Gertrude has lost all her faith in science, again this adds to the psychological effect of the story; it would have to take something great to dissolve science’s integrity in Gertrude. So she goes to see Conjuror Trendle, she knows she is wrong as she keeps this from her husband. Her desperation to be cured goes on increasingly, she has chosen to keep her visit to the conjuror private showing she was of a standard where she would consider this as nonsense. She goes to the clairvoyant ‘cloaked and veiled’ showing her embarrassment for actually needing to see an alternative person.
The conjuror’s house is in Egdon Heath just like Rhoda showing how if you believe in these ways you are pushed out of the village into the outskirts, as Gertrude pushes herself to go to see him, she pushes herself out the acceptable society. As she goes out the village into the outskirts, she loses all her inner beauty. Farmer Lodge married her for her because she was the full package, she was indeed extremely attractive and had all the intelligence he could ever wish for, and she sacrifices her intelligence for a chance of recovery. The second time she sees him, he describes the arm as ‘the nature of a blight, than the nature of a wound’, which is very appropriate as this story is set in the countryside. She is described as if she has symptoms of a plant, she was once the blossoming lady who had all the men attracted to her but now is slowly fading withering away as if she has been starved of her necessities, that being her beauty.
As a remedy to this, he tells her to ‘touch with the limb the neck of a man who’s been hanged’. She had stooped this low to even think of touching the neck of a corpse. Her gruesome arm had withered, along with it so did her life, her husband barely talked to her, her timely beauty had disappeared and most important of all her self had disappeared. Hardy’s view on life is pessimistic, it is as if all hope is lost and just to get everything back you have to do something condemned, he is telling us life is hard and may never work out and relationships are difficult to sustain.
Gertrude had lost all sense of herself, she had been visiting the conjuror, taking hundreds of ‘medicaments’ and practising ‘counterspells’. She had bought into witchcraft and made herself one of the followers, she had become her worst enemy, she had become superstitious.
To salvage her marriage she goes off to Casterbridge to attend the hanging of a young boy. As the time comes closer and closer the macabre grows more and more. Gertrude’s ‘flesh crept’ as she saw the gallows being put up for the hanging. Hardy uses realism here to show the macabre even more. When hangings were used for punishment people used this as an opportunity for a family day out, a ‘hang-fair’ as Hardy calls it, this increases the macabre, people buy the rope as a souvenir-‘ “Tis sold by the inch afterwards.”’ This is very sinister, Hardy is showing death is not entertainment and he ridicules the villagers for it. Hardy writes ‘the town was thronged...but Gertrude had seen scarcely a soul.’ This means the town was full of people but nobody even cared they were about to witness the death of a young boy.
The macabre is at its highest at the hanging, it is very oddly released in the action of the arm of Gertrude touching the boy’s neck. Prior to the hanging, Gertrude was in such a obscure state of mind that felt as though ‘she had nearly died,’ this is such a horrid thought that reader feels empathy for her, we can now tell how serious this wound is, and how much it is worth to her to get better, this is strange for someone in death can bring back life. Hardy is showing how uncanny things were. When the corpse came to Gertrude the executioner
‘held it so that her arm lay across the dead man’s neck, upon a line the colour of an unripe blackberry.’
At a time of such disgust, Hardy connects the countryside with the death. The ‘unripe blackberry’ was the bruises from the rope on the boy’s neck, but also it was the too young boy whom had been hung. The taste of an unripe blackberry is the same taste that Gertrude feels.
‘The Withered Arm’ presents itself with many issues about life, for example, is everything for a purpose-Gertrude’s withered arm showed us superficiality and vanity will always control us or are we free to choose out own destiny-did Rhoda create herself or was she preordained to a life already? In the other stories there are many common issues such as fate, destiny, vanity and superficiality.
In ‘The Superstitious Man’s Story’ the description is condensed as this story is only to entertain and too much information would ruin the point of the story. This story is about mystery and superstition, it is more positive than ‘The Withered Arm’ as it is lighter hearted, as there is no gruesomeness. This short story is about death in superstition associated with death and how people react to this information but to add interest Hardy add mystery to grab the readers’ attention.
