HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H0035 4/6/00 "THE END OF NOVEL WRITING FOR HARDY". ========================================================== --- Keith Wilson wrote: ...deserting it (novel-writing) in part because he had come close to being traumatised by what he saw -- accurately or not -- as vitriolic attacks on him, both publically and domestically, for being an atheist. > I had not realised the extent to which attacks on Hardy as an atheist led to his withdrawal from novel-writing. What were some of the other factors? Didn't he continue to give his fiction quite a lot of attention, ushering collected editions into print and so on? As far as I know there are no 'unfinished' novels; what about notebooks etc, or did he utterly leave off even thinking about new works of fiction? Not to digress too far from Hardy, but has anybody read Michael Wood's book about Vladimir Nabokov? In mid-life VN stopped writing books in Russian and switched to English, and made much of the sacrifice, saying that it was his tragedy to have been torn from his native language, etc. Wood questions the genuine-ness of this stance; after all he didn't have to give up anything, he was the top dog in Russian literary circles, okay it wasn't a great living, but the choice was his. It's intriguing to contemplate the mixed personal and professional motives of writers who make a big leap, linguistic or generic, and also the unconscious promptings. ========== Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 21:22:11 +0100 From: Ray Girvan Subject: Re: The end of novel-writing The one usually cited is the furore surrounding Jude the Obscure. RG Cox's "Thomas Hardy: The Critical Heritage" quotes many of the Jude reviews, and they attack various aspects of style and content: "a titanically bad book"; "a deplorable falling-off ... a treatise on sexual pathology"; "Jude the Obscene"; "Give us quickly another and cleaner book to take the bad taste out of our mouths"; "Nothing so coarsely indecent ... has ever been put in English print"; and an American reviewer saying she needed to open the windows for fresh air and find on her bookshelf novelists who hadn't trailed their talents in the dirt. I'm not sure if these are supposed to be the attacks "for being an atheist". They accuse the work of an immoral stance and of attacking institutions such as marriage, but I haven't so far found anything specifically accusing Hardy of atheism. Ray Girvan -- ray.girvan@zetnet.co.uk +++ Technical Author +++ Topsham, Devon, UK http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/rgirvan/ +++ The Apothecary's Drawer ========== Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2000 17:19:52 -0400 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: The end of novel-writing I think one of the most memorable critical attacks on *Jude*, certainly as far as Hardy himself was concerned who found it important enough to record it in the *Life* (to the extent of a full page), was that of the Bishop of Wakefield who wrote to the papers to say that he had thrown the novel into the fire. Hardy retaliates by saying that "if the bishop could have known him as he was, he would have found a man whose personal conduct, views of morality, and of the vital facts of religion, hardly differed from his own" (*Life* 178) Elsewhere he adds (though I can't recall where) that the book was burned only because the Bishop couldn't burn the author. Cheers, Rosemarie ========== From: Nelle360@aol.com Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 21:15:45 EDT Subject: Re: The end of novel-writing Somewhere I read that the reaction to "Jude the Obscure" was a huge factor. Ellen ========== From: Sarah Dangelantonio Subject: RE: The end of novel-writing Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 21:46:35 -0400 I was asked this question on my oral comps, I think it was Simon Gatrell who posed the question. I remember that I began my response (it's worth mentioning this was one of the last questions of a 1-hour grilling on all things Hardy and the last hour of a 3-hour grilling) by stating that despite what many others thought, I was of a mind that he was financially in a very comfortable position and was ready to return to his first love, poetry. While my response generated some smiles, even Simon agreed that there was merit to the idea. So I thought I'd once again throw it into the mix, and maybe generate a smile or two? Sarah Sarah Bearinger Dangelantonio Associate Professor of English Coordinator, Individual and Community Integrated Curriculum Coordinator, College Writing, WAC, Writing Center Franklin Pierce College Rindge, NH 603-899-4295 ========== From: "James Whitehead" Subject: the end of novel-writing Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 11:04:14 +0100 I think that there probably were - as ever - a number of factors involved: 1. Hisreaction to the hostile criticism of Jude the Obscure -as represented in the reviews and in the action of Bishop Walsham How of Wakefield. 