ABSTRACT

The reception of Hardy’s major novels and his poems, although affected by changing literary fashions over the twentieth century, has not suffered especially from the Modernist reaction to things Victorian. His short stories, however, have suffered. Perhaps because the genre has been and still is regarded as reaching its peak in the Modernist writings of the first half of the twentieth century, Hardy’s short stories seem in critical studies to be judged by how closely they approach Modernist form and sensibility, and according to this measure they are often found wanting. 1 The Modernist short story is regarded as a very different entity from its nineteenth-century counterpart – so popular in the family magazines of that period, and supposedly written to keep the ‘pot boiling’ by those same authors who were busily employed writing the three-decker novels of the day. Indeed a contemporary reviewer, noting this phenomenon, opens a review in 1891 of A Group of Noble Dames rather ominously: ‘Novelists, whether they have the peculiar gift or not, seem to consider it a point of honour now to bring out at least one volume of short stories, and Mr Thomas Hardy has followed the multitude – in this case, to do evil.’ 2 In fact, much of Hardy’s shorter fiction is Janus-faced, looking back to the strong narrative plotting, repetition and coincidence associated with Victorian fiction, and forward to the sparser plot and more reticent characterization and description of the Modernist story. The transitional nature of his shorter fiction makes it vulnerable to twentieth- and twenty-first-century critics who deem a Hardy tale successful depending on how closely it approaches the Modernist paradigm. Interestingly, some contemporary critics recognized Modernist qualities in the stories: reviewing Life’s Little Ironies in 1894, George St. George writes that the stories in this collection seem ‘more modern, more fin de siècle ’. 3 Also in 1894, the Boston fortnightly The Literary World writes of Ironies and of Hardy’s fiction generally that he

delves into the human mind and drags forth desires and impulses that when once brought to the light justify themselves as neither too far-fetched nor improbable, however unusual they may seem toone at first … Yet Mr. Hardy gives us little explanation or analysis. He tells his story; we may do our own moralizing. 4

Of ‘On the Western Circuit’ (Ironies), the Athenaeum writes that the tale ‘would be sadder if it were not for a slight sense of improbability left by the conduct of the heroine’, but concedes that

even so it is an effective story, and Mr Hardy, who excels pre-eminently in those little half-sketched glimpses that suggest the whole horror of a situation, reveals an appalling vista of dreariness for the two united lives in that final touch of the railway journey. 5

Reticence, a lack of moralizing, sparseness of description and psychological explanation: for several of Hardy’s contemporaries, his stories were imbued with traits of the fin de siècle moment and Modernist beginnings. Alternatively, and from a very different critical perspective, his stories have been judged by how well they charm and amuse with accounts of rural customs and manners from earlier times. Several late Victorian critics were impressed by his realism and humour, but did not regard this as imparting a minor or merely entertaining quality to his work: a review of Wessex Tales in the Westminster Review of 1888 finds his ‘world’

intensely real, yet highly idyllic and poetical. For readers whose ideal of entertaining fiction is a graphic representation of the society they themselves frequent, Mr. Hardy’s novels have probably little charm; but to those who care for vivid pictures of rustic life, and the powerful presentation of unfamiliar types of humanity, few contemporary romance writers are so fascinating as the author of The Woodlanders. 6

While the Athenaeum reviewer admires the ‘first part’ Ironies, ‘it is almost with a feeling of relief as from some oppressive nightmare that one turns from their weight of implacable doom to the second part, entitled, “A Few Crusted Characters,”’ which he deems ‘delightfully humorou. 7 The Saturday Review of 1894 remarks upon the truth of ‘Hussar’, ‘a true Wessex tale … and true also as facts are true, is the story of the barrister and the delusive love-letters – “On the Western Circuit” – of which we have heard something very like a paral’. 8 One writer who captures this contemporary sense of Hardy’s bringing together of ‘truth’ or realism with the poetic concludes his 1894 article about exploring ‘In the D’Urberville Country’:

Wanderings about Wessex would seem to lead to very irrelevant chronicling and to much strange mixture of history and romance. It is inevitable. The history is written in the face of the country and in the old folios, but walk where you will and dig as you will, Mr. Hardy has been there before you, has peopled the countryside, and translated the old dead pages into life. His is the truth, and wanderings and perusings only serve to prove it. The most distinctive feature of his art lies here, that he has shaped the things before him, read what has lain to his hand, accepted actual conditions, and imagination and beauty have been with him all the time, and have never cried for release. 9