Introduction to Literature

Introduction to Literature Lesson fourteen: Hardy and frost Life Choices Margarette Connor

Contents: • Thomas Hardy’s life • Serialization • Bowdlerization • “The Ruined Maid” discussion • Robert Frost’s life • “The Road Not Taken” discussion

Introduction • Today we’re starting another theme, life decisions, and in the works we’ll be reading in the next few lessons, we’ll be looking at how different authors write about how we make the decisions we do in life, and how the decisions we make impact on our life.

Thomas Hardy • “Foot in both camps” • Victorian writer and a Modernist writer. • Full career as a novelist followed by a full career as a poet.

Hardy and his topics • He is associated with the English county of Dorset, which he fictionalized into "Wessex”. • His view of fate and his criticism of society, especially in its treatment of women, always drew criticism

Many Honors: • Awarded the Order of Merit, having previously refused a knighthood, 1910. • Receives the Freedom of the Borough of Dorchester, 1910 • Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Literature, 1912 • Numerous honorary degrees.

Parents • Born June 2, 1840, in a cottage in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, near the regional market town of Dorchester. • Eldest of four children of Thomas Hardy and Jemima Hand Hardy’s parents

Schooling • 1848 Begins lower school in Stinsford. • 1850-1856 Continues schooling in Dorchester.

Apprenticeship A young Hardy • Through 1856-1860 he was apprenticed to Dorchester architect John Hicks. • Hardy later becomes his assistant. • During this period, he begins friendship with Horace Moule, who becomes his intellectual mentor, and encourages his study of Latin and Greek.

Move to London • Moves to London in 1862 to work for architect Arthur Blomfield. • This is the beginning of a lot of back and forth between Dorchester and London for Hardy. • They aren’t too far apart in terms of distance, but they are a world apart in terms of lifestyle.

First publication • "How I Built Myself a House", appears in Chambers's Journal, 1865. • Begins to write poetry though none is published A young, if fuzzy, Hardy.

Finally a successful novel • Far from the Madding Crowd serialized in Cornhill Magazine and published in two volumes by Smith, Elder, 1874. • It is Hardy's first substantial literary success and his fourth novel. • After this he begins to have more and more success as a writer, and he is eventually able to give up architecture and become a full-time writer.

Serialization • Very common for authors to publish their novels a section at a time in magazines. • “Serial novels” very popular with readers, hence very popular with publishers--they helped sales. • If a novel popular, often published as one volume after the magazine. • Often author would revise between the time it was written for the magazine, often under extreme time constraints, and the time it came out as one volume.

Marriage • In 1874, Hardy marries Emma Gifford whom he’d met in 1870. • The two rent a house in London Emma and Hardy around the time of their marriage.

1878, a busy year • The Return of the Native, previously serialized in Belgravia Magazine, published in three volumes by Smith, Elder. • The Hardy's move to Tooting, London. • An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress (a version of part of The Poor Man and the Lady) serialized in New Quarterly Magazine and Harper's Weekly, New York.

Tess • 1891. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, previously serialized (in bowdlerized form) in The Graphic, published in three volumes by Osgood, McIlvaine.

Bowdlerized form • When Dr. Thomas Bowdler edited The Family Shakespeare in 1818, he cut out all the sexy bits, or as he put it “whatever is unfit to be read by a gentleman in the presence of ladies”. • So nowadays, we used this form of his name to mean a prudish cutting of a literary work in the name of “decency”.

Jude the Obscure • Previously serialized in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Jude is published in one volume by Osgood, McIlvaine in 1895. • The novel was both praised and violently attacked, the extremity of negative response contributing to Hardy's decision to abandon novel writing. • One of the other reasons was his own continuing anxieties about the literary value of the novel form,

Turns to poetry • Wessex Poems and Other Verses, Hardy's first collection of poetry, published by Harper and Brothers, 1898.

Second marriage • 1914 Hardy marries Florence Dugdale, who has been his secretary since 1905.

World War I • Outbreak of First World War and its brutality "destroyed all Hardy's belief in the gradual ennoblement of man" and "gave the coup de grâce to any conception he may have nourished of a fundamental ultimate Wisdom at the back of things”. • From Young Hardy.

Preparing for the end • In 1917 Hardy begins sorting his papers, destroying many of them, in preparation for his posthumously published "autobiography."

Birthday honors • On his 80th birthday in 1920, Hardy receives messages of congratulations from King George V and the Prime Minister • He is visited at Max Gate by a deputation from the Incorporated Society of Authors.

Death • January 11, 1928 Thomas Hardy dies. • His heart is removed and buried in Emma Hardy's grave in Stinsford Churchyard. • His body is cremated and the ashes buried in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey. • Winter Words, his last volume of poetry, published posthumously.

“The Ruined Maid” • Originally published in Poems of the Past and the Present in 1902 though it was written 1866. • This is interesting for while the poem seems quite modern on the one hand, it is firmly set in Victorian values.

