A review by travelsalongmybookshelf
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
4.0
✨BOOK REVIEW✨
The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
Well we are back with the next instalment in thegreatthomashardyreadalong2022 and this is just classic Hardy. I feel I am getting to know him much better by now, but he still has the capacity to drop in some surprises for a reader and if I’d been a Victorian reader I think they would have felt like bombshells!
We have a classic set up, a young woman, Grace Melbury is in a bit of a triangle for her hand in marriage with Giles Winterbourne, a solid, reliable, gentle woodlander and Edred Fitzpiers, the new professional doctor. Grace’s status has been elevated by her father’s wish for her to be educated and he feels Giles is now beneath her, even though they had been promised to each other. Grace’s head is turned by Fitzpiers and of course they marry. Fitzpiers is the usual unpleasant character, there is adultery with petticoat numbers 1 and 2. Grace’s attitude and treatment of them must have been quite shocking I think at the time of writing and there is even divorce bandied about. We have also mixed in the tragedy - I always know it’s coming, but my heart breaks, there is Hardy’s little gang of old gossips and Marty South, who is not in in a lot, but was my favourite character, sells her hair like Fantine, but is, it seems to me almost the wisest most sensible of the lot of them!
Chuck in the glorious descriptions of nature, me getting really quite upset when he kills off one of the characters - this is not a spoiler because he always does it! and you have his best book yet!
Onwards to Casterbridge!…..
✩✩✩✩
The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy
Well we are back with the next instalment in thegreatthomashardyreadalong2022 and this is just classic Hardy. I feel I am getting to know him much better by now, but he still has the capacity to drop in some surprises for a reader and if I’d been a Victorian reader I think they would have felt like bombshells!
We have a classic set up, a young woman, Grace Melbury is in a bit of a triangle for her hand in marriage with Giles Winterbourne, a solid, reliable, gentle woodlander and Edred Fitzpiers, the new professional doctor. Grace’s status has been elevated by her father’s wish for her to be educated and he feels Giles is now beneath her, even though they had been promised to each other. Grace’s head is turned by Fitzpiers and of course they marry. Fitzpiers is the usual unpleasant character, there is adultery with petticoat numbers 1 and 2. Grace’s attitude and treatment of them must have been quite shocking I think at the time of writing and there is even divorce bandied about. We have also mixed in the tragedy - I always know it’s coming, but my heart breaks, there is Hardy’s little gang of old gossips and Marty South, who is not in in a lot, but was my favourite character, sells her hair like Fantine, but is, it seems to me almost the wisest most sensible of the lot of them!
Chuck in the glorious descriptions of nature, me getting really quite upset when he kills off one of the characters - this is not a spoiler because he always does it! and you have his best book yet!
Onwards to Casterbridge!…..
✩✩✩✩