2. His awareness of ageneral lack of widespread interest in The Well-Beloved, a more experimental novel than Jude in many ways (he revised thisnovel for its volume publication in 1897, i.e. during and after the furore over Jude). Martin Seymour-Smith: "Hisfiction career thus ended with a sardonic whimper, rather than with the big bang of Jude". See Hardy (London: Bloomsbury, 1994) p.594. 3. His disagreement with his first wife, Emma, over the direction in which his fiction was tending - she would soon be distributing anti-Catholic pamphlets in Dorchester and writing bizarre letters tothe press on the subjects of religion and education, signed "Mrs Thomas Hardy". See Martin Seymour-Smith's biography, Hardy, Ch. 25. 4. His desire, as expressed in the Life, to return to his first love, poetry. 5. His financial security - achieved through writing fiction - leaving him in the fortunate position to write whatsoever he pleased. It should be noted, however, that he continued to writeshorter fictionfor a number of years, as published in thecollection of short stories,A Changed Man and Other Tales (1913) - James Whitehead ----------------------------- Dr J.S. Whitehead Beecholme, New Road, Rotherfield, East Sussex TN6 3JR E-mail: jamesswhitehead@hotmail.com ========== From: Martin Ray Subject: Re: the end of novel-writing Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 12:10:39 -0400 (EDT) > It should be noted, however, that he continued to write shorter fiction for a number of years, as published in the collection of short stories, A Changed Man and Other Tales (1913) > > This is slightly misleading. Only five of the twelve stories in *A Changed Man* were written after Jude, and they were all completed by 1900 (he did not go on writing stories until 1913, as the date of the Wessex edition seems to imply here). All five of these stories were written to fulfil pre-Jude promises to various periodicals. The fact that it took him five years to complete the five stories suggests the difficulty he had with prose at this time in contrast to the facility with which the poetry was now being written. On the general issue of Jude and the end of fiction: all of the reasons which have been mentioned are of course contributory factors, to a greater or lesser degree, but some of them posit a wonderfully disingenuous Hardy who needs to be uncovered. For instance, the critical reaction to Jude was obviously important, but what does this tell us about Hardy? He writes a novel in which he takes a machine gun to every major Victorian institution and then professes himself surprised when he gets such a hostile reception! 'Gosh, who'd have thought it?' Well, *Hardy* thought it, for one. He knew exactly how they would respond, and, indeed, one might say that he wrote the novel in order to get that response. It gives him the perfect excuse to abandon prose, while at the same time gaining the satisfaction of having the last word. It also helps him to square things with Emma: if he stops writing novels, then there will be no more 'milch-cows', as he once described Tess, to keep her in her pink ribbons, but at least the pious wife can be placated by the assurance that there will be no more obscene work. The more outrageous the novel, indeed, the more appeased the missus, in the long run. Anyway, just some end-of-week reflections... Martin Dr Martin Ray Department of English University of Aberdeen Aberdeen Scotland, UK m.ray@abdn.ac.uk ========== Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2000 09:53:36 -0300 From: Richard Nemesvari Organization: St. Francis Xavier University Subject: Re: the end of novel-writing I would like to support and expand somewhat upon Martin's comment below about Hardy's disingenuousness. Hardy's focus on the negative reviews of *Jude,* many of which were in fact scurrilous and abusive, tends to elide the reviews which supported the novel. Edmund Gosse, for example, in *Cosmopolis,* delivers a measured and positive evaluation of the work. D. F. Hannigan in the *Westminister Review* declared "*Jude the Obscure* is the best English novel which has appeared since *Tess of the D'Urbervilles," and further asserts "I would class [Hardy] with Fielding, Balzac, Flaubert, Turgenev, George Eliot and Dostoievsky....The mosquito-like criticism of the day need not trouble a novelist who has already won fame. He is the greatest living writer of fiction." That's a pretty ringing endorsement. And finally, an unsigned commentary in the *Saturday Review* begins "It is doubtful, considering not only the greatness of the work but also the greatness of the author's reputation, whether for many years any book has received quite so foolish a reception as has been