Discuss Hardy's use of the supernatural element in The Withered Arm. To what extent could it be considered a major theme?

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Coursework Criteria: Discuss Hardy’s use of the supernatural element in The Withered Arm. To what extent could it be considered a major theme?

Charlie High 4B                                                                                   20/7/03

The Withered Arm by Thomas Hardy, who lived from 1840 to 1928, is a short story split into nine chapters and is also split into two parts, chapters 1-5 and 6-9.

It is set in Wessex, a fictional representation of the south western counties of England, such as Dorset, Cornwall and Somerset, as this was where Hardy spent most of his life and to this area he gave the fictional name of ‘Wessex’. Wessex was the general name for which this particular part of England in Anglo-Saxon times, so we see that Hardy was a keen historian and through some of his novels we can note some references to famous figures such as the Wessex King Ina, whom King Lear was based on.

Hardy concentrates on not one character but on four, Rhoda Brook, Gertrude Lodge, Farmer Lodge and the boy. Rhoda is Lodge’s former lover who had his child and thus made herself socially unacceptable. He later chooses to marry the younger richer Gertrude. Through the first few chapters Hardy establishes the characters, primarily Rhoda and we begin to see how isolated she is from the others. Our first view of her is at work in the dairy, ’where a thin fading woman of thirty milked somewhat apart from the rest’. We learn that Lodge ‘ hadn’t spoke to Rhoda Brook for years’. Physical loneliness is an important theme that Hardy applies as it adds other dimensions to the novel, for example her status is highlighted through her being isolated and it indicates that she is of a lower class than people around her. She ‘milked somewhat apart from the rest’  .If she were popular she would not look up to others and would be satisfied with her own looks, instead she is an outcast as she is an unmarried mother, due t her being of a lower social class to Lodge. Hardy creates drama and tension through sheer human interest of the relationship between Rhoda and Gertrude this expands the story and we get a greater insight into the two ladies personalities .Through the force of her dream Rhoda loses farmer Lodge and her jealousy is so great that she inflicts blight on Gertrude; this is the first sign of the supernatural in the novel. We know this because when Gertrude visits Conjuror Trendle he comments,’ Medicine can’t cure it, Tis the work of an enemy’ and when Gertrude looks at the egg in the basin of water, she visualises the face of Rhoda. Who has inflicted the blight.  

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Six years then pass in section six and the affliction becomes worse and starts to affect the marriage. We know that Farmer Lodge is selfish and shallow and as Gertrude’s young beautiful look disappears so does his love for her, ironically Gertrude is as desperate, hate filled and reliant on superstition as Rhoda by this point . Hardy then uses elements of suspense, physical tension and superstitious beliefs in the final chapters. Gertrude intensifies her quest to treat her withered arm and visits Conjuror Trendle once again and he gives Gertrude a task to carry out to cure the curse, ...

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