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Drawing on critical responses from his era and later twentieth-century criticism, the text argues that many interpretations misunderstand Hardy’s central concerns. It contrasts romanticized accounts of rural England with the real historical pressures shaping nineteenth-century countryside life and rural social 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does the book say about Hardy’s hopes for critics by the end of his life?","Question",{"text":113,"@type":114},"By 1922, near the end of his life, Hardy had stopped hoping that literary critics would understand him and had ceased writing novels years earlier.","Answer",{"name":116,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":117},"How does the book critique earlier and contemporary criticism of Hardy?",{"text":118,"@type":114},"It argues that many critics abused or failed to grasp Hardy’s most important works, often reducing them to entertainment and misrepresenting what the English countryside was like.",{"name":120,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":121},"What alternative interpretation does the book offer for Hardy’s “pessimism”?",{"text":122,"@type":114},"Instead of treating “pessimism” as a personal trait, the text discusses critics who define it by linking it to major events transforming English rural 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978-1-349-01411-8 ISBN 978-1-349-01409-5(eBook)  \nDOI 10.1007/978-1-349-01409-5  \n◎Merryn Williams I972Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1972  \nAll rights reserved.No part of this publication may bereproduced or transmitted,in any form or by any means,without permission.  \nFirst published 1972 by  \nTHE MACMILLAN PRESS LTDLondon and Basingstoke  \nAssociated companies in New York TorontoDublin Melbourne fohannesburg and Madras  \nSBN 333 I33463  \nToDiana Forrest  \nContents  \nPreface  \n1X.X1  \nIntroduction  \nPart One  \nI Rural England I840-I900I2 Country Writing 1840-I90oI53 Richard Jefferies334 The Country Novel before Hardy5I5 The Theme of Seduction79  \nPart Two  \nI Hardy's WessexI032 Economic and Social Relationships in theWessex NovelsII53 Under the Greenwood TreeI234 Far from the Madding CrowdI305 The Return of the NativeI366 The Mayor of CasterbridgeI467 The WoodlandersI578 Tess of the d'UrbervillesI6g9 Jude the ObscureI8o  \nConclusion  \nI9I  \nAppendix:Population Movements in someDorsetshire Parishes 1840-Ig0o20INotes206Select bibliography2I4Index222  \nOutline map of England,I852  \n3  \n# Preface\n\nThis book was originally written as a thesis at Cambridge Univer-sity and I have been given invaluable help by some of the scholarsthere.I have to record my special thanks to Mr L.G.Salingar,Mrs Gillian Beer and Dr Raymond Williams from the EnglishFaculty,and Mrs J.Howarth from the History Faculty.Thelate Professor C.B.Joslin also gave me some very kind advice.Miss Phyllis Deane helped me with the population statistics inthe first chapter.I also had a long and very helpful talk aboutnineteenth-century rural life and literature with Mr Adrian Bell.  \nNobody else,though,is responsible for any errors that I mayhave made.The book is my own original work,except that insome parts of Chapter I I have consulted and to some extentdepended on the historical authorities referred to in the text.  \nM.W.  \n# Introduction\n\nBy I922,near the end of his life,Thomas Hardy had given uphoping that literary critics would understand him.He had ceasedto write novels years before -he said he had been cured of it bythe assaults on fude the Obscure-and he was convinced by thistime that'critics approached his work with an ignorant pre-judice against his“pessimism”which they allowed to stand inthe way of fair reading and fair judgement'.1  \nIt is very understandable that he should have felt like this,forthe great majority of contemporary critics had abused or failedto see the point of his most important works.The Victorianswanted him to go on and on writing novels like Far from theMadding Crowd,²which one critic called a ‘picturesque romanceof rural life'.⁵Edmund Gosse in his review of Jude complained,'We wish he would go back to Egdon Heath and listen to thesinging in the heather'.4 They continually abused his best andmost serious work because they would have liked to reduce himto a mass entertainer,giving support to their own conventionaland misleading views of what the English countryside was like.  \nI think that twentieth-century criticism has not got far enoughbeyond this;Hardy's greatness,and his central significance in thehistory of the English novel,is not understood even today.I'mnot thinking only of T.S.Eliot's really vicious attack on him,orDr Leavis's exclusion of his work from ‘the great tradition’,foreven the growing number of critics who admire Hardy often failto understand what he is writing about.It is generally taken forgranted that he was a pessimist,*just as it was in his own day.But instead of treating his ‘pessimism'as a personal idiosyncracy,several modern critics-and this is where I quarrel with them-have given it a precise definition by relating it to the great  \n*Roy Morrell in Thomas Hardy:The Will and the Way argues veryconvincingly that Hardy was nothing of the so","cbCair0c3zccdLy8","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCair0c3zccdLy8","pdf",24659385,234,"English","# Preface\n# Introduction\n## Critics and misunderstandings\n## Rural society and historical change\n## Defining Hardy’s “pessimism”","[{\"question\":\"What does the book say about Hardy’s hopes for critics by the end of his life?\",\"answer\":\"By 1922, near the end of his life, Hardy had stopped hoping that literary critics would understand him and had ceased writing novels years earlier.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the book critique earlier and contemporary criticism of Hardy?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that many critics abused or failed to grasp Hardy’s most important works, often reducing them to entertainment and misrepresenting what the English countryside was like.\"},{\"question\":\"What alternative interpretation does the book offer for Hardy’s “pessimism”?\",\"answer\":\"Instead of treating “pessimism” as a personal trait, the text discusses critics who define it by linking it to major events transforming English rural society.\"}]","Thomas Hardy and Rural England - Preface and Introduction | PDF",1789949523,360]