HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H0015 2/14/00 "HARDY ON INDUSTRY AND URBANIZATION" ============================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 13:07:17 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Hardy on Industru and Urbanization I was sent the following request for information privately, but have been unable to come up with an answer off-hand. Can anyone help? Many Thanks, Betty Cortus X-Sender: lasarte@iosphere.net (Unverified) Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 14:36:24 -0500 To: hardycor@mailhost2.csusm.edu From: Gaston Lasarte Subject: info please Mime-Version: 1.0 Status: I am in need of information on Hardy's views on the rise of industry and urbanization, but am having very little luck finding anything. I have searched libraries and all over the web, with minimal success. If you could send me anything at all regarding the aformentioned topic it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, ========== Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 23:55:38 +0000 From: Birgit Plietzsch Subject: Re: Hardy on Industry and Urbanization With regard to Hardy's own views, Betty, I can't think of much either. Spontaneously I remember Hardy briefly pointing out his views on urbanisation in his contribution to Rider Haggard's _Rural England_ (1902), which is also reprinted in _Life and Work_ (pp. 335-7), and in "The Dorsetshire Labourer" writing "'[t]he tendency of the rural population towards large towns,' is really the tendency of water to flow uphill when forced." Birgit ========== Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 18:39:31 -0600 From: Bill Morgan Subject: Re: Hardy on Industry and Urbanization Douglas Brown's book, *Thomas Hardy*, argues that the Wessex novels, if read as a series, chronicle the destruction of rural England by the forces of modernization. And then there's Arnold Kettle's (in)famous reading of *Tess* as an allegory of the destruction of the English peasantry (He makes much of the reaping machine, as I recall). But neither of these critics is really writing *about* industrialization or urbanization in Hardy: both are about the loss of the opposite, the rural world. Bill Morgan ========== From: "Alan Shelston" Subject: Re: Hardy on Industry and Urbanization Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 08:59:52 -0000 The letters and journals would be the obvious place to start, but the relevant novel is A Laodecian surely. ========== Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 10:05:04 -0800 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Re: Hardy on Industry and Urbanization : Thanks to Birgit, Bill, and Alan for your responses to the query about urbanization and industrialization. It doesn't seem to have been a major theme with Hardy. However, I have passed your messages on to the inquirer and they should get him started. He is not a subscriber to this list, but I've encouraged him to join in case other responses come in. Thank You Again, Betty Cortus hardycor@mailhost2.csusm.edu ========== Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 13:47:13 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: Hardy on Industry and Urbanization Re Hardy and Industrialisation: There may be some starting points in, *Thomas Hardy: Towards a Materialist Criticism* by George Wotton (Barnes & Noble Books, 1985). This book is mainly concerned with class, labour relations and the industrial bourgeoisie, but I think you'll find the first three or four chapters well worth looking at. Further back in time, Edmund Blunden's *Thomas Hardy* (Macmillan, 1941) has a chapter on Hardy-and-the-city and not only has the virtue of offering a contemporary outlook on the subject but also (as far as I can recall) gives some pointers to specific Hardy poems treating with urbanisation. Hope this helps, Cheers, Rosemarie Morgan =========== From: "James Whitehead" Subject: Re: Hardy on Inddustry and Urbanization Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000 21:16:56 -0000 re. Gaston Lasarte's request for information. I concur with Alan Shelston that *A Laodicean* is important with regard to the subject of an encroaching urbanization. It was written, of course, while Hardy lay flat on his back in Tooting Bec suffering (at least in part) from the ill-effects of an unhealthy London environment! ... I would also suggest directing attention to *The Hand of Ethelberta* which depicts life in London in more detail than any other Hardy novel; in the portraits of Ethelberta's brothers Dan and Sol (and her family in general) we see rural workers adjusting to life in an urban environment. Peter Widdowson's *Hardy in History: A Study in Literary Sociology* is interesting with regard to the need to reconsider the popular idea of Hardy as an exclusively rural writer. It is important, I think, to see Hardy as a cosmopolitan writer capable of depicting the pitfalls and pleasures of life in both urban and rural environments. -James Whitehead ========== Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 11:40:10 +1100 From: David Cornelius Subject: Re Hardy on Industry and Urbanization Hardy expresses some of the views found in "The Dorsetshire Labourer" in "Tess". Merryn Williams, "TH and Rural England" is a very good book for background information on urbanisation in England. Regards, David Cornelius ****** David Cornelius 5 Caltowie Place Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia. dcorney@midcoast.com.au ==========