Public and Private Folklore: The Function of Folk-Culture in The Return of the Native and Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy’s use of folklore in his novels is best understood as a dramatization of characters’ tendencies towards meaning-making, seen also in the poems “The Convergence of the Twain” and “Ah, Are You Digging on my Grave.” Hardy’s process of meaning-making attempts to impose some order on chance happenings (or “haps”). Drawing on Bill Ellis’s discussions of the purpose and utility of folklore in daily life, this essay examines the ways that folkloric narrative framing functions in the public or communal folklore of The Return of the Native and in the private or family folklore present in Jude the Obscure. In each, Hardy utilizes folklore to dramatize human meaning-making in the face of an indifferent universe.