disaster

The letter moved Raye considerably when it reached him. The intelligence itself had affected him less than her unexpected manner of treating him in relation to it. The absence of any word of reproach, the devotion to his interests, the self-sacrifice apparent in every line, all made up a nobility of character that he had never dreamt of finding in womankind. ‘God forgive me!’ he said tremulously. ‘I have been a wicked wretch. I did not know she was such a treasure as this!’ The whole of On the Western Circuit may be found in Hardy’s collection Life’s Little Ironies [Read More]

To return now to the moment at which Anna, at Melchester, had received Raye’s letter. It had been put into her own hand by the postman on his morning rounds. She flushed down to her neck on receipt of it, and turned it over and over. ‘It is mine?’ she said. So much in Hardy’s story happens unspoken, kept beneath the surface and out of sight according to the strict social mores of the era. This is so for the characters, who struggle against those rules, and it is so for Hardy himself as he writes around Anna’s situation and [Read More]