The Woodlanders

May 07, 2011 Christopher H. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Christopher by: lonebearimages@gmail.com

Shelves: british-literature, historical-fiction, victorian-literature, thomas-hardy, read-in-2010, favorites, my-western-canon, favorite-rereads, read-in-2011

Update--May 7, 2011: I took Hardy's The Woodlanders with me on a recent week-long camping trip to Yosemite National Park, and re-read it while there. It was truly wonderful to sit in some of the most idyllic natural locations in all of the world and read this most amazing novel. If anything, I got even more from the novel this second time through, and highly recommend The Woodlanders to fans of the fiction and poetry of Thomas Hardy.

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I am continuing on with my summer of reading the written wor...more

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Aug 24, 2007 Paula rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: british lit fans

So I read this book because I love Hardy's work--Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, and Far from the Madding Crowd. The Woodlanders isn't as famous as these three.

It's interesting to read Hardy and D.H. Lawrence together. Both focus on themes of marital/sexual alienation, discovery, and rebellion, and have great sympathy for women. Both were also poets, and Hardy went so far as to shun novel-writing for poetry later in his life, believing many of his novels, because they were serializ...more So I read this book because I love Hardy's work--Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, and Far from the Madding Crowd. The Woodlanders isn't as famous as these three.

It's interesting to read Hardy and D.H. Lawrence together. Both focus on themes of marital/sexual alienation, discovery, and rebellion, and have great sympathy for women. Both were also poets, and Hardy went so far as to shun novel-writing for poetry later in his life, believing many of his novels, because they were serialized, to be too influenced by commercial necessity. As a writer, Lawrence is the more "modern" and self-consciously experimental of the two. Hardy is more austere in style, while at the same time more optimistic than Lawrence about the possibility of human goodness. Both writers were regarded as controversial in their lifetimes due to their frank treatment of sex and their latent critiques of the English class system.

The Woodlanders is a story about Grace and her close-quarters relationship with the three men in her life: her father who dotes on her and has invested his middle-class salary into her education, her childhood sweetheart Giles who comes to represent a purity/unity with nature threatened by industry and the upper class, and her adult lover Fitzpiers, a doctor with an aristocratic background. The novel starts at the point where Grace returns to her parent's woodland home after finishing school. Her father is tormented by his promise to "give" her to Giles, since her education has now elevated her above him in class and standing. Grace thus marries her social better, Fitzpiers, but comes to sorrow when he regrets his "slumming" and essentially abandons her.

The book focuses on the minutiae of propriety in the handling of a young unmarried woman, and the choices available to an abandoned wife when divorce was still only an option for the uber-rich. It's fascinating to see the ways in which Grace and her men must all constantly face acceptable social strictures governing their behavior, even when they attempt to defy these strictures. Hardy points to how this social structure ultimately keeps Grace imprisoned and alienated from herself. By the time she discovers how she really feels and what she wants, it's too late, and society, especially the divorce laws at the time, make sure to keep her from happiness.

Stylistically, the Woodlanders is not as mature as Jude the Obscure. Hardy lays it on a little thick at the end, and the characters often come across as too broadly sketched, where Grace = the doe-eyed ingenue, Giles = the Christ figure/pure of heart Nature Boy, and Fitzpiers = the heartless aristocrat. Still, serialized or not, the book is fascinating for its concentrated setting (one small village in the woods), and for the dense and darkly comical mood Hardy's sympathetic third-person narration evokes.

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Oct 03, 2011 Alicia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Apparently, this is Thomas Hardy's favorite of all the novels he wrote.

My order of Thomas Hardy favorites is:

MOST FAVORITE: Far From the Madding Crowd
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Return of the Native
The Woodlanders
Under the Greenwood Tree
Two in a Tower
A Pair of Blue Eyes
Mayor of Casterbridge
The Well-Beloved
LEAST FAVORITE: Jude the Obscure (way too tragic for me)

My 18-year-old son also loves Tess of the D'Urbervilles and took it to BYU with him in his suitcase, one of 3 novels he took with him to co...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Christine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Again, Hardy sets up a believable world of a village tucked away, remote in even his contemporaries's terms, to find a group of people dealing with class struggles due to the family patriarch. The heroine struggles finding out what her place in the world is, as her father has raised her above her station through excessive schooling. Hardy would probably say that this novel shows the fickleness of people against the steadfastness of others. Some characters have problems making and following up on...more

