THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928): BETWEEN VICTORIAN AND MODERNIST?

To make the expanse of the twentieth century more manageable for our purposes, it might help to think of it in three stages. Notice that like the Victorian Age, this period lends itself less to study by characteristics (Romanticism) than by issues. Also where Romanticism is dominated by male poets whose poetry, while immensely rich, is also fairly homogeneous in its concerns, twentieth-century British literary figures are far more diverse and often less monolithic as literary personae. Consequently, they are perhaps more interesting when considered in clusters than according to a "major author" model.

Stage 1: From Victorian (1837-1901) to Edwardian (1901-1910)
1. Victoria's golden jubilee in 1887 and diamond jubilee in 1897 and then her death in 1901 endorse the last two decades of the nineteenth century as the closing of an era. Gradually Victorian earnestness is displaced by Edwardian ostentation.
2. The artist, from struggling to engage with political and moral issues, becomes more resigned to alienation. Some opt for aestheticism--deliberately cultivating a distance from practical and political problems and concentrating on the formal problems of art (e.g. Oscar Wilde). This develops into the Modernism of T. S. Eliot and James Joyce.
3. Religious doubt (expressed, for instance, in Tennyson's In Memoriam) now frequently extends to outright pessimism and stoicism (Hardy).
4. The Woman Question develops towards full emancipation for women (Woolf).
5. The colonies both European (such as Ireland) and elsewhere (India, Africa, West Indies) resist colonization and imperialism.

Stage 2: The First World War (1914-1918) and Its Aftermath:
1. Post-war disillusionment is prevalent. Britain is portrayed as a spiritual wasteland (T. S. Eliot).
2. Women's emancipation is achieved (1928) as Woolf's "Room" indicates.
3. Irish resistance grows to full-blown uprising (Yeats).

Stage 3: The Second World War (1939-45) and Decolonization:
1. Decentralization of London as the hub of imperial power begins; from 1960s onward acceptance grows of alternative cities (e.g. Liverpool, Manchester, Reading) and regional cultures. Postcolonial subcultures and literatures flourish both at home and abroad.
2. Decolonization accelerates (Independence of India: 1947; The Irish Republic: 1949; The Republic of South Africa: 1961).

Which of these issues is important for understanding the poetry of Thomas Hardy?

--Absence of religious faith and presence of pessimism and stoicism are important. He accepts "Crass Casualty " (see "Hap") and is unable to feel any connection with a higher metaphysical power (see "The Impercipient"). That said, Hardy has the capacity to create a sense of ghostliness or a past that returns to haunt the present and complicate the future ("The Voice").

--You may notice his resistance to the moral pressure imposed on women by the Fallen Woman myth (as we see in "The Ruined Maid" and also Tess of the D'Urbervilles). His novels also reflect his interest in the New Woman (Jude the Obscure), though we do not have time to study either of these novels.

--Notice his refusal of aestheticism. Hardy is very far from the witty urban milieu of Oscar Wilde. He situates both his poetry and his novels within a regional, rural mode (particularly Dorset, or in his novels, the mythical, antiquarian "Wessex"). You may find this reminiscent of Wordsworth (see "The Darkling Thrush"). Hardy is perceived to be in tune with the worker and the agricultural laborer rather than an elite, intellectual clique or high society. His regionalism and liberalism will make him a touchstone for later poets like Philip Larkin (1922 --   ) who search for a way of distancing themselves from what they see as the imported aesthetics of modernist poets like T. S. Eliot. Hardy thus fits into the decentralization of culture away from London toward alternative urban cultures (Liverpool, Manchester, Reading etc.) in the 1960s.
 

1. Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), "The Soldier" (1915)
This is one of the best known and most anthologized poems of the First World War. I suggest you read it first of this cluster of writings, and then return to it again when you have read all the other "voices" of the First World War. Ask yourself in what regard this sonnet is strikingly different from the other poems in our selection.

2. Discuss the different effects produced by floral imagery in "The Cherry Trees" by Edward Thomas and "To His Love" by Ivor Gurney.

3. In the extract from Grey Ghosts and Voices (1976) May Wedderburn Cannan retrospectively describes her contribution to service in France during the First World War. Look carefully at her use of the pronouns "we" and "they" in the opening paragraph and in the last three paragraphs. Then compare this usage with the "we" and "they" of Siegfried Sassoon's short lyric "They" (1917). Discuss the differences of perspective that these pronouns reflect.

4. What poetic techniques does Wilfred Owen use to express sorrow, loss, and the value of human life without slipping into either angry raving or maudlin sentimentality?