HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H0077 9/28/00 "A PAIR OF BLUE EYES QUESTION" ====================================================== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: Blue Eyes' earlier name Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 11:13:51 +0100 I have read somewhere that before he called it 'A Pair of Blue Eyes', Thomas Hardy planned to entitle his novel 'Elfride of Lyonnesse' or something like that. Unfortunately, in my usual chaotic way, I have lost the reference. Can anyone help with what this earlier title was? Patrick Roper ========== Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 08:39:24 -0400 From: Robert Schweik Subject: Re: Blue Eyes' earlier name An earlier title of *A Pair of Blue Eyes* was "A Winning Tongue Had He." Bob Schweik Robert Schweik Distinguished Teaching Professor, Emeritus schweik@fredonia.edu ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: RE: Blue Eyes' earlier name Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 14:50:00 +0100 The response from Bob Schweik below to my original query raises still further points in my mind which others may be able to illuminate. First, I have now found the note I made which does indeed say that TH originally intended to call 'A Pair of Blue Eyes' 'Elfride of Lyonnesse'. Bob has added another candidate - 'A Winning Tongue Had He' - and it raises the question of how exactly Hardy did go about choosing his title(s). The one he finally settled for, 'A Pair of Blue Eyes' has, to my mind, that slightly eccentric spikiness that so often enlivens Hardy's poetry. Because of phrases like 'a pair of socks' or even 'a pair of kippers' it has a somewhat anti-romantic and even derogatory edge to it (though Elfride may have had wonderful orbs she was, patently, much more that 'a pair of blue eyes'). So far as the actual novel is concerned, Elfride's blue eyes are mentioned with particular significance several times, notably at the start of chapter 1: "One point in her, however, you did notice: that was her eyes. In them was seen a sublimation of all of her; it was not necessary to look further: there she lived." Later Hardy mentions her 'blue eyes' once when she is upset, once when she was affectionate and post mortem: "Knight and Stephen had advanced to where they once stood beside Elfride on the day all three had met there, before she had herself gone down into silence like her ancestors, and shut her bright blue eyes for ever." The whole of Elfride somehow seems to be personified by TH in her eyes. When fishing for compliments from Knight TH writes: "And now, like a reckless gambler, she hazarded her last and best treasure. Her eyes: they were her all now." Are there other instances in his writings, or in his life generally, when Hardy demonstrates such a particular interest in eyes being able to reveal so much, to be, to use the cliche, 'windows of the soul'? Patrick Roper ========== Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 11:50:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Meg Cronin Subject: RE: Blue Eyes' earlier name Dear Patrick and listmembers, I have never done the following--mention my publications in a list submission. But rather than review an argument I have made elsewhere--as if it were a fresh argument I am making now--I would prefer to say to Patrick that I (following a shortish but very solid line of other scholars) have discussed the extensive role of eyes in the novel. My argument concerns "eye charm" and uses Hardy's jewel imagery along with the eyes in an analysis of the power of looking, the actual eye, jewels that look or act like eyes,etc. in love relationships. All of this is linked to eye charm in "high" and "low" folklore; that is, classical images of Narcissus and Medusa (this is the stuff that earlier scholars did for me, in part) and rustic, low folksy superstitions. I also mention other Hardy novels, but only in a general sense, because the editors asked me to do so. The article, "'As a Diamond Kills an Opal'...." is in VIJ volume 26 (1998). As I continue to read, study, and, I hope, soon write about Hardy again, I eagerly seek any and all feedback. Thank you for tolerating what my mother would call a breach of etiquette. Then again, what does my mother know? Meg Meoghan Cronin St. Anselm College mgcronin@anselm.edu ========== Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 00:06:23 -0400 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: RE: Blue Eyes' earlier name Cheers! And here's to Daughterly Defiance -- ! All of your extensive research notwithstanding, Megan, which I greatly look forward to reading (and admire you for so bravely publicising), I did momentarily wonder whether TH gave "A Pair of Blue Eyes" that special and most particular title to differentiate his creative Elfride from his living Emma who had, in his recollection, the loveliest corn-coloured hair but certainly no vivid blue eyes (to speak of). Seymour-Smith is the one of the first to make the point of Emma's rather pale eyes. To take it one step further, it strikes me that the utterly infuriating confusion of Life-and-Art that so many critics tried to make with Hardy could well have driven him to make emphases (literary emphases) he might not otherwise have made: that is, Elfride is NOT Emma; A Pair of Blue Eyes is NOT, simplistically, autobiographical. This remains an untold thesis-- but for now I would only add that Hardy is certainly hot on "eye charm"(see below) and that I am dreadfully disappointed in my fellow women colleagues who have traced so much "Male Gaze" and so much "Appropriation of the Female Body" in their literary criticism but have touched so little on the eroticism of the male/female gaze and rapture of eye contact of which there is so much, in TH-- (in mirrors, especially)-- which is, for so many of the more shameless among us, absolute BLISS! (ah..sigh..) Rosemarie Morgan ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: Blue Eyes Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2000 17:14:59 +0100 It's a bit of a long shot, but I wonder if others have thought there might be a reflection of Robert Browning's 1842 poem 'Porphyria's Lover' in TH's 'A Pair of Blue Eyes'. I was particularly struck by the following lines in Browning and the physical resemblance of Porphyria to Elfride: .... and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around, And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain. As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids: again Laughed the blue eyes without a stain. There does seem to be some echo of this in TH's lines at the end of his novel: "Knight and Stephen had advanced to where they once stood beside Elfride on the day all three had met there, before she had herself gone down into silence like her ancestors, and shut her bright blue eyes for ever." Elfride died of illness rather than strangulation, but could it be argued that she underwent a metaphorical strangulation, that the men in her life 'killed' her when she was at her most desirable? There is, apropos of this, an interesting analysis of Browning's poem by Catherine Maxwell at: http://www.cswnet.com/~erin/rb6.htm7 Patrick Roper ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: RE: Blue Eyes'Earlier Name Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 12:03:31 +0100 Bob Schweik asked at the end of his posting: > But I confess that I don't remember seeing any reference to > an earlier title, "Elfride of Lyonesse." Where is the > evidence for that? I have now found the reference. It was in Martin Seymour-Smith (1994) _Hardy_ Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd., London. In talking about A Pair of Blue Eyes the author says (page 153): "Hardy disguised St Juliot as a vicarage, just as he protected the St Juliot people by rejecting 'Elfride of Lyonnesse' for an alternative title." Patrick Roper ========== From: "schweik" Subject: Re: RE: Blue Eyes'Earlier Name Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2000 13:20:28 GMT Thanks, Patrick! Part of the problem with Seymour-Smith's biography is that he does not provide information about his sources. Can anyone save me a more complicated inquiry? What would have been the source upon which Seymour-Smith based that claim? Bob Schweik ==========