Find it difficult to convey just how much I'm enjoying and getting out of reading this truly fantastic book. Thought it would be just a light-type introduction to or summary of Hardy's work, but it really is much, much more.
The book is divided into three sections about Hardy's life; his well-known and lesser-known fiction and poetry; and how different schools of literary criticism approach and view his work. In other words, the book offers a wonderfully balanced view of Hardy.
When I saw how the book was structured, I immediately headed for the third and last section on different critical approaches to Hardy's work. This section summarises how different authors have approached Hardy's work from liberal humanist (traditional 'lit-crit'); structuralist; deconstructionist; psychoanalytic; marxist/materialist; feminist and gender study perspectives. Needless to say, I found the liberal humanist; psychoanalytic; and structuralist perspectives most interesting as they most closely correspond to how I tend to approach, interpret and understand Canonical Literature as offering a thorough examination and exploration of the complexity of the human condition. However, I also surprisingly got something out of reading the feminist and gender study perspectives on Hardy which often go into depth about the systematic oppression against and suffering of Hardy's main female characters, especially Tess, of course.
I'm now reading the part of the second section that deals with Hardy's more famous work, and I can already see that there's a chronological development from a kind of compromised maintenance of the pastoral idyll (against outsider intrusion) in 'Under the Greenwood Tree' to a louder celebration of the survival of an ideal-type rural setting (against more robust outsider opposition) in 'Far From The Madding Crowd'. From here, outsider interference in local rustic matters intensifies in 'The Return of the Native' and seems to reach a peak in 'The Woodlanders' and 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' where rural communities can now be seen to be coming under increasing threat (and even being broken down and potentially destroyed) by outsider intrusion. Also love the sub-section on 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' which points towards an individual's character being as much responsible for his/her fate as any external forces (a person's character = his/her fate). Indeed, what is becoming clearer for me through reading Harvey's book is that 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'; 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles'; and 'Jude the Obscure' may be viewed as case studies in (tragic but probably avoidable) individual self-destruction process.
The picture below shows that Harvey's book is never far from my hand at the moment, as my understanding of Hardy thankfully becomes more lucid through encountering detailed insights into the work and complex ideological outlook (e.g. Hardy being an agnostic humanist who couldn't emotionally let go of the pastoral brand of Anglicanism that he had been brought up on as a child, and who also had some kind of fetish for pre-Christian, pagan beliefs and customs/rituals that often lay beneath the surface of 19th century, Wessex, agricultural life) of Thomas Hardy.
Can't wait to find the time to delve some more into this wonderful book.
