[hardy-l] Satirical President

[Rosemarie Morgan]

Hardy had personally witnessed the brutal hanging of a young woman who had 
(if memory serves) killed her husband. He also made notebook entries of 
like capital punishment horrors.

I had always interpreted his Aeschylean phrase to indicate, by 
transference, an abhorrence of a law which is more pagan than Christian and 
more brutal than humane. For reasons of censorship, Hardy couldn't aim his 
fire at the current British legislation but he could, indirectly, condemn 
it by analogy.

That 's my take on it - for what it's worth
Rosemarie


t 10:01 AM 5/20/2009, you wrote:

>A reader's, not a scholar's, response to the ending of TESS:
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>Carolyn McGrath
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Rosemarie Morgan
Research Fellow, Yale University
President, The Thomas Hardy Association
Editor, The Hardy Review
124 Bishop St, New Haven, CT 06511

203 624-6976