Hardy sets the scene by introducing us to William Privett in a spooky almost supernatural way:
‘You could feel when came near ‘ee...without seeing him’
We can tell something peculiar is going to happen to William, Hardy builds up a character that we expect to have a strange aura around him. Hardy prolongs the explanation of the mystery to the end and meanwhile builds up tension by giving us information that does not make sense or we do not pick up on. When the wife is ironing we do not think of anything suspicious, when in fact an important action takes place, William’s soul walks out leaving his body in the house, causing great conflict for the wife.
When the wife stops to talk to Nancy, Hardy makes the reader assume we know Nancy, by the familiar tone used, because it is a very short story, as only the information she tells Betty is essential.
‘She was walking down Longpuddle street...she met Jim Weedle’s daughter Nancy.’
Betty’s information gives the reader an answer to the odd incident, her character is not needed for the story only her words are, and therefore the relative tone Hardy creates. Nancy hints that she saw William Privett enter the church on Midsummer Night and so he would be ‘doomed to die.’ The fact that she saw Mr. Privett enter the church does not prove anything, the superstition is showing in the countryside as entertainment, this night only comes once a year and so everybody went to view the occasion just like in ‘The Withered Arm’ when people go to see the ‘hand-fair’. Notice the alliteration Hardy uses, this makes it is seem more child-like and more story like. For this story to be light hearted it is important for Hardy to show this without the death aspect conquering the story and making it solemn. Another way he shows this is, Betty does not get upset when she hears that William will die soon as it is expected. This is because people in those days lived shorter lives than us and so death was not unexpected. A better incident he uses to show this is when William goes to the meadow with John Chiles, they have their lunch and fall asleep in the heat of the day.
‘They sat down to a bit o’ munch under a tree.’
This is a sweet and comforting death. The superstition of Nancy was not taken too seriously yet was taken into account unlike in the Withered Arm, where Gertrude goes overboard with superstition. Hardy uses the countryside as peaceful place to pass over and so the reader feels touched by this. This emotion is emphasized especially when we read on to see that his son accidentally drowned at the spring and that his spirit went to the spring. ‘He was seen at the spring was the very time when he died.’
This story gives a different effect than ‘The Withered Arm’. In the Superstitious Man’s Story the townspeople seem more at peace with the country and only take superstition as solace, whereas the Withered Arm superstition is used as a necessity to survive.
The final story is ‘Barbara of The House of Grebe’, a tale of romance turned into Gothic horror. This is about two lovers, Barbara and Edmund Willowes who drift apart because a of distorted physical appearance. This is like in ‘The Withered Arm’ where Farmer Lodge and Gertrude drift apart because of her beauty deteriorated. Macabre is a common theme in this short story, especially when Edmund’s face gets distorted in an accident.
Barbara has met her true love Edmund and has been forced to run away to London were they can get married and have a marriage that is full of love rather than full of hierarchy. A common theme is linked with ‘The Withered Arm’ is that relationships were hard to sustain in those days, because parents chose their child’s partner regardless of love, most of the time they would choose somebody higher than themselves to get into the higher class and live a life of luxury.
‘She had taken this extreme step because she loved her dear Edmund as she could love no other man... she had seen the doom of marriage with Lord Uplandtowers.’ (He is the richer man that Barbara’s parents want her to marry.)
We the reader are getting a sense of inevitability that something will change all this, because at present everything seems to be going to well. Barbara has just eloped with a man of her dreams, the perfect gentleman whose love for her is truly genuine. When we find that Edmund is leaving for a trip, there is a sense of fate, ‘A great reason urged against Barbara accompanying her youthful husband.’ This is the turning point of the story, where this decision concludes her relationship with Edmund.
Barbara is a young fickle girl, who like Gertrude buys into vanity and superficiality, even though Barbara’s love for Edmund is real there is still a sense that her lust for him was his good looks. Even Lady Grebe picks this up, she mutters to herself ‘How handsome he is...I don’t wonder at Barbara’s craze for him.’
This profound love all turns into a horror for Barbara when Edmund’s face is gravely burnt from a theatre fire in Venice. Edmund being the heroic character that he is, re-entered ‘for the fifth time to save his fellow creatures’ when ‘some fiery beams had fallen upon him’.
The first time she sees her husband after the accident, Hardy creates melodrama when he describes a ghoulish figure that is now commonly used in television and stories for tension and horror,
‘A figure stepped inside...her husband was attired in a flapping black cloak and slouched hat...he came forward into the light...perceived with a surprise, and almost a fright, that he wore a mask.’
