A Laodicean

Fascinating and well structured, enjoyable reading too. Packed with expertly crafted characters.
The new heir to Stancy Castle, Paula Power (such a name resonates as a present day character, but we are in fact set deep in Victorian England, approximately 1881), find herself caught between two lovers, and being a Laodicean, her prevaricating sets up all sorts of problems.
Notably, her two suitors are a bit dim, one an architect who happens to be passing at the same time as Paula has redevelopment plans for the castle, and the other a listless sort of military officer (De Stancy) who is from the ancient family whose castle is now in her hands, a result of his father's bankruptcy.
There is one vile character, a colonial criminal whose show more devilish scheming creates so much of the second guessing and chaotic action for both suitors and heiress.
Much of the action is Wessex based still, but Paula's wild pursuit of her architect also takes her to Western Europe.
Hardy introduces the telegraph into the story; his characters are fully used to reliable train services both locally and abroad. Is Hardy the first writer to describe the hum of a telegraph wire in the breeze (1881) on Page 20?
Hardy, one of the best! show less

HIGHLY disappointed that Hardy didn’t give that trifling, troublesome, self-satisified little girl what she had coming. The ending rather spoiled what was otherwise a great novel. The only other complaint is how long and tedious and repetitive were the scenes of De Stancy’s inability to take “No” for an answer. Come to think of it, none of the principle players were altogether likeable: Paula was a coquette, De Stancy a boor, and Somerset clingy and needy. I suppose it was only Hardy’s writing that saved the thing. This is the first time I can remember any scene in Hardy’s novels taking place outside of England. I wonder if there are any other such scenes in his works?

Edit: Well, on a second reading, some four years later, I show more find myself having much more sympathy for Paula, bullied and bothered as she was by the various men who pursued her. I wonder if there were enough changes in the Wessex edition by Hardy from the original serialized version to change my opinion. I still couldn't enjoy the continental scenes at all; they've nothing at all to do with what Hardy is best at. This must be my least favorite of Hardy's novels, but even so it's enjoyable merely by being Hardy's writing. show less

I suspect that few of us in modern times, unless we are Bible scholars, will know the origin or the meaning of the title of this book. It refers to a passage from Revelation which is quoted by the pastor of the church that the heroine attends. Paula Power is the daughter of a railroad baron. Mr. Power was a Baptist and he had a church built in the countryside near Stancy Castle which he had recently purchased. Prior to the beginning of the book Mr. Power had died leaving Paula, his sole heir, a very wealthy young lady. George Somerset is a young architect who is travelling the country sketching old buildings prior to starting his actual work as an architect. He sees people gathering in the church and finds out that a baptism is to take show more place. It is Paula who is to be baptized but at the brink of the pool she refuses. This is what leads the pastor to quote the passage from Revelation. This passage is from a letter written to the church at Laodicea:
I know thy works, that thou are neither hot nor cold: I would thy wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

Thus are two of the principal characters introduced to the reader. George is immediately smitten by Paula and he resolves to try to get to know her. He goes to the castle and asks to be allowed to view it. It is rather good fortune for him that Paula is looking for an architect to try to rebuild Stancy castle. At the same time another young man, Mr. Dare, asks for permission to photograph the castle. Dare manages to get taken on as Somerset's assistant to help with drawings and measurements. His motive for wanting to be involved only becomes clear later when a new army unit comes to town. By this time Dare has been dismissed by Somerset and he is helping the rival architect try to win the contract to rebuild the castle. One of the officers in the new unit is Captain de Stancy, son of the noble family that used to own Stancy Castle. It is this officer that Dare is interested in because he is Captain de Stancy's illegitimate son. Dare thinks that if de Stancy tries he can win Paula away from Somerset, take his rightful place in the family castle and have access to Paula's fortune. Since Dare is perpetually broke and has no desire to actually work this would put him on easy street.

Hardy classed this book as one of his 'Novels of Ingenuity' or 'Experiments'. The Hand of Ethelberta and Desperate Remedies, which I read as a library book, are also 'Novels of Ingenuity'. Ten years passed between Desperate Remedies and A Laodicean and I can see that Hardy progressed as a writer in that time. His characters are better developed and the plotting is tighter. Since Hardy actually wrote this book by dictating it to his wife while quite ill it is a testament to his craft that he was able to carry it off.

I didn't really like Paula. I think the pastor was right by saying she was neither hot nor cold. Her friend, Charlotte de Stancy, who was also in love with Somerset seemed to feel the appropriate emotions but Paula was always stopping Somerset from making love to her.

However, there's lots of interesting plots and details in this book and I found I raced through the last 100 pages as I had to know how it turned out. show less

A Laodicean is a bit of a departure for Hardy, in that he deals with a contemporary time period, rather than a previous, although the subject matter remains true to one of his themes, that of people attempting to shrug off the yoke of religious and social convention. In fact, the entