Now I find it sexy when he rides over to pierce the windy sheep and deflate them in the clover, his tools being quite as sharp as Troy's in reality and much more useful. There's been a chemical change in me; the kind of transformation that can't be wrought just by reading a book. In fact, my husband now jokes about my unromantic outlook and the way I hold forth, given half a chance, about how the only thing that really matters in a relationship is that both partners want to live in the same place and share the same cultural references and watch the same box sets. As Tim Minchin puts it: "If I didn't have you someone else would surely do." Which isn't to belittle what you do with that - what you build together. When Oak and Bathsheba do finally marry, Hardy tells us that camaraderie and "similarity of pursuit" will turn out to produce the only love worth having, a love that eventually makes romantic passion seem as "evanescent as steam".

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Picking the wrong men: Amy Jenkins on Thomas Hardy and love

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My favourite moment in Far from the Madding Crowd is when Bathsheba Everdene is riding high along the lanes, both literally and figuratively, on top of a cart piled up with furniture. Gabriel Oak, who is in the fields, can see her above the hedge and she doesn't know that he is watching.

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The Museum's LGBTQ Working Group unearths previously hidden or unknown LGBTQ histories in the collections and aims to facilitate understanding of LGBTQ identities and histories through research, events, discussion and debate.

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The Museum's LGBTQ Working Group unearths previously hidden or unknown LGBTQ histories in the collections and aims to facilitate understanding of LGBTQ identities and histories through research, events, discussion and debate.

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The most striking aspect of such a compilation of quotations from Hardy's work is their contradictory relation to each other, seemingly essentialist sentiments co-existing with an almost postmodern willingness to disrupt binary constructions of gender and sexuality.

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The story features eroticism and tragicality, macabre and violent details and you can experience a sense of real discomfort and distress as a reader,  which is not common while coping with romance.

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Thomas hardy- Gave up his work as an architect and became a novelist.

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�‘Its very title – a quotation from Gray’s “Elegy written in a Country Churchyard” – is an ironic literary joke. Gray idealises the “noiseless” and “sequestered” calm of country life, where “sober wishes never learned to stray”; Hardy disrupts the idyll, and not just by introducing the sound and fury of an extreme plot into the pastoral world. Like Braddon and Collins, he was out to subvert his readers’ complacency’ (Lucasta Miller)

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The title Far From the Madding Crowd suggests avoidance of the life of a city, modernized government, crowds and industry; in it, Hardy tries to fashion a portrait of what he saw as an endangered way of life and to create a snapshot for future generations. - INDUSTRIALISATION into the modern world - Modernisation Theory.

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His theory of 'chance and luck' in evolution.

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Elizabeth James traces the development of Thomas Hardy's fourth novel, from inspiration to post-publication revisions.

Far from the Madding Crowd marked a turning point in Thomas Hardy's career. It was the first of his novels to be written after he had decided to give up his work as an architect, the first to be written for a prestigious literary magazine closely supervised by a meticulous editor and, famously, the first to use the term 'Wessex' to identify the 'partly real, partly dream-country' setting in south west England. It was also his first commercial success. As Michael Millgate has demonstrated, it is 'unmistakably a major work', a novel of 'astonishing confidence', richness and vitality. Hardy himself came to recognise its special qualities, admitting in 1901 that it had 'a growing tendency to appear as the work of a youngish hand, though perhaps there is something in it which I could not have put there if I had been older'.

Map of Thomas Hardy's Wessex

The literary geographical term 'Wessex', which Hardy used as a setting for his novels, is first used in Far from the Madding Crowd (1874).

Usage terms: Public Domain

Origins and composition of the novel

In November 1872 Hardy was surprised and delighted to receive a letter from Leslie Stephen, editor of the Cornhill Magazine, inviting him to contribute a serial. Realising that this was an important opportunity, Hardy proposed a pastoral story to be called 'Far from the Madding Crowd', in which 'the chief characters would probably be a young woman-farmer, a shepherd, and a sergeant of cavalry'. Almost a year later, in September 1873, he submitted the first 10 or so chapters of the novel and arrangements were made to begin publication in the January issue of the magazine. From then until the following summer he secluded himself at Bockhampton, the Dorset village where he had been born and brought up and where his parents still lived. Here, he told Stephen, he could write 'within a walk of the district in which the incidents are supposed to occur', jotting down ideas on large leaves or pieces of wood or stone if he had no paper to hand, and neatly tailoring the monthly instalments to the seasons of the year. The final chapters were written 'at a gallop' in July, and the novel published in book form on 23 November 1874, shortly before the appearance of the last magazine instalment.

The Dorset Farm Labourer by Thomas Hardy

Hardy's settings and characters were drawn from observation - in this pamphlet he argues against the stereotyping of farm labourers, proposing that this amounts to a caricature.

Usage terms: Public Domain

Editorial influence

Far from the Madding Crowd began conventionally. The characters Hardy had outlined were familiar from popular fiction and melodrama; the lyrical opening chapters promised a traditional narrative on the pastoral theme which Stephen had requested, and city readers craved. As the novel progressed, however, it evolved into a more complex and challenging story, bringing with it unexpected and far-reaching editorial difficulties.

