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Desperate Remedies Oxford World Classics Thomas Hardy Patricia Ingham Books

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Desperate Remedies Oxford World Classics Thomas Hardy Patricia Ingham Books

Underrated -- ranks with Hardy's best!


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Desperate Remedies Oxford World Classics Thomas Hardy Patricia Ingham Books Reviews

Postage took about 3 weeks but certainly worth the wait. Book in very condition, thankyou. Will definitely buy from dealer (all new books)again. Thanx . Melinda ;-)
Desperate Remedies, Thomas Hardy's first published novel, is far from his best but surprisingly quite good and, indeed, somewhat underrated. Despite some limitations - I hesitate to call them "faults" - that Hardy later overcame, it is an engaging, suspenseful read that holds up rather well after almost a century and a half. It is a novel by a young beginning writer full of promise; though it infamously got several very bad reviews, at least a few critics rightly saw that its author could someday produce greatness. Fans and scholars will delight in these budding elements and much else related to Hardy in embryo, while the significant differences from his other novels may even attract those who do not normally like him.

Hardy later improved on all the book's strengths, but there are, to its benefit, several similarities to his great later works. Not least is a strong sense of place, perhaps Hardy's most important and characteristic novelistic asset. He is rightly known for vivid, often detailed, and sometimes strikingly lyrical descriptions of settings and for moving them beyond mere background to become an integral part of the story. This last is not reached here, but the descriptions are well above the norm, and we can see Hardy's progress toward works where setting is so important that it almost becomes a character. The official launching of Wessex - the part-real, part-dream country, based on his native Southwest England, that Hardy made world famous - did not occur until his fourth published novel, but he was clearly already working toward it. This is not a proto-Wessex novel in the sense that his next two books are, but the setting is a rural England based on Hardy's own area and quite memorably sketched.

The portrait of the heroine, Cytherea, is also striking - the first of Hardy's many great heroines. She is skillfully and realistically drawn, quickly gaining sympathy and interest; we feel for and with her vividly lifelike character. Like Hardy's more famous heroines, she is to a large degree idealized - incredibly beautiful, intelligent, and educated yet innocent and naïve. She is notably strong and independent for a female literary character of the era, clearly showing that Hardy had a far higher view of women than most people of his time, especially men. However, also like his more famous heroines, she is not perfect but must fight a tendency to be overly trusting and a dependent streak. The many feminists interested in Hardy's work will find much to fascinate them in this early depiction.

The author's preface admits that, even after Hardy became acclaimed, the book was praised almost exclusively for this character. He as usual sells himself short, but it is certainly true that characterization is not the book's strength. Hardy later improved his characterization to the point of mastery, creating some of the era's most memorable characters, but here Cytherea stands well above the rest of the book's cast. Her lover Edward Springrove, whom Hardy says he based closely on someone he knew, is believable and memorable, but other characters are stock cutouts to various extents. Her brother is the most well-drawn among them, with an appealing intelligence reminiscent of later Hardy characters, but his overbearing paternalism smacks of stock Victorian male types, however lifelike. Cytherea's employer, Miss Aldclyffe, is even more conventional - the grim and dominating but mysterious rich lady with a hidden heart quite familiar in Victorian fiction. Worst of all, though, is her son Aeneas, whose villainy is pushed to such extremes that it is not only highly implausible but sometimes even bordering on unintentionally comic. These deficiencies are interesting in that they make Cytherea stand out even more but keep the book significantly below Hardy's later great work.

The real weak spot, though, is the plot. That said, it is weak only by the highest literary standards and in comparison to Hardy's later masterpieces. Leading Victorian critic George Meredith read Hardy's first written novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, and suggested he write a book with more plot. Hardy took his advice, putting much of the book into Desperate Remedies and eventually destroying the rest. However, by his own admission, he took the advice rather too far. Hardy became known for complex plots, but ambition outran him here; the plot is not only needlessly convoluted but also overly melodramatic. He also became identified with heavy use of highly wrought coincidence; many have criticized him for it at the time and even now, and it is a large part of the reason some do not like his fiction. Yet many fail to realize that he did it deliberately and carefully as a way of advancing his deterministic views. There is much of it here, but unlike in later works, melodrama and generally overcomplicated implausibility push it over the proverbial top. Anyone expecting a realist novel will be sorely disappointed, and the book is also not well-done enough to be classed in the naturalist genre that Hardy helped make famous.

Even so, taken on its own terms, the plot is quite engaging; highly suspenseful and very entertaining, it grabs interest quickly and does not let go. It is almost the mid-Victorian equivalent of today's cinematic thriller. Indeed, there are several interesting things going on at once. One thread is a love story of the sort Hardy later specialized in; it has strong verisimilitude and great emotion, making it well worth reading for fans and those who appreciate such stories. Uniquely in Hardy's long career, another thread is a dark murder mystery of the sort Victorian fiction made immortal. Indeed, though it has almost never gotten credit for it, Desperate Remedies is an important early entry in what became known as detective fiction; we must remember that Sherlock Holmes was almost two decades in the future. I do not mean to put the novel on the level of that brilliant work in terms of detective fiction, but the mystery is lively and engaging. Anyone who really knows such works is well aware that they can fail like nothing else when handled poorly, but Hardy works this aspect quite dexterously; the tight execution he became revered for is already here to a large degree. Fans and critics used to more typical Hardy plots may well be pleasantly surprised by how deftly he could handle something so seemingly alien to his art, especially at such an early juncture - and may be entertained against their will. More notably, its great difference from later Hardy may even mean that those who dislike his more representative work may find themselves liking his fiction for the first time.

