[hardy-l] Hardy - not a happy camper

[Fraser Pakes]

In connection with some of the recent comments about what Hardy  
SHOULD have written I am comforted to find the letter he wrote in  
1889 to John Addington Symonds, explaining his own thoughts on the  
subject.
The pertinent section reads,
". . .I get smart raps sometimes from critics who appear to think  
that to call me a pessimist and a pagan is to say all that is  
necessary for my condemnation.  The tragical conditions of life  
imperfectly denoted in The Return of the Native and some other  
stories of mine I am less and less able to keep out of my work.  I  
often begin a story with the intention of making it brighter and  
gayer than usual; but the question of conscience soon comes in: and  
it does not seem right, even in novels, to willfully belie one's own  
views.  All comedy, is tragedy, if you only look deep enough into it.  
A question which used to trouble me was whether we ought to write sad  
stories, considering how much sadness there is in the world already.  
But of late I have come to the conclusion that, the first step  
towards cure of, or even relief from, any disease being to understand  
it, the study of tragedy in fiction may possibly here and there be  
the means of showing how to escape the worst forms of it, at least ,  
in real life."  (The Collected Letters, Purdy and Millgate, Vol 1, p.  
190)
Fraser Pakes
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