Hardy’s Contemporary Readers: Some Introductory Questions

Abstract

The subject of this book is not quite as simple as its title might suggest. It is about the relationship between Hardy and his readers but neither half of this partnership constitutes a straightforward, easily defined object. Reception theorists have argued that the process of reading involves the construction of an ‘implied author’ responsible for the final form of the text, a mental object clearly distinguishable from the historical author. But in practice, as we shall see, there have been as many Hardies as readers, each producing an imaginative projection of the author, a myth: ‘My Thomas Hardy’ (Widdowson 1989: 2). Even the historical Hardy is not that easy to pin down since each biographer produces a modified image of the inhabitant of Max Gate. Michael Millgate, for example, writes of a Hardy so wrapped up in his work and his elevated Shelleyan conception of the role of the artist that he was often unaware of the likely impact of his work upon his readers (Millgate 1982: 374), until, that is, the reviews appeared. I will attempt to modify Millgate’s model of Hardy, suggesting that he was fully aware of the likely response of his readers but increasingly risked challenging and antagonising them.