[Hardy-l] Father Time

[Jackie Wilkinson]

Yes, Richard, the word I was searching for is surreal -  surreal ,
emblematic and metaphorical. Sorry, Pauline, but I don't perceive him as
being an instigator of tragedy as he is a negated image and as such I
believe is therefore unable, up to the moment of his suicide, to influence
events because of his liminality. It is his ultimate negation - death -
which eventually influences events. As he is almost a non-person he is
equally a non-instigator. For me he is the allegorical presence of the
absences in the lives of the main characters if that makes sense. Yes, I
like very much the idea of Father Time as 'the extreme symbol of alienated
modernity'. 

Jacky Wilkinson
PhD researcher
Lancaster