[Hardy-l] Class - Past and Present

[Rosemarie Morgan]

Thank you for this detailed report, Angelique. The concern you show 
(revealed by the trouble you've taken to supply specific information) 
complements Hardy's own concerns for the "underdog" and is surely relevant 
to our reading, not only of Hardy but of post-Hardyan criticism. I've had 
students who query the commonsense of Tess's sleeping outdoors as much as 
she does. And while one has to credit an American student with a greater 
sense of hazard inflicted by nature than Tess needs to fear from the 
English countryside, the more pervasive fear in modern North America is 
fear of man. Tess, at 16, has to learn this fear -- which says something 
about the attitudes towards sexual abuse in her world, whereas most 
children in the US learn it in the nursery (don't take candy from strangers 
-- and so on). Necessarily so. Not a week passes than yet another report -- 
often several -- of child homicide, rape or abduction hits the headlines.

Likewise poverty. While the US administration advocates spreading the 
gospel of Western democracy  throughout the world by any means, from CNN 
propaganda to imposing trade sanctions to military invasion, at home the 
facts and figures relating to child poverty, lack of medical care, 
homelessness and sexual abuse (as in the UK) offer a variant interpretation 
of what Western democracy actually means -- in practice -- before 
propaganda has tinted it rosy.

Hence, in studying Hardy the issues that arise in the classroom (in my 
classroom anyway) end in an examination of present-day moral values, 
present-day hypocrisy, present-day class/race/ethnic/sex/age 
discrimination  ---and so on -- rather than focussing on criticism of past 
issues as represented in his novels.

Best
Rosemarie

>End Child Poverty notes that 3.8 million children (1 in 3) currently live
>in poverty in the UK (http://www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/).
>
>And, if we are thinking of the homeless state of the Bridehead-Fawley
>family, displaced, deracinated, and homeless both materially and more
>metaphysically, the UK charity Shelter, founded in 1966, notes that
>'nearly one in 10 children

>Angelique