Miss Havisham

Estella [Havisham] – Miss Havisham's adopted daughter,

Hard Times (1854)

The book is one of a number of state-of-the-nation novels published around the same time, another being North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, which aimed to highlight the social and economic pressures some people were under. The novel is unusual, in that it is not set in London, as is Dickens' usual wont, but the fictitious Victorian industrial town of Coketown.

Dickens' novel follows the classical tripartite structure of novels, and the titles of each book are related to the proverbial aphorism, 'As you sow, so shall you reap'. The interpretation of this quote being, what ever is effected upon or done in the present will have a direct effect on what happens later. Book I is entitled 'Sowing', Book II is entitled 'Reaping', and the third is 'Garnering'. These titles are a deliberate motif used, and have to be bared in mind when reading the book and analysing its narrative and content.

In Hard Times it can be affirmed that there is no main protagonist. A criticism of Dickens novels is that the intricate plots and eventual denouement, mean that several characters are involved only to represent ideas of Dickens, usually at the expense of their development as human beings. Ergo, representing straw men and women.

Mr. Thomas Gradgrind
Tom Gradgrind is a utilitarian who is the founder of the educational system in Coketown. 'Eminently practical' is Gradgrind's recurring description throughout the novel, and practicality is something he zealously aspires to. He represents the stringency of 'Fact', statistics and other materialistic pursuits. Only after his daughter's breakdown does he come to a realisation that things such as poetry, fiction and other pursuits are not 'destructive nonsense'.

Josiah Bounderby
Josiah Bounderby is a business associate of Mr. Gradgrind. He is a bombastic, yet thunderous merchant given to peroration. He employs many of the other central characters of the novel, and his rise to prosperity is shown to be an example of social mobility. He marries Mr. Gradgrind's daughter Louisa, some 25 years his junior, in what turns out to be a soulless matrimony. Bounderby is the main target of Dickens' attack on the supposed moral superiority of the wealthy, and is revealed to be an utter hypocrite in his sensational comeuppance at the end of the novel.

Louisa Gradgrind/Bounderby
Louisa is the unemotional, distant and eldest child of the Gradgrind family. She has been taught to abnegate her emotions, and finds it hard to express herself clearly, saying as a child she has 'unmanageable thoughts'. She is married to Josiah Bounderby, in a very logical and businesslike manner, representing the emphasis on factuality and business ethos of her education. Her marriage is a disaster and is tempted into adultery by James Harthouse, yet, she manages to resist this temptation.

Stephen Blackpool
'Old Stephen' as he is referred to by his fellow 'Hands' is an improvident, indigent worker at one of Bounderby's mills. His life is immensely strenuous, and he is married to a constantly inebriated wife who comes and goes throughout the novel. He forms a close bond with Rachael, a female worker. After a dispute with Bounderby, he is dismissed from his work at the Coketown mills and is forced to find work elsewhere. Whilst absent from Coketown he is accused of complicity in a crime he did not commit, and tragically, on his way back to vindicate himself he falls into a pit, and seriously injures himself. He is rescued, but dies.

Oliver Twist

Characters:
* Oliver Twist
* Fagin
* Bill Sikes
* The Artful Dodger
* Noah Claypole
* Mr. Brownlow

Oliver is a boy born in a workhouse, who has no idea of his parents' identity. His mother Agnes died in childbirth. By pure chance he is chosen as a scapegoat by the other starving boys, and is made to go and ask for an extra helping at a mealtime ("Please, sir, I want some more."). As a result of this breach of etiquette, he is "sold" by the workhouse as an undertaker's apprentice. The cruelty he suffers at the hands of an older apprentice named Noah Claypole causes him to run away, and he finds his way to London, where he is taken under the wing of the Artful Dodger, a boy criminal.
The Dodger introduces Oliver into his circle of friends, who include Fagin the Jew, a criminal mastermind, and his brutal ally, Bill Sikes. Oliver is taught crimes such as picking pockets, but never actually participates in them. He is shown kindness by Bill's 17-year-old mistress, Nancy.

After a robbery that goes wrong, in which Oliver played the part of an unwitting lookout, he is taken into the home of a wealthy man, Mr Brownlow. Unknown to them, efforts are being made by Oliver's half-brother, Monks, to locate him and prevent him from obtaining his inheritance, but Mr Brownlow soon begins to suspect that Oliver is the son of his niece. Sikes and Nancy snatch Oliver back, and Sikes takes him on a burglary, planning to get him a criminal record as a favour to Monks. But Oliver is left behind when the burglary goes wrong, and is adopted into the home of Rose Maylie. Ultimately he is restored to Mr Brownlow.

