Started reading this Hardy novella/short story a few days before Christmas and ended up finishing it on Christmas Day while away in Eastern Poland. Thus, it may be officially classified as a short story, but more accurately seems to be a novella, as it takes a few readings to get through it.
After finishing this fairytale-like story, I was a little mystified as to how I could reflect on what I'd just read, but, thankfully, I came across a great Internet review of 'The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid' on a blog site called 'ProSe' which helped me to more deeply digest things.
First, it's not difficult to see that the early meetings between Margery Tucker and Baron von Xanten are laden with 'Little Red Riding Hood' and 'Cinderella'-type imagery, as Margery, while out walking to her grandmother's house, comes across the Baron in a desperate state on his Manor House land, with this occurrence probably stopping him from committing suicide. In gratitude, he offers her a reward or special treat of her own choosing, and she tells him that she'd love to go to a Grand Evening Ball. This is where the kind of Cinderella allusion comes into play with Margery getting changed into an elegant ball gown inside a hollow tree, while the Baron, as a kind of Prince Charming, takes her to a Ball in a dream-like carriage, and then takes her back to the hollow tree for her to get changed back into her plain milkmaid clothes. All the while, the reader is left asking whether the Baron is the noble Prince from 'Cinderella' or the predatorial wolf from 'Little Red Riding Hood'.
The upshot of Margery's visit to the Ball, is that she starts to dream about attaining an upper-class lifestyle for herself, and starts to go off the thought of marrying her longtime fiance, Jim Hayward, a local lime kiln operator (and co-owner). Of course, this is bringing Hardy's pre-occupation with a social mobility theme into play, especially the issue of Victorian women wanting to climb the social class ladder, often through 'marrying above themselves', to escape a life of misery and suffering. In this sense, the ProSe blog article that I read points towards 'The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid' being a kind of trial run for 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles', especially in relation to Tess' upward-looking relationship with Angel Clare.
The Baron is a complex character, being well travelled and worldwise, but there is also a sense of morose mystery about him. In response, Margery views the Baron in almost Godlike term, while in return, he seems to idealise her as a natural, pastoral figure of simplicity and yet great beauty (again, this seems to be prefiguring the two-way idealisation process between Tess and Angel Clare). Here, in particular, I found the ProSe blog article extremely useful for expressing the view that nobody really falls in love in the plot of 'The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid', as it is about the idealisation of romantic love created in each of the three main characters' minds. Regarding this, Jim believes himself to be in love with his fiance, Margery, while she appears to be mesmerised by the thought of the Baron possibly loving her. Correspondingly, almost like a puppeteer, the Baron seems to control and enchant both Margery and Jim, while he himself appears to be caught between being attracted to Margery and morally wanting to push Margery and Jim together in marriage (again, I am indebted to the ProSe blog article here), possibly as an atonement for having come in between their courtship. Another psychological complexity may be that while the Baron is impulsively drawn towards Margery, he also cannot help but admire Jim's prolonged commitment to her (possibly realising that he won't be able to offer the same kind of long-range commitment towards her).
Unlike many of Hardy's major novels ('Tess of the D'Urbervilles'; 'Jude the Obscure'; 'The Woodlanders'; 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'; 'The Return of the Native' etc.), 'The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid' novella/short story does actually have a happy ending. By the skin of her teeth, Margery resists the urge to go off travelling round the world with the Baron in his magical-type yacht (a kind of 'flying machine'-type image), and the Baron keeps his word to never see or interfere with the couple again, which leaves the necessary calm and space for Margery and Jim to get married and have a child. However, Margery obviously retains a tinge of 'what might have been' if she'd flown off with the Baron, while retaining her commitment to Jim in the Baron's absence (who knows what would've happened if the Baron had come back, of course).
Some more deeper concluding thoughts about the 'The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid'? Well, I think the conclusion may show that Margery finally realises that the Baron is an unrealistic dream for her to aspire towards, while the Baron himself was neither Prince Charming nor a predatory wolf, but just a complex character from the upper-classes who wouldn't normally have been associating with people from the local Wessex, rustic class. In contrast, Jim appears to be well-suited for Margery in that he aspires towards an attainable, optimal-type, upward social mobility making him worthy of her (I can see echoes of the Dick Dewy-Fancy Day relationship from 'Under the Greenwood Tree' here). Thus, all in all, 'The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid' may be viewed as a much shorter, less dramatic and, of course, much happier version of 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'. In other words, it left me pondering: "If only Tess had somehow settled for Alec instead of idealising Angel Clare . . ."
A couple of women I met in Hardy's Wessex two years ago, one who was working as a ranger on the heathland ('Egdon Heath') near Hardy's Higher Bockhampton childhood home, and the other working at Max Gate (Hardy's home in Dorchester), said to me that they had some sympathy for Alec and that Tess needed a kick up the backside. In a roundabout way, I can now kind of more fully understand what they meant.
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