Thomas Hardy and the rural question

Lowman, Roger John (1983) Thomas Hardy and the rural question. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

The Rural Question of the nineteenth century is a significant context for Hardy's novels, as they appear to draw so particularly upon the rural background against which they are set. But attempts to establish a relationship between his novels and nineteenth-century history have been unconvincing. Hardy's use of documentary, discussed here, is unusually insistent, but it is not an earnest of truth, as different critical schools which have seen in it historical or social accuracy have supposed. The novelist, the journalist and the political commentator have certain strategies in common to persuade the reader of their truth and immediate relevance, and these become important for an assessment of the novels as well as of the history. The Rural Question was so firmly established as an issue before the public when Hardy wrote that it becomes clear that he was deliberately turning away from it rather than addressing himself to it; in particular, his attitude to the rural poor is unsympathetically conservative, and the benevolence of his rural scenes amounts to a political statement, although no doubt an involuntary one. Hardy's article 'The Dorsetshire Labourer' is read in the context of writing on the Rural Question, and seen to evade the significant issues through the use of various rhetorical strategies; the essay is compared with material on the Rural Question published by Dorset men well known to Hardy. The novels also show evasive tendencies; the virtual exclusion of the rural poor and the manner in which the few who do find a place are presented reveals old-fashioned social attitudes, and suggests that the sympathies which some critics have found in Hardy are of their own making. The images of the countryside which are such dominant symbols in the novels do not relate convincingly to historical reality, and are better seen as rhetorical contributions to versions of pastoral, a genre which has wide application in Hardy's novels, in respect of both form and content.

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