Meanwhile, Monks and Fagin are plotting to try to go after Oliver again and either kidnap him or kill him. Nancy is fearful of such a scenario and goes to Rose Maylie and Mr Brownlow to divulge the plot of the evil pair. She manages to keep her secret meetings hidden until Noah Claypole (he has fallen out with the same undertaker who once employed Oliver and moved to London to seek his own fortune) agrees to spy on Nancy and then gives information to Fagin and Sikes. In a fit of rage, Sikes murders Nancy and is himself killed while being pursued by an angry mob. Monks is forced to explain his secrets and give his inheritance to Oliver, and moves to America soon afterwards, where he ultimately dies in prison. Fagin is arrested and hanged for his crimes. Rose Maylie marries her long-time sweetheart Harry, and Oliver lives happily with his saviour, Mr Brownlow.

George Eliot (1819 – 1880)

George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, who was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity.

Middlemarch

In Middlemarch, Eliot interweaves the stories of various friends, acquaintances, and relations in the town of Middlemarch. She demonstrates genuine compassion for each of her characters, yet she seeds her portraits with critical—even cynical—assessments of human hypocrisy and weakness. She is particularly tart on the topic of gender relations and the limited role of women.

The central character, Dorothea Brooke, is a beautiful and serious-minded young woman who yearns for knowledge and the power to help others. She rejects a titled young man in favour of the Reverend Edward Casaubon, a middle-aged clergyman who, she imagines, will teach her and engage her in great works. Her marriage proves a terrible mistake, as Casaubon disdains her efforts to assist him in his research, and Dorothea begins to realize the meanness of his intellectual ambitions. Meanwhile, she makes the acquaintance of his poor relation, Will Ladislaw, who truly admires her and who matches her in passion and ambition.

When Casaubon dies suddenly, Dorothea inherits his large fortune and tries to use it for the good of others, despite her indignation on finding, in the terms of his will, that she is specifically forbidden to marry Will Ladislaw. In the end, she gives up the inheritance in order to find true happiness with Will.

Dorothea's charitable works bring her into contact with Doctor Tertius Lydgate, who plans to build and run a hospital in anticipation of epidemic typhus reaching Middlemarch. Lydgate falls in love with the pretty but impractical Rosamond Vincy; their financial improvidence puts Lydgate in debt to the disreputable attorney Bulstrode, whose attempts to conceal a scandal in his past lead him eventually into real evil. Bulstrode never clears his name but finds true sympathy from his wife; Lydgate becomes a successful-enough London doctor but never achieves happiness at home or scientific greatness.

Meanwhile, Fred Vincy, Rosamond's irresponsible brother, takes a step down socially and economically—but a step up in terms of integrity and hard work—as he allies himself with the Garth family and finally marries plain but kindhearted Mary Garth. Along with Dorothea, whose pursuit of true love is deemed socially unacceptable, Mary is a possible stand-in for Eliot herself. She is sensible and loving, and when she publishes an historical volume for boys, nobody believes that a woman could have written it.

Virginia Woolf described Middlemarch as "one of the few English novels written for grown up people".

Silas Marner

Set in the early years of the 19th century, Silas Marner was a weaver and had been since a young man. While living in this industrial town, he was also a highly thought of member of a little Dissenting church. Silas was engaged to be married to a female member of the church and thought his future happiness assured. However, due to the betrayal of a fellow parishioner, who blamed him for a theft that he did not commit, Silas was expelled from the congregation. He found out later that his former fiancee married the man who had betrayed him. Later on, he went to settle in the village of Raveloe, where he lived as a recluse who existed only for work and his precious hoard of money until that money was stolen by a son of Squire Cass, the town's leading land owner, causing him to become heartbroken. Soon, however, an orphaned child came to Raveloe. She was not known by the people there, but she was really the child of Godfrey Cass, the eldest son of the local Squire. Because the mother was a woman of low birth, Godfrey had refused to clarify her as his wife, and the woman, Molly, went to seek out Godfrey for revenge, but she never made it there and died on the way. Silas named the child Eppie (after his deceased mother Hephzibah) and changed his life completely. Symbolically, Silas lost his material gold only to have it replaced by the golden-haired Eppie. Later in the book, the gold is found and restored. Godfrey wanted to take her back when she was a young woman but she refused to go back with him and his second wife, Nancy Lammeter. At the end, Eppie married a local boy, Aaron, son of Dolly Winthrop.

