Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Thomas Hardy
- 2 Wessex
- 3 Art and aesthetics
- 4 The influence of religion, science, and philosophy on Hardy's writings
- 5 Hardy and critical theory
- 6 Thomas Hardy and matters of gender
- 7 Variants on genre
- 8 The patriarchy of class
- 9 The radical aesthetic of Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- 10 Hardy and readers
- 11 Hardy as a nineteenth-century poet
- 12 The modernity of Thomas Hardy's poetry
- Index
8 - The patriarchy of class
Under the Greenwood Tree, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Woodlanders
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- 1 Thomas Hardy
- 2 Wessex
- 3 Art and aesthetics
- 4 The influence of religion, science, and philosophy on Hardy's writings
- 5 Hardy and critical theory
- 6 Thomas Hardy and matters of gender
- 7 Variants on genre
- 8 The patriarchy of class
- 9 The radical aesthetic of Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- 10 Hardy and readers
- 11 Hardy as a nineteenth-century poet
- 12 The modernity of Thomas Hardy's poetry
- Index
Summary
Central to all of the novels under discussion here is a story of love, courtship, and marriage. More particularly, for the central female character in each case, this central fable takes the form of an erotic or marital “double choice,” to use Franco Moretti's phrase; the woman is first attracted to the “right” partner, then distracted by one or more “wrong” partners before confirming - whether emotionally or formally - the “rightness” of the original choice. Also central to all three, though, is a perhaps less familiar story of class mobility and social allegiance, focused through the narrative structures of fluctuating economic fortunes, ownership of property, the accumulation of financial or social capital, trading, and inheritance. These two central points of concern are, of course, deeply interconnected, thematically and in narrative terms. The triangulated relationships of potential lovers represent marital choice as the primary mode of class transition for women; it is evident that, though Fancy, Bathsheba, and Grace have all received a good education, in each case it functions rather as a marital asset than as an alternative path for class mobility.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy , pp. 130 - 144Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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