A Pair of Blue Eyes edition by Thomas Hardy Reference eBooks
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A Pair of Blue Eyes edition by Thomas Hardy Reference eBooks
This novel centers on Elfride Swancourt a beautiful young woman with the "blue eyes" that the book alludes to. When she meets a young aspiring architect who is socially inferior but ambitious with potential as he gets older, Stephen Smith she finds that she enjoys the attentions that he gives her and she feels that she is falling in love with him and commits herself to marry him. But when her father finds out about Stephen's humble background he demands that she never see him again. Stephen leaves Elfride to make his fortune in India and Elfride meets an older more established, intelligent respectable man, Henry Knight, which forces her to look inside herself and determine what her true feelings are. She is torn between doing what is right and what her heart wants her to do.This is the second Hardy book that I have had the pleasure to read. The first was Far from the Maddening Crowd which is one of his later books and what most critics feel to be one of his masterpieces. A Pair of Blue Eyes is one of his earlier works and despite this I found myself really enjoying the plot. I was also interested to learn that this book was where the term "cliffhanger" originated from because in one of the scenes Henry Knight is literally left hanging from a cliff. As with most Hardy novels things do not always turn out how readers would wish it to and the ending is very sad but despite this I found it hard to put the book down. I enjoyed all of the character descriptions and his descriptions of the landscape are so accurate and detailed that it is easy to imagine you hanging from the cliff with Henry as well.
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A Pair of Blue Eyes edition by Thomas Hardy Reference eBooks Reviews
Thomas Hardy is one of my all-time favorite novelists.
As a kid, I was an insatiable reader of fiction, but I think that Hardy's "Trumpet Major" was probably the first classic English novel I read when I studied it for my GCE 'O' level back in the early 60s.
I didn't really get it at the time, as I was far more interested in reading the likes of W.E. Johns and Dennis Wheatley.
Then in my late teens, when I was in my room supposedly studying for accountancy exams, I picked up The Trumpet Major again, and I started reading it. I couldn't put it down and I loved every page – and I failed my accountancy exams…
I was hooked on 19th Century writers, although as a young man, I spent most of my time reading the best sellers of the day - from Archer to Grisham to Hailey to Le Carré to Michener to Maclean and so many more – good, bad, or indifferent. However, I continually went back to the world of Dickens, Austin, The Brontës, and, of course, the grand literary master himself, Thomas Hardy.
As I grew older, I became much more discerning about which authors I read. These days, with a few notable exceptions, I really struggle to find anything worthwhile to read that has been written since about 1950.
After my recent disappointment in reading Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", I was so happy to be back in the comfortable world of Hardy and his "A Pair of blue eyes".
What a pleasure it was to read his evocative, poetic texts, his wonderful descriptions of the countryside, of the landscapes, of the church buildings, and even parts of Victorian London; and, of course, his finely drawn characters. We get to know the novel's protagonists so well, that they could easily be members of our own family –had we lived in that far away time.
Add to all this a tragic love story – indeed, a classic eternal triangle - along with a half crazy grieving mother and several highly idiosyncratic and memorable characters, then you have before you a veritable Hardy feast.
The main thrust of the story involves Elfride, a young, beautiful, sheltered teenage parson's daughter, who falls for the first pretty young youth - Stephen Smith - who crosses her path.
While Smith is away in India making his fame and fortune, she finds even greater depths of feeling for a more mature young man, Harry Knight, who succeeds in supplanting Smith in her affections. Elfride's change of lover is made all the easier because Smith is from unacceptable lineage - his father is a stonemason - and Knight is a well-bred 'gentleman'.
Typical of Hardy, coincidences abound. Knight is the not only Smith's best friend and 'mentor' but he is also related to the Elfride's newly arrived, wealthy step-mother.
Then we have the aggrieved mother of a dead son from an even earlier Elfride romance, who always happens to be on hand to witness Elfride's romantic indiscretions.
There are many more coincidences, not least of which were when the two lovelorn protagonists meet up in London completely by chance and just happen to take the same train back to Cornwall to renew their attempts to woo Elfride. Completely unbeknown to them, a carriage carrying their beloved is also being transported back to Cornwall by the very same locomotive.
I never have a problem with Hardy's use of coincidences, as I doubt there is an author in existence who hasn't resorted to coincidence as a plot device somewhere in their novels.
Tolstoy was a master user of coincidences – "War and Peace" is full of them. But I do think that the carriage carrying Elfride's remains on the same train as the two protagonists who are both hoping to meet and wed her are possibly taking things a bit too far. Indeed, the climax of the story almost descends into farce, which, I am sure, was not Hardy's intention.
The best of Hardy's 'sub-plots' is Fiction's first, (literal), cliffhanger. Poor harry was hanging onto a cliff by his fingertips and this genuinely creates much suspense as you wonder whether the Knight will be saved by his beloved Elfride.
Another wonderful scene is set in a crypt, below the church, where the local aristocracy are entombed, awaiting the next world. This is where Smith first learns that Elfride's new beau is Knight - his former friend. Elfride is terrified that Smith will tell Knight of her past indiscretions and she will lose Knight, but Smith remains silent.
