The Triumph of the Vast Green Ring: English Literature and the Ideology of the Countryside, 1870-1914.

Abstract

This thesis focuses on four authors who wrote about English rural life in the 1870-1914 period: Richard Jefferies, Thomas Hardy, Henry Rider Haggard and George Sturt. Manuscript, published primary and secondary sources are used to show the contributions that these writers made to the upsurge of pro-rural sentiments and prescriptions in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. It is argued that when these authors were faced with altered socio-economic realities in the countryside, they did not espouse traditional paternalist idyllism. Rather, their work celebrated the independent countryman, heightened public awareness of the implications of rural change, and conveyed to the reading public the benefits, and hardships, of contemporary rural life. Their treatment of these themes involved complex interactions with prevailing social and political discourses, without, however, producing a paradamatic shift in ruralist preconceptions. Chapter one, entitled 'Rural, Urban and Biological Crisis and the Vision of a Reconstructed Countryside', briefly surveys the context in which the authors wrote. The late nineteenth-century rural and urban crises are examined, as is the impact of degenerationist theory on contemporary perceptions of the crises. Chapters 2-5 comprise in-depth studies of Jefferies, Hardy, Haggard and Sturt's fiction and non-fiction about the rural sector. Each chapter opens with a brief biographical overview. Chapter 2 deals with Richard Jefferies' early rural social commentary (1870-1880), his 'country books', transcendental works, and late novels and essays from the 1880-1887 period. Chapter 3 considers Thomas Hardy's role as 'historian of Wessex', critically assesses 'The Dorsetshire Labourer' (Hardy's sole foray into non-fictional rural social commentary), and examines the significance of his version of English rural life as conveyed in the novels. Chapter 4 examines the relationship between Henry Rider Haggard's ruralism, imperialism, nationalism and conservatism. The chapter analyses both Haggard's fiction and non-fictional works which deal with the agricultural crisis and threats to English rural life. Chapter 5 considers George Sturt's Bettesworth books and Change in the Village in the context of Edwardian radical ruralism. The conclusion outlines the major contributions made by Jefferies, Hardy, Haggard and Sturt in influencing the contemporary response to rural life and culture, and identifies their relationship to significant political and ideological currents in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain