Thomas Hardy describes the settings. Here is a quotation “Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries…” This means that it was an unchanged landscape. Also the weather is described as windy and it was raining heavily. In “A Vendetta” Guy de Maupassant describes the surroundings of the house and areas. Guy De Maupassant gives us the impression that the surrounding are extremely dangerous because it is built on a mountain overlooking the sea. Also he makes us feel that it very quiet around the area where the widow lives. Guy De Maupassant makes it feel scary so that we read on with the rest of the story.
This is very important to the reader so that the reader can get the story, and carry on reading. Important also the reader could read more of the authors’ books such as ‘A Vendetta’ and ‘The Three Strangers.’
The descriptions of the settings help to develop a sense of the nature of the mystery otherwise if there are no descriptions, there would be no sense of mystery let alone the story.
The time of day in Thomas Hardy’s story was night, you can tell because he writes, “It was nearly time for a full moon” this tells us that it was late at night, whereas in ‘A Vendetta’ Guy de Maupassant states that the old widow going to kill Nicolas Ravolatti was in the morning.
The environment around was that it was raining heavily and so you could be expected to find some stranger at your doorstep asking you if he could stay. Also Thomas Hardy writes, “The most salient of the shepherd’s domestic erections was an empty sty at the forward corner of the hedgeless garden.” Hardy is emphasising the words which are underlined, to describe the environment around, saying that everything outside was really empty but inside was really full. The effect is that something wrong will happen because the inside is so full while the outside is so empty.
Thomas Hardy describes the way places are, for example a quotation “The principles of masking the homelier features of your establishment by a convectional frontage was unknown.”
Here are the changes after he has entered the house, the weather had changed, rain had come pouring down, louder beatings of the rain on the cabbage – leaves of the garden, on the eight or ten beehives just clearly seen by the path, and its dripping from the eaves into a row of buckets and pans that had been placed under the walls of the cottage. These changes build up a sense of mystery because they were totally different from the outside world.
There are many many more changes but there is no need to list all of them.
The nature of the man was that he was tall, predicted an age of 40 years old, suggested to the black-coated tribes of men. The stranger was thirsty and hungry. The stranger was living on the streets, so he was forced to pick up anything from the floor. This builds up a sense of mystery because Hardy writes about the clothes which are unusual and could say that the man looks bad in sense.
The question that we could ask about the nature of this man is that “Why doesn’t the nature of this man match his appearance?” Another question to ask ourselves is “Is it right to kill a man for stealing a sheep? Is a man’s life worth more than a sheep? My personal answer is that a man’s life is much more worth than a sheep. Whereas the question to ask ourselves about ‘A Vendetta’ is “Was the old woman right to avenge her son?” My answer is that it was right to avenge her son because if I had lost a son after somebody had killed my son I would kill them, but not as brutally as the old widow did with her dog. There would have been another way, it is to forget who it was that murdered her son and carry on with your life instead of finding the man and killing him of.
The clues that are given about the first stranger’s profession is that Thomas Hardy writes “I have had some rough times lately, and have been forced to pick up what I can get in the way of wearing.” So the stranger must be very poor and must be living on the streets.
We suspect that he is lying that he has a job because he says, “But you hardly have heard of me.”
The second stranger was much different than the first stranger. He had more manners, he was several years older than the first one. He was richer, and all he asked for was shelter to go to Casterbridge. The second stranger makes himself at home. The second stranger was the hangman, he was to hang the clockmaker who stole a sheep to feed his family.
The third stranger was very frightened and ran away when he heard about the situation with the stolen sheep, and he was an escaped prisoner. You can tell that the prisoner was frightened because Hardy says, “ he hid under the tree and it was very obvious that he was hiding there.” The first stranger returns, and chats to the second stranger and they go off in separate directions. This builds up a sense of mystery because all the strangers went in different directions which was suspicious and that everyone thought that they would have run in the same directions because they had known each other.
I think at the end, this mystery story was designed to entertain and to instruct, because Thomas Hardy instructs us to believe in this story and NOT TO OPEN THE DOOR TO ANY SRANGERS! The other message for us in the story is that “Should a man be hanged for stealing a sheep for his family because they are poor and hungry.
In “A Vendetta” Guy de Maupassant builds up a mystery story by writing about an old widow living only in a tiny cottage who is presently living with her son Anotine Saverini.
It is similar to Thomas Hardy’s story because he writes about a cottage as well. Different about these is that Thomas Hardy talks more of the surroundings and areas in the setting. They are both in bad moods, because the surroundings are described as a bad mood, like raining and it was a dull day.
If an old widow is described in a setting it tells you straight away that this story is going to be a mystery story because an old widow living on her own, there is something bound to happen to her or her son. I think that Guy de Maupassant is trying to intensify the reader’s interest in the psychology of revenge and the way the person thinks, whereas in Thomas Hardy’s story he seems to litter his story with intriguing clues and fate leads throughout the narrative.
In “A Vendetta” the ending was more horrific than “The Three Strangers,” and it keeps the reader entertained. It is about a woman who avenges her son because Nicolas Ravolatti had stabbed him treacherously. The old widow trains her gundog to kill people by grabbing at their throats and killing them.
I believe that although both stories use the usual formulaic devices of mystery story such as lonely and hostile environments, bizarre behaviour and puzzling relationships between people, a resolution or explanation, with a scattering of useful and useless clues (red herrings) there is much more to the mysteries that meet the eye.
