Dear Serial Reader(s),
Finally the word I've been thinking as the KEY to this novel has appeared early in this installment: anachronism! Yet it's about Clym's beauty and men's physicical beauty as such, whereas women's beauty "may not be an anachronism." Does Hardy have in mind classical sculpture? In any case, the novel continues to flood the descriptive passages with so many allusions to the past--the near, far, and even prehistoric pasts in this setting of "the rural world" which is not ready for "forwardness." How about Susan Nonesuch's needle attack on Eustacia in church? So much for churchgoers! Good reason to stay clear! This episode is also an amusing example of the superstitious view of Eustacia as a kind of witch (variation of contemporary view of her as what...a femme fatale?). An even more interesting anachronism is the narrator calling words (to capture love and passion) as "the rusty implements of a bygone, barbarous epoch."
Such an unusual proposal scene set during a lunar eclipse--E's melancholy thoughts on love as fickle, not eternal--and then she asks Clym to talk about Paris--Geographical cure! Historical romance! The muted Emma Bovary allusion too-- French and English views on suicide: "In France it is not uncustomary to commit suicide at this stage: in England we do much better or much worse as the case may be." What does *that* mean? The "stage" here is about youthful disillusionment--when "in a young man's life... the grimness of the general human situation first becomes clear." Yet Eustacia seems to have a more abiding sense of this grimness. I'd say the French conclusion would be her suicide, while the English would be Clym's. Let's see what happens....
One thread of this set of chapters that seemed so "modern" is the mother/son relationship--how Mrs. Y has high hopes for Clym to escape the limits of the "rural" life and have a career in Paris, and Clym's interest in returning to his heath homeland with his quasi-socialist ambitions to equalize classes by becoming a schoolteacher (which he then modifies to ditch the poor for the wealthier), and then of course his mother's suspicions and jealousy of Eustacia as having bewitched her son. Mrs. Y, despite her superior class position, is not so far removed from Susan Nonesuch in how they see Eustacia. Clym sees too the irony that despite the tension between his mother and lover, they both want the same--for Clym to return to Paris.
Next time: chaps. 5-8 in "The Fascination" section.
Serially yours,
Susan
2 comments:
This is my favorite anachronism line: "To many persons this Egdon was a place which had slipped out of its century generations ago, to intrude as an uncouth object into this. It was an obsolete thing, and few cared to study it."
While Mrs. Y and Eustacia share a desire that Clym return to Paris, their underlying sentiments are totally different.
Mrs. Y, like a typical parent, wants Clym's life to be better than those before him. To her, being a businessman in Paris (with or without diamonds) represents upward mobility. As much as she loves him, and we assume misses him, she thinks that life in Paris is what would be best for him.
Eustacia, in contrast, cares nothing for what is best for Clym. She was "in love with" him before she ever saw him because she believed she knew what he was and what he could be for her, i.e., a ticket out. Having met him, she still doesn't know what he is, because she continues to be in love with the preconception of him she had/has in her mind. He wants to give back to his community and be a teacher. The native returned. She can't let go of her original belief that he will do that which he's expressed no interest in doing--return to Paris and take her with him. She's not the first or last person to be in love with what she believes and want her lover to be rather than what he actually is.
This is fantastic!
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