EYES WIDE OPEN...

I was never forced to read Thomas Hardy. At school, I can recall being force-fed on Dickens and George Eliot, but never Hardy. It wasn`t until much later in life that I began to read his novels. It`s possible that their appeal at the time was heightened by the fact that I too am a son of Dorset but haven`t lived in the county since my earliest days, so I might sub-consciously have seen myself as at least a virtual returning native, immersing myself in the places and times that fill his pages.

Thanks to the kindness of a good friend, I`m reading Claire Tomalin`s biography of Hardy and finding it compelling, not just for the narrative but also for the insights and the eye-opening influences which shaped the novels, their `story lines,` their moralities, their prejudices and, of course, the characters themselves.

Now, I`ve recalled here in an earlier post the time I took my youngest son, in advance of sitting his `A` levels, to Fawley on the Oxfordshire downs so that he could experience the true location of Jude`s Marygreen. And I guess that Hardy`s`Wessex` is in my blood, having been born within a stone`s throw of Wellbridge Manor, where Tess spent her first night with Angel Clare and having lived my first days on Portland. So Hardy`s work has always rekindled a feeling of belonging to the places, if not the times, described so vividly in his novels.

And so it came as a surprise - a disappointment even - to glean from Claire`s book that my perception of Hardy as an accurate observer of Wessex, its people and its ways, might have to be replaced by the reality of Hardy`s own experiences having been his inspiration. Claire suggests quite powerfully that the tales, the characters and the places are all drawn from within Hardy`s own life rather than from any sympathetically observed interpretation he might have placed on how life might have been for those people in those places in that far off time. My eyes are being forced open as I read on and whilst I welcome that, there is also the sense that the more I discover of Hardy the man, the more it may detract from my affection for his work, which could be dangerous for me as well as unfair to him.

Claire Tomalin has also written perhaps the definitive biography of Jane Austen - another of my all-time favourites perhaps for similar reasons to those of my affection for Hardy, for I also have an affinity with places like Steventon, Chawton, Bath and Southampton and I`m not sure I want to see myself questioning Jane`s reputation or her legacy. So maybe I won`t buy it?