Dear Serial Readers,
If you like fast pacing and lots of dialogue and external action, then this serial is probably a challenge for you. I'm enjoying Hardy's luxuriously slow unfolding of the world of Egdon Heath, and the meditations on and about characters across this desolate landscape. As promised at the end of #4, this installment opens with the meeting of Clym and Eustacia, whose mummer disguise as the Turkish Knight doesn't fool him. I suppose the psychic chemistry of Eustacia (with her intense and imaginative passions--after all, she's "had undoubtedly begun to love him" already) and Clym (with his "wearing habit of meditation" and "inner strenuous") promises some fireworks later on, but not yet. I'm also struck by how Hardy uses the word "depression" to describe both Clym and Eustacia. It's interesting that the heath seems to give Eusatica more freedom to roam, as her grandfather tells her she "may walk on the heath night or day as you choose," but at the same time much isolation and time for meditation.
Not much excitement in the Wildeve and Thomasin match, after Eustacia clarifies that she's no longer interested in him. What does interest me? Reddleman Diggory Venn. The chapter titled "A Coalition Between Beauty and Oddness" must surely refer to him! His disinterested love for Thomasin, his kindness, his social status as quite malleable (he's educated, he could be a dairyman), his sensitivity to others are all part of his "beauty" along with his "obscure rubicundity of person"--love that word, "rubicundity"! What does this redness mean--how to read it?
Is it unusual for an unmarried woman to "give" the bride away, as Eustacia does Thomasin?
Next up is Book Third, "The Fascination"--surely more on Clym and Eustacia: chaps. 1-4.
Serially yours,
Susan
4 comments:
Eustacia's giving Tamsin away was jaw-dropping for so many reasons!
I don't think Eustacia tried very hard to keep her identity secret from Clym.
Another interesting adjective for the reddleman: Ishmaelitish. What's this mean? Bastard son of the maid? Ancestor of Mohammed? Neither of these make sense to me. Maybe a more general sense of outcast?
“To dance with a man is to concentrate a twelve month’s regulation fire upon him in the fragment of an hour. To pass to courtship without acquaintance, to pass to marriage without courtship, is a skipping of terms reserved for those alone who tread this royal road. “
I like this quote because it combines the symbolic impact of fire with a subversion of courtly love. There is a clear pretense at courtly convention in the text in so far as men like Wildeve are expected to make their intentions known in earnest (which only the Reddleman does) and characters such as Eustacia insists on being treated like a lady. But, most of the characters subvert courtly convention by working discreetly to undermine a respective suitor in pursuit of their own interests. In a previous post, I referred to this a version of real politicking.
The conflation of fire and courtly convention makes me think about how, on one hand, these people are closely connected to their Pagan heritage—so much so that one of the elders even denounces learning how to read and write. But, on the other hand, there is also an impulse to observe, or pretend to observe, the long tradition of the medieval court. Nevertheless, in the above quote, the narrator uses fire to symbolize the means through which courtly convention is bypassed. This makes me think about the expanded notion of historical time in the text, yet time also moves really quickly in the sense that characters might mate quickly.
Dorell
In this installment, the text seems particularly self-conscious of itself. Clym reasons of himself "if he were making a tragical figure in the world, so much the better for a narrative" (166.) And later: "It was the custom of Egdon to begin the preface to a story before absolutely entering the house, so as to be well in for the body of the narrative by the time visitor and visited stood face to face" (174.) This was certainly true of our experience as visitors to Return of the Native, left outside in the landscape of Egdon before we are face-to-face with "humanity appearing upon the scene" in chapter 2. Does the narrative often make these little winks to the reader, and I have just begun to pick up on them? Or is the novel gaining self-consciousness as it is growing larger through serial progression?
In this installment, I was noting the series of roles (sometimes complete with costumes) that individual characters were playing. Eustacia plays a boy playing the Turkish Knight, transitions from lover to Wildeve to hopeful lover of Yeobright, and then plays a role in Thomasin's wedding. Diggory plays the reddleman, suitor to Thomasin (in a new outfit) and then returns to the role of reddleman. Wildeve has to settle on the role of husband to Thomasin after continuing to play lover to Eustacia.
I wonder if these roles have stabilized now that there has been a wedding, or whether there will remain traces of the different roles--just like there were traces of red after Diggory leaves town.
On another note, I liked the references to the time that had passed since the beginning of the novel. Events so far have been connected to calendar holidays: Guy Fawkes Day, Christmas. The characters reference the time that has passed, but it does not reflect how much time has actually passed for the readers (1.5 months in the novel is 5 months to the reader)--and none of the calendar dates connect to the months of the installments.
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