HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H01061 7/2/01 "GRAMMER IN UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREES" ======================================================================== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: Greenwood grammar Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 11:26:00 +0100 Having been lost in Cyberspace since the end of April but having found my way back again with much help from the Cortuses and Rosemary Morgan, I thought I might try going into 'send mode' again. Reading Under the Greenwood Tree I was intrigued by a passage at the start of Chapter VI of 'Winter' where Dick Dewy watches his mother grilling bacon. TH says "The limp rasher hung down between the bars of the gridiron like a cat in a child's arms; but there was nothing in similes unless She uttered them." The 'She' is Fancy Day. I am sure it must have been remarked before that someone like Dick Dewey would hardly make a grammatical reflection of this kind and it does seem as though Hardy is referring to himself as author rather than his hero. Would this perhaps be a coded reference to his supposed romance with Tryphena Sparks and the way he felt about her? Secondly, I was intrigued by the passage in the second paragraph of Chapter II of the 'Conclusion' where TH says of Fancy Day that she had "strictly charged her father and the tranter to carefully avoid saying 'thee' and 'thou' in their conversation." Did TH split the infinitive deliberately as though he was saying "Well, if you can arbitrarily do away with the second person singular, you can do away with other rules of grammar too."? Some 54 years later in his 'Second Notebook' (Note 47), TH wrote the following: "'The mind seems more to feel after than to definitely apprehend them'. (Walter Bagehot, Times Literary Supplement, 20 Jan., 1926). Example of the split infinitive." If TH thought the split infinitive was still worthy of comment in 1926, it would perhaps seem more likely that his decision to ungrammatically write in 1872 was deliberate. There must be other examples of interest Hardy took in matters grammatical. Patrick Roper ========== From: "Ahmad" > Subject: Re: Greenwood grammar Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 20:18:53 +0300 Patrick, Hardy completed the manuscript of *Under the Greenwood Tree * in the summer of 1871. As he was then in the second year of his Cornish romance, it seems highly unlikely that he would make coded references to an earlier affair. Besides, there is no evidence in the passage of the authorial voice. It is an omniscient third-person narrator doing his business. You say that "someone like Dick Dewey [sic] would hardly make a grammatical reflection of this kind," apparently forgetting that Dick had a good education. IN "Dick Meets His Father" (II, viii), the Tranter reminds his son that his parents had sent him "to a school so good that 'twas hardly fair to the other children." As for the split infinitive, Hardy did not consider it ungrammatical. In the margin of page 460 of F.A. Hedgcock, *Thomas Hardy: Penseur et Artiste (Paris, 1911), he pencilled the following in comment on "split infinitives," which he underlined: "Browning, and many other writers use them. The idea that the 'split infinitive' - a phrase invented by penny-a-liners - is ungrammatical, is quite exploded." (Hedgcock's book is in the Memorial Collection, Dorset County Museum.) Hardy's 1926 note, therefore, would fall under the same heading of protest against critics of his grammar. One should remember that Hardy, like the speaker in "So Various," was "one who forgot slights never" (l. 57). By the way, is your "to ungrammatically write" "deliberate"? All the best. Suleiman M. Ahmad, Department of English, University of Damascus, Syria From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: Re: Greenwood grammar Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 21:49:05 +0100 Many thanks, Ahmed, for your comments. The author (TH) uses a simile to describe the rasher, but he does not say that Dewy thought the rasher looked like a cat in a child's arms. Characters don't, on the whole, analyse their ruminations in a grammatical way, but authors sometimes do which is why it seeme to me like the 'authorial voice'. Put another way, is it not curious that an author should create an excellent simile to describe a scene then have his character comment on the figure of speech the author has just used? It is as though the character knows the author's thoughts. I fully accept the point about TH being in love with Emma in 1871, but is it not the case that people have supposed that Dewy is semi-autobiographical and that Fancy Day might embody elements of Tryphena Sparks? So far as the split infinitive is concerned, there would seem to be no way of telling whether TH put it in deliberately to highlight the 'ungrammatical' dropping of thee and thou. But then you suggest that you are uncertain as to whether I deliberately split an infinitive at the end of my earlier message. Patrick, Hardy completed the manuscript of *Under the Greenwood Tree * in the summer of 1871. As he was then in the second year of his Cornish romance, it seems highly unlikely that he would make coded references to an earlier affair. Besides, there is no evidence in the passage of the authorial voice. It is an omniscient third-person narrator doing his business. You say that "someone like Dick Dewey [sic] would hardly make a grammatical reflection of this kind," apparently forgetting that Dick had a good education. IN "Dick Meets His Father" (II, viii), the Tranter reminds his son that his parents had sent him "to a school so good that 'twas hardly fair to the other children." As for the split infinitive, Hardy did not consider it ungrammatical. In the margin of page 460 of F.A. Hedgcock, *Thomas Hardy: Penseur et Artiste (Paris, 1911), he pencilled the following in comment on "split infinitives," which he underlined: "Browning, and many other writers use