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Aug 15, 2012 Larisa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 27, 2011 Durdles rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

I must confess that I didn't find this tale quite as gripping as the other Hardy novels that I have read. I wanted to love it more, having saved the book up for a few years lest I should run out of his novels to read for the first time. There isn't masses of action and, bearing in mind Hardy's propensity for making his characters suffer - particularly the wholly good people, the ending is fairly predictable. So I divide the cast up into Goodies: Grace, Giles, Marty obviously (although Suke is al...more I must confess that I didn't find this tale quite as gripping as the other Hardy novels that I have read. I wanted to love it more, having saved the book up for a few years lest I should run out of his novels to read for the first time. There isn't masses of action and, bearing in mind Hardy's propensity for making his characters suffer - particularly the wholly good people, the ending is fairly predictable. So I divide the cast up into Goodies: Grace, Giles, Marty obviously (although Suke is also good for a roll in the hay) who are therefore destined for ultimate misery, and Baddies: Melbury who is so ridiculously keen to control others' lives that he ruins everyone's chance of happiness including his own and is therefore the chief villain of the piece ahead of Eldred Fitzpiers who is plainly immature and unworthy of any of his numerous conquests (although you have to admire his chutzpah) and Felice who is rich enough to know better but too posh to care (also she smokes cigarettes which is shocking). The moral is to be careful what you wish for and leave your children alone in affairs of the heart. And if you are a good person, don't get your hopes up.
There is a huge amount of sex in this novel: "You shall have her!". "My God you've had her!". It's all very earthy and tied in with man's exploitation of the encircling woods, the soil and apple orchards. Sap keeps rising "like a hydraulic press" physically and metaphorically and walkers continually get lost in the woods as they try to negotiate the maze of their lives.
I do love Hardy's flashes of insight into human nature. The scene where Fitzpiers arrives to see Marty's father is a good example: firstly the author notes (unlike many patients) that the GP hasn't thought once about his patient since his last visit (that's very me I confess. I can't even remember their name, what was wrong with them or which bloody pills they had, which, by the way, were useless) and secondly the green doctor makes the mistake of actually giving advice (big mistake). This is the only (grimly) humorous passage and there is, in the small cast of characters, a dearth of local idiots to give light relief.(less)

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Nov 04, 2011 Jayaprakash Satyamurthy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Throughout this novel I was taken by the way Hardy visualises scenes either through subjective viewpoints, showing us what specific characters see, or choose to see, or from the eye of the omniscient observer, the author. Some of my favorite novelists - Graham Greene is another example - excel in the art of sequencing, chosing the most telling scene to establish theme, character and setting and advance plot. Hardy displays a similar knack here, with each episode bearing its own strength and unit...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Alicia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was Thomas Hardy's favorite of all his novels. This wasn't my favorite storyline/ending, but I loved the writing and descriptions of nature. I loved getting lost in this book and feeling like I was there among the apple trees in the little English village with the woodlanders. This book teaches a valuable lesson that would benefit teenagers today: The heroine decides not to marry the hard-working, devoted boy-next-door. Instead, she marries a handsome doctor with higher social status. She s...more This was Thomas Hardy's favorite of all his novels. This wasn't my favorite storyline/ending, but I loved the writing and descriptions of nature. I loved getting lost in this book and feeling like I was there among the apple trees in the little English village with the woodlanders. This book teaches a valuable lesson that would benefit teenagers today: The heroine decides not to marry the hard-working, devoted boy-next-door. Instead, she marries a handsome doctor with higher social status. She soon regrets her decision as her new husband is selfish and unfaithful. The great life lesson is to go for the hard-working, humble, honest man. This book has all the usual Hardy twists and turns and tragedies, plus some likable characters (Giles and Marty). A very satisying read!

Quotes:

p. 95: “He was sorry. The petulance that relatives show towards each other is in truth directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped the situation no less for the offenders than the offended, but is too elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor humanity in irritated mood.”

pp. 160-1: “Why should he go farther into the world than where he was? The secret of quiet happiness lay in limiting the ideas and aspirations; these men's thoughts were conterminous with the margin of the Hintock woodlands, and why should not his be likewise limited--a small practice among the people around him being the bound of his desires?”

p. 194: “Fitzpiers was for once as agitated as she. Over and above the genuine emotion which she raised in his heart there hung the sense that he was casting a die by impulse which he might not have thrown by judgment.”

p. 301: “…in his view there could come of his interference nothing worse than what existed at present. And yet to every bad there is a worse.”

p. 398: "’How clever he is!’ she said, regretfully. ‘Why could he not have had more principle, so as to turn his great talents to good account?’”

p. 404: “Nothing ever had brought home to her with such force as this death how little acquirements and culture weigh beside sterling personal character.”

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May 30, 2009 Rosalind rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Every bit as lovely as I remembered it. My view of this as my favourite Hardy is only confirmed, even if my recent splurge of rapid reading slowed down dramatically as I was reading it. The first two thirds took a couple of days, the remainder has been spun over two weeks simply because of time pressures and because this is a book that demands not to be read superficially in small doses, but needs to wait for time to be allocated to it.

It's less melodramatic than some of Hardy's better-known no...more Every bit as lovely as I remembered it. My view of this as my favourite Hardy is only confirmed, even if my recent splurge of rapid reading slowed down dramatically as I was reading it. The first two thirds took a couple of days, the remainder has been spun over two weeks simply because of time pressures and because this is a book that demands not to be read superficially in small doses, but needs to wait for time to be allocated to it.

It's less melodramatic than some of Hardy's better-known novels, and it doesn't have the same huge Wessex landscapes against which the smallness of human existence is contrasted. Instead, its setting is confined to one small part of West Dorset, a suffocating micro-world hemmed in and overshadowed by trees. Within this prison, Hardy documents a centuries-old agrarian society which was already dying, its inhabitants as much allegory as beautifully-constructed flesh-and-blood. In this world are Giles and Marty, people who live by the trees and have done for generations, frozen like the figures on Keats's urn, never quite to find each other for the love to which they are surely destined. From outside come the strangers, Dr Fitzpiers and Mrs Charmond, as sophisticated, superficial and uncomfortable with this introverted world as the century coming over the horizon. And they would stay apart but for a fifth person, Grace Melbury, with a foot in both camps thanks to her socially ambitious father. She is the catalyst for explosive changes.

The Woodlanders was published in the year of Victoria's jubilee, a time of supreme confidence in the world. In that context, Hardy's sense of Greek tragedy, of hubristic protagonists struck down by the gods, seems particularly perspications. But there are no simple morals in this story; the ending is ambiguous, the apparent gloom and bleakness shot through with dry wit marking Hardy a kind of Leonard Cohen of the Victorian novel (Giles, who has little time for God, strops his knife on a leather-bount psalter), The book is surprisingly modernist in feel, anticipating not only James and Lawrence but the cinema.
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Mar 08, 2013 Ali rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Woodlanders is the latest read in my on-going Hardy challenge. Several friends and I have been reading (or re-reading in my case) all of Hardy’s fiction in chronological order. I’m not sure why this is only the second time I’ve read The Woodlanders, as I remember been mesmerised by it when I was eighteen. I can remember clearly where I was when I read it – and despite always meaning to, I never managed to get around to re-reading it in the intervening years. I am so glad I left it until now,...more The Woodlanders is the latest read in my on-going Hardy challenge. Several friends and I have been reading (or re-reading in my case) all of Hardy’s fiction in chronological order. I’m not sure why this is only the second time I’ve read The Woodlanders, as I remember been mesmerised by it when I was eighteen. I can remember clearly where I was when I read it – and despite always meaning to, I never managed to get around to re-reading it in the intervening years. I am so glad I left it until now, as it has been such a joy. I love my Hardy, as many of you will know, and those fond memories of my first reading of it have been upheld.
Despite not being a happy story – that’s maybe no surprise, this is Thomas Hardy we are talking about – The Woodlanders is less melodramatic than some of Hardy’s best known novels. The themes are familiar ones, and in The Woodlanders there are definite echoes of previous novels such as Under the Greenwood Tree and Far from the Madding Crowd, and the tragic Tess of the D’Urbervilles which came four years later. Hardy’s preoccupations with marriage, sexual mores, social equality and rural life are all present in this wonderful novel.
“There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged like a dead-born child.”

