The Woodlanders
HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of best-loved, essential classics.Grace Melbury, the only daughter of a timber-merchant, arrives home in Little Hintock after an expensive education and her father looks to find a husband for her. There are two rivals for her hand: Giles Winterborne, a good-hearted yeoman and her childhood sweetheart, and Edred Fitzpiers, an ambitious young doctor of good family. Fitzpiers wins her, but the mismatch brings unhappiness not just to the young couple, but to a wider circle in the woodland community.‘The Woodlanders’ is one of Hardy’s most powerful works and the one he liked best. With brooding sexual undertones, it addresses themes about which the author held strong views – the laws of divorce, the inequalities of society, and the uncertainty of land tenure.
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About the Author
Thomas Hardy was born in a Dorset village in 1840. Although he had a modest upbringing, Hardy found himself working successfully as an architect in London at the age of 22. He spent five years in London, but was eventually drawn back to Dorset because he did not enjoy the urban environment or the class prejudice he felt, mixing with the well-heeled of Englandâs capital city. Having returned to the countryside, he began to consider an alternative career as a novelist. By 1867, he had already completed a manuscript, but had no luck placing it with a publisher. Despite this, his ambition knew no bounds and he persevered securing his first publication in 1871. His first five novels were well received, and Hardyâs confidence in pushing the literary envelope grew steadily.
The Woodlanders
Thomas Hardy, observing that the real behaviour of people was often driven by animal instincts rather than social etiquette, used his literature to take a swipe at Victorian respectability. His stories are filled with characters who are extreme in their thoughts and actions, since he uses them as representations of the human traits that he wishes to analyze.
The Woodlanders is typical of Hardyâs literary style. The characters cannot help but make life more complicated than it needs to be, because the author ascribes them with traits that make them flawed: they are personifications of the flaws that Hardy wishes to criticize in his fellow humans. One gets the impression that Hardy finds great amusement in doing this, precisely because it becomes apparent that the very notion of respectability is an impossible ambition.