In the same scene, Smith's father, who is a stone mason, happens to be working in the crypt along with some jolly village helpers. So along with romantic suspense, we get one of Hardy's wonderful vignettes of rural folk, their agricultural dialects and the lives they led.
I have to confess that the darker Hardy's tales are, the better I like them. I think he is an absolute master of the dark genre, but in "A Pair of Blue Eyes", which is admittedly only his third novel, he has not quite perfected the art. His attempt at a 'dark ending' simply left this reviewer with a smile on his face.
Knight eventually learns what his lover has been up to with Smith and breaks off the relationship. Elfride follows him to London and begs him to take her back. But her unfeeling and haughty father, fearing disgrace, was hard on her heels. Once poor, broken-hearted Elfride has been dragged from Knight's home by her father, we never hear or see her again.
Surely we, the readers, are entitled to follow her back home , to share her grief and learn the circumstances which caused her to marry a third man - the local Lord? Surely we are entitled to see and how the events of her married life contributed to her failing health and ultimately, her death?
I appreciate that Hardy intended that the end of the story would come as a surprise to his readers. But surely, we could have learned the details of what happened to her later – maybe from the mouth of his stepmother, or even her father, no doubt much chastened. Instead, we hear the entire events related in a few meager sentences from the mouth of an uneducated maid.
I also think Hardy has made another constructional error. This concerns Elfrid'e decision not to meet Smith at the agreed time and place. This occurs on the same day that she rescues Knight from the cliff. Up to this point in the story, the readers have been privy to her every thought. But suddenly, we are left completely in the dark as to why she so suddenly and irrevocably changed her mind and abandoned poor Smith.
You have to wonder whether it might have been more in keeping with her character for her to meet with him and tell him to his face. Why are we spared details of how she acted the way she did and her undoubted subsequent feelings of torment and shame? Her decision to break her appointment is so pertinent to the very core of the story.
So while I thoroughly enjoyed Hardy's writing master class, I confess that I was disappointed with the last few chapters, and it is for this reason, that I can only give the book four stars out of five.
It has been over twenty years since my last foray into the beautifully written books of Thomas Hardy. The synopsis of this story has been covered by other reviewers, therefore I will focus on the thematic elements that I found the most interesting and important.
This particular novel is classified as one of the early romantic novels with apparent roots in Hardy's relationship with his beloved first wife.
While modern women will undoubtedly chafe at the rendering of old-fashioned notions of femininity and especially the feminine disposition, it is certainly instructive to be reminded of that era's expectation that women be submissive, somewhat meek and---heaven forfend--- not be seen as outspoken in the company of males.
In exploration of the character of Elfride we view her initially in the role of child-woman with an innocence and naïveté in regard to the male species. We experience a blossoming and refinement of her notion of love as she moves through the multiple stages of relationships with Felix, Stephen and Harry with continued graceful imagery.
The author exposes us to motivational aspects as Elfride stretches her mind and capabilities and confronts consequences of her somewhat precipitous actions resulting in a desperate attempt to survive the moral climate of the times.
The descriptive nature of Hardy's prose provides the occasional chuckle in the form of the wonderfully named William Worm whose mental distraction of people "frying fish" in his head all day perfectly denotes his character.
We also receive an education in routines of daily life such as pig-butchering, gardening, burial practices and housekeeping as well as the overarching impact of class and gender differences.
The text is peppered with country dialect and numerous references to Greek mythology and Latin quotations. I gave up researching the actual meaning of the more obscure names after the first dozen or so but don't think the ignorance hurt my overall enjoyment.
Hardy is a master at setting up moral quandaries that draw the reader along until the denouement. His romantic character was seemingly fulfilled after his own death when differing factions argued about where he should be buried. I found it poignant that his heart was buried beside the body of his first wife and his ashes reside in the Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.
This novel centers on Elfride Swancourt a beautiful young woman with the "blue eyes" that the book alludes to. When she meets a young aspiring architect who is socially inferior but ambitious with potential as he gets older, Stephen Smith she finds that she enjoys the attentions that he gives her and she feels that she is falling in love with him and commits herself to marry him. But when her father finds out about Stephen's humble background he demands that she never see him again. Stephen leaves Elfride to make his fortune in India and Elfride meets an older more established, intelligent respectable man, Henry Knight, which forces her to look inside herself and determine what her true feelings are. She is torn between doing what is right and what her heart wants her to do.
This is the second Hardy book that I have had the pleasure to read. The first was Far from the Maddening Crowd which is one of his later books and what most critics feel to be one of his masterpieces. A Pair of Blue Eyes is one of his earlier works and despite this I found myself really enjoying the plot. I was also interested to learn that this book was where the term "cliffhanger" originated from because in one of the scenes Henry Knight is literally left hanging from a cliff. As with most Hardy novels things do not always turn out how readers would wish it to and the ending is very sad but despite this I found it hard to put the book down. I enjoyed all of the character descriptions and his descriptions of the landscape are so accurate and detailed that it is easy to imagine you hanging from the cliff with Henry as well.
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