The Well-Beloved

This is one of Thomas Hardy's 'romances and fantasies'. Like Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, the novel explores the destructiveness of men's idealisation of women. The difference in this novel is that the lives of the women - the 'well-beloveds' - do not end in tragedy. They shrug, get on with their lives, and it is the male central character who becomes increasingly desperate - and rather ridiculous - as the novel progresses.

Jocelyn Pierston is a successful, respected sculptor (although it is perhaps a weakness of the novel that Hardy never shows Pierston at work, nor does he really show the reader what it's like to view the world from the perspective of a visual artist), born on the isle of Portland where some of the people still follow ancient pagan rituals and where there are only a handful of surnames, because of the extent of intermarriage.

The story concerns Pierston's doomed quest for the ideal woman, which involves him courting women from three generations of the same family. Clearly the 'perfect woman' does not exist. He loses interest when each 'well-beloved' fails to live up to his expectations and consequently is unable to commit himself to any one woman. Pierston ought to be an irritating, even infuriating, character; that he isn't is largely because of Hardy's skill as a storyteller. Although not a tragedy, it is a moving story, and whilst not up there with Hardy's greatest novels, it is well worth a read. [December 2007]

3904. The Well-Beloved A Sketch of Temperament, by Thomas Hardy (read 27 June 2004) I have read with much appreciation all the best-known novels of Hardy, but Harold Bloom in his Western Canon includes this work too, and since I had not read it I decided to do so. It is the last of Hardy's novels to be published (in 1897). It tells a light story of Jocelyn Pierston, from the Isle of Portland (a peninsula on the south coast of England), at ages 20, 40, and 60. It is funnier than Hardy's usual work, And really quite good and worth reading. ( )

one of my favourite Hardy's