Fwd: [hardy-l] Satirical President

Wed May 20 14:09:11 PDT 2009

Hi Joanie

  I remember TCT and COurt 4 and May 21 but was it 7 pm or 7.30?

thanks
Rosie

At 12:23 PM 5/20/2009, you wrote:
>I'm forwarding Judith's response to your good messages about the 
>alternative ending to Tess.
>Thanks to all who wrote.
>Betty
>
>Begin forwarded message:
>
>>From: "Judith Flanders" 
>><<mailto:mail at judithflanders.co.uk>mail at judithflanders.co.uk>
>>Date: May 20, 2009 10:01:12 AM PDT
>>To: "'Betty Cortus'" <<mailto:bcortus at HARDY-L.COM>bcortus at HARDY-L.COM>
>>Subject: RE: [hardy-l] Satirical President
>>
>>Interesting. I don’t know anything about Hardy except as a reader of his 
>>novels – I’m not sure, therefore, what censorship he might have felt 
>>himself constrained by, but was certainly not remotely forbidden or even 
>>frowned upon to write against capital punishment – there is reams of the 
>>stuff, from the 1840s onwards.
>>And, as an additional connection, that Carolyn McGrath’s post brought to 
>>mind, I wonder if anyone has linked the President of the Immortals with 
>>the Bion tag about boys killing frogs in sport, but the frogs dying in earnest.
>>And indeed Hardy did see an execution, that of Martha Elizabeth Brown, 
>>who murdered her abusive husband. I am writing about murder and its 
>>transformation into ‘entertainment’ – books, newspapers, theatre and so 
>>on, and that was why I was checking Tess in the first place. I will be 
>>mentioning Hardy and his connection to Mrs Brown, but only briefly, as he 
>>really only fleetingly touches on what he saw (and I posit that he 
>>actually merges the memory of that with a far more famous execution which 
>>he did not see, but must have read about).
>>Thanks again for being the conduit, and please thank your co-posters – I 
>>am enormously grateful to them all, and to you.
>>Best
>>Judith
>>
>>From: Betty Cortus [<mailto:bcortus at HARDY-L.COM>mailto:bcortus at HARDY-L.COM]
>>Sent: 20 May 2009 17:00
>>To: Judith Flanders
>>Subject: Fwd: [hardy-l] Satirical President
>>
>>Here are a couple of late responses Judith.
>>Betty
>>
>>Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>
>>From: <<mailto:carolynmcgrathuk at yahoo.co.uk>carolynmcgrathuk at yahoo.co.uk>
>>Date: May 20, 2009 8:01:40 AM PDT
>>To: <<mailto:hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu>hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu>
>>Subject: [hardy-l] Satirical President
>>Reply-To: 
>><mailto:carolynmcgrathuk at yahoo.co.uk>carolynmcgrathuk at yahoo.co.uk, 
>><mailto:hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu>hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu
>>
>>
>>A reader's, not a scholar's, response to the ending of TESS:
>>
>>Glad Tony has sorted 'arch' vs 'anti' as I was struggling to see how one 
>>could flip into the other. Unless anyone informs me otherwise, I 
>>understand the assumption to be that 'Time, the Archsatirist' with 'his 
>>joke' is Hardy's 'first stab', as Judith puts it, and 'the President of 
>>the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase,' with 'his sport' is the revision.
>>
>>I know that at 17, when I first read TESS, I would have undoubtedly 
>>preferred the more direct 'first stab' as it is more immediately 
>>understandable. As I had no knowledge of Greek tragedy (a little less 
>>than I have today), the name of Aeschylus did not resonate with me at all 
>>and the sudden introduction of some apparently transcendental authority 
>>figure grated on me as I sought to make sense of the ending of the book. 
>>I remember feeling irritated that the author seemed to be intentionally 
>>preventing my 'enjoyment' of the tragedy by demanding that I work harder 
>>at discovering what this narrator/authorial comment might mean.
>>
>>However unwelcome this may have been, is this in fact its purpose? 
>>W.P.Trent calls TESS a 'novel with a purpose'; if this is so, is the 
>>'purpose' satirical? If it is, the second version may better achieve that 
>>for a wider audience: the re-naming of 'Time, the Archsatirist' as 'the 
>>President of the Immortals', with that authorial metalinguistic and 
>>cultural aside, has a sharper ironic edge to it; the shift from 'joke' to 
>>'sport' points to Tess as the target of a blood-sport, although 'sport' 
>>reatins the idea of amusement conveyed by 'joke'.
>>
>>To me, the puzzling concept of 'the President of the Immortals' rather 
>>than the direct reference to 'Time' is one that demands more thought 
>>from  the reader. Is it maybe slightly less 'heavy-handed', as some have 
>>criticised, by being more cryptic? Does it connect better with the novel 
>>as a whole? I thought it 'stuck out' as having a different tone to the 
>>rest of the book when i read it in my teens, and still feel it wakes the 
>>reader up from the 'tragedy' of the story to consider what forces were 
>>bearing down on Tess and how she comported herself:
>>
>>"Satire is what happens when there isn't any decent family or society 
>>available for the main character to reconcile himself to, or when the 
>>desires he has aren't worth desiring, or when the actions he takes aren't 
>>worth taking.  Satire is the literature that describes what our world is 
>>like when we try to reintegrate ourselves with it and can't, when all 
>>anyone can find are unintegrated fragmented pieces of a world."
>>
>>Edward B. Germain, the copyright date is 1975 if not specified; the 
>>source is <http://www.pafaculty.net/joyce>http://www.pafaculty.net/joyce .
>>
>>'Aeschylus sees mankind, meeting disaster grandly, forever undefeated. 
>>"Take heart. Suffering, when it climbs highest, lasts but a little time" 
>>-- that line from a lost play gives in brief his spirit as it gives the 
>>spirit of his time.'
>>from The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton
>>
>>best wishes
>>
>>Carolyn McGrath
>>__________________________________
>>
>>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
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>>
>>
>
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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  