A Pair of Blue Eyes in Never too Late to Read Classics

Jun 26, 2019 Sara rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literary-fiction, romance, classics, victorian, 19th-century-literature

What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

Elfride Swancourt is a vicar’s daughter, unschooled in the world, who falls in love with two men. Her first is a young impressionable boy himself and her second a more worldly, but dare I say no more emotionally developed, man of letters. At a number of junctions in the novel, Elfride might save herself a bad experience by being honest, but she elects to withhold the truth, for easily understandable reasons, and it is her undoing. Li What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

Elfride Swancourt is a vicar’s daughter, unschooled in the world, who falls in love with two men. Her first is a young impressionable boy himself and her second a more worldly, but dare I say no more emotionally developed, man of letters. At a number of junctions in the novel, Elfride might save herself a bad experience by being honest, but she elects to withhold the truth, for easily understandable reasons, and it is her undoing. Like Tess, she is doomed to heartbreak by the unreasonable expectations of men and the societal pressures put upon women.

Hardy never fails to surprise me with his understanding of the female characters he paints. They are full-bodied and thoughtful, and they breathe life. His men are so often cruel in exacting standards that a saint would be hard to live up to and that beg for the rules to be bent, if not broken.

Never were conditions more favourable for developing a girl’s first passing fancy for a handsome boyish face--a fancy rooted in inexperience and nourished by seclusion--into a wild unreflecting passion fervid enough for anything. All the elements of such a development were there, the chief one being hopelessness--a necessary ingredient always to perfect the mixture of feelings united under the name of loving to distraction.

I found here the same elements that have always made me such a avid fan of Thomas Hardy. There is such a feeling of doom, of having the cards stacked against happiness, and that tearing desire to whisper to the characters as you go, “don’t do this, listen to your gut, you are about to step off the edge of a cliff.”

Speaking of cliffs, this story has the distinction of being the source of the term, “cliffhanger”. When first produced in its serial form, it ended on a scene in which a major character is literally hanging from the side of a cliff by fingernails, and readers had to wait for the next installment to discover the fate ahead.

A lovely read for any fan of Thomas Hardy, which can rank alongside many of his other works for both plot, interesting characters and style. It seems to be less known, but I have no idea why, since it delivered for me on all levels.
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Dec 05, 2012 Laura rated it it was amazing

Shelves: victorians, audio-books, british-literature, fiction-19th-century, read-2012

From BBC radio 4 Extra:
Thomas Hardy's partly autobiographical story about the love triangle between a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from very different backgrounds

Jeremy Irons is splendid!!! ...more

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Feb 11, 2022 Laura (Reading is a Doing Word) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics-trad-and-modern, hardy, 2022-read, books-i-own

I read this as part of a readalong over on Instagram.

I didn’t really know what to expect going in. The only Hardy I’d previously read was Far from the Madding Crowd back in 1996 and I suspect I was too young to fully appreciate it. So Blue Eyes almost feels like my first “proper” Hardy experience.

From the outset I was struck by two things: Hardy’s descriptions of nature are beautiful and his characters are flawed and challenging.

I found it interesting reading about characters I didn’t really li I read this as part of a readalong over on Instagram.

I didn’t really know what to expect going in. The only Hardy I’d previously read was Far from the Madding Crowd back in 1996 and I suspect I was too young to fully appreciate it. So Blue Eyes almost feels like my first “proper” Hardy experience.

From the outset I was struck by two things: Hardy’s descriptions of nature are beautiful and his characters are flawed and challenging.

I found it interesting reading about characters I didn’t really like, although it speaks for the writing that despite this, I still read on. Elfride is inconstant and flighty and perhaps overindulged. Her father is blinkered and pompous. Stephen is perhaps too naive and Knight was a nightmare!

The blurb on the back hinted at the path this story would take. There was no happy ending here. Throughout the book there were often sweeping statements about women and I struggled to decide whether these echoed Hardy's beliefs or if he was highlighting societal views. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt…just.

Despite Elfride’s annoying nature I did sympathise with her by the end of the book. Her youthful misguided behaviour ends up being judged overly harshly and unfairly costing her happiness. If a man of the time had behaved in the same way there would be no issue.

