Janet Haven

It's difficult to read Thomas Hardy, that great chronicler of social injustice, without considering the modern path of social justice movements. Social justice is a concept that many rally around -- activists, funders, polictical parties. Nevertheless, the idea of social justice is a bit slippery -- in its broadest sense, it is about shaping societies to a basic moral structure, but how that gets interpreted obviously varies widely from culture to culture. The Center for Social Justice, a Canadian Jesuit organization that Googled first for "social justice", argues for "narrowing the gap in income, wealth, and power". For others, it may not be so explicitly about financial power, but more about social power -- Fahamu, an organization that operates mainly in Africa, uses the tagline "networks for social justice", and on their website explain their "...vision of the world where people organise to emancipate themselves from all forms of oppression, recognise their social responsibilities, respect each other’s differences, and realise their full potential." In other words, it's very much about personal responsibility and initaitive.

Back to Hardy and a world where personal responsibility and initiative are generally punished -- not by the rule of law, but, indeed, socially. I've just finished Hardy's "The Woodlanders", which was apparently the author's favorite of his own works; it's easy to see why. Unlike the clearly doomed title characters in "Jude the Obscure" or "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", "The Woodlanders"' Giles and Grace keep a Hardy-weary reader's hope allive. Maybe, just maybe, they'll overcome all the injustices heaped on them by 19th century England and see their way clear to a happy pastoral life of barking trees in the spring and pressing cider in the fall. However, since this is Hardy, it's foolish to suppose that anyone will be well-rewarded for trying to wiggle their way clear of the social codes of the day.

Hardy spent a lot of his time thinking about social mobility, and wrote with a view on the increasing porousness of English society. "The Woodlanders" focuses on the after-effects of social elevation. Rather than being about the follies of trying, like the ever-obscure and always-failing Jude, to better oneself into a higher social status, "The Woodlanders" is about the follies of *actually* bettering oneself into a higher social status, and the ensuing social disintegration that one can assume will happen when classes willfully mix.

As always, love (or lust) is the driving force behind class-mixing. Marty, a lowly country girl, loves above her station, and covets Giles, a self-employed cider-presser. Giles doesn't give Marty the time of day, but instead dedicates himself to Grace, the local timber-merchant's daughter, who is one social step ahead of him by virtue of her expensive education; Grace, in turn, who should be of Giles' stature but has been (foolishly?) sent away from village life for a high-class education and now returns to find Little Hintock (and Giles) too mean for her new tastes, is fascinated by a newly arrived young doctor of very good family; the young doctor, Fitzpiers, is the great democrat of the book, since he's willing to sleep with everyone in town, but eventually marries beneath himself by choosing Grace - - who is, despite her newly refined tastes, still the daughter of Hintock's timber merchant. Finally, Fitzpiers realizes he has unnecessarily lowered himself, and starts keening after Mrs. Chambers, the local aristocrat who actually owns the whole village. Mrs. Chambers clearly finds a professional man like Fitzpiers beneath her, but begins an affair with him anyway, thus ruining his marriage. However, since Grace, his wife, is essentially two tiers below Mrs. Chambers in social hierarchy, that doesn't really bother her until Grace shows up and demands that Mrs. Chambers keep her hands off her (Grace's) husband. Mrs. Chambers wavers when face to face with the angry young wife, but then takes Fitzpiers off with her to tour Europe anyway. It is, by her reckoning, her social right, after all.

As you'd expect from Hardy, it all ends in tears, early death, and unfortunate choices. The crucial point, however, is that all the book's events are set in motion by the unusual decision by Grace's father to attempt to better his daughter through education; he simply does not factor in how an educated woman will be reintegrated into village society at the other end of boarding school. She is welcome nowhere. Grace confesses at one point in the book that her schoolmates always looked down on her, knowing that she came from village life. However, her old friends (and her betrothed, the guileless Giles) assume her to be too finely wrought, post-schooling, to enjoy their company. Hence the social dystopia of Hardy's vision: one may achieve some kind of personal betterment, but only at a cost to society as a whole. Grace is only reintegrated back into the village when she returns to "nature" (both her own "real" nature, and nature in opposition to cosmopolitanism), and becomes as she was before.

Hardy's is a beautiful trick; as a romantic poet who clearly loved the rhythms of 19th century rural England, he writes a tactile and engaging story. But as a social crusader, he avoids Dickensian didactics, and still manages to impart a modern sense of social injustice in his narrative. I can't help but wonder which element prevailed for his contemporary readers.