HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H9976 11/30/99 "A PAIR OF BLUE EYES DISCUSSION" ========================================================= From: "Daniels, Charles" Subject: New Member/A Pair of Blue Eyes. Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 16:42:14 -0600 I have just join the Hardy list and have been looking for this list for some time. I am a Medical Records Administrator at a state mental Health hospital in Kerrville, Texas. I read many of Hardy's major novels in High School and am coming back to read him again; esp. the novels I have not read. There is also a High School English teacher that I know who believes that Hardy is a writer of the same stature as Shakespeare and has been pushing me to read. Well, I am reading "A Pair of Blue Eyes" [chapter XXVIII at the moment] and am discovering the joy of Hardy again. Charles Daniels charles.daniels@mhmr.state.tx.us ========== Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 08:58:08 -0500 From: Robert Schweik Subject: Welcome to Charles Daniels/ A Pair of Blue Eyes Dear Charles, Betty Cortus, who is Director of HARDY-L is temporarily out of the country, as is Rosemarie Morgan, President of the Thomas Hardy Association, but on behalf of them and of the other members, welcome to HARDY-L. It's been argued, by Michael Stieg if I remember correctly, that *A Pair of Blue Eyes* is a better, more mature novel than *Far from the Madding Crowd* because in its conclusion it presents the reader with a more ironic and less comfortingly optimistic view life. I wonder if, after you've finished it, you'd agree, and what other members of HARDY-L think of that proposition? Bob Schweik ========== From: WWKerrigan@aol.com Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 09:44:55 EST Subject: Re: Maturity/ A Pair of Blue Eyes It may be true as a matter of description that *A Pair of Blue Eyes* presents "a more ironic and less comfortingly optimistic view of life" than *Far from the Madding Crowd*. But when is becomes ought, and the description a judgment, the idea that more irony and less optimism mean "better, more mature" has to make one uneasy. Why should this be so? John Bayley prefers *The Woodlanders* to malignly tragic novels such as *The Major of Casterbridge* and *Jude the Obscure* because its heroine learns to accept her life as a sequence of small pleasures. Maybe that, in the end, is maturity. Hardy's work in general, as Gillian Beer has suggested, shows a division between crushing plots and a sense of pleasure taken in nature, work, folk rituals, music, dancing, drinking, etc. Hardy thought that we desire large satisfactions that life rarely provides, and are therefore rendered unhappy by the sheer excess of our expectations; but he also subscribed to Darwin's notion of "ordinary felicity"-- the notion that life's littler pleasures, if accepted as they come, balance off life's little (and even big) ironies. Bayley, rightly in my view, finds the full scope of Hardy's vision in *The Woodlanders*. Wally Kerrigan ========== From: "David Harris" Subject: Re: Welcome to Charles Daniels/ A Pair of Blue Eyes Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 13:07:07 -0500 Dear Dr. Schweik, Would you agree with Martin Seymour-Smith that *A Pair of Blue eyes* "is certainly much more than the mere 'rag-bag of information, ideas, descriptive vignettes, personal experiences' that Milgate pronounces it to be." Seymour-Smith goes on to say that "it is sharp and exact in its depiction of the literary hack Knight's sexual make-up, as it is in demonstrating how unloved, for herself, Elfride always is, even unto her premature death." Why does Milgate react so negatively to the story? I read the novel for the first time this summer and found it equally as engaging as *Far from the Madding Crowd.* Is there a case to be made for Rev. Swancourt's sort of doting paternal neglect of Elfride? If so, how does this neglect shape her character in the story? Thanks also for your article in the Cambridge Companion. I continue to find great joy in reading Hardy. David Harris ========== Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 15:33:44 -0400 From: Richard Nemesvari Organization: St. Francis Xavier University Subject: Re: Welcome to Charles Daniels/ A Pair of Blue Eyes Although the request below was addressed to Bob Schweik, I'd like to put in my two cents by advising David to be very careful about accepting "straight" anything Martin Seymour-Smith has to say about Michael Millgate. The vehemence of his rejection of practically everything Millgate has to say often leads to misrepresentations, as any number of reviewers of Seymour-Smith's biography of Hardy noted. Thus, for example, the quotation about *A Pair of Blue Eyes* which appears below, and which was taken from Millgate's *Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist,* doesn't do justice to his overall evaluation of the novel. He does not see it as one of Hardy's successes, but his analysis isn't as completely dismissive as the quotation makes it seem. Indeed, the points which Seymour-Smith goes on to make about the novel are ones which I might argue Millgate himself advances. The best thing to do would be to get hold of *Career,*read the entire chapter on PBE, and judge for yourself. Richard Nemesvari Department of English St. Francis Xavier University rnemesva@stfx.ca ========== Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 15:46:05 -0500 From: Robert Schweik Subject: Re: A Pair of Blue Eyes Unfortunately, Seymour-Smith was quoting only part of a sentence from Millgate's *Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist*, New York, Random House, 1971, p. 67. Actually, in a chapter of some 10 print pages, Michael Millgate had much to say about *A Pair of Blue Eyes* that was favorable, and his point about it being a "rag-bag" of sorts was by way of characterizing the odds and ends of materials Hardy imported into the story "under pressure of serialisation." He praises the "vivid specificity" of some of its descriptions, the "parallelism" of its structure, its "Hamlet motif," Hardy's "nicely done" characterization of Elfride and his handling of the Smith-Knight relationship. Altogether, his assessment of the novel is a balanced and judicious one, and concludes that although "it is not now possible to read the novel so sympathetically" as Victorians might have done, "it is at least possible to recognize the interest, the tragic potentalities, of Hardy's central subject." What I find striking about *A Pair of Blue Eyes* is how consistently Hardy incongruously juxtaposed elements of "tragic potential" with comic materials, so that the conclusion of the novel, which combines the sad revelation of Elfride's death with the comic jostling of Stephen and Knight, is consistent with a pattern of such juxtapositions on many different levels throughout the novel. I tried to trace that pattern in a study I did a couple of years ago: "'Life and Death Are Neighbors Nigh': Hardy's *A Pair of Blue Eyes* and the Uses of Incongruity" that appeared in *Philological Quarterly*, 76 (Winter 1997), pp. 87-100. That pattern, it seemed to me, was a major structural element in the novel and one that contributes to its distinctive tragi-comic tone. I guess I've always thought it one of Hardy's most underrated novels. As to the Rev. Swancourt/Elfride relationship question, I'd like to hear what others may think. Bob Robert Schweik Distinguished Teaching Professor, Emeritus State University of New York College at Fredonia Fredonia, NY 14063 E-mail: schweik@ait.fredonia.edu ========== From: "Daniels, Charles" Subject: Pair of Blue Eyes - conclusion Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1999 08:38:37 -0600 This was Hardy's first bestseller? I can see why. The book is a mixture of Dickens [the Smith Family and other members of that class], Austin [the heroine], Trollope [Knight], and Hardy himself. The plot is derivative of Trollope and has romance, suspense, adventure, [a real cliff-hanger!] . I wonder what people thought Elfie when she removed all her undergarments and then because of the rain her clothes "fit like a glove"? Even Gothic elements: How many times were people seen as "shadows" or as a mysterious figure that could not be seen? And there was a lot of things happening that were "strange coincidences" - like the finding of the lost ear-ring by Elfie and Knight. Now I wonder why the book before that was a "failure" {Desperate Remedies}. All in all, a very good read. Hardy is very good and creating the scene where the action occurs. Charles Daniels charles.daniels@mhmr.state.tx.us ==========