The book highlights double standards and classism in English society at the time, but also the hypocrisy that follows when lower classes become upwardly mobile.

I’m not expressing myself satisfactorily but I enjoyed this book. I found it a relatively easy read and I did want to find out what happened to everyone. However I’m not sure how long these characters will stay with me and I didn’t really care about any of them that deeply. I was fascinated to learn that Blue Eyes contains the origin of the expression “cliffhanger”!

..but I loved Hardy’s descriptions of nature. Here are some quick examples:

“The mists were creeping out of pools and swamps for their pilgrimages of the night..”

“It was so early that the shaded places still smelt like night time, and the sunny spots had hardly felt the sun.”

I look forward to continuing the Hardy journey. Next up - Far from the Madding Crowd. ...more

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Nov 10, 2020 Zuly rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, privacy-and-surveillance, around-the-world-challenge, favorites, around-the-world, family, history, culture, identity, literature

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. spoilers** Having read 3 or 4 of Hardy's most popular novels decades ago, I'm drawn back to start from the beginning with his first, and this, his second. His novels are shaped around secrets and secrecy and eavesdropping, interpretation (misinterpretation) of others' outward acts, and ultimately how we can know one another and ourselves. Efride dies from the barriers to love--first to Stephen Smith with whom she decides to elope then changes her mind when her father forbids the marriage because spoilers** Having read 3 or 4 of Hardy's most popular novels decades ago, I'm drawn back to start from the beginning with his first, and this, his second. His novels are shaped around secrets and secrecy and eavesdropping, interpretation (misinterpretation) of others' outward acts, and ultimately how we can know one another and ourselves. Efride dies from the barriers to love--first to Stephen Smith with whom she decides to elope then changes her mind when her father forbids the marriage because of his lack of social standing. The change in mind becomes a scandal to one person, the mother of a young man who has died after his unrequited love for her, according to his mother who uses the scandal against Elfride at a moment of crisis in her life. Stephen goes to India for the architectural firm he works for to earn more money and a higher social standing so that he might marry Elfride with her father's blessing. Along comes Henry Knight who stays with the family long enough to fall in love with Elfride. When he almost falls to his death on the day he follows her to a cliff where she has promised to watch the ship carrying Stephen back to England, Elfried saves his life by ripping up her outer dress and making a rope to save him. The situation is traumatic and they fall in love. Stephen is forgotten. Knight has no experience with love, and hearing bits and pieces of Elfried's prior experience, he becomes enraged with jealousy for her past and what he believes to be her betrayal of him in not telling all details of her previous love. He leaves her. She chases after him to London where she finds Knight, but is soon found out by her father, the vicar. He never forgives Elfride for having embarrassed him by running to London. Her step-mother loses interest in her. After Smith and Knight meet by chance (former best friends, Knight, the elder, being Smith's beloved tutor long ago) they ask after each other's marriage status. Smith knows Knight took his place as fiance; Knight doesn't know that Smith was Elfride's first love. They talk and come to know how they are both still in love with her. They travel to her home village to ask for her hand, only to find that her body travels with them on the train back to her home. When they arrive at a blacksmith's they see a plaque to be placed on her coffin--she has married a widower, Lord Luxellean. Unity, her former servant, tells the story of how she'd been thin and ill after losing Knight. The two men are left alone in their grief. There is some sentimentality in all of this, but there is no end of grief, a hallmark of Hardy's novels. Elfried was a strong, independent woman--she'd had a novel published!--but her devastation, caused by her own doing, appearances that belie the truth, and her rejection by Knight and her father cause her early death.

England ...more

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May 11, 2025 Kate rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-romance, abandoned, england, 19th-century-literature, historical-fiction, read-in-2025

"The opening lines of A Pair of Blue Eyes instantly portray their fair possessor as vain and superficial, deficiencies which lead her to vacillation in love and 'proneness to inconstancy.' Elfride's life has been a sheltered one, spent alone with her father -- a parson with high social pretensions -- until she meets and falls in love with an inexperienced youth, whose inferior birth prevents their marriage. This tender first love is overshadowed when Elfride is thrown into the company of the fas ...more

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