them. The idea that the 'split infinitive' - a phrase invented by penny-a-liners - is ungrammatical, is quite exploded." (Hedgcock's book is in the Memorial Collection, Dorset County Museum.) Hardy's 1926 note, therefore, would fall under the same heading of protest against critics of his grammar. One should remember that Hardy, like the speaker in "So Various," was "one who forgot slights never" (l. 57). By the way, is your "to ungrammatically write" "deliberate"? All the best. Suleiman M. Ahmad, Department of English, University of Damascus, Syria ========== Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 01:22:50 -0700 (PDT) From: Andrew Hewitt Subject: Re: Greenwood grammar I don't follow you Patrick. There isn't anything ungrammatical about a split infinitive. Thee and thou can be used grammatically or ungrammatically but the objection isn't to their incorrect use -- isn't it something to do with what they are supposed to reveal about the speaker's (lack of) sophistication? Andrew ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: Re: Greenwood grammar Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 11:09:39 +0100 Andrew, I understand that the issue of the split infinitive has generated more heat than light over the centuries and my reason for describing it as 'ungrammatical' is that I was taught not to do it. As it says in 'The American Heritage Book of English Usage' (1996) " Split infinitives have been condemned as ungrammatical for nearly 200 years." I imagine TH would have been similarly taught that infinitives should not be split (though he may not have agreed with the notion) and paid enough attention to what he was writing to know when he was splitting them. Thus, it seems to me, the split infinitive is likely to be deliberate when TH writes "strictly charged her father and the tranter to carefully avoid saying 'thee' and 'thou' in their conversation." So far as 'lack of sophistication' is concerned, Fancy Day seems to be subscribing to the fashion of her time by condeming 'thee' and 'thou' as old-fashioned. So all I am really trying to say is that TH might be implying that there is no reason why he should not split an infinitive or two if young women can make much more radical alterations to the language in order to keep up with fashion. Whatever the case, TH does seem to have had an attitude towards split infinitives because he made various notes about the issue throughout his life. I could be wrong, but I suspect the constantly quoted Startrek split "To boldly go" gains some of its force because people feel the author neither knew nor cared whether it was a split infinitive or not. Apropos of this, I seem to recall that Oxford University Press, or some such body, declared a year or so ago that they were no longer going to outlaw split infinitives. This makes me wonder if, in the case of TH, his editors/publishers suggested that such turns of phrase in his manuscripts should be unsplit and whether Hardy resisted these suggestions. Patrick Roper ========== From: "Patrick Roper" Subject: Re: Greenwood grammar Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 11:09:39 +0100 Andrew, I understand that the issue of the split infinitive has generated more heat than light over the centuries and my reason for describing it as 'ungrammatical' is that I was taught not to do it. As it says in 'The American Heritage Book of English Usage' (1996) " Split infinitives have been condemned as ungrammatical for nearly 200 years." I imagine TH would have been similarly taught that infinitives should not be split (though he may not have agreed with the notion) and paid enough attention to what he was writing to know when he was splitting them. Thus, it seems to me, the split infinitive is likely to be deliberate when TH writes "strictly charged her father and the tranter to carefully avoid saying 'thee' and 'thou' in their conversation." So far as 'lack of sophistication' is concerned, Fancy Day seems to be subscribing to the fashion of her time by condeming 'thee' and 'thou' as old-fashioned. So all I am really trying to say is that TH might be implying that there is no reason why he should not split an infinitive or two if young women can make much more radical alterations to the language in order to keep up with fashion. Whatever the case, TH does seem to have had an attitude towards split infinitives because he made various notes about the issue throughout his life. I could be wrong, but I suspect the constantly quoted Startrek split "To boldly go" gains some of its force because people feel the author neither knew nor cared whether it was a split infinitive or not. Apropos of this, I seem to recall that Oxford University Press, or some such body, declared a year or so ago that they were no longer going to outlaw split infinitives. This makes me wonder if, in the case of TH, his editors/publishers suggested that such turns of phrase in his manuscripts should be unsplit and whether Hardy resisted these suggestions. Patrick Roper ========== From: "Ahmad" Subject: Re: Greenwood grammar Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 16:35:59 +0300 Patrick, It seems to me that Fancy's charging of her father and father-in-law to avoid saying "thee" and "thou" in their conversation is also related to the status of dialect in *Under the Greenwood Tree * and other novels by Hardy. Dialect is the mark of the "work-folk." Earlier, Mrs Dewy says of her husband, "'Such a man as Dewy is! Nobody do know the trouble I have to keep that man barely respectable. And did you ever hear too - just now at supper-time - talking about "taties" with Michael in such a work-folk way. Well - 'tis what I was never brought up to! . . .'" (I, viii). Hardy evidently held the view of language as a social index. It is significant that when he raised (in revision) the social position of the Smiths in *A Pair of Blue Eyes *, he changed Mrs Smith's language from dialect to standard English. Suleiman M. Ahmad, University of Damascus ===========