HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE HO2045 7/08/02 "CALENDRAIC QUESTIONS IN FFMC" ================================================================ From: Meg Cronin Subject: help for my conference lecture Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 23:54:05 -0400 Hello there, I have a nagging question that I need help with as I finish up my lecture for the conference. I am embarrassed not to have asked before or to know where else to go for the answer. In brief, I am writing about courtship rituals (divinations) and other omens that occur on the seasonal calendar in Hardy's novels. My paper focuses primarily on Midsummer night but also on other divination days and fire-nights. As I was double-checking a quote in FFMC, I noticed what I think is a discrepancy that I know someone can help me with. Let me say that I have reviewed all my notes from the Norman Page's companion and other sources that cover the composition of the novels. These notes don't have the answer, but the originals (the Companion itself, for example, which is stuck in my office while I am at home) might have. Here goes: Is there something "off" in the time schedule of the first several chapters of FFMC? Chap. 1: We start in December. Chap. 2 opens at midnight on the eve of St. Thomas (Dec 21). Chap 3 is the next day, but also moves to "an incident which occurred at the end of the same week." In Chap 4 about 8 days pass at first ("At last the eighth day came"), then who knows how much time until, in the same chapter, "a fine January morning" brings G. on his visit to B. Chap. 5. no real mention of time Chap. 6 begins, "Two months passed away. We are brought to a day in February, on which was held the yearly statute of hiring fair." Here's the problem then. How can two months have passed from a January morning until a day in February, especially if it is Candlemas day--Feb 14, old calendar, traditional day of hiring fairs throughout Britain? More confusing, in Chap. 8, Billy the maltster's grandson, refers to "last Purification Day (footnote says Feb 2) in this very world." Does he mean the very last, which would be a few days before, if SEveral chapters later --some only separated by "half an hour," while others occur on "the following market day"--Feb 13th arrives (chapter 13). Then Chap. 14 is Feb 14. How can this be, given what the earlier chapters laid out as the amount of time passing? Surely a year has not passed, as Fanny is still wandering, and G. is just recently hired by B. More confusing, in Chap. 8, Billy the maltster's grandson refers to "last Purification Day (footnote says Feb 2) in this very world." Does he mean the very last, which would be a few days or a week before, if FEb 14th is to arrive in Chapter 14. Or does he mean last year's Purification Day? If so, why does he say "in this world" apparently to emphasize the adjective "last"? Am I imagining this problem? Has someone already figured it out? The funny thing is that I have been spending so much time in the last several years looking at the calendar in Hardy, but never bothered to check this out. I looked in a different edition of FFMC and, in my own handwriting was a confused sort of "huh" in the margin, but I obviously never bothered to check up on it. Time isn't steadily marked in this novel, and it's oddly paced, especially at the end, but what to do about this little glitch? Thanks for thinking as minutely as I am right now. Meg Cronin ========== From: "Rebecca J Wood" Subject: Re: help for my conference lecture Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 09:51:12 -0400 : Hello, I am new to the listserv, and signed on because I am an avid Hardy fan but hardly a scholar. I hope the following comments will be taken with that in mind. As pertains to your "calendrical" dilemma, would it help to remember that FFMC was first published as a monthly series in a popular magazine and not as a novel? Hardy's timing may have been more in tune with the date/time of the month on which the magazine was published, or some similar concern. Is it possible that those "burps" in time you struggle with may be an artifact of that? Your question makes me curious as to the manner/sequence in which the novel was constructed from the serial, do you know? I have much to learn. Thanks for your patience with a Hardy neophyte. ========== From: Meg Cronin To: "'Rebecca J Wood '" Subject: Re: help for my conference lecture Have you researched the original writing/publication schedule? I understand he whipped out FFMC in a single draft, with the first half published while the ending remained unwritten (and unknown). Could some of these problems have occurred during a frantic publication schedule? Under such conditions, would the author be able to retain a copy of the manuscript-to-date for his own reference, or would the only copy be at the publishers? Glen ========== Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 10:53:08 -0700 From: Betty Cortus Subject: Help for Conference Lecture : Dear Meg, A little belatedly, most of the FFMC issues you raise -- including the divination scene and Purification reference -- are covered in Rosemarie Morgan's *Cancelled Words* (1992, Routledge). Looking forward to your lecture, Betty Cortus ========== From: Meg Cronin To: "'Betty and/or John Cortus '" , Subject: RE: Help for Conference Lecture Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 20:09:50 -0400 Right you are, Betty. In the two days since I posted that message, I went back through my "other" Hardy notes--ones I wasn't currently using. Thanks for the help. I am not going to talk about those early chapters' calendar, but I was at the time making calendar lists of three novels, just for my own comparison, and the "off" dates jumped out at me. In the meantime, I had decided after looking at Page's Companion, that the phrase, "Two months passed away," which begins Chapter 6 and the second monthly installment, really means, "two months had passed since the beginning of installment no. 1," which opens on "a certain December morning," rather than "two months had passed since the last event recorded in Chap. 5." See you soon. Meg =========== Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 22:41:45 -0400 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: RE: Help for Conference Lecture Hi Meg-- one thing I noticed in my own "calendar" days with FFMC was that every new Cornhill instalment (up to the last) matched the season currently under way in the real world. So, in effect, the hiving-of-the-bees episode occurred precisely when the hiving season would be happening in the world of his readers. It struck me at the time that this made for highly effective publication politics and that precise designations of time might go by the board in the interest of seasonal currency. Someone earlier mentioned (on this List) that TH wrote FFMC in one full swoop. He did write a fair amount ahead of times --several instalments anyway (I don't have my books to hand but I think this is detailed in my edition of FFMC (Penguin World Classics) that is, by the time of the opening issue of the Cornhill's serialisation in December in 1873, but the remainder of the book was written month by month conterminously with revisions-- hastily, very hastily, as your previous commentator mentioned I think. A factor that did affect both the temporal order of the inner world of the novel as well as the spatial order was the late Wessexising of the topography. FFMC was just one of several novels that suffered various inconsistencies as the result of these late topographical revisions TH felt obliged to make when "Wessex" had become, by 1912, a "universe" of some cultural significance. I, too, look forward to your lecture. With every good wish, Rosemarie ==========