Admirable technically, especially in his use of the natural world and the (sometimes) subtle symbolism and structure, but I can't say I loved this. A contender for the most English novel ever written and that's not really a compliment. I'm not in the mood for that, this decade, how life is bound by class and expectation and how we are underestimated and manipulated by men and/or our superiors. I realise that's Hardy's point and have no argument with himself or his women. I'm just tired of England.

First book I have ever not finished. Very surprising as Tess is one of my favourite novels, but this was incomparable. I didn't enjoy the plot and had no affection towards any of the characters.

"For there can be hardly anything less connected with a woman's personality than drapery which she has neither designed, manufactured, cut, sewed, nor even seen, except by a glance of approval when told that such and such a shape and color must be had because it has been decided by others as imperative at that particular time."

"Human love is a subjective thing - the essence itself of man, as that great thinker Spinoza says - ipsa hominis essentia - it is joy accompanied by an idea which we project against any suitable object in the line of our vision, just as the rainbow iris is projected against an oak, ash, or elm tree indifferently. So that if any other young lady had appeared instead of the one who did appear, I should have felt just the same interest in her, and have quoted precisely the same lines from Shelley about her, as about this one I saw. Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!"

"'It is a different kind of love altogether,' said he. 'Less passionate; more profound. It has nothing to do with the material conditions of the object at all; much to do with her character and goodness, as revealed by closer observation. 'Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.''"

Women, know your place…

George Melbury has been blessed with only one child, his daughter Grace, so he decides to spend his hard-earned money on educating her. A happy child, growing up among the woods that surround the tiny hamlet of Little Hintock and provide the people there with their living, Grace forms an early attachment to her childhood friend, Giles Winterborne, and it’s her father’s wish that she will one day marry him. But when Grace returns to Little Hintock after years spent at boarding school, she has become such a cultured lady that Mr Melbury no longer thinks Giles is good enough for her, and Grace tends to agree so doesn’t put up much of a fight. Instead, she is wooed and won by the new local doctor, impoverished scion of a once wealthy local family. Happy ending? Good grief, no! This is Hardy, so poor Grace’s troubles are just beginning…

First off, let me start by saying I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Hardy writes like a dream, and the woodland setting gives him the opportunity for some wonderful descriptive prose. Over the course of the book, the reader gets a clear picture of the society of the woodlanders, the trades they follow and how they make their living, their limited but enjoyed social life, the gradations of class even within the working population, the gender roles – a Hardy speciality – and the social and cultural gulf between the working people and the gentry.

However, I was a little puzzled as to the message Hardy was sending in this one, perhaps because I think of him as more feminist than most of his contemporaries. Here it almost feels as if he’s issuing a warning about the dangers of educating women above their station. Grace’s education changes her from a loving child into a cold-hearted little snob; from being a hearty, healthy daughter of the woods into a delicate little flower, who sews not and neither does she spin for fear of spoiling her pretty little hands. Hardy as good as states that Grace would have been a happier, better woman if she’d never been taught to think and had married within the sphere to which she was born. This hardly reads like a paean to social mobility, especially not for daughters!

I actually thought this might have been an early one, but it isn’t. It falls between The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, both of which I felt were clearer on Hardy’s views on the status of women. It’s not that he doesn’t sympathise with Grace’s position as a women educated out of her class, nor even that I feel the portrayal is inaccurate for the time. It’s simply that, whether he intended it or not, the underlying message seems to be, not that society should get a grip and accept that women should have the right to both an education and a happy life, but that it would probably be better for the poor little dears to stew in ignorance so they will make a happy child-bearer and home-cleaner for a worthy working man. I don’t want to get into spoiler territory, but even the ending left me wondering if he was really suggesting that men should be allowed to behave badly, but that women should find it in their sweet, feminine little hearts to forgive?

However, as I said, I still enjoyed the book thoroughly! I listened to the narration by Samuel West – again excellent. West father and son seem to be becoming my go-to narrators for a lot of the great English classics. 4½ stars for me, so rounded up.

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2/5 - Not the one for me. Knew that going in with the synopsis.

What exactly is Thomas Hardy trying to say about educated and/or bold women? This is the second Hardy book I read (the first being Far From the Madding Crowd) and actually, surprisingly for a classic, one that I didn't know anything of the plot. So I didn't know how it was going to go. I don't suppose it's a shocker to say this is a Hardy book and someone comes to a bad end.

But for further ramblings I will probably throw in spoilers, so if you read on, you've been warned.

