ABSTRACT
This chapter explains some Victorian novels, and most notably in Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders, the purely functional object makes difference of class, gender, race, or ethnicity palpable. Withheld from formlessness by benevolent neglect, and by token established as bric-a-brac, the nail happily testifies to the superior power, then of myths of nature. It would be 'easier to fancy' that it had mellowed with the changing seasons than that someone had simply forgotten to remove it from the wall. Hardy seems invariably to have associated nails with hats. In Under the Greenwood Tree the house in which gamekeeper and timber-steward Geoffrey Day lives with his daughter Fancy merits several paragraphs of dense description. In 1886, Hardy had developed a new understanding of the novel as literary form. Barber Percomb, arriving in Little Hintock after dark, immediately seeks out Marty South, whose luxuriant chestnut hair would make a perfect wig for his most profitable client, Mrs Charmond, the lady of the manor.
