Monthly Archives: September 2026

Rediscovering Thomas Hardy: A Book without Notes

This was the draft I meant to publish on Thoma Hardy. Enjoy!

Are you a reader of introductions, footnotes, glossaries, and chronologies? Do you take notes on index cards, or indeed remember what an index card is? Or do you read the book separately from the scholarly apparatus?

Mind you, for the last 25 years I’ve enjoyed reading the introductions of Penguin classics and Oxford World Classics. Penny Boumelha’s introduction to the Penguin edition of Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native is in itself a work of art.

Boumelha begins: “The Return of the Native is characteristic of many of Hardy’s novels in that at its core lies a story of love, courtship, and marriage. In this recurring central structure, one or more characters is faced with the erotic or marital choice between potential lovers which serves to foucs those issues of class mobility and social allegiance that always interact closely with sexuality and the emotions.”

On my last reading, I perused Boumelha’s introduction, but this time I chose to read an old hardcover edition with no book jacket or notes. And as I read The Return of the Native, with no scholarly apparatus, I experienced this book not only as my favorite Hardy, but as Hardy’s masterpiece. Well, one of them.

The critics often consider Jude the Obscure his masterpiece. If you’re in in the mood to read the gloomiest bildungsroman in literary history, this is for you. Jude, a working-class amateur classicist, struggles to teach himself Greek and Latin. He wants to go to an Oxford-like university , but the professors send ntes declining to meet with him. It’s clearly a class issue. And much later, in one of the most brutal scenes in literature, his gloomy young son hangs himself and his siblings. I recommend pausing at this point to pop a Tylenol or eat a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies.

The Return of the Native, a gorgeously written, fascinating novel, with a brilliantly symmetrical structure, is set on gloomy Egdon Heath. Bonfires abound. Beautiful, brooding Eustacia Vye pays her young admirer, Charley, to light a bonfire on Nov. 5 to signal a meeting with Wildeve, her illicit boyfriend. These two physically beautiful people seem well-suited but keep betraying each other with other people.

And at the center of two mismatched couples is Diggory Venn, the reddleman, who always knows what’s going on in the neighborhood. (Penguin footnote: “A reddleman is one who sells or deals in reddle, a form of red ochre dye once widely used by shepherds and farmers to mark and identify sheep.”) He’s my favoriite character because he uses his knowledge to protect pretty, sweet-natured Thomasin, with whom he is in love. She loves another.

I am fascinated by Eustacia, though she is not what I’d call a nice person. Venn the reddleman, asks her to keep away from Wildeve so he will marry Thomasin, whom Wildeve more or less jilted at the altar, claiming there was some mistake in the marriage license.

Eutstacia rages. “I have not injured her: he was mine before he was hers! He came back – because – he liked me best!”she said wildly.

Love is a dangerous, terrible force in The Return of the Native. You can literally die of love. Hardy certainly is gloomy.

But somehow the book is not gloomy. It is a romantic page-turner. Eustacia and Wildeve, who marry other people, represent chance and wrong choices, the wild Egdon Heath and implacable landscape. The blander pair, Thomasin and her cousin Clym, married respectively to Wildeve and Eustacia, have an intelligence that helps them endure the harsh heath.

Now I’m reading another book by Hardy, this time in a paperback with an introduction and notes. I may have a “naked book” of this one somewhere. If I tire of the footnotes, I’ll look for it.

Poets at Large: Mary McCarthy’s “The Groves of Academe”

Near the end of Mary McCarthy’s satire, The Groves of Academe, the squabbling English department at Jocelyn College sponsors a poetry conference. My reaction to poetry conferences is awe.

But Mary McCarthy is not awed; she explains the mechanics of the conference. The poets have attended so many (for a small fee) that they can predict the trajectory. They know that the president of the college will stand up at the last event and ask an intelligent but very long question.

One of the most charming moments is when Miss Mansell, wearing “a high- necked black heavy crepe blouse encrusted with with sequins and a long black crepe skirt” (an outfit that would suit any poet), announces she intends to speak about and recite Virgil. The faculty and students are both shocked.

McCarthy explains, “From the point of view of the students, the choice was not a happy one. The majority of the students present had never heard of the Mantuan; they supposed he was a modern poet whom their faculty had not yet caught up with…”

Those who know Virgil are equally upset. “A few scowling students who had not had the good fortune to be educated progressively moved restlessly in their seats, as though fighting being awakened from a dream tto their Latin teacher and the abhorrent learning by rote. There were stifled cries of ‘Let me out of here.”

This made me laugh because – full disclosure – I used to teach Latin. So did my husband. We loved being T.A.’s at the university, and in my case I was also a Visiting lecturer while my husband finished his thesis. I taught Virgil and two first-year Latin classes, and required my students to memorize the opening lines of the Aeneid. I knew from experience during a protracted illness that reciting Virgil (silently) is calming.

This is one of McCarthy’s best satires, and poets would doubtless enjoy it. And if you can’t wander off to a poetry conference, read this book instead.

Tears in the Woods

The Woodlanders is one of Thomas Hardy’s most brilliant novels. I did not, however. find this book till midlife when I was browsing at Goodreads. Yet I was introduced to Hardy years ago by Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, who was enticed by Eustacia Vye.

The Woodlanders has a different, less artificial, less Gothic atmosphere. Set in a tiny, wooded hamlet, inhabited by characters who make their living by aspects of forestry, it tells the story of the clash between classes, between lovers of different classes, and their relationships to the woods.

Marty South, a minor character, would make a more interesting heroine than the designated heroine, Grace. Marty supports her sick father by making “spars, such as are used by thatchers.” To eke out their living, she sells her hair to the barber. His customer, Mrs. Melbury, a rich widow, has nagged him to buy Marty’s hair for a wig.

And now Giles Winterborne will never love Marty, though there was never much hope.

Winterborne says, “Why, Marty – whatever has happened to your head? Lord, it has shrunk to nothing – it looks like an apple upon a gate-post.”

He is a good man but does not understand women. Ironically, later in the book, Mrs. Melbury is also responsible for Winterborne’s business woes. Winterborne alienates the newly-bewigged Mrs. Melbury by refusing to back up his cart, which is piled high with a load of wood. Haughty Mrs. Melbury never forgives. Again, it is class vs. class.

Unlike Marty, I have an abundance of hair, but I, too, recently burst into tears in the woods. Suddenly I became very sick. We had to thrash our way to a meadow where I could squat.

I had to wipe myself with Kleenex and dead leaves. My husband, who has camped off-trail, knows the outdoors and gathered most of this material.

I’m not a crier. Here’s why: I cried my eyes out as a young woman. But now in the woods, I cried.

My resolve: no more tears! No more crying! I’ve shed so many tears that there are few left. Far better to reread The Woodlanders when I’m feeling sad.

There are always reasons to cry in Thomas Hardy’s novels.