HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE HO3040 5/23/03 "FFMC AND LITERARY CONVENTIONS"
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From: DMSECK@aol.com
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 18:42:35 EDT
Subject: FFTMC and Literary Conventions


I have only recently discovered TTHA, as I have been researching, and am so very appreciative of this excellent resource! I have also been following the forum with great interest this past week, as I have been working with the Norton text of FFTMC edited by Robert Schweik. I see now I must obtain the complete 2000 Penguin text as well; I have been reading Rosemarie Morgan's introduction as posted on the TTHA site.

In the introduction it is pointed out that literary conventions of Hardy's day "insisted on the presence of a censorious voice, or a moralising narrator, to assist in the acceptance and preservation of prevailing socio/sexual codes and values." In *The Modernity of Hardy's Jude the Obscure* Robert Schweik also refers to literary conventions of the day; that an open ending -- no marriage -- was "discouraged" due to "the conventions required by serial publication." My question would be, considering these conventions, was it possible to assign the narrator anything OTHER than a censorious voice and still be published?

One critic in the Norton edition draws on the first chapter's words, "woman's prescriptive infirmity" and states, "There can be little doubt of Hardy's view in FFTMC that women are by nature infirm." Yet, Hardy's paragraph concludes with the narrator's acknowledgment, "Still, this was but conjecture," which might seem to remind the reader to question the narrator's omniscience. For me, Hardy's fiction appears quite empathic in regard to gender.

How much of Hardy's narrator's voice might one attribute to late Victorian literary convention?

Donna Seckrater
dmseck@aol.com

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Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 11:39:50 -0400
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: FFTMC and Literary Conventions

Hi Donna-- I was hoping someone better versed than I in nineteenth century
editorial practices and censorhip would respond to you on this question, but
perhaps I should jump in at this point (we are loth, at TTHA, to leave
inquiries unanswered).

With regard to the first issue (below) I think the best answer to give is that
if you are an ambitious writer aiming to make a career of your talents you
should please the populace by observing the niceties and, as Leslie Stephen
once put it (this isn't verbatim), levelling your narrative voice and
fictional
content to the moral universe of the "parson's daughter." Hardy repeatedly
failed to conform to this dictum although he did try to cloak his antipathy to
the happy-marriage ending. Following his difficulties in keeping Hardy in line
during the serialisation of FFMC Leslie Stephen took one look at the
opening to
RN and turned it down on the spot. Later, for similar reasons, Hardy was
obliged to tout TD around to several publishing houses, to no avail. Finally,
he only got it accepted for publication after he had cut out large chunks of
offending passages (including the "Chase" episode, Tess's baptism of little
Sorrow, and Angel's very wicked act of carrying the milkmaids across the
flooded lane in his arms).
__________
>
> 1 ....no marriage -- was "discouraged" due to "the conventions required by
> serial publication." My question would be, considering these conventions,
was
> it possible to assign the narrator anything OTHER than a censorious voice
and
> still be published?


____________
On the second issue you are absolutely correct to take note of the variety of
Hardy's narrators and of their contrasting perspectives & often contradictory
roles, voices and stances. Clearly, if there were no spy (Oak) in this scene -
and a spy, moreover, who is quick to moralise -- we might take the "infirmity"
observation at face value, which is to say, superficially. But since the
episode concludes with this particular spy proclaiming on woman's "vanity"
(Bathsheba's), readers are given clues enough (including "cynical inference")
to link the observer's view of "infirmity" with his later observation on
"vanity." In sum, these are Oak's "cynical inferences."* The alternative or
primary narrator in this scene is more inclined to speak of Bathsheba as a
"fair product of nature" whose actions it would be "rash" to judge --whose
intentions, rather, it would be "rash" to give judgement upon.

*I've noticed that Oak's own "vanity" (in not wishing to display the ugliness
of his facial movements when playing the flute) is noted later in the book.
Odd
that no critic (to my knowledge) has picked up on this double-standard on
Oak's
part (that "vanity"" is "woman's prescriptive infirmity").
Cheers,
RM

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