The Woodlanders - Thomas Hardy

The novel begins with a view of the forests surrounding Little Hintock, a secluded woodland village. A barber from the nearby town of Sherton Abbas travels into the woods to buy Marty South’s beautiful hair, since poverty forces her to sell it. Soon after, Grace Melbury, the educated daughter of a timber merchant, returns home from boarding school. She reunites with her childhood friend and fiancé, Giles Winterborne, whom Marty secretly loves. Grace notices that Little Hintock has changed during her absence, especially with the arrival of the sophisticated doctor, Edgar Fitzpiers, a man from a higher social class who now lives in the district. 

The main story is the complicated love story between Grace Melbury and the humble woodlander, Giles Winterborne. Grace is often treated like property by her father. Mr. Melbury spends a great amount of money on her education so she can become an educated lady, socially above the woodland people of Little Hintock. Because of this sacrifice, he begins to think that marrying Giles Winterborne would waste Grace’s education and social advancement.

Grace is also quite capricious about her future, and I think she is similar to her father in some ways. At times, this becomes a little annoying because Grace always acts like an obedient daughter and rarely stands against her father’s wishes. When Giles loses his house, Grace finally marries Dr. Fitzpiers. She seems relieved because the marriage follows her father’s choice, even though she barely knows the doctor well.

Characters from outside the woodland, such as Mrs. Charmond and Dr. Fitzpiers, look noble and educated from the outside, but inside they are emotionally complicated. Hardy shows a contrast between the simple woodland people and the more modern upper-class people, suggests that rich or educated people are not always better than simple rural people.

The woodland is the main setting of this novel. It is full of tall trees with little sunshine, so the atmosphere feels quiet, lonely, resilient, and a little dark. The district in the woodland area is called Little Hintock. The “woodlanders” are the people who live and make a living in the woods.

After reading The Woodlanders and The Return of the Native, I think Thomas Hardy feels important today because he recorded a rural world that slowly disappeared. He captured the lives, labor, and struggles of English peasants and village communities before industrial modern life changed everything. For example, Giles Winterborne works with traditional cider-maker, Marty South strips bark from trees, and other villagers work closely with timber and forests. In The Return of the Native, the furze-cutters also show the hard life of rural workers. Hardy vividly preserved ways of life that were later erased by modernization.

I do not know how Victorian society valued Hardy’s novels at that time. If we imagine living in that era, people may have read his stories as ordinary accounts of everyday rural life, just as modern people today write about the difficulties of life in the city. But because Hardy’s novels describe a world from more than 200 years ago, it's more interesting to me, reading them today feels like a window to past time.

Ruang Buku Megga Rated : ✬✬✬✬ (4/5)

Title :  The Woodlanders

Author : Thomas Hardy

Publisher : Everyman Library
Year :  1994 (First Published in 1887 )
Format / Pages : Softcover / 400 pages
ISBN :  9780460874595