The canvas is less broad than say The Return of the Native and Far from the Madding Crowd, mainly a small woodland community, the hamlet of Little Hintock. At the heart of this small community is George Melbury who has educated his daughter Grace considerably above her social station. Grace promised to local man Giles Winterbourne returns from school to her father’s house seeing her home with new eyes. Melbury’s ambitions for his daughter cause him to regret an earlier vow to Giles’s father.
“He Looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him the sweet atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards.”
Into this rural idyll of timber dealers and woodland workers come two outsiders. To Hintock house, comes landowner the beautiful widow Felice Charmond, while a gifted young doctor Edred Fitzpiers comes to take up a small hillside practice nearby. In Fitzpiers, who is of an old and noble family, Melbury sees a brighter future for his adored daughter Grace. As Grace and Giles’s youthful affection begins to fade in the wake of Melbury’s interference, Marty South a strange young woman nurses her own old love for Giles which goes unrequited. The world of the woodlanders of Little Hintock is an old one, one of traditions and ancient trades – Mrs Charmond and Fitzpiers do not entirely fit into this world, bringing with them sophistications and ideas at odds with the woodland people.
As some of my fellow Hardy readers will possibly read this review – I hesitate to say too much more – in case of spoiling the rest of the story. Suffice to say, in my opinion – whatever that is worth – this is an outstanding novel. Hardy’s descriptions allow the weaving together of beautiful imagery with a well-crafted story. I actually found the ending – of which I’ll say no more – to be wonderful poignant.
For anyone who has read it – a question (no spoilers in your replies please) what do we think of Grace and Marty? I like both of them, for different reasons – although I began by thinking I wouldn’t care much for Grace. One of the things I like about Hardy’s female characters is that they seem real – they are flawed, vulnerable and sometimes do things the reader disagrees with. They are never merely vapid creatures in crinoline. Grace Melbury is no Bethsheda Everdene, but she grows as the novel progresses and the woman who emerges has been transformed from the girl she was by her experiences and disappointments in love.

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Sep 17, 2012 Lucas Reis rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-english

This is a great book indeed. Hardy´s style is very elegant and he uses inversions all the time, at any rate it isn´t a very difficult reading.
As a follower of the Naturalist school in literature, Thomas Hardy depicts his characters as true masterpieces of their enviroment. Thus we have ,for example, Grace who in spite of being born in the quiet and isolated Little Hintock, was raised in a posh school and aquires the noble refinements of a true lady ; or Giles Winterborne who is utterly connected...more

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Mar 02, 2013 Ben Babcock rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 19th-century, 2013-read, own, romance, victorian-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. My mad love affair with the work of Thomas Hardy deepens and continues with The Woodlanders, the latest of his novels to grace my shelves. I found this well-preserved Penguin Classics paperback in a used book shop in Edinburgh for £2. I bought it (and a few other books) more so I could say I bought some books from a used bookstore in Scotland than for any other reason. But Hardy is one of those authors whose entire oeuvre I intend to consume, book by book. Though The Woodlanders is a relatively...more

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Jan 29, 2011 Nicki rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, victorian

Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders, is a nearly perfectly balanced novel. It’s not so melodramatic as The Mayor of Casterbridge, nor is it as tragic as Tess of D’Urbervilles. The plot revolves around a group of woodlanders living in a village called Little Hintock. Grace Melbury is a frontrunner among the protagonists along with her two love interests Giles Winterborne and Edred Fitzpiers. When the novel opens Grace has just returned home after a long absence at school. Though she has been promised...more

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May 22, 2011 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've read my fair share of Thomas Hardy novels. I love me some Thomas Hardy. For me, this falls somewhere in the middle... of course, I still gave it a 4. The beginning felt a tad slow, but once everything was set up properly, the story got really interesting...

I expected this to be more like a Far From the Madding Crowd but got something more akin to Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

I'm not sure how I feel about Grace. I couldn't decide if I was supposed to like her or not. I think in the end, I didn...more

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Mar 15, 2010 Angela rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, thomas-hardy-love

“The Woodlanders” is microscopic in scale compared to Hardy’s other novels. Not only is the story dwarfed in comparison to the size of “Jude the Obscure” and “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” but the novel primarily takes place in the small town of Hintock and its surrounding woods. The readers barely travel outside of this parameter, and we are forced to take Hardy at his word when he says the characters are traveling abroad since hardly any ink is wasted in describing any foreign surroundings. Neve...more “The Woodlanders” is microscopic in scale compared to Hardy’s other novels. Not only is the story dwarfed in comparison to the size of “Jude the Obscure” and “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” but the novel primarily takes place in the small town of Hintock and its surrounding woods. The readers barely travel outside of this parameter, and we are forced to take Hardy at his word when he says the characters are traveling abroad since hardly any ink is wasted in describing any foreign surroundings. Nevertheless, Hardy stays true to his style by introducing us to a handful of characters through whose various lenses the readers watch the story unfold.