Adam Bede (1859)

Adam Bede is a young workman of twenty-six in the town of Hayslope in Loamshire. He is the foreman of a carpentry shop where his brother, Seth, also works. The novel opens in the workshop with an argument among the men about religion. We learn that Dinah Morris, a Methodist preacher with whom Seth is in love, will speak in the village that evening.

Seth goes to the prayer meeting and afterwards proposes to Dinah, who refuses him. Meanwhile, Adam has gone home and found out from his mother, Lisbeth, that his father, Thias, has gone off drinking instead of finishing a coffin he had contracted for. Working all night, Adam finishes the coffin, and he and Seth deliver it in the morning. On their way home, they find the drowned body of their father in a brook.

Joshua Rann, the parish clerk, informs Mr. Irwine, the local Anglican clergyman, that the Methodists are stirring up dissension in Hayslope. Mr. Irwine and Arthur Donnithorne, grandson and heir of the local landowner, ride over to see Dinah at the Hall Farm, a place tenanted by the Poysers, Dinah's uncle and aunt. Mr. Irwine speaks to Dinah and is impressed by her religious sincerity. Meanwhile, Arthur flirts with another of the Poysers' nieces, Hetty Sorrel, and she is greatly flattered by his attentions.

Mr. Irwine informs Dinah of Thias Bede's death, and she goes to the Bedes' cottage and comforts Lisbeth. Arthur learns on the same occasion that Hetty will be at the Chase, his manor, in two days' time, and he places himself so as to meet her in a grove on the grounds. After talking with her, he is ashamed of himself for being attracted to a mere farm girl, but he cannot break the spell and later that day intercepts her again in the same grove and kisses her. Ashamed of his behavior once more, he decides to tell his troubles to Mr. Irwine, hoping that confession will cure his passion. But when he speaks to the clergyman at Broxton parsonage the following morning, he loses his nerve and says nothing about Hetty. Meanwhile, Dinah has encouraged Hetty to come to her if she ever needs help, but Hetty, a thoughtless little thing who feels that no trouble will ever come to her, repulses the offer. Dinah leaves for her home in Snowfield, Stonyshire, the next day.

Thias Bede is buried, and Adam reflects that now he can begin to look forward to marriage; he is in love with Hetty. He goes to the Hall Farm and finds that Hetty seems more friendly towards him than in the past; he doesn't realize that her thoughts are all of Arthur, and his hopes rise. While visiting Bartle Massey, the local schoolmaster, that evening, he learns that the keeper of the Chase woods has had a stroke and that the job may be offered to him. Adam's marriage prospects look bright indeed, both from a financial and an emotional viewpoint.

Arthur's twenty-first birthday arrives, and all the tenants of the estate gather for a grand celebration. There is a round of toasts at dinnertime and everyone wishes the popular Arthur well. Adam is offered the job as keeper of the woods and he accepts it. There are games in which the townspeople compete in the afternoon and a dance in the evening. At the dance, Adam discovers by accident that Hetty is wearing a locket which looks like a lover's token, but he dismisses the thought that she is interested in another man. The locket, of course, is a gift from Arthur; he and Hetty are carrying on a secret affair.

About three weeks later, Adam happens to be passing through the grove on the Chase grounds when he finds Arthur and Hetty in an embrace. He is furious, starts a fight with Arthur, and knocks him out. When Arthur revives, Adam forces him to promise to write a note to Hetty breaking off the relationship. After much soul-searching, Arthur composes the note and gives it to Adam to deliver. He then leaves to join his regiment in the south of England. Adam delivers the note, trying to soften the blow to Hetty as much as possible. Before she reads the letter, Hetty refuses to believe that Arthur wants to break off the relationship; she is convinced that Arthur will marry her. After she reads it, she is in despair. She wants to leave home and go into service as a maid, but the Poysers won't let her. Finally she begins to feel that marrying Adam wouldn't be such a bad idea after all. Meanwhile, Dinah has written a friendly letter to Seth from Snowfield, and Mrs. Poyser has verbally routed Squire Donnithorne, Arthur's grandfather, who was bent on making a sharp deal with respect to the Poyser's farm.

When Adam notices that Hetty's friendly attitude toward him does not change, he concludes that there had really been nothing serious between Arthur and her. He proposes to her, she accepts, and the wedding is set for the following spring. Adam is deliriously happy and spends the next three months making preparations. Hetty, meanwhile, has fits of depression and contemplates suicide; she is pregnant by Arthur. She decides to run away and go to Arthur; telling the Poysers that she is going to visit Dinah in Snowfield for a week or two, she sets out.

