HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H0080 9/19/00 INTO OCT.00 "HUMANS AS BREEDING STOCK IN HARDY" ============================================================ Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 14:05:46 -0600 From: "Goldie Morgentaler" Organization: University of Lethbridge Subject: Breeding stock I need some help with a possibly impossible question: I was wondering if anyone could direct to examples in Hardy's fiction where human beings are referred to in terms that suggest animal breeding stock. I can give an example of what I am looking for from Dickens, who in Bleak House compares Lady Dedlock to a brood mare, or in Great Expectations has Jaggers referring to the poor as so much spawn. Is there anything similar in Hardy? Goldie Morgentaler Dept of English University of Lethbridge 4401 University Drive Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1K 3M4 Goldie.Morgentaler@uleth.ca ========== Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 17:01:06 -0700 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Breeding Stock Goldie, this is an anecdote from the life rather than from the fiction, but I nevertheless found it amusing. It appears in James Gibson's _Thomas Hardy: Interviews and Recollections_, Macmillan, 1999. Harold Macmillan once related the following favorite story of his about Hardy to Gibson: Apparently Macmillan had told this story frequently, "and the incidentals were often different but the substance remained the same." At a function in London "a woman had come up to Hardy while he was talking to Sir Frederick Macmillan (Harold's uncle: 1851-1936) and asked him 'What did Tess mean to you Mr. Hardy?' after a moment reflection, Hardy turned to Sir Frederick and said 'I don't know what she meant to you, Sir Frederick, but she was a good milch-cow to me.'" Gibson adds: "No doubt, the woman,failing to recognise Hardy's irony and her own insensitiveness in asking him such a question in such a public place, went away convinced that Hardy was concerned only with money." Betty Cortus hardycor@mailhost2.csusm.edu ========== From: "james whitehead" Subject: Re: Breeding stock Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 22:22:10 GMT in which we find a protagonist with stock-breeding expertise. In the latest UK edition published this year by Penguin, edited with an introduction and notes by Rosemarie Morgan with Shannon Russell, we read about Gabriel Oak's first meeting with Fanny Robin, before he finds his way to Warren's Malthouse, in Chapter VII, p. 45: "She extended her hand: Gabriel his. In feeling for each other's palms in the gloom before the money could be passed a minute incident occurred which told much. Gabriel's fingers alighted on the young woman's wrist. It was beating with a throb of tragic intensity. He had frequently felt the same quick hard beat in the femoral artery of his lambs when overdriven. It suggested a consumption too great of vitality, which to judge from her figure and magnitude, was already too little." Gabriel, our quasi-biblical, quasi-angelic, earthy hero-figure who has appeared in the last chapter as the just shepherd in the hell of the rick-fire, gives his last shilling to Fanny in an act of extraordinary charity; it's a case of the good shepherd and the pathetic, lost sheep! Is this of any help? There may be more of this type of animal analogy in the novel.A curious subject for investigation ... while this quotation may lack a specific stock-breeding aspect, it is certainly a resonant passage possibly based on detailed farming knowledge. James Whitehead Dr J.S.Whitehead Radley College Oxfordshire United Kingdom jsw@radley.org.uk / jamesswhitehead@hotmail.com ========== From: BILLPATH@aol.com Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 18:14:36 EDT Subject: Breeding stock A minor correction: Gabriel Oak was comparing the pulse at Fanny Robin's wrist (which he does not name) with that of the femoral artery in his lambs. If he had been palpating Fanny's femoral artery, FFMC would no doubt have had a very different ending, and Hardy would have encountered Mrs Grundy rather earlier in his career. Bill Taylor (who knows more about anatomy than literature) ========== Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 18:07:24 -0500 From: Bill Morgan Subject: Re: Breeding stock Dear Bill Taylor, Thank you, thank you. You made me laugh out loud at the thought of Gabriel Oak with his hand . . . well, you know. What a rewriting of the novel could follow from such a plot detail! chuckling, Bill Morgan ==========