First published 1873. Macmillan paperback, 1976, pp429, c.152,000 words (main text).
Apparently this was the book of his that Hardy was most concerned with – he continued to revise it, not just after its transition from magazine to book, but long after as each new edition was produced. It was closest of his novels to his heart because it contains biographical elements of the place he met his wife and of her character.
The story is that of a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and the men who loved her. When we first meet her, she is the twenty-year-old daughter of a widowed priest whose parish is a remote village in north Cornwall, bounded by Bodmin moor to the south and the rugged coast to the north. At the start of the story a young architect, Stephen Smith, arrives from London to survey the village’s church tower.
This is a book about class. Elfride has already spurned the advances of a poor local youth, and falls for the young man from London. Fine class distinctions abound and are observed all the way up the scale. Perception can hold sway for a while, but once origin is known, a person is labelled. Some mobility is possible through increase in wealth, and of course, through marriage. ‘I see now how this inequality may be made to trouble us.’ [p108]. Some may help those below them to prosper, as Knight does for his acquaintance Smith. A son’s success may raise his parents. Another vital element of Victorian society is central to this story is propriety – being seen to do only the right thing, and not to have the slightest suspicion that one (particularly a woman) may have possibly been sullied (i.e. no sex before marriage). A hundred and fifty years later, the importance of this is hard to comprehend.
Hardy is known for his tragedy and there are tragic elements here. However Elfride is treated well, with a strong spirit. She rises socially as those around her fail her. The ending seems rather tacked on, perhaps as a morality tale, although to be fair to Hardy, it was pre-figured in a glance of admiration given a third of the way through. Inevitably some will get hurt along the way as we humans search around for the right partner, sometimes finding them, sometimes losing them.
Hardy is marvellous at descriptions of remote country. There is a beautiful visualisation of a gentle evening: ‘surrounded by the soft musical purl of water through little weirs, the modest light of the moon, the freshening smells of the dews outspread around. It was a time when mere seeing is meditation, and meditation peace.’ [p124]. Another is of the sea: ‘And then the waves rolled in furiously – the neutral green-and-blue tongues of water slid up the slopes, and were metamorphosed into foam by a careless blow, falling back white and faint, and leaving trailing followers behind.’ [p223]. And a little later on that same page: ‘By the time they had reached the higher levels the sky had again cleared, and the sunset rays glanced directly upon the wet uphill road they had climbed. The ruts formed by their carriage-wheels on the ascent – a pair of Lilliputian canals – were as shining bars of gold, tapering to nothing in the distance.’ [p223]. Later, a description of the colour pallet of some trees is as imaginative as a Hockney painting [p298].
Hardy is also good at encapsulating human emotion in physical activity. When Elfride is considering two possible courses of action she sets out in one direction, but soon decides the other path would be better, but no sooner set on that road than she now prefers the former. So conflicted, she eventually defers the decision to her horse, which chooses the road with the best food prospect at its end [p141]. One moment is set ‘between sunset and moonrise’, [p212] with the two faint sources of light competing to make shadows as a metaphor for developing and competing stages of a relationship from strangers through acquaintance, friendship, intimates and lovers.
On a few occasions Hardy interposes himself into the story to preach a lesson on morality or to give a Victorian male’s view on the proper role of women and what they want [e.g. p157]. ‘Women’s ruling passion – to fascinate and influence those more powerful than she … ‘ [p218]. He also has a brief dig at critics, asking who critiques the critics [p179]. The odd Wildean aphorism creeps in in the voice of Knight: ‘So many people make a name nowadays that it is more distinguished to remain in obscurity.’ [p186]. Knight is an unusual character for a novel. He comes across as a Ruskin like figure: a reviewer of books and writer of essays. He is also rather like Ruskin in his inability with and idealisation of women. A bit of a dud.
There is rather a lot of melodrama, most notably in the cliff-edge scene and also in the rushing about on trains. Cornwall seems remarkably well served with services to London; on one occasion Elfride and her father arrive on presumably separate trains within a short time of each other. The ‘poor widow’ is also rather good at turning up at awkward moments.
This edition of the book contains a lot of notes in the back, asterisked in the text, most of which are useful in explaining vernacular or archaic words, phrases, or current affairs of the period. One contains the most appalling plot spoiler. There is also a solid introduction at the beginning which is best read after reading the text for the first time because it, as expected, also contains plot spoilers. It is enlightening in some respects but makes no comment on the Knight/Ruskin similarities. There is also a biography of Hardy and a list of his major works at the beginning, and at the back, a Note on the Text, the General Preface to the Wessex Edition of 1912, written by Hardy, and a Glossary of Place-names which matches places in the book with their thinly disguised real counterparts. Hardy makes no apologies for altering places for the purpose of his fiction.
Hardy’s women characters are usually more rounded out, three-dimensional human beings than his men. Elfride is shown here maturing from a teenager into a fully developed adult with her emotions and flights of fancy under control and her understanding of the constraints of the real world matured. Smith is on something of the same journey but is much more perfunctorily filled in. If Elfride is modelled on Hardy’s wife, then he was clearly deeply in love with her at the time this was written.
While this is one of Hardy’s significant works, and contains some beautiful writing, it perhaps doesn’t quite have the power of his mature major fiction, let down by odd bits of melodrama and occasional preachiness.
Wikipedia biography of Hardy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy
Wikipedia description of the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pair_of_Blue_Eyes
Others’ reviews of the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/110077.A_Pair_of_Blue_Eyes?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_14
© William John Graham, October 2023