In ‘The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion’, Phyllis is a young woman living in isolation with her father, who excludes her from society. Humphrey Gould, a fine bachelor, who is “an approximately fashionable man of a mild type”, proposes to a very flattered Phyllis, who decides to take this opportunity to escape her seclusion. Humphrey then decides to go away on a trip and doesn’t come back for a year. In that time Phyllis feels abandoned and becomes involved with an exotic German soldier called Matthäus Tina, whose face “was so striking, so handsome; and his eyes were so blue, and sad and abstracted”. When Humphrey suddenly returns again, he tells her that he has married another woman and wants her help in not letting his father get too angry. Phyllis feels surprised but also relieved by the unexpected news. Meanwhile Matthäus and his friend Christoph are shot for desertion, leaving a lonely and grief-stricken Phyllis. She visits their graves regularly until her own death, and is buried nearby.
‘The Winters and the Palmleys begins with two women who are “to a certain extent rivals in good looks”. One takes the other woman’s man, who is called Winter, and they marry and have a son called Jack. The other woman marries several years later to a man called Palmley and they also have a son. Both women eventually become widowed and the wealthier woman Mrs Winter takes the impoverished Mrs Palmley’s son as errand-boy. The little boy is literally scared to death one day when Mrs Winter sends him on an errand through the dark woods. Mrs Palmley is left even unhappier and vows vengeance against her rival. Mrs Winter’s son Jack falls in love with Harriet, Mrs Palmley’s niece, who comes to live with her. Harriet is a “proud and handsome girl, very well brought-up, and more stylish and genteel than the people of the village”. She clearly has more class than Jack and is not in love with him, but is very flattered so they become a couple. Unfortunately for poorly educated Jack, Harriet is put off by his scruffy letter-writing, and “the weak flame that had been set alight in Harriet’s heart soon sank low”. She soon jilts him and moves on to someone else. Jack is upset, but also embarrassed that Harriet and her new lover will mock him and his letters, so his pride gets the better of him. After she heartlessly refuses to return them on his request, Jack breaks into the house to steal the letters back. Jack is caught red-handed by police, who believe he is after Mrs Palmley’s money. Harriet and Mrs Palmley do nothing to help him in his trial, as part of Mrs Winter’s revenge on Mrs Winter, and so he is hanged for night burglary. Mrs Winter is left lonely and grieving, whilst the two Palmley women feel some guilt for the omission of Jack’s death, which was indirectly caused by them.
Thomas Hardy tends to cover different aspects of the subject of love in his stories. Jack is very infatuated with Harriet, even though she clearly has more class and education than he does. Tony Kytes is similar in some ways because he shows infatuation towards his fiancée Millie, but also for Hannah and Unity, proving that he is a lady’s man. Gertrude loves her husband maritally, in the way she is committed to Farmer Lodge and she does not want the withered arm to ruin her relationship and her marriage. In a similar fashion, the young couple in ‘The Hardomes’ give marital love even though they marry the wrong partner who is not compatible.
“James Hardcome’s intended was called Emily Darth, and both she and James were gentle, nice-minded, in-door people, fond of a quiet life. Steve and his chosen, named Olive Pawle, were different; they were of a more bustling nature, fond of racketing about and seeing what was going on in the world.”
The quote above shows how different the two couples are, and how alike each person is to their spouse. Gertrude shows sympathetic love for Rhoda and her son by visiting and giving them gifts, just like Phyllis is sympathetic towards Matthäus by being friendly to him. Isolated Phyllis looks for love in order to escape her loneliness and she “was discovered even here by an admirer and her hand asked in marriage” by Humphrey Gould. Similarly, rejected Rhoda still feels something for Farmer Lodge, and probably hopes things could start again between them. Phyllis, although she grows romantically involved with Matthäus, she stays loyal in the end by going back to her fiancé Humphrey. Gertrude is committed to Farmer Lodge, going great lengths to cure her arm in order for him to love her again.
In every Thomas Hardy story we have covered, at least one character makes a fateful decision that somehow triggers their own or someone else’s downfall. In fact, there are quite a few fateful decisions which, along with an external malign force, lead to the final tragedy. An external malign force is something that usually is not caused by or can’t be helped by the characters involved, such as punishments by the law and illnesses like Gertrude’s ailment on her arm, or “the withered arm” as described in the stories. This force causes distress in the story and makes the difficult situations even harder for the already unhappy characters. If Gertrude’s arm was not withered, perhaps Farmer Lodge, although quite shallow, would not have stopped loving her. And if Jack were allowed to serve some time in jail instead of the death sentence, maybe he would have moved on and quite happily lived with his mother. But, then again, the characters tend to bring about misfortunes in one way or another. For example, if the engaged Phyllis decided not to act on her feelings for Matthäus, then maybe she wouldn’t have become trapped in the love triangle. However, if she wasn’t engaged in the first place, then she would have had no problems getting together with Matthäus. Also, she has problems with her strict father secluding her from society. Jack could have stopped worrying about the letters, but instead he chose to break into the Palmers’ house, resulting in his death sentence. And if Gertrude had not decided to visit the conjuror, she would not have been led on by his myths, believing that Rhoda was possibly a witch and going to the hanging of Rhoda’s son. All these fateful decisions are immense factors that cause heartbreak in the end.
Most of Thomas Hardy’s stories finish in tragic disaster, as a result of the characters’ fateful decisions, actions and the external malign force. Like I mentioned earlier, I think Hardy chooses these endings not necessarily to depress us, but to make us think. If characters like Jack and Gertrude had not made their fateful decisions, they could have escaped their premature deaths. Thomas Hardy was a great author, his characters very cleverly created to show how imperfect real human beings are, and his stories highlighting many different real-life issues.
