Joe O'Malley's Channel Firing Essay

Fire In The Withered Arm, Thomas Hardy runs the gamut of religion, ladies, and gentlemen. The story would lead the reader to believe that there was no empire, other than small towns and villages scattered around Dorset; that the Church of England existed, that there were ladies, and women, men and gentlemen. If the story were written today, I think it would be classified as a mystery due to the story line, but considering the times during which it was written, it has depth, a degree of social comment. It begins with the none-too-subtle ostracism of Rhoda Brook, “The Lorn Milkmaid,” an unwed mother, a situation which makes her unacceptable even to her peers, the other milking women; they will speak of her, but not to her. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that her fall from grace, and the son she begat, were the result of behavior between herself and the owner of the farm, one Mr. Lodge, a gentleman of some means. His status as a gentleman precluded acknowledging his paternalism of a child out of wedlock, particularly in light of the fact that the mother was not a lady. When Farmer Lodge takes a wife, “a rosy-cheeked, tisty-tosy little body” (1448) (Dettmar), Gertrude by name, “A lady complete” (1451), as described by Rhoda’s illegitimate son of about twelve years, religion appears in the form of the son seeing the wife at church. Rhoda grills the son on the wife’s qualities, and Rhoda’s interest in the wife’s hands invites comparison between a ladies’, delicate, and a common woman, rough and calloused. Unfortunately, the hands were gloved. Gertrude Lodge, as a lady, met and became familiar with Rhoda in the course of charitable work, as in delivering shoes for the young boy. The contact with Mrs. Farmer Lodge erupted in spiritualism, in the form of the occult, when Rhoda wakens from a realistic nightmare in which she does bodily harm to Gertrude: she seizes her arm and casts her to the floor. Sometime later, Gertrude confides to Rhoda that her arm was injured, relating the exact day and time it happened, which coincided with Rhoda’s nightmare. Her confidence to Rhoda includes the fact that her husband loved her less due to the detracting appearance of the withered arm. Oh my. What’s a lady to do? A trip to a mystic proved unfruitful, as did a plethora of creams, ointments, and salves. The years passed, the arm withered, and with it, the marriage “sank into prosiness, and worse.” (1458) Farmer Lodge told his wife, “You want somebody to cheer you” (1458), and mentioned thinking “of adopting a boy; but he is too old now. And he is gone away I know not where” (1458). Gertrude, wishing for some six years to revive her beauty and rekindle her marriage, decided on a second trip to the mystic, his supernatural powers having been rumored through the towns and villages; she travelled alone, met with him, and came away dreading what was to be done, but deciding she would do it. She would, somehow, in secret from everyone, her husband included, travel to a distant jail, where she would place her withered arm on the neck of a just-hung man of eighteen; he was hung for being present at a rick burning. She screamed when her “curst arm” (1465) touched the corpse’s neck; another woman screamed, and Gertrude turned to find her husband, with Rhoda, come to claim the body of their son. Gertrude died three days later, probably of shock, Farmer Lodge took two years to wither and die, and Rhoda eventually returned to milking. Hardy, himself a product of Dorset, told of his father’s story about watching a young boy hung for nothing more than watching a hay rick burn. Victorian gentlemen, men of the moneyed class, had iron-fisted control over all the members of the laboring class, and they brooked no interference from their own ladies. A Victorian gentleman would be disgraced if he openly admitted paternalism of an illegitimate child. He would even less admit to fathering a child born of a common woman. In a marriage between a gentleman and a lady, the lady would, without a doubt, bow to the wishes of her husband. Running parallel to the Church of England there existed, particularly among the uneducated laboring class, a tendency to believe in spiritualism, the occult, and sorcery. Hardy never mentions that Gertrude might have sought help from the church, but he, Hardy, sure gave her free rein to seek a cure through a mystic or conjurer. Finally, it is safe to assume that, had the young boy of the rick fire been acknowledged by the gentleman Farmer Lodge as his son, the boy would not have gone away, would not have been present at the fire, and probably would not have been hanged for such a minor offense.

(The word count according to Office, up to the final word ‘offense’ above, is 828. Subtracting class info drops the count to about 800 words.) "I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help on this work." Joseph P. O’Malley Works Cited Dettmar, David Damrosch and Kevin J. H. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Vol. 2B. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010.