Clearly the supernatural events in this powerful short story are the arrival of the monkey’s paw that has had a curse cast upon it by a fakir, the wishes it grants to its owner and the consequences.
The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy concentrates on the arrival of Farmer Lodge’s new wife Gertrude. Soon we find out that Farmer Lodge has had a child with another woman called Rhoda Brook. He denies the child’s existence and the fact Rhoda had his baby when they were not married. Which was frowned upon in those times and if it surfaced the family would become outcasts of the village.
Rhoda seems envious and maybe even obsessed with Gertrude and asks her son to spy on Mrs Lodge. One night Rhoda has a nightmare that Gertrude was mocking her, waving her wedding ring in front of her. Rhoda was enraged and seized Gertrude’s arm and her vision ended. After some time Gertrude came to visit Rhoda and told her that her arm was not well. Gertrude showed Rhoda and there on the exact arm she had grabbed in her nightmare were four finger marks. Rhoda immediately asked her when she discovered such an ailment. Sure enough it was the same day Rhoda had grasped that arm in her nightmare. She was completely mystified at the unnatural event.
The summer drew on and Rhoda dreaded the arrival of Gertrude because it made Rhoda scared that it might surface that she was the person who caused Gertrude’s illness. One morning Gertrude called upon Rhoda and asked about a man called Conjuror Trendle who is said to “have powers normal folk do not”. Gertrude sees this as her last chance of curing her disfiguration and asks if Rhoda could take her to him the next day. Unwillingly, Rhoda agrees. By afternoon on the next day Rhoda was dreading the trip to meet the mystical Trendle. However she had promised and must direct Gertrude to the Conjuror. After a long walk into the heart of Egdon-Heath, the village where the old man lives, Rhoda and Gertrude arrive at the house of the wizard. He examines her arm and says “Medicine can’t cure it, tis the work of an enemy”. He also says he can show her who the enemy is. He brought a tumbler from the dresser, almost filled it with water, fetched an egg, prepared it in some secret way and then broke it on the edge of the glass, so that the white went in and the yolk remained. As it was getting murky, he took the glass and its remnants to the window, and told Gertrude to watch them carefully. They leaned over the table together, and the milk woman could see the shade of the egg-fluid changing form as it descended into water. On the walk back Rhoda asked Gertrude what she saw, she replied "Nothing I care to speak of." This made Rhoda think the worst that Mrs Lodge had seen Rhoda’s face in that egg yolk and sure enough that spring Rhoda Brook and her boy disappeared from their village.
Six years passed and the Lodge’s marriage had drifted from happiness into despair. The once blissful Gertrude had become an irritable, irrational woman whose spare moments were spent experimenting on her arm with every foolish remedy she could come across. What’s more Mrs Lodge had brought her husband no son and every day Mr Lodge thought more about his son which had disappeared with his mother. After trying hundreds of medicines she still hadn’t visited Conjuror Trendle since the day she had found out that her ailment had been caused by Rhoda by some means.
In a last effort to cure her suffering Gertrude decided to visit Conjuror Trendle for one last time. When she asked him to help her heal her arm he asked her what remedies she had tried. Gertrude listed just a few of the hundred counter spells and enchantments. He approved of some, saying they would have worked on minor wounds but not on this. She pleaded with him, begging for him to help her to remove this curse from her. He did though say he knew one way in which she could lose her disfigurement but it would be difficult to carry out. She must touch a hung man’s neck with her arm and it must be done whilst the dead man’s blood is still warm.
A while passed and soon Gertrude found herself praying every night for a guilty or innocent man to be hung! Finally in July there was to be a hanging, just one, for arson. She knew to be able to get close enough to the dead body she must talk to the hangman and persuade him to let her fulfil this spell. So she found where the hangman lived and requested that he could let her get close enough to the body to touch it. He agreed and told her to be waiting underneath the gallows. The next day Gertrude was waiting punctually where she was told to wait. The time arrived where she had to emerge from beneath the gallows and touch the newly hung man. She walked over to where the dead man lay and placed her wounded arm across his neck and she cried out “the turn o' the blood”. A woman shrieked in the crowd which caused Gertrude to turn round and there stood before her was Rhoda Brook. Rhoda was weeping and her eyes were red, behind her stood Farmer Lodge. Rhoda grabbed Gertrude. Gertrude slid down the wall, lying unconscious next to her husband’s feet.
Gertrude had put two and two together and realised that the dead man was Farmer Lodge’s and Rhoda’s son. Her delicate condition, weakened maybe by the arm, gave way under the blow that followed the physical and mental pressure which she had subjected herself to. Gertrude didn’t make it home alive.
Farmer Lodge soon sold his farm and moved to Port Bredy at the other end of the county. He was first occupied with grouchiness and sorrow but soon became a disciplined and considerate man. He died two years later and it was soon found out that he had left a large amount of his land to a reformatory for boys. Rhoda, after a while, returned to her milk woman post and stayed there for many years.
The two stories resemble each other with the idea they communicate with the reader, that people should respect the supernatural. In the Withered Arm, Thomas Hardy develops why we should fear and respect the supernatural by showing that by mocking Gertrude about her medicines and counter curses, Farmer Lodge ended up with a dead son and a dead wife. He also ended up selling all his land because he could not endure staying in the village with everyone gossiping about him. Also by keeping the tempo of the story fast and building up to all the supernatural events keeps us tense. In the Monkey’s Paw, Sergeant Major Morris warns the White family about the consequences of the wishes the paw grants. However the White family do not take heed of the warning and take advantage of the paw and in doing so, they end up with their son dead, Mrs. White acting senselessly to try and bring back her son and Mr. White having to wish his son back to the grave. The author is trying to tell us that if you do not respect the supernatural and take advantage of it, you will feel its wrath.
The two stories are alike in other ways. Both stories involve young innocent people suffering. In the Monkey’s Paw Herbert died for his family’s foolishness. Whilst in the Withered Arm it was Rhoda’s and Farmer Lodge’s son that was innocently sent to the gallows. Another similarity is that people that were selfish earlier on in the stories are punished in the end. Mr. White is self-seeking at the start of the Monkey’s Paw and does not take Sergeant Major Morris’ advice and his son dies as a result. In the Withered Arm Farmer Lodge is punished for his negligence shown to his son and his failure to accept the responsibility for his son. The consequence for this is the eventual hanging of his only son.
Also both stories have ironic twists. In the Monkey’s Paw the family wishes for two hundred pounds and after the money doesn’t appear straight away, Herbert says "Well I don't see the money, and I bet I never shall." The wish eventually does come true and the money is handed over to the family but only as an insurance payout for Herbert’s death at the factory. So the irony is that Herbert will never actually see the money. In the Withered Arm the ironic twist is that when Gertrude was waiting for a hanging she got so desperate that she used to pray for a hanging “O Lord, hang some guilty or innocent person soon!” It turned out her prayers were answered but the man seen to be in the wrong turned out to be Farmer Lodges’ and Rhoda Brooks’ son but it seemed the boy was wrongfully charged with arson. At the hanging, Farmer Lodge and Rhoda were present in the crowd and once Gertrude had realized the hung man must be their son, she entered a sense of shock. This proved too much for her and she died. The irony is that she prayed for a man to be hung, so that she could cure herself but the man in the end was her husband’s son and this did the opposite of curing her and the shock of it all ended her life.
In conclusion, the writers use the supernatural to show the reader that if you ridicule the supernatural, it will backfire on you and you will feel the consequences greatly. Also they try and make you scared of the supernatural by making the paranormal events happen to normal people. Meaning it could have been you instead.