One thing I found interesting about this story was the fact that there was no one for whom I could feel sympathy. Grace is a weak and unambitious girl who upon finally finding her voice, decides to lose it. Giles a poor but hardworking man who loves his “Gracie” first loses her because he is not as assertive as he should have been and then loses her again by worrying too much about what others may think about their “scandalous” arrangement. Melbury, Grace’s father, relies too heavily upon the notion that his daughter’s future will bring him grandeur and therefore ruins it. Fitzpiers is a shallow asshole. Mrs. Charmond needs to rip a page out of “How to be a Discrete Mistress” and meditate upon it daily. And Marty, the person for whom I believe we’re supposed to feel the most sympathy, deserves everything that happens to her. She is the epitome of how not to act when trying to win someone’s heart. (OK maybe I’m being a little harsh on Marty, but really, who tries to gain someone’s love by pointing out what they’ve lost? SERIOUSLY!) Generally, in a Hardy novel, there is at least one person with whom I can connect on some type of level, but upon reaching page 305 of “The Woodlanders,” I realized I might have connected more with Hardy’s grotesque description of the woods than with any of the characters who lived within.

I give “The Woodlanders” 4.3 stars (is that even possible?) for Hardy’s unnatural ability to personify people’s true character and motivations via beautiful prose and for giving us a Jude-light novel for those day when we readers don’t want to be too depressed.

Recommended to those who are true fans of Thomas Hardy. For those who have yet to read a book written by Hardy, I would suggest starting with “Far from the Madding Crowd,” “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” or “Jude the Obscure” (my all time fav.).

(Excerpt from http://honorsenglish.heavytext.com/)(less)

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Nov 05, 2010 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have a thing for Thomas Hardy. Maybe my husband should be worried.
Normally mothers have to take the blame for everything, but this novel is about a father and his love for his daughter. It compels him to give her a good education at a finishing school: when the girl returns to her hometown there is nowhere for her to show her accomplishments or use her skills. It also makes her grow apart from her childhood sweetheart, the man her dad would like her to marry. This is the paradox at the heart o...more I have a thing for Thomas Hardy. Maybe my husband should be worried.
Normally mothers have to take the blame for everything, but this novel is about a father and his love for his daughter. It compels him to give her a good education at a finishing school: when the girl returns to her hometown there is nowhere for her to show her accomplishments or use her skills. It also makes her grow apart from her childhood sweetheart, the man her dad would like her to marry. This is the paradox at the heart of the novel.
As a result, this girl, Grace, is going to find herself torn apart between Giles, who is deeply and constantly in love with her, and Fitzpiers, the new doctor in the area. It is very intriguing how her dad tries to engineer first a relationship with Giles and then with Fitzpiers, and then back to Giles and so forth, so Grace does not really know her own feelings and falls into a relationship almost by default.
This is the case with Grace and Fitzpiers. They fancy themselves in love, they will themselves to fall in love. By contrast, Giles and Marty South, victims of unrequited love, are steady and unmoved in their feelings regardless of circumstances. I wonder whether Thomas Hardy is suggesting that civilization and education complicate things a bit too much.
The structure of this book is awesome. It starts off and finishes with the two single appearances of the same character, the barber. Also, like in "A Pair of Blue Eyes", Hardy manages to get the protagonist out of her clothes at a key point in the story. The part where Giles behaves so gentlemanly towards Grace as to risk his own life as a result, seems a bit farcical to me and difficult to believe, but then I am a twenty-first century reader. I really liked how at the end of the book Grace's dad and his friends, coming back from a search party, judge how the situation between Grace and Fitzpiers is going to go from then, and retell various stories about marriage, Hardy's leit-motiv.
I have never been a great fan of the countryside, but I appreciate the beauty of English villages and this is a side of Hardy that I really enjoy too.
How I wish he were a member of goodreads and could clik on the "I like" button after reading my review.
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Oct 26, 2012 Mark Lancaster rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders is one of those books I've had it it mind to read for years - and thirteen years after graduating in Literature I've finally gotten round to it. And I'm so glad I did! It's quite a short book for Hardy - not on the scale of Tess or Madding and much lighter than Jude. Being Hardy, though, it still has a poignant if not tragical thread. A lovely story, but also a fascinating insight into how much society has changed in the past hundred or so years - something that wa...more

