(1) Hardy stands out among 19th century British novelists as being highly visual, spatial, tactile, cinematographic, and atmospheric. He charges landscapes with emotion and meaning.
(2) People are a kind of natural phenomenon for Hardy, and he can use them quite symbolically. The Return of the Native reads in part as an allegory of the seasons, with love stirring, blooming, and dying cyclically; and Eustacia Vye can be seen as a manifestation of the life-principle that drives that cycle.
(3) Hardy is a master of the big scene, and you can occasionally feel him moving his characters into place for one. The scenes that result are so great, you barely care about the overt manipulation.
(4) In Hardy's world, destinies can hang on enormities (the sale of the wife in The Mayor of Casterbridge) or seemingly minor actions (Eustacia Vye's failure to open a door to Clym Yeobright's mother in The Return of the Native).
(5) Anyone who thinks that the surveillance society is strictly a modern, urban phenomenon should read Hardy. A lesson that Hardy delivers regularly is that, even in depopulated landscapes where a rabbit would have trouble hiding, someone is always watching. Your business is never private. I saw what you did last summer.
Breakfast is being served
3 years ago
