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147 HARDY'S THE WOODLANDERS : THE TOO TRANSPARENT WEB By John Peck (University College, Cardiff) Of all Hardy's novels The Woodlanders has the most curious reputation . It is recognised, and has long been recognised, as one of his six major works, yet it is nearly always the least admired, and by far the least discussed. An explanation of this stable, but slightly dismissive, respect for the novel demands answers to two questions: firstly, in what ways is The Woodlanders clearly better than many of Hardy's novels, and secondly, what is it, a difference in quality or a difference in kind, that makes it the least valued of the major novels? An answer to the first question is implicit in Ian Gregor's The Great Web. Gregor argues that the form of The Woodlanders gives expression to a clearly conceived idea, that of "the great web," and does so in an extraordinarily effective way, in which we see "nature, work and sex ... as interconnecting ."1 He does not deal with the lesser novels, but presumably they develop from a less certain, or more modest, premise , or something goes wrong in the articulation of an originally promising idea. The Woodlanders, though, does manage to find the form appropriate to its worthwhile informing conception, the novel accordingly, achieving a coherence which is not in evidence in his minor novels, where no amount of Wessex atmosphere can disguise uncertainty or slightness of subject, or wider failings of execution . But, if The Woodlanders does possess this intellectual and aesthetic coherence, one might expect it to be as highly regarded as any of Hardy's novels, yet this is not the case. Critics seeking to explain this usually suggest that it is a novel of a different kind from the other major works. David Lodge, for example, sees it as, "by Hardy's own standards, a novel in a muted key. ..." The usual dramatic force is not in evidence, and "there is no attempt to build the characters up into heroic proportions . . . ." Instead , Hardy offers a "quiet, meditative" novel, belonging to "the genre of pastoral elegy. . . ."2 If it is undervalued it is the fault of its readers who demand a certain kind of performance from Hardy, and who are disappointed when he offers something more subtle. Gregor takes a similar line. He emphasises how it differs from the other major works, the underlying idea not permitting the sort of dramatic exaggeration in evidence elsewhere. A large part of the power of the other novels lies in the imaginative force with which Hardy pursues the plight of one character, the concentration enabling him to achieve quite extraordinary effects, whereas the power of The Woodlanders is more diffuse. It depends largely on Hardy's handling of the idea of "the great web"¡ characters interrelate in various ways, none being really alone, so that the slightest movement by one makes the whole web quiver. On several occasions, a meeting of two people is observed by an unseen third party whose own life is affected by the overheard conversation ¡ and major consequences spring from minor actions: an 148 affront to Mrs. Charmond from Giles leads eventually to the loss of his house, a letter from Marty to Fitzpiers precipitates the death of Mrs. Charmond and the eventual reunion of Grace and her husband. And, of course, the web extends beyond human relationships to suggest a complex and ever-changing relationship between man and his natural environment. The Woodlanders does indeed, as Gregor says, "make transparent the inter-penetrating realities between man and man, man and nature, man and the cosmos,"3 but the connections suggested are delicate, and demand to be accepted on their own terms, rather than as a muted version of what he offers in his other novels. The arguments of both critics are impressive, and convincing up to a point, but neither provides a totally satisfactory account of the novel, because of their refusal to consider the possibility that The Woodlanders is inferior in quality to the other major works, as well as being different in kind. It is possible to have doubts about the overall success of the novel, and it is over...

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