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Sep 03, 2012 Christina Dudley rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Another beautiful Hardy read, and--not to give any spoilers--a comparative frolic. Not as skippy-happy (for Hardy) as Far from the Madding Crowd, to be sure, but not such a downer as Jude the Obscure.

Lovely Grace Melbury is educated above her humble family's station in the woodlands of Little Hintock, making her too good in her father's opinion (and occasionally her own) for her childhood friend and sweetheart Giles Winterborne. Grace then comes to the attention of the fascinating dilettantish d...more

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Nov 02, 2011 Ian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books

A really satisfying read, absorbing and affecting, without being quite as tragic as some of Hardy's other efforts. As it was Hardy's own favourite, its hard to fathom why it is not more popular. Perhaps the lead characters are not quite so appealing: Grace Melbury, educated beyond her natural station, Edred Fitzpiers, dissipated doctor, are finely carved, but Giles Winterbourne, honest, worthy son of the soil comes across (perhaps appropriately) as a bit wooden, a thinly veiled allegory for all...more

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Jun 18, 2010 Jennifer rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: why-did-i-bother, classics

This suffered from being a required read at school. I am prepared to admit that the underlying story was interesting enough but was left with the lingering feeling that if anyone described another tree/copse/wood to me I would be forced to get an axe or light a fire and deal with it! As I remember it, you could probably rip out the first half of each chapter and discard it before getting on with reading "the story". Admittedly school was quite a number of years ago now but I can't really stir up...more

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Oct 28, 2011 Emma Mckay rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hardy uses his honourable heroine Grace to criticise the class system as we see her impossibly torn between passion and propriety. Hardy again questions what love is and emphasises the tragedy of unrequited love as Grace believes herself to be too good for Giles after she has been educated. However it seems that no matter what the characters believe they should choose because of class; fate still catches up in the end to wreak havoc in their lives. A well balanced novel, deserves just as much cr...more

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Jan 12, 2011 Meg J. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

It's become a new year's tradition to read a Hardy novel in January. This one was not my favorite, but it had that tragic Hardy irony that I love! My favorite character was Marty South, although at the end she seemed a bit unstable! I also loved the role the hair played in the story. I thought it was hilarious that the book started and ended with hair!

"she was penning a letter to Fitzpiers, to tell him that Mrs. Charmond wore her hair. It was poor Marty's only card, and she played it, knowing no...more

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Jan 30, 2013 Rosalind Mitchell rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Every bit as lovely as I remembered it. My view of this as my favourite Hardy is only confirmed, even if my recent splurge of rapid reading slowed down dramatically as I was reading it. The first two thirds took a couple of days, the remainder has been spun over two weeks simply because of time pressures and because this is a book that demands not to be read superficially in small doses, but needs to wait for time to be allocated to it.

It's less melodramatic than some of Hardy's better-known no...more Every bit as lovely as I remembered it. My view of this as my favourite Hardy is only confirmed, even if my recent splurge of rapid reading slowed down dramatically as I was reading it. The first two thirds took a couple of days, the remainder has been spun over two weeks simply because of time pressures and because this is a book that demands not to be read superficially in small doses, but needs to wait for time to be allocated to it.

It's less melodramatic than some of Hardy's better-known novels, and it doesn't have the same huge Wessex landscapes against which the smallness of human existence is contrasted. Instead, its setting is confined to one small part of West Dorset, a suffocating micro-world hemmed in and overshadowed by trees. Within this prison, Hardy documents a centuries-old agrarian society which was already dying, its inhabitants as much allegory as beautifully-constructed flesh-and-blood. In this world are Giles and Marty, people who live by the trees and have done for generations, frozen like the figures on Keats's urn, never quite to find each other for the love to which they are surely destined. From outside come the strangers, Dr Fitzpiers and Mrs Charmond, as sophisticated, superficial and uncomfortable with this introverted world as the century coming over the horizon. And they would stay apart but for a fifth person, Grace Melbury, with a foot in both camps thanks to her socially ambitious father. She is the catalyst for explosive changes.