Stephen provided expert guidance throughout, from the division of chapters to the use of dialect. He took care to praise certain passages, such as the Great Barn chapter, but had no hesitation in recommending cuts. Some of these were necessary to reduce the material to the length of the magazine instalment; others - the conversation at the shearing supper, for example (ch. 23) - were intended to speed up the action. More significant were the cuts Stephen felt obliged to make out of 'excessive prudery'. Acutely aware of the religious and moral sensibilities of the Cornhill's highly respectable, upper middle-class subscribers, he altered the proofs to remove potentially offensive words or phrases. He advised Hardy to treat Troy's seduction of Fanny 'in a gingerly fashion', and instructed him to tone down the treatment of Fanny's death (ch. 43), eliminating all reference to the illegitimate baby.

This treatment gave Hardy a taste of the editorial censorship he would experience regularly in the future. Despite the damaging effect on his overall design, at this early stage in his career he was prepared to compromise. 'Perhaps I may have higher aims one day, and be a great stickler for the proper artistic balance of the completed work, but for the present circumstances lead me to wish merely to be considered a good hand at a serial'.

From manuscript to print

As he wrote, Hardy's original, simple outline developed into a carefully interwoven tale in which the lives of the principal characters are played out against the backdrop of a close-knit community and the wider natural world. The light-hearted, expansive tone of the opening chapters gradually sharpened and intensified; the stock figures with which he began became living individuals with human weaknesses and passions.

Hardy made many alterations in his manuscript as he went along - to the plot, to the language and imagery, and especially to his characters. Gabriel, whom we meet as a boyish, slightly bumbling, somewhat comic figure, becomes more of a hero, addressed as 'Mister Oak' by the villagers, and a worthier partner for Bathsheba; Troy, on the other hand, becomes less so. Dangerously attractive at first, he is dismissed abruptly only to reappear as a pantomime villain playing Dick Turpin, the popular hero of W. H. Ainsworth's Rookwood, a favourite book from Hardy's childhood. Both were gentrified - Oak by his progressively standardised speech, Troy through repeated references to his noble connections - to bring them into closer rivalry with Boldwood, the wealthy loner who is increasingly portrayed as a tormented victim. There are even attempts to make Bathsheba appear more ladylike, less assertive, in response to the hostility of contemporary critics.

Hardy's manuscript revisions have been discussed in detail by Rosemarie Morgan, Robert Schweik and Simon Gatrell.

Later revisions

Hardy continued to make revisions in later editions. The most significant were undertaken for the first collected edition of the Wessex Novels, published in 1895. By this time Wessex, mentioned for the first time in Chapter 50 of Far from the Madding Crowd, had been taken up and transformed into a tangible region. The topographical details were fine-tuned: place names made consistent across all the novels, distances and directions specified, and an explanatory Preface added. By now Hardy also felt able to restore some of the expurgated elements of the vigil over Fanny's coffin, and further emphasize Troy's illegitimate birth and higher social status.

In 1901 he again made extensive revisions for a sixpenny paperback edition: the proofs, with Hardy's manuscript corrections, are now in the British Library. Most important were two small changes made to the tense Christmas party scenes to suggest that Bathsheba strongly suspected Troy was still alive (ch. 52 and 53). This impression was strengthened in the 1902 Uniform Edition, and in the 1912 Wessex Edition, the title of the chapter describing Bathsheba's reaction to Troy's disappearance now changed from 'Doubts arise; doubts vanish' to 'Doubts arise; doubts linger' (ch. 48). In all these later editions Hardy continued to refine topographical details, adjust the use of dialect words, and make subtle changes to meaning or emphasis; even in the last years of his life he was still making notes for future revisions.

Footnotes

[1] Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: his career as a novelist (London: Macmillan, 1994), p. 79.

[2] Hardy to Frederick Harrison, 29 July 1901. The collected letters of Thomas Hardy, ed. by Richard L. Purdy and Michael Millgate, 8 vols (1978-2012), ii (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), p. 294.

[3] [F. E. Hardy] The Early Life of Thomas Hardy ([S.I.]: Macmillan, 1928), p. 125.

[5] Leslie Stephen to Hardy, 8 Jan., 17 Feb., 12 Mar., 15 April 1874. In Richard L. Purdy, Thomas Hardy, a bibliographical study (Oxford: Clarendon, 1954, repr. 1979), pp. 336-341.

[7] Rosemarie Morgan, Cancelled words: rediscovering Thomas Hardy (1992); Robert C. Schweik, 'Hardy's shifting narrative modes' in Far from the Madding Crowd, ed. by R. C. Schweik, Norton edition (1986); Simon Gattrell 'Hardy the creator: Far from the Madding Crowd', in Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Thomas Hardy, ed. by Dale Kramer (1979).

[8] Simon Gattrell, Hardy the Creator: a textual biography (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988) is a study of the textual history of Hardy's novels, including the Wessex Novels edition of Far from the Madding Crowd.

Written by Elizabeth James

Elizabeth James was formerly Head of British Collections, 1801-1914 at the British Library where she curated a number of exhibitions on literary themes. She has published on Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, 19th century popular literature, and the Victorian book trade, especially the publishing houses of George Routledge and Macmillan. She is currently working on an edition of Nicholas Nickleby.

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the making of far from the madding crowd

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Writing, publishing and revising Far From The Madding Crowd

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Elizabeth James traces the development of Thomas Hardy's fourth novel, from inspiration to post-publication revisions. Far from the Madding Crowd marked a turning point in Thomas Hardy's career.