The first few lines set a scene of something in the past ‘absolutely unchanged since those eventful days. It is also described as ‘a lonely place.’ These first few lines already tell you that what ever happened; happened along time ago and that it is going to be a sad story.
Few visitors ever came to the house and Hardy does a great job in describing this. He shows us how Phyllis was hoping for a visitor and how she could persuade herself that the normal sounds of everyday life had brought to her a visitor. ‘The brushing skirt of a visitor was heard on the doorstep it proved to be a scudding leaf,’ and ‘a sound like luggage thrown down from the coach was a gun far away.’ These are just a few superb examples of Hardy’s use of language to describe isolation. Hardy then goes on to describe different degrees of solitude. For instance he uses ‘twilight’ for Phyllis and ‘darkness’ for the father.
When Hardy starts to describe the feelings of Matthaus the Hussar who falls in love with Phyllis he creates a very strong picture of what the lonely figure of Matthaus looked like. When he says ‘his eyes on the ground’ this is a perfect sign that he was lonely, this is a thing he has got in common with Phyllis, as even though she is engaged she hasn’t seen her ‘husband’ for a long time. Hardy tells us that Matthaus’ head would probably have been looking down if it wasn’t ‘for his stiff neck-gear.’ This tells us that the uniform the Hussars wore always made them look superior what ever their mood. The last powerful picture is that of ‘his face was marked in deep sadness.’ It tells us how he felt and gives the reader an idea that he doesn’t want to be with the German Legion and in England. Later on Hardy tells us that Matthaus missed his mother so much, that the few letters he did get from her he read more than once.
It seemed Phyllis and Matthaus weren’t the only ones felling lonely as Hardy describes ‘The regiment was pervaded by a dreadful melancholy a chronic home-sickness.’ Hardy adds to the feel of sadness and loneliness with this image, as it suggests that they all want to go somewhere else with somebody.
Towards the end of the story Hardy creates a picture of great sadness and mourning when he says. ‘There came a morning which broke in fog and mist, behind which the down could be discerned in a greenish grey.’ This is a powerful description as at this point in the story Phyllis is thinking about Matthaus who has left and this description reflects her feelings. ‘Smoke drooped heavily’ is also a very good description and all these paint a picture of a heavy feeling of sadness.
In the Withered Arm although isolation and sadness remain, they appear in a much more subtle way.
In this story all the characters tie in with each other in some way and in the end they all seem to become remote.
Straight away it is told to us that Rhoda Brook lives with her son some distance away from her fellow workers in a ‘lonely spot.’ Hardy describes her surroundings as ‘dark countenance.’ This means that the appearance she saw was dark.
As hardy explains when Rhoda observes Mr Lodge returning with his new wife he states ‘few people travelled this way, for it was not a main road:’ This again tells us how isolated the area was.
When Rhoda’s son goes to see what Gertrude Lodge looks like, his father pays no interest to him as if he weren’t there ‘having taken no outward notice of the boy whatever.’ This is a good example of isolation because the father obviously knows the young boy, ignores him and creates a picture of sadness in the boy.
Further on in the story Hardy gives us another example of isolation when Gertrude is speaking to Rhoda about her arm ‘if I hadn’t a notion that it makes my husband dislike me.’ She explains that she wouldn’t worry if her husband still loved her but she wasn’t sure if he did anymore because ‘Men think so much of personal appearance.’
When Gertrude decided to visit Conjurer Trendle he told her ‘Medicine can’t cure it,’ ‘Tis the work of an enemy.’ This statement would have made Mrs Lodge feel quite isolated because at that precise moment she didn’t no who her enemy was and she didn’t think there was any way to cure her disease.
Six years after Gertrude Lodge had made that visit to Conjurer Trendle she says to herself ‘Six years of marriage, and only a few months of love.’ This confirms the feeling of isolation she would have had when she was married to Farmed Lodge because without his love she had no friends or relatives close to hand.
At the end of the story Gertrude Lodge decides to take Conjurer Trendles advice which was to go and place the infected limb on a recently hung body. She decides to do this because her husband was out of town on ‘business’ for a couple of days. When the time eventually came to touch the corpse, Rhoda Brook the mother of the deceased appeared from around the corner. She appeared with Farmer Lodge Rhoda’s son had been born out of marriage; Gertrude would have felt isolated that moment because an atmosphere of anticipation would have come over the gathering. This event is quite ironic as to how all the characters tie in with each other at the end of the story.
When Richard Stockdale first joins the community of Nether-Moynton he is ‘unknown and almost unseen.’ This would have made him fell quite isolated and uneasy. When Hardy uses language with Stockdale he chooses to use the literacy device omniscient narrator which allows him to reveal facts about other characters that other facts might not be aware of.
Because of the situation the village people are in, which is smuggling alcohol from France, they have become isolated and therefore constructed there own moral code.
As soon as Stockdale arrives he is distracted by Lizzy Newberry and because of this fells isolated towards her, for the moment anyway.
The next incident in Stockdale’s term as preacher came one afternoon when he observed Lizzy and the Miller talking. In this same incident while the pair were talking ‘a head of a man peered out.’ This would have made Stockdale fell isolated because he wouldn’t have known what was being said or done.
When Stockdale asks Lizzy to marry him for the first time ‘let it be yes or no between us,’ Lizzy does not give a direct answer and says ‘It all comes upon me at once, and I must settle one thing at a time.’ She means that she must see her cousin Owlett to tell him about the eavesdropper. From this Stockdale would have felt isolated again because he felt that Lizzy was more interested in Owlett than him.
Stockdale finally finds out that Lizzy is part of the smuggling business and he puts al the conventional arguments to her against smuggling, but they hold little sway in a community so isolated.
In the final part of the story Stockdale decides to leave because he can’t marry Lizzy because she won’t give up smuggling. His final sermon is about the smuggling trade, this would have made him feel very isolated because everyone in the village took part in it and he was condoning it.
The structural features of a short story are different to those of other prose fiction. Short stories are often anecdotal, with all of the events leading to a swift and dramatic conclusion.
To create a sense completeness or closure the endings of short stories often have a twist in the tale or a surprising ending. In The Withered Arm the ending is dramatic and shocking. The ending of The Melancholy Hussars of the German Legion is more poignant because of the objective perspective adopted by the narrator.
Short stories rely on dialogue and description to carry the pot forward swiftly. Thomas Hardy uses a variety of styles of narrative which, combined with the dialogue and description, establish the tone of the stories. His use of regional dialect in the stories tends to identify the social class of the characters.
Thomas Hardy uses first-person narrators who speak with a regional dialect for his more humorous stories. This style of narration immediately establishes an informal tone and the use of regional dialect creates a friendly atmosphere for the anecdote. The omniscient style such as The Distracted Preacher is used in the more serious stories in which Hardy is exploring issues of social division and morality.
Through his descriptions Hardy develops our understanding of the characters. A character’s physical appearance can indicate their nature, whilst their clothes can help to establish their social status. The character’s homes often reflect their state of mind or their situation. In The Withered Arm Rhoda's home is remote from the village, a fact which suggests her status as an outcast.
The dialogue in the stories allows us to identify the relationships between the characters. In The Distracted Preacher we can discern the evasiveness of Lizzy’s responses to Stockdale’s questions, which establishes her superiority. When Stockdale asks her about the barrels she replies ‘I cannot inform, in fact, against anybody,’ and the reader immediately suspects her personal involvement in the smuggling.
