Hardy versus Wessex

Abstract

Abstract Hardy's distinctive creation, the world he called Wessex, has, in recent years, been increasingly regarded as a dubious construction too often used by critics in the liberal humanist tradition as the basis for seeing the Wessex Novels as mythic or tragic narratives. Materialist critics such as Goode, Fisher, Widdowson, and Wotton have argued that the effect of such readings has been to mask the social and economic practices and pressures, rooted in the Victorian class system, that are central to Hardy's novels. These critics often argue that the Wessex Novels identify both the dominating influence of class conflict in their representations of actual experience as well as Hardy's own deflections of his insights into that experience. The present essay supports the materialist critics to some extent but rejects the reduction of Wessex to a socioeconomic stage. The work of Raymond Williams is used as a critical discourse whose initiatives can enable us to see a different Wessex, one that confronts an...