A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)

A story about the perils of love and the social norms of the Victorian Era. I started out hating Elfride and ended up sympathizing with her. I kept hoping she would end up with Knight and that the both of them would proverbially stick the knife in Stephen's heart. It was so sad how things actually turned out. I ended up hating Stephen. ( )

This novel was first published in 1873. It is the 10th Hardy novel I have read and though it does not rank with Hardy's best works (Tess,Tthe Mayor of Casterbrdge, and Far From the Madding Crowd) i found it held my attention well, and there were dramatic events. It is a story of a beautiful but simple girl (Elfride) who falls in love too easily. and the trouble this causes. One of her lovers, Stephen Smith, is a quite admirable charavcter, I thought, but the second, Henry Knight, was an insufferable prig. I did not find the ending very satisfactory. but if you want to know how it comes out you will have to read it. ( )

Well, now we're getting into the Thomas Hardy that is known from his more famous novels like Tess of the D'Ubervilles. In this novel, first published in 1873, Elfride Swancourt, daughter of a clergyman, is wooed by a series of men. The title refers to Elfride's eyes described by Hardy on the first page:
One point in her, however, you did notice: that was her eyes. In them was seen a sublimation of all of her; it was not necessary to look further: there she lived.
These eyes were blue; blue as autumn distance--blue as the blue we see between the retreating mouldings of hills and woody slopes on a sunny September morning. A misty and shady blue, that had no beginning or surface, and was looked into rather than at.

Elfride's first suitor was a local boy and the action between them occurs before the opening of the book. Elfride seems hardly to have noticed him but when he died soon after his grieving mother claimed he died of a broken heart.

Her second suitor was Stephen Smith, an apprentice architect (as was Hardy) who is sent to study the tower of the church of which Mr. Swancourt is minister. Mr. Swancourt is quite taken by this young man and invites him to come back for his summer holidays. Stephen is already smitten with Elfride and so he agrees to do so. But although Stephen is now a professional he comes from humble beginnings. In fact his father is master mason on the estate next to the village where the Swancourts live. When he tells Mr. Swancourt this his suit for Elfride's hand is rejected because he comes from a lower class. Elfride and Stephen decide to be secretly married but, although they go away to London to do so, Elfride pulls out and they immediately return to her home. Stephen decides to go away to India to make his fortune so that he can be worthy of Elfride.

In his absence his mentor, Harry Knight, sees Elfride and discovers that his cousin is her stepmother. He then goes to spend some vacation time with the family and falls in love with Elfride. Elfride forgets her promise to Stephen and is smitten with Knight. Knight thinks that Elfride has never been loved by anyone and that is her prime attraction for him. By bits and pieces he learns some of her previous history including her attempted elopement but he never learns that his acolyte, Stephen, was her previous lover. He rejects Elfride and leaves England for the continent.

When Stephen and Knight meet after their respective returns to England they each realize they still love her and want to try to marry her. Unfortunately, Elfride has recently died and they have both lost her.

I didn't much like Elfride whom Hardy portrays as a weak-willed and vain female. And Knight is not sympathetic either since he dominates Elfride and expects her to be unkissed and unwooed. Stephen, on the other hand, is quite sympathetic. Nothing he did caused the rift between him and Elfride. He refrained from telling Knight about their promise to each other when he could easily have done so. He was even nice to his parents. I guess it's not surprising that Hardy would paint Stephen thusly. Others have said that Stephen is an autobiographical figure so it figures that Hardy would treat him kindly.

As always in Hardy's novels, the descriptions of the countryside are vivid. The sea plays a big part in the story and I fancied as I read this book I could hear waves crashing on the shore. The setting for this novel is a little outside of the usual realm of his books since it is on the Atlantic Ocean side of the south-west of England. Usually his books are set in the area he calls Wessex along the English Channel. So that setting really conveys the out of the way world that Elfride inhabits and to some extent explains her naivete.

I'm really enjoying reading Hardy's books in the order they were written and seeing his evolvement as a writer. ( )

hardy's softest and best portrayal of human nature and the relationship between man and woman. ( )

Kindle

Melodramatic and gripping, but we're also now coming into Hardy's full powers - characters' lives are constrained by the boundaries and flaws of their personalities; Fate deals some heavy blows, and the Pathetic Fallacy (landscape and particularly weather echoing characters' emotions and experiences) for which Hardy is famous comes into play.

As Elfride falls in love with two very different men, and tries to manage her emotional life, we have more rounded characters, and the chorus of locals is more well integrated into the plot and throws light and shade onto it rather than being inserted and being a bit irritating. Some hilarious and nail-biting moments as well as some extremely charming ones. I very much enjoyed reading this - I think for the first time.

Reading it on the Kindle was a bit annoying, in that it's part of a collection, so I didn't know how far through the book I was: apparently, this matters to me! ( )