The macabre here illuminates Barbara’s feelings. The negative connotations, ‘figure, black, slouched, fright, and mask’, emphasize that Edmund has transformed from a debonair handsome man to a frightful, ghost-like figure. As Edmund steps into the light, it is the point where her feelings change for him, it is as if she is stepping away from him for the first time especially since she had been excited to see him, there is a great contrast in her feeling for him. From then on a great amount of anxiety is built up in their relationship e.g.
‘He put his arm around her but did not attempt to kiss her... “I would give anything to kiss you dearest, now at this moment!” He continued, with mournful passionateness’
Edmund feels the strain on their relationship as soon as he walks through the door. When he puts his arm around her we sense that Edmund is full of melancholy because he did not try to kiss her, although he did want to, he felt that she did not want the kiss because he says ‘mournful passionateness.’ The comma when he tells her he wanted to kiss her shows there has been a break in the marriage, it is as if he had to think before he could say now-whether it would be appropriate or not. Also the clause after the comma seems to be Edmund just being his gentleman-like character, a partner could just say he wanted a kiss and it would less needy. Hardy here is saying love is based upon lust, which is mostly about appearance, and without lust love falls through. He is not a romantic writer, he feels that a marriage is not based upon the love in your life but the way you love your life i.e. how you want it-getting married into a rich family. Hardy is preaching that love is a bonus, in the end not everything will turn out well.
In the end Edmund did die and so Barbara married Lord Uplandtowers even though she did not love him. All of a sudden she receives a statue of Edmund that she ordered years ago from a friend and becomes fanatically obsessed over it. It is only now that
‘this perfect being was really the man she loved and not that later pitiable figure’.
She is described as ‘lost in a reverie’ when she is looking at the statue, this is similar to both ‘The Superstitious Man’s Story’-when his soul walks out of the house in the middle of the night and in ‘The Withered Arm’-when Rhoda becomes obsessed with Gertrude and then has the dream. We see the truth pouring out of Barbara’s heart but it is too late as it only pours out in the absence of her sweetheart.
She is caught intimately kissing the statue by Lord Uplandtowers, he stands in the doorway towering over her as she is devoting herself to Edmund, and there is a sense of he is a monster waiting to squash her. ‘He beheld the door of the private recess.’ When she is kissing the statue, a very vulgar sexual act is happening.
‘Her nightclothes had slipped from her shoulders and her long white robe and pale face...she apostrophised in a low murmur of infinite tenderness.’
She herself has turned into a statue. the ‘white’ does not mean virginal in this case but ghoulish and nothingness. Her murmur of infinite tenderness is extremely inappropriate, all her lust that she had lost has all been regained and she is showing it not to her husband but to a statue. The reader will very appalled by this, especially a Victorian one, as it is shocking and very unheard of. When she declares her love for him-‘O Edmund, I am always yours!’ rather than the readers feeling sympathy for her, we feel that she has gone insane, this is because she described as statue which creates malevolent figure in our minds. This scene gets even more sinister when Lord Uplandtowers sighs to himself ‘ “Ha, Ha...this is where my hopes of a successor in the title dissolve.”’ This is where we know this marriage is definitely over and has no love whatsoever, the words Hardy chooses are significant as the words ‘successor,’ ‘title’ and ‘dissolve’ prove there was no love in the marriage as it was more of a joining of elite class.
In conclusion Hardy’s view on life mostly is negative, ‘The Withered Arm’ and ‘Barbara of The House Grebe’ are pessimistic stories on life, Hardy feels that in most cases life does not work out and that it is very hard to be content as Gertrude and Barbara are. Interestingly in ‘The Superstitious Man’s story’ it is quite the opposite, although it does deal with death it comes out warmth for the reader, superstition is used for recreation rather than a requirement. Fate plays a big part in this story, the characters felt that you could not stop destined future and so no witchcraft could overcome the time of death unlike in ‘The Withered Arm’ the characters felt if anything went wrong it was to be handled in a non-orthodox way e.g. Gertrude seeking Conjuror Trendle’s advice. The key to success in all the characters is to handle everything and let fate run its course. The morals in the stories do relate to the modern world. Vanity is becoming a growing problem and one of the morals was not to let an abnormality control you. The ridiculous superstition of some characters was only because it was a pagan society where science was new, they needed time to accept these new discoveries and move on from their old ways.