The Woodlanders was published in the year of Victoria's jubilee, a time of supreme confidence in the world. In that context, Hardy's sense of Greek tragedy, of hubristic protagonists struck down by the gods, seems particularly perspications. But there are no simple morals in this story; the ending is ambiguous, the apparent gloom and bleakness shot through with dry wit marking Hardy a kind of Leonard Cohen of the Victorian novel (Giles, who has little time for God, strops his knife on a leather-bount psalter), The book is surprisingly modernist in feel, anticipating not only James and Lawrence but the cinema.
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Jan 29, 2012 Danelle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, historical, 19th-century, mine, favorites

Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders is set in Little Hintock, an isolated village surrounded by wood in the second half of the 19th century. Hardy pits big city culture versus rural life and values. Wealth, poverty, class status, and ambition are all topics of discourse in this beautifully written novel.

Though life in this remote village goes on as it has for hundreds of years, a select group of its residents are caught in a web of passions: Marty South, an unassuming peasant girl is deeply in love w...more

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Jul 14, 2012 Louise rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, eread, classics, favourites

I have fallen in love with this book, heart and soul. I love the story, I love the setting, I love the themes and most of all I love Hardy's evocative, yet sensitive, narrative. From "a doctor's kaleidoscopic dreams", through "the secret of quiet happiness" of "unvarnished men" to "if I ever forget your name, let me forget home and Heaven" this book held me, spellbound.

Quintessentially Hardy, with it's romantic illustration of a long-extinct way of life and the clashes between it and the encro...more

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Mar 24, 2012 Corinna Hann rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: victorian-guilty-pleasures

Hardy often reduces me to tears either by virtue of how lovingly he describes his chosen settings or through allowing some awful fate befall his most beloved protagonists. The Woodlanders was no exception; although,it didn't hit me as hard as Jude the Obscure did. I'll be honest: the more tragic, the better. I adore being emotionally battered by Hardy. No one is left fulfilled by the story, least of all its most pitiful character, Marty South, whom we encounter in the first pages of the novel.

A...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Nadyne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel, fiction, e-books, classic, literary-fiction, 1800-s, kindle, english

First sentence: “The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should trace the forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to the south shore of England, would find himself during the latter half of his journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands, interspersed with apple-orchards.”

P. 99: “Melbury had purchased some standing timber from her a long time before, and now that the date had come for felling it he was left to pursue almost his own course.”

Last...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Craig rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics-british

You can’t be lily-livered and read Thomas Hardy. You have to have grit. This is equally true of The Woodlanders, written by Hardy in 1887 as one in the series of his Wessex novels. The Woodlanders is a “Gatsby-esk” look at class distinctions; how the privileged class invariably and uncaringly run rough shod over the lower and middle class – in this case in mid-19th Century England. Fitzgerald’s book followed some 38 years later and dealt with the same issue on American soil.

Giles Winterborne (t...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Madeline rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Madeline by: B.D.

Shelves: 2012, class, novels, pastoral, wessex, westernish-canon, marriage-lets-you-down, family, women, the-victorians

The Woodlanders is kind of the mirror image of Under the Greenwood Tree, a book which has grown in my estimation since I first read it (which was two years ago, I'm realizing, and that's weird to think about).

Girl comes back to her home town after being educated above her class? Check. This is due to her father's marital ambitions for her? Check. She gets involved in a love triangle with a hometown boy and a professional class of newcomer/interloper? Check. There's a wood? Check. There a consta...more

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Nov 06, 2010 Mlg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: victorians

Another gem from Thomas Hardy. Mr. Melbury, timber merchant at Little Hintock decides to educate his only daughter high above her station. This complicates her betrothal to Giles, a simple but honest cider merchant. Add in an unscrupulous and rakish doctor who is trying to buy the skull of Melbury's servant, and a self absorbed lady of the manor, Mrs. Charmond and the novel has all the elements needed to keep the reader engaged until the end. Like most Hardy books, don't look for a happy ending...more

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