accorded the last and most splendid of all the books that Mr Hardy has given the world." In other words, Hardy had his staunch defenders as well as his severe detractors, and that's something to keep in mind. Richard Nemesvari Department of English St. Francis Xavier University ========== From: Martin Ray Subject: Re: the end of novel-writing Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 13:57:50 -0400 (EDT) Just to second Richard's comments, here's a brief snippet from my entry on critical reception in Norman Page's Oxford Reader's Companion (a copy of which arrived here this week, so contributors elsewhere can expect theirs shortly): "The ferocious and 'tabloid' attack on Jude shocked Hardy, who, astonishingly, does not appear to have foreseen it, and he was unprepared for reviews titled 'Jude the Obscene' and 'Hardy the Degenerate' (a topical adjective in the year of Oscar Wilde's trial). The timing of Jude's publication meant that it was wrongly understood to be a 'marriage question' novel, for which there had recently been a vogue, but there were more predictable charges against the 'grimy' aspects of the novel, such as the pig-killing scene and the throwing of the pizzle, while the principal characters were inevitably described as 'revolting' and 'coarsely indecent'. Of course, there were some sensible and highly appreciative reviews, and Hardy himself noted that it had been received with 'about equal voices for & against' (Letters, i, 103), but it is understandable that the sensational clamour should have made a more lasting impression on an acutely sensitive Hardy. He appreciated that sections of the press were insincere and commercially motivated in their outrage, and he acknowledged that he had upset those readers who had wanted 'something comfortable, resigned and conforming' (Letters, vii, 128), but he retained sufficient irony to observe that 'the only people who faint & blush over it are fast men at clubs' (Letters, ii, 100)". Martin Dr Martin Ray Department of English University of Aberdeen Aberdeen Scotland, UK m.ray@abdn.ac.uk ========== Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 09:45:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Keith Wilson Subject: end of novels I think Martin and Richard are bang on in their recent comments. Despite his disingenuousness, Hardy couldn't have anticipated the degree of vitriol in, and the sheer expansiveness of, the negative reactions that he knew he would provoke in some circles. And the reviews specifically of _Jude_ took their place among, and perhaps helped generate, some hostile general assessments of Hardy's work that appeared around the same time. The following, for example, is from Thomas G. Selby's _The Theology of Modern Fiction,_ the (presumably somewhat expanded; it's 192 pages) text of the 26th Fernley Lecture delivered in Liverpool in July 1896, not long after the publication of _Jude._ There are five chapters (on George Eliot, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Hardy, George McDonald, and Mark Rutherford), and an introduction that indicates the shape of things to come with a scorching attack on recent writers whose "fiction teems with painful and repulsive illustrations of the doctrine of human depravity. . . . The only remedy offered by these fond delineators of the impure is that we must reconcile ourselves to the sty, and by some process of metaphysical idealism believe that it is a palace of enchantment . . . . It is perhaps sufficiently obvious that such writers magnify the symptoms whilst they belittle the antidotes, and that these morbid and, in some cases, wicked exaggerations are a passing phase of the pessimism of the decade" (4-5). Not surprisingly, Hardy has a starring role among these literary dissolutes, and Selby's 40+ page evisceration of him proceeds from the assumption that "This gifted man has made his home in the slime-pits of Siddim" (89), through the claim that "the conclusion to which such views must lead is either rigid despair or devil-worship" (110), to arrive (after coloufully impassioned summaries of some of the bleaker moments in TH's plots) at the judgement that "He sounds the muffled knell of all progress and social redemption" (129). Perhaps not altogether surprisingly under the circumstances, Selby begins his next chapter (which tramps through the considerably more congenial territory of George MacDonald) with the opinion that "To pass from Wessex and its pits of night-soil to the sweetness of Caledonia and the kailyard, is like flitting from Purgatory to Paradise" (131). And it is perhaps worth mentioning that my 1897 edition of this redoubtable work indicates that it is already into its fourth thousand, so for the kind of book that it is, it didn't lack a fairly substantial audience for its fulminations. I suspect that, however provocative he knew he was