After traveling for seven days, Hetty arrives sick, exhausted, and penniless, at Windsor. Here she is befriended by an innkeeper and his wife who inform her that Arthur's regiment has left for Ireland. Hetty faints in despair, but the next day her courage revives, she gets some money from the innkeeper in exchange for the jewelry Arthur had given her, and she heads back north, intending to go to Dinah in Snowfield. After five days of traveling, though, her spirits give out, and she leaves her coach and wanders out into the open fields. She spends part of a night by a pond but can't summon the courage to kill herself and so resumes her journey on foot towards Stonyshire.

When Hetty does not return in the expected time, Adam decides to go to Snowfield and bring her back. He discovers, of course, that she has never been there, and he tries to trace her but to no avail. Realizing that she has probably gone to Arthur, he resolves to go to Ireland. He stops at the parsonage to tell Mr. Irwine his plans and is shocked to learn that Hetty is in prison in Stoniton for the murder of her baby. He and Mr. Irwine go to Stoniton; Mr. Irwine returns the next day to break the bad news to the Poysers, while Adam rents a room and stays. Meanwhile, Arthur's grandfather has died and Arthur has set out for home from Ireland.

As the trial begins, Adam sits in his room in despair. Mr. Irwine and Bartle Massey (who has come to stay with Adam) bring news of how the trial is progressing; Hetty's guilt seems certain, though Adam refuses to believe it. Finally he goes to the courtroom himself. Two witnesses give evidence against Hetty, the jury returns the verdict of guilty, and the judge pronounces the death sentence. Meanwhile, Arthur has returned home, found a note from Mr. Irwine explaining the situation, and left for Stoniton.

On the evening after the trial, Dinah comes to the prison and gains admittance; she has been away and has just returned to the area. She gets Hetty to confess her guilt, which the girl had refused to do before, and induces her to pray. Dinah then goes and asks Adam to come and see Hetty before she dies. He comes the following morning, the day of the execution, and gives Hetty the forgiveness she asks for. Then Hetty is taken away to the place of execution. But at the last instant, Arthur comes riding up with a reprieve; Hetty's sentence has been commuted to "transportation" (exile). The next day, Adam and Arthur meet by chance in the grove where they had fought. Arthur is repentant and plans on going off to the wars. He asks Adam's forgiveness, and Adam, after a short struggle with his pride, agrees to shake hands.

Eighteen months later, Adam visits the Hall Farm to ask Dinah, who is visiting her relatives again, to come and comfort his ailing mother. Dinah goes back to the cottage with him and stays overnight to help Lisbeth. She blushes when Adam speaks to her. After she leaves, Lisbeth tells Adam that Dinah loves him; Adam is taken by surprise, but when he thinks about it he realizes that he loves her too. That afternoon he goes to the Hall Farm and proposes; Dinah wants to say yes, but her sense of duty stops her. She says she will return to her work among the poor and think about it. Adam reluctantly agrees and Dinah leaves. It is harvest time at the farm, and the harvest supper takes place with great gaiety.

After a month or so, Adam becomes anxious to know Dinah's decision and goes to Snowfield. He meets her atop a hill and she accepts his proposal. After another month has passed, they are married amid great rejoicing.

Some years later, Dinah and Seth are at home with Dinah's two children. Adam comes home; he has been to see Arthur, who has been away all this time and has returned a changed man. We learn that Hetty is dead, and then the novel ends on a note of domestic contentment.

Thomas Hardy

The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-imaginary county of Wessex, is marked by imaginative poetic descriptions, and a foreboding sense of fatalism. D.H. Lawrence greatly admired Hardy’s ability to ennoble the common man.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

It is Hardy's penultimate written novel. Though now considered to be a great classic of English literature, the book was poorly received at the time of its initial publication. The poignant portrait of heroine Tess illustrates Hardy's deep understanding of women.

The story concerns a simple country girl, Tess Durbeyfield, whose father's pretensions to social status lead her into the company of the nouveau-riche d'Urberville family. In a scene which suggests rape, though it is open to interpretation, Tess is made pregnant by the rakish Alec d'Urberville. Tess returns home in disgrace, but the child she bears soon dies, leaving her free to leave her village once again to look for work. While employed as a milkmaid, she encounters the morally upright Angel Clare, who falls in love with her. After their marriage, she is honest with him about her past; though Angel is educated, he remains basically naive, and cannot reconcile his real affection for Tess, his wounded pride, and his image of Tess as a semi-pagan Mary figure.

Abandoned by Angel, Tess is lured into a liaison with Alec d'Urberville, who comes back into her life by chance. When Alec lays eyes on Tess once more, he ruthlessly hunts her down, determined to win her back into his life of sin. Tess, influenced by her desprate situation and the perception that her husband will never rejoin her, yeilds to Alec's determination and allows him to support her while she lives with him. Eventually Angel returns, repentant, to reclaim her, and Tess murders Alec in order to be with her legal husband. They flee together, but the police catch up with them at Stonehenge, in a memorable finale. Tess is hanged for the murder of Alec.

