Travis Quattlebaum's channel firing essay

How About Hardy?

Thomas Hardy is most well known for his novels which include Tess of the d’Ubervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd, and The Return of the Native. He is widely recognized as one of the most influential and well known of all British authors, yet Hardy was completely left out of Foss’ poetry filled syllabus. Hardy is again disrespected in The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Volume 2B the Victorian Age, a collection of “canonical” works that only includes one of Hardy’s works, the short story “The Withered Arm.” Foss would greatly improve the education of all young minds by including a little taste of Hardy in the syllabus. Fitting phenomenally into the Madding Crowd’s Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen section of the syllabus, Hardy’s portrayal of the people of Wessex County goes more in-depth into gender roles than any poem can. Hardy specifically focuses on beauty and opposite sex relationships in order to critic the ways society viewed women in his time.

Hardy’s work, being a short story, allows for greater character development than a short 100 line poem could ever offer. His development of Rhoda Brook is particularly pivotal to the story in that it allows for Hardy to exemplify how the desire to be beautiful will ruin women. Rhoda, who has an illegitimate son with a nearby farmer, hears of her ex-lover becoming newly marries and instantly becomes jealous. Rhoda continuously heckles her son for information on the young wife, Gertrude, and hopes only for bad physical features. By focusing mainly on physical features as a way of comparing herself to the farmer’s wife, Rhoda is admitting to herself that love is based solely on beauty and very little more. Rhoda, being an “every woman” character, clearly represents every woman’s fear of growing old and unbeautiful and ultimately losing the love of her husband. Hardy seems to believe that by believing in marriage as a social adventure instead of a love first ordeal, leads to unhappiness. Hardy’s ideas, as expressed by our assigned readings, tend to be the general consensus for men and women of the Late Victorian Era. Thus, because Hardy’s work is a prime example of how beauty and the necessity of beauty to make a “good” marriage is not how marriage should work, it would fit perfectly into the Madding Crowd’s Victorian Ladies and Gentlemen section of the syllabus.

The cause of all the trouble in the work, the withered arm, belongs to a young lady who has recently married a farmer. The marriage, and relationship overall, between the farmer and young lady, serves as the prime example of how most relationships within the Victorian Era were. Containing a semi-wealthy husband a beautiful young maiden, the marriage is quickly ruined by the maiden’s inability to produce an heir for the farmer (1458). This inability to reproduce symbolizes the lack of true love within the relationship. However, farmer Lodge and Rhoda’s ability to make a son (the preferred heir to most men) is Hardy’s way of emphasizing the necessity of love in order to create a lasting relationship. Hardy again stresses that love is the most important thing in life when he writes the death of farmer Lodge and Rhoda’s son. Because farmer Lodge does not remain faithful to his love, his son is killed off as a form of punishment for his infidelity. Again, the belief that love should conquer all within a marriage is becoming more and more popular among the Victorian Age population and is expressed so clearly by Hardy.

Probably the most important factor going into choosing which work to include in the British Victorian Literature syllabus is the enjoyment acquired from reading the work. Hardy’s masterful control of the English language lends itself very much towards being an enjoyable read. His shifting from direct details to vague explanations keeps the reader guessing who Hardy is referring to. Often times he will refrain from using names and only use descriptors. By only describing the characters, Hardy allows for the reader to gather an image of the individual and then, and only then, offers a name to put with the “face.” Also, with the newly redeveloping adoration of vampires, werewolves and other spooky-scary supernatural figures, Hardy’s continuous supernatural references should be widely popular and interesting to many modern day readers, especially English majors who have been forced to read poem after poem. Lastly, because English majors are knowledgeable of Shakespeare, the allusions Hardy makes to the great Bard’s works, and the ability to understand them, serve as a major ego boost for anyone who is having a rough day.

Thomas Hardy, a highly respected and pivotal author of British heritage has been greatly wronged to not be included at least once within a British Victorian Literature class. By including him in the syllabus, Foss would benefit by adding some extra fun to a poetry filled end of the semester while still maintaining his goal of educating his students of the viewpoints on Ladies and Gentlemen during the Madding Crowd period of the British Victorian Era.