being, Hardy was far from anticipating this kind of raking broadside. All the best, Keith ***** Keith Wilson Department of English, University of Ottawa 70 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5 Telephone/Voice-Mail: (613) 562 5770; Fax: (613) 562-5990 e-mail: kgwilson@aix1.uottawa.ca ========== Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2000 11:10:31 -0400 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: end of novels Keith writes that: > > "I suspect that, however provocative he knew he was being, Hardy >was far from anticipating this kind of raking broadside." ________ This has to be closer to the truth than simple "disingenuousness" takes into account. We are rarely able to predict the emotional outcome of our actions with absolute accuracy. In a cancelled passage in the *Life* (presumably deleted by Florence Hardy), Hardy writes: ". . . such distortion of truth bearing evidence, as Hardy used to say, 'of that absolute want of principle in a reviewer which gives one a start of fear as to a possible crime he may commit against one's person, such as a stab or a shot in a dark lane for righteousness' sake." We know that, in the face of hostile reviews, Hardy suffered deep depression and even suicidal feelings at the outset of his novel-writing career. And latterly, as the above citation indicates, these feelings verged on paranoia. Whether or not he could predict the level of hostility aimed at his work by critics, he most certainly took such criticism personally, as deeply wounding, as traumatic even. The compulsion to continue to write and to go on writing under this kind of duress bespeaks an intense drive which may be daunted but evidently not destroyed. That is until *Jude*. Given all the detailing we have had on this topic these past few days, and all of it relevant, the question remains, how much, at this point in his writing career, did his turn to poetry satisfy that intense drive to go on writing while also reducing the risks of vitriolic critical attacks--notably upon his morals? Hardy did say he felt far more secure writing in verse-- that subjects ineligible for the fiction market could be channelled into poetry without causing outrage. Thanks for all the good observations, Rosemarie ========== Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 16:35:46 +0100 From: Ray Girvan Subject: Re: end of novels A modern comparison might be Rushdie and The Satanic Verses: another case where the author undoubtedly knew the work was provocative and expected a negative reaction - but didn't anticipate just how strong it would be. With Rushdie, I notice there have been very similar arguments to those about Hardy and Jude: the assertion that the author "must have known" the consequences, and hence was on some sort of self-destruct kick. Ray Girvan -- ray.girvan@zetnet.co.uk +++ Technical Author +++ Topsham, Devon, UK http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/rgirvan/ +++ The Apothecary's Drawer ========== From: Martin Ray Subject: Re: end of novels Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 17:16:48 -0400 (EDT) On Fri, 07 Apr 2000 11:10:31 -0400 Rosemarie Morgan wrote: > This has to be closer to the truth than simple "disingenuousness" takes > into account. But who said that H's disingenuousness was 'simple'? Quite the opposite, for it seems to me downright byzantine. Of course, one is always surprised by the depth of folly in the world, and H could not have anticipated the wilder excesses of the open season which was declared on his personality, but the fact remains that Jude is a red rag of a novel, deliberately designed to provoke howls of outrage. What did he expect? Bouquets and a knighthood? What he achieved was precisely what he wanted to achieve: a pretext that would allow him to stop writing novels. It also allowed him to blast away at his contemporaries and then plead ignorance and innocence when they blasted back. The coverage of all this in the Life is quite fascinating and almost schizophrenic in its ambivalent attitude to authorial responsibility. At one point we see him warning that the thing is getting out of his control, that 'novels will take shapes of their own as the work goes on, almost independently of the writer's wish' (in other words, it wasn't me, guv), yet later he proclaims complete control of what he had knowingly written, and that the 'evil complained of was what these "nice minds with nasty ideas" had read into his book, and not what he had put there'. This is called having one's cake and eating it. Notice that he then goes on to explain how he underwent 'the strange experience of beholding a sinister lay figure of himself constructed by them [the critics]': in other words, he becomes the lead player in his own skimmity ride, a psychologically defensive bifurcation of himself. Er, 'simple'? The compulsion to > continue to write and to go on writing under this kind of duress bespeaks an > intense drive which may be daunted but evidently not destroyed. That is > until *Jude*. H's compulsion to write is perhaps more complex than this. It is not merely that he went on writing under this kind of duress, but rather that he went on writing increasingly provocative novels under increasing duress. If it is merely a compulsion to write, then it is simply a masochistic one, in the circumstances. Rather, he is raising the stakes with each of the later novels, knowing full well how his critics will react, until he gets his enemies to show their hand, and their stupidity, at which point he can retire from the field with a satisfying contempt (no more novel writing for me). If he had a compulsion to write, then he also needed to engineer a compelling reason to stop writing: he could not simply put down his pen and take up his gold watch, but he needed to stop on his terms and with a crushing (and injured) air of finality. On second thoughts, perhaps good little Thomas Hardy could not possibly be so devious. And perhaps Florence wrote the Life after all. Cheers Martin Dr Martin Ray Department of English University of Aberdeen Aberdeen Scotland, UK m.ray@abdn.ac.uk ========== From: Tessness@aol.com Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 13:22:28 EDT Subject: Re: end of novels "...to the sweetness of Caledonia and the kailyard..." This brings up a briefly off-topic but burning question: WHAT is a kailyard? The word is in a folk song I know, and I've never had a clear idea of what it is. Thanks. :-) Tess Walker ========== Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 13:55:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Keith Wilson Subject: kailyard It's a Scottish vegetable garden/cabbage patch, but it gave its name to a late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century "school" of writers who used dialect, and set their sentimental works against modest rural/cottage/farm backgrounds. The best know are J. M. Barrie, S. R. Crockett (whose _The Stickit Minister_ is probably the best known of the lot), and 'Ian Maclaren.' George MacDonald is himself often associated with them as an influence. All the best, Keith **** Keith Wilson Department of English, University of Ottawa 70 Laurier Avenue East, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5 Telephone/Voice-Mail: (613) 562 5770; Fax: (613) 562-5990 e-mail: kgwilson@aix1.uottawa.ca ========== From: brown@jc.edu Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2000 15:38:30 -0500 Subject: Re: end of novels Similar observations have been made about the poetry. Here's Donald Davie writing in Thomas Hardy and British Poetry (Oxford UP, 1972): [W]ho can think that the innocuousness of "The Darkling Thrush" on New Year's Day 1900 was arrived at by luck, by being for instance luckily abstracted from a context which would have cast a guilty shadow on its innocence? A modern enthusiast for the poem, John Berryman, makes much of the irony latent in the last line: Some blessd Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware. (That is to say, the hope is an illusion.) But can we doubt that the reader of The Times in 1900, and the readers of the anthologies ever since and at present, read the lines quite differently, to mean: "I, the notorious pessimist and author of Jude the Obscure, humbly confess myself foolish beside the sanguine and resolute wisdom of this bird"? And--a nastier question--can we doubt that Hardy, either when he wrote the poem for this occasion or else when he mailed it to The Times to meet the occasion, counted upon the editor and the regular readers of the newspaper to take it in just that up-beat, unexpectionable way? Such are the dishonesties, or the opportunities for dishonesty, which attend a poet who, like Hardy, declares that his highest ambition is to place one or two poems in an anthology like The Golden Treasury. (38) Davie seems to have got some of the details wrong (James Gibson's edition of The Complete Poems has "The Darkling Thrush"--under its original title, "By the Century's Deathbed"--appearing in The Graphic on 29 December 1900; when the poem appeared under its present title in Poems of the Past and the Present, it bore the date 31 December 1900). At any rate, Davie must mean New Year's Day 1901, not 1900. But his analysis of Hardy's motives sounds right. Mark Brown ========== Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2000 16:52:37 -0400 From: Robert Schweik Subject: Re: end of novels A "kailyard" is a Scots term for cabbage patch. It came into currency in England in the 80's, particularly in connection with John Watson, S. Crockett,and J.M. Barrie who wrote a kind of novel of Scottish village life with much Scots dialect spoken. Bob Schweik schweik@ait.fredonia.edu ==========