HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H0024 3/23/00 "CLYM YEOBRIGHT'S BLINDNESS" ======================================================= From: Nelle360@aol.com> Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 21:14:38 EST Subject: Clem Yeobright's blindness Are there any theories about the cause of Clem Yeobright's blindness? Nelle ========== Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 16:29:34 +0200 From: sa Sundnes L¿vlie Subject: Re: (Clym's) blindness There is blindness in Far From the Madding Crowd, as well. Think of Boldwood not seeing/noticing Bathsheba at the Corn Exchange, and afterwards passing her on the road without so much as turning his head. After receiving her valentine he notices her, but he never really sees her in the sense of understanding her. He is blind to realities. sa Sundnes Bruheim sa Sundnes Bruheim Mellomb¿lgen 60, 1157 Oslo Tlf. 23 38 96 89 Pers.s¿k: 96 88 20 33 ========== Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 10:05:14 -0500 From: jgould@andover.edu (John Gould) Subject: Re: (Clym's) blindness A few years ago, I taught ROTN to a bright class of high school students, and one student -- whose mother was an opthamologist -- wrote a term paper on Clym's blindness. His point was that -- for all the symbolic value of that particular malady -- there were some very real eye diseases prevalent during that time, and they were exacerbated by reading in poor light. He even made some suggestions of what specific diseases might have afflicted Clym (though I can't now remember what they were). The nineteenth century has many stories of blindess acquired from eyestrain. I recall that, as a child, Charlotte Bronte did real damage to her eyes from reading and drawing miniature scenes from the stories she wrote with her siblings. In any case, my student's paper impressed on me that Hardy's choice of affliction for Clym was more natural and less contrived than I had earlier believed. John Gould ========== Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 12:55:12 -0500 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: (Clym's) blindness Following up on John's point about "contrivance" it may be worth noting that during the composition of The Return of the Native Hardy was reading and taking notes from *Insects at Home* by the naturalist/historian John George Wood (Hardy also owned Wood's *Common British Beetles* and *The Common Moths of England*). One of the concepts underlying Wood's investigations into the world of Nature and, in particular, its harshness, is the idea that herein lie deep philosophical implications for the life of man. That Wood may have shaped Hardy's own thinking in RN can be gleaned from the notes he took from *Insects at Home* -- one being the reference to the fact that "many successive generations of ants continue to use the same track they have once taken to. I have been shown ant-roads by old men who stated that they have been familiar with them from their earliest recollections." Readers may recall Mrs Yeobright's dying moments on the heath: "In front of her a colony of ants had established a thoroughfare across the way.... She remembered that this bustle of of ants had been in progress for years at the same spot -- doubtless those of the old times were the ancestors of these who walked there now." Hardy also made several pages of notes on (amongst other things) the parasitic nature of the Ichneumon fly, on the beetle, Claviger foveolatus, "which possesses neither eyes nor mouth, & is capable of supporting existence without food", on the endless toiling and moiling of insects on the face of the earth by day and by night (Wood had been studying them under a microscope). The shaping of Clym's sightless existence and his mindless toiling on the heath may, then, have been influenced by Hardy's reading of Wood at this time. We may also note that Clym is perceived by Hardy's narrator as a "Parasite" whereas in Eustacia's case, "there was a certain obscurity in Eustacia's beauty . . . In her winter dress . . . she was like a tiger-beetle, which, when observed in dull situations, seems to be of the quietest neutral colour, but under full illumination blazes with dazzling splendour." (Hardy's note is: "Beautiful beetle -- gold-green above, shining copper green below-- the common tiger-beetle, or sparkler) This may be a far cry from the original question: the cause of Clym's blindness (which several list-ers have already adequately explained), but it may perhaps throw light on aspects of his deterioration to an insect-like creature-- that is to say, lacking in human vision (in all senses of the word). Incidentally, crossing over to the "belief" debate currently on TTHA Forum there is also, inherently, a Darwinian contingency that Hardy is thinking about here. Later, he makes a note of it in the *Life* (346) that "the discovery of the law of evolution, which revealed that all organic creatures are of one family, shifted the centre of altruism from humanity to the whole conscious world collectively." This colours the portrayal of Clym's "parasitic" quality a little more sympathetically. Apologies for the length of this! Cheers, Rosemarie ========== From: "Alan Shelston" Subject: Re: Clym's blindness Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 09:31:37 +0100 While I'm on, I'm disappointed that there has been no response to the query about Clym's blindness - I was sorely tempted! Clym's self-absorption makes it appropriate if nothing else. But encroaching blindness was a threat that many Victorians were conscious of and is equally a very appropriate literary symbol - viz blind Bardo in Romola, Casaubon in Middlemarch, and Dorothea too is short-sighted. I don't think we need, or Victorian readers would have asked for, an explicit physical cause. Hardy knew about linds of blindness, though - remember his comment on Alec's mother, as Tess approaches her with the fowls. Two for the price of one. Alan S ========== Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 12:33:10 -0700 Subject: Re: (Clym's) blindness From: "Philip & Andrea Allingham" Indeed, Clym's blindness is probably directly related to all that reading he is doing to fit himself to be a rural schoolmaster, although when I taught *The Return of the Native* I felt a case could also be made for excessive eyestrain from working out of doors. As I recall, Milton went blind from reading and writing by candle light. ========== From: Tessness@aol.com Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 04:14:09 EST Subject: Re: (Clym's) blindness << His point was that -- for all the symbolic value of that particular malady -- there were some very real eye diseases prevalent during that time, and they were exacerbated by reading in poor light. >> I remember that Mac in _Eight Cousins_ (Louisa May Alcott) became nearly blind and had to wear shades over his eyes, supposedly from eyestrain of reading in poor light. Does this seem a "hysterical" malady or otherwise rather quaint to us because it's not an issue for us due to electric light...? I confess to enjoying reading Jane Eyre by candlelight... I did it to keep from disturbing my sleeping roommate in college, and kept it up because I found it enhanced the experience so much! Tess ==========