The Woodlanders is set in an out-of-the-way woodland village where people make their money in forestry - timber, bark, cider, apple trees etc etc. You get the picture. They are simple folk who work with nature (again back to Madding Crowd and Gabriel Oak being the ideal character). Melbury is a rich timber guy, who was once embarassed by his lack of book learning. So he decided to make sure it wouldn't happen to his daughter, Grace, and sent her off to boarding school. And planned her life out as if her opinion didn't matter. Feeling guilty about having stolen the women who would be Grace's mother, from her original sweetheart, he decided Grace should marry the son of the rival, Giles Winterbourne. An ideal character who is a good honest soul, really understands nature etc etc. But Grace comes back a refined lady and out of place and Melbury wonders if Giles is now beneath her station and she ought to aim higher. She ends up marrying the doctor, who turns out to be a randy sod and has affairs with a local lass and the rich widow of the area, a vain and inconstant woman (rich and refined = bad) who leads him a merry dance to the continent and then is shot by a jealous ex lover. Grace, in the meantime, realises she doesn't love the doctor, but loves Giles, and they kind of simper at each other whilst hoping a divorce will be possible (turns out the law isn't on their side). She then runs off when the doctor returns, stays in Giles' house in hiding for a few days, and to keep things honourable, he sleps out in some kind of shack. Already ill, the conditions don't help and he ends up dying in his great sacrifice for Grace. She and Marty (a simple maid intune with nature, basically the female of Giles) who was in love with Giles, go to his grave once a week to honour their love for eight months. Then the doctor woos Grace back and she moves on with life and we end the story with Marty faithfully tending the grave as though she is the ideal woman doing the right thing and GRace is just... well, no more than one can expect of a refined and educated woman? Did Hardy just not like women getting above their station?

There's a couple of deaths in this tale, and I suppose Giles is the heroic and uncomplaining good Victorian death. There's also Marty's father earlier in the book, who is terrified of a tree near the house he thinks will collapse and crush him in his bed. His death precipitates Giles' misfortune as a strange clause tied the lease of a lot of the cottages to particular people's lives, and with that man's death, Giles is kicked out of his home. Then there's the old maid at the Melbury's Grammar, who is near death (she hangs on in there) who gets frightened as she signed a silly contract with the doctor to say he could have her oversized head when she died, and she's already spent some of the money. And then this vicious thing with the mantrap at the end. What was that all about? Tim Tang has recently married Suke (the local girl who had a fling with the doctor) and when he finds out she is attracted to the doctor, he gets a mantrap, which are illegal at this point and hides it in the wood hoping to crush the doctor the night before Tim and his new wife emmigrate to New Zealand. Just... what? What are we saying about the uneducated, down-to-earth types here? Mind you, I enjoyed the story even though I am still left undecided about a lot of things.

This book is going straight onto my list of favorites. I found myself reading at every free moment, which rarely happens with books from the nineteenth century. Not that they're not good, but they tend to be more meditative than acutely riveting (by today’s standards, at least).

The Woodlanders is riveting, however. While it takes Hardy a moment to set up the story, once it is up it is really running. I love his writing; from the careful way he plans out his plots, to his Romantic views of nature, and from his implicit feminist critiques to the almost cinematic quality of his scenes.

Hardy possesses a kind of cinematic sensibility that is all the more striking considering that the very movie ever made came out a year after this book was published. In other words, there are times his scenes are so vivid, they feel like movie scenes, but film did not exist yet. A few scenes in particular come to mind:
- Giles seeing Grace as he walks home at night, her room lit by multiple candles, as she picks out clothes for visiting Mrs. Charmond;
- Grace visiting Dr. Fitzpiers for the first time, and seeing him awake in the mirror, then asleep when she turns to look;
- The “love” ritual shared by all the town girls, on a hill outside the town;
- Dr. Fitzpiers spying first Suke and then Grace from his window as they approach the newly painted fence;
- The thunderstorm in the woods.

In all those scenes (and many more) Hardy seems to direct the reader’s gaze and plays with light and looks (yes, really!) in a way that directors and cinematographers do. Absolutely fantastic, as if you’re getting a literal inside glimpse of the Victorian era.

I have always enjoyed Hardy’s writing, but this book is by far my favorite. The town of Little Hintock just felt so real, and I loved Grace, Giles, Marty, and even Dr. Fitzpiers (towards the end), all of whom felt like people very much alive.

And of course, his writing is beautiful, as always:

“She looked towards the western sky, which was now aglow like some vast foundry wherein new worlds were being cast” (79).

“He dreamed and mused till his consciousness seemed to occupy the whole space of the woodland round, so little was there of jarring sight or sound to hinder perfect mental unity with the sentiment of the place” (165).

“He set out to look for Giles on a rimy evening when the woods seemed to be in a cold sweat; beads of perspiration hung from every bare twig; the sky had no colour, and the trees rose before him as haggard, grey phantoms whose days of substantiality were passed” (270).

By the end, I was reading it at midnight, almost falling asleep but unable to stop. To write a story with such power that it has that effect on a reader 136 years later is a testament to Hardy’s brilliance.