A look at the poem • Look at Hardy’s use of irony. • Being ruined was the saving of Amelia. • What does this say about women’s choices? • Look at Hardy’s use of ordinary, country language.

The use of language in the poem • When it comes to the country girl’s lines, the meter is very forced and false. • What is Hardy doing with this? • We don’t hear from Amelia much. She’s become a “fine lady” and probably doesn’t like the reminder of her past. • She calls her former friend “a raw country girl”.

Robert Frost(1874-1963) • One of America’s favorite poets. • Regional in voice yet national in scope.

Frost on poetry • “Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, “Why don’t you say what you mean?” We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hinds and in indirections--whether from diffidence or some other instinct.”

Many honors inlude: • First person to win four Pulitzer Prizes, • National Institute of Arts and Letters member, • American Academy of Arts and Letters member, • Gold Medal from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, • Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. 1958 • Emerson-Thoreau Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. • Bollingen Prize for Poetry.

University teacher • After his career as a poet took off, he taught poetry at a number of schools including Amherst College, the University of Michigan, Harvard, Dartmouth, and Middlebury College

Parents • Born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, first child of Isabelle Moodie and William Prescott Frost Jr. • Both his parents were old New Englanders, but his father worked for a newspaper in San Francisco.

Father’s death • When he was 11 in 1885, Father dies of tuberculosis on May 5, leaving family with only $8 after expenses are paid. • Family moves to Lawrence, Mass. to live with grandparents. • Robert and Jeanie, his sister, dislike grandparents' sternness and rigorous discipline.

High school • After a tricky start with education graduates high school in 1892 as the co-valedictorian of his class. • The other Elinor White, whom he’d fallen in love with the year before. • After graduation, he became engaged to her.

University • Was accepted to Harvard University. • Dependent upon grandparents for financial support, enters Dartmouth College instead of Harvard because it is cheaper, and because grandparents blame Harvard for his father's bad habits. • Bored by college life and restless, leaves Dartmouth at the end of December.

School teacher • After he leaves Dartmouth, he starts teaching, something he does on and off until he goes to England in 1912. • Back in those days, teachers in lower schools did not need to have a college education.

Marriage • In 1895, at the age of 21, he marries Elinor White. • The marriage, which lasts until her death in 1938, is sometimes quite turbulent. Robert and Elinor Frost, 1911

Children • In 1896 their son Elliott is born. • He’s the first of six children: • Elliot, Lesley, Elinor, Carol, Marjorie, Irma • Four will die young, • Elliot died when he was four, Elinor only lived a few days, Marjorie died of complications from giving birth and TB and his son, Carol, committed suicide.

Harvard • In 1897 he passes Harvard College entrance examinations • Borrows money from grandfather and enters Harvard as a freshman. • But in 1899 he withdraws.

Grandfather’s legacy • In 1901, Grandfather William Prescott Frost dies. • His will gives Frost a $500 annuity and use of his Derry poultry farm for ten years, after which the annuity is to be increased to $800 and Frost is to be given ownership of the farm.

Move to England • In 1912 he decides to live in England for a few years and devote himself to writing full time. • Sails with family on August 23. • Stays in London briefly before renting a cottage in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, 20 miles north of London.

Publishing success • A Boy's Will is published April 1. • Meets numerous literary figures, including Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), Ford Hermann Hueffer (Ford Madox Ford), and William Butler Yeats

Literary encouragement • Yeats tells Pound that A Boy's Will is "the best poetry written in America for a long time". • Friendship with Pound becomes strained • "He says I must write something much more like vers libre or he will let me perish by neglect. He really threatens.”

Second book soon follows • In 1914, North of Boston is published • Favorably reviewed in The Nation, The Outlook, The Times Literary Supplement, Pall Mall Gazette, The English Review, The Bookman, and The Daily News.

War breaks out • Amused by local concern that he may be a spy when war breaks out in August. • Learns that Henry Holt and Company will publish his books in the US. • Helps him decide to return to America. • Concerned that review by Pound may cause Americans to consider him to be one of Pound's "party of American literary refugees."

Life as a professional poet • From 1916 he is either teaching poetry or acting as writer in residence. • He makes a good living at poetry.

Elinor’s death • In March 1938 Elinor dies of heart failure in Gainesville, Florida. • Frost collapses and is unable to attend cremation. • Shortly after she dies, he asks another woman, Kathleen Morrison, to marry him, but she declines, instead becoming his secretary for the rest of his life.

Erratic behavior • He is increasingly erratic during this period. • This worries people as his sister ended her life in a mental institution. • Two of his children also fought mental illness, his son killing himself in part from the depression over Elinor’s death.

75th birthday honors • In 1950 the US Senate adopts resolution honoring Frost on his 75th birthday (actually his 76th). • Frost thought he was born in 1875 until he was 79 years old!

Congressional recognition • In 1960 Congress passes a bill awarding Frost a gold medal in recognition of his poetry. An elderly Frost scratching his dog during an interview.

Introduction to Literature