[Hardy-l] sentence sense

[Rosemarie Morgan]

>Ah -- I didn't quite understand your meaning, Bill.  I don't have the 
>*Life* to hand so can't address your query at the moment, but in the case 
>of PBE I would have thought that the narrator would be struggling less 
>with the "nature of the praise " (whether the anxiety is over 
>condescension  or over being "the custodian of the power system in which 
>he is operating and which she has successfully subverted") than with the 
>text's most daring indiscretion. After all, the reader has just been 
>invited to imagine a naked woman who has removed all her clothes outdoors, 
>in the open air - -  ("she had taken off her whole clothing, and replaced 
>only her outer robe and skirt" - 1st edition). Personally, I would imagine 
>that if anything were at all anxiety-making or threatening or even 
>subversive to the patriarchal system it would be that the woman's "wit" 
>has landed everyone in very deep Grundyan waters.

   Ironically, Knight fears Elfride is endangering herself by positioning 
herself as hitching-post on the cliff. And she is endangering herself. But 
not simply for the reasons he is thinking of.

>At the same time, knowing Hardy and his way with injudicious moments & 
>sidestepping Mrs Grundy, I would also have thought that the allusion to 
>AYLI was an attempt to distract the reader from images of a woman 
>undressing into embracing a different perspective -- shifting focus to the 
>relevance of the allusion (just as, in FFMC, Bathsheba's "bedroom " 
>activities in the open air are resituated as Oak's perspective on what he 
>sees as her "vanity"). Most chapters in PBE rely on some kind of allusion 
>to former patriarchal texts --  are these allusions designed to cloak 
>erotica in literary tuxedos?

Best
Rosemarie

But I was asking instead about the nature of the *praise* and
>not the wit itself.  I think I detect in the passage in Life & Work a trace
>of patriarchal anxiety: Woman's wit (or motherwit), being resourceful and
>ultimately uncontainable is admirable but threatening to the male writer (or
>perhaps any male)
>
>Bill