'Intrinsic Name': the Search for Definition in the Novels of Thomas Hardy

Abstract

In this thesis I discuss Hardy's fiction in terms of a duality which is a recurrent feature in his work: that is, the constant opposing of an impressionistic approach and a compulsion to classify, categorise, label. Hardy's essentially impressionistic method has received extensive discussion; I concentrate, instead, on the role of the second element of this duality, his labelling tendency, which I believe is an important dynamic in his work. The thesis is divided into three major sections. I approach Hardy's use of labels initially by looking at his preoccupation with verbal labels: firstly, in relation to the titling of his last three novels; next, in the way characters' names play a thematic and rhetorical role; and, finally, by showing how Hardy uses chapter and Part headings as problematic labels of the action. In the second section I look at Hardy's preoccupation with dress. Dress works as a visual label, and we see Hardy's handling of dress develop as a complex mode of definition from Under the Greenwood Tree in 1872, to The Mayor of Casterbridge in 1886 and Tess of the d'Urbervilles in 1891. In these two sections on name and dress I try to show how idiosyncratic preoccupation is translated into artistic motif and becomes part of the particular novel's larger rhetorical purpose; but, more importantly, how these two related preoccupations take part in the novels' continuing dialogue on the role of impressions and labels. The third section is a general discussion of Desperate Remedies, Hardy's first published novel, which was written when 'he was feeling his way to a method'. I consider here the way that Hardy, in subverting generic expectations, redefines the sensation genre: in Desperate Remedies we see an overt example of the conflict of labels and impressions in the opposing of sensation plot and poetic narrative. As a brief coda to my discussion of this early novel I look at the ways in which Hardy's last published novel, The Well-Beloved, is a subversive response to Desperate Remedies and emphasises schematic labels at the expense of impressionistic method.