The reason for this strange dichotomy is that Desperate Remedies is essentially an entry in the sensation novel genre. It was then wildly popular but now nearly forgotten and rarely read - with good reason. Desperate Remedies aside, the novels of Wilkie Collins, the genre's master, are basically the only ones still read. Hardy knew the genre was not ideal for him, but the rejection of his first novel and his poems made him desperately and begrudgingly decide that adopting a popular form was the only way he could be published, as the title perhaps slyly and cynically acknowledges. It was an awkward fit; Hardy's talent was too great and idiosyncratic to fit any template, much less such an inappropriate one. The novel is thus a curious mix of conventions and individual brilliance bursting through, perhaps even against Hardy's will. The conventions are well-done, but genre purists thought them less than perfectly handled. This is the result of Hardy's own brand creeping in, which is to the book's great benefit. Desperate Remedies would perhaps be fully forgotten if it were a pure genre entry, but the elements of Hardy's later greatness are in embryo, raising it above a mere sensation novel. Hardy thankfully never restricted himself this way again, which improved his art greatly, but this book's unique status in his canon is not its least appealing aspect.

Fans and scholars will indeed see and appreciate much that is familiar from later works. One of the most obvious is Hardy's unusual prose style. This is clearly an early effort, as he greatly improved his prose, but his characteristic writing is already in evidence. More notable are the strong presences of themes he would return to again and again, primarily sex and class. The former is of course done via Cytherea, but the latter suffuses the whole book. Like many later Hardy characters, Cytherea, her brother, and (especially) Springrove are lower-class people who managed to educate themselves well beyond what was normal. The resulting class complications are memorably dramatized here. The class system's unfairness was a perennial Hardy topic, but this is noteworthy for pushing the issue unusually far; one might almost call it protest literature. It comes across most forcefully in the confrontation between Springrove and Miss Aldclyffe, where even the ostensibly neutral narrator gets in on it. This scene is indeed so heavy-handed that it is arguably authorially intrusive; we get the strong sense that Hardy is pushing a personal issue at the expense of story. It was indeed a sensitive issue because of his humble birth and the setbacks it caused him, not least his future father-in-law's reluctance to let him marry his daughter. One cannot blame Hardy for feeling thus, but it does get in the way of his art here a bit, even if his points are valid and well-made. He realized this himself, toning down some of the harsher passages in later editions when his own position as a famous and rich author became established and age perhaps mellowed him. Hardy made meticulous changes to all his novels when they were reissued, but this perhaps has the most interesting and revealing alterations. Students of his art will certainly want to seek out an edition with footnotes detailing the changes.

This debut novel is also revealing in other ways for those familiar with Hardy's life and thought. For instance, a negative reference to conservatism throws into question his insistence of lifelong indifference to party politics. Perhaps more importantly, there are many elements related to his life, not least many references to architecture, his pre-writing career.

As for which edition to get, the Oxford World's Classics volume is ideal. It has the series' usual supplementary material - introduction, author timeline, notes, etc. -, but this is well above even its usual high standard. The introduction is revelatory, rescuing the novel from the critical toilet and even arguing that the sensation novel was essentially always Hardy's chosen form. I do not quite buy this claim, but it is well-argued and interesting. We also get much fascinating background information, including biographical insights. Finally, the notes are exceptionally useful, highlighting Hardy's sometimes obscure references and again providing much insight.

All told, Desperate Remedies is an essential read for fans and critics, while even those who normally dislike Hardy's fiction should check it out. I recommend it especially to fans of sensation novels, detective fiction, gothic literature, and anyone who likes the darker and/or more melodramatic side of Victorian fiction. The novel is so overshadowed by later Hardy that hardly anyone has read it for some time, and it is now quite difficult to procure. This is a shame, as it is very readable and has several hints of greatness. Unless one is willing to chart Hardy's progress chronologically, this should be one of the last Hardy novels anyone should read, but it should be read.
It took me a few years to obtain this (first published but second written) Hardy novel at a reasonable price, (for a while, it was only available for over $100) but it was well worth the wait. Thickly plotted with a generous share of chance and missed opportunities, luxuriously written, seriously dramatic and at times hysterically melodramatic, but very visual, very compelling, almost page-turner suspense. And while spawned from a detective mystery genre, it is fully consciously a Hardy novel, with all the mature concerns of this artist breaking the surface. (Oh what that first novel, the one not published might have been!)
Underrated -- ranks with Hardy's best!