The Mayor of Casterbridge

It is set in the fictional town of Casterbridge (based on the town of Dorchester in Dorset). Hardy subtitled the novel "The Life and Death of a Man of Character".

Under the influence of alcohol, Michael Henchard, a young hay-trusser, sells his wife and daughter in a country fair to a sailor. Once sober, he swears never to touch liquor again.

Eighteen years later, Henchard, now a successful grain merchant and the Mayor of Casterbridge, is reunited with Susan, the wife he gave away at a country fair. The return of his wife and daughter sets in motion a decline in his fortunes. The daughter, Elizabeth Jane, soon falls in love with Donald Farfrae, whom Henchard has employed as an assistant. Until his wife's death, Henchard is unaware that Elizabeth Jane is not his own child, but that of the man who "bought" Susan from him. He conceals the secret from her. His growing resentment of Donald Farfrae leads to his standing in the way of a marriage between Donald and Elizabeth Jane.

In the meantime, Henchard's former mistress, Lucetta, arrives in town, and attracts Donald, who marries her. Rumours spread of her previous relationship with Michael Henchard, and both are disgraced. Lucetta dies. When Newson, Elizabeth Jane's real father, returns, Henchard, afraid of losing her companionship, pretends she is dead. By the time Elizabeth Jane, now married to Donald Farfrae and reunited with Newson, goes looking for Henchard to forgive him, he has died.

Jude the Obscure

Jude the Obscure is the last of Thomas Hardy's novels, first published in 1895.

Called "Jude the Obscene" by at least one reviewer, Jude the Obscure received so harsh a reception from scandalized critics that Hardy stopped writing fiction altogether, producing only poetry and drama for the rest of his life. It was first published under the title The Simpletons; and then Hearts Insurgent in the European and American editions of Harper's New Monthly Magazine

The novel is often thought of as Thomas Hardy's best work, not only for the elaborate structuring of the plot, where small and subtle details lead to the character's ruin, but in the themes of the book. Such themes include how human loneliness and sensuality can stop a person from trying to fulfill his dreams; how, when free from the trap of marriage, one's dreams will not be fulfilled if one is of a lower status; how the educated classes are often more like sophists than intellectuals; how living a libertine life full of integrity and passion will be condemned as scandalous in conservative society; and how religion is nothing but a mistaken sense that the tragedies that wear down an individual are the result of having sinned against a higher being.
As in most of Hardy's novels except, perhaps, for Far From the Madding Crowd, Hardy manipulates the downfall of his characters like a sadistic god—as if he were a true believer in a deity that was not a redeemer but a cruel monster (a motif frequently called a "rigged doom").

The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, a stonemason who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on Oxford, England. Denied entry into the university, Jude is manipulated into an unwanted marriage with a country girl, Arabella, who soon deserts him. He becomes obsessed with his cousin, Sue Bridehead, even after she marries his former schoolteacher. Sue is attracted to the normalcy of her married life but quickly finds the relationship an unhappy one because, inherently, she is a libertine like Jude.

When Jude and Sue begin to live together, employers, who find out about this illicit relationship and its bastard children, dismiss Jude from his employment—and landlords continually evict them. Jude's eldest son (from his first marriage to Arabella), also called Jude but known as "Little Father Time", after observing the problems he and his siblings are causing their parents, hangs Sue's two children and then himself. The child leaves a pathetically misspelled note that reads: Done because we are too menny.

This tragedy ends Jude's relationship with Sue who returns to her first husband, Phillotson, after experiencing extreme religious guilt. After being tricked yet another time into remarrying Arabella, Jude falls ill and makes one last trip to Sue. Sue first confirms her intense love for him then leaves him forever, evincing the moral stranglehold of the church. Jude returns home and dies alone as Arabella is out courting his doctor.

Far from the Madding Crowd

Far from the Madding Crowd is a novel by 19th century English novelist Thomas Hardy, published in 1874. The title is apt, as the life of the book's heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, living in the quiet rural village of Weatherbury is indeed disrupted by the "madding crowd". After shunning the first man to love her, the shepherd Gabriel Oak, she is courted by two others: the lonely and repressed farmer Boldwood, and the charming but faithless Sergeant Troy. The role of fate is clearly established, with each twist and turn in the book being more luck than the choice of one of the characters. The book is widely seen as Hardy's first masterpiece.

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