Hardy, The Hand of Ethelberta, and Some Persisting English Discomforts

Abstract

After I had accepted the invitation to write this paper, I kept forgetting why it had been said that it might make sense for me to do so. I found myself thinking instead of the reason why it didn’t make sense: that is, that I am not a Hardy scholar. And it doesn’t help that the best words I can think of for such scholarship as I have — that it always resolves itself into a confused heap of impressions — were the words used by Hardy to describe his fiction. I am simply, like many others, someone who has read Hardy most of his life: and of whose outlook, and way of seeing things, and way of attempting to say things, Hardy is a part. But when I say that, I suddenly remember the argument that was offered for my writing: which was that an unremitting, relentless reader, who has thought much and over many years about what he has read, might have something to offer as that sort of person: as someone who owes part of what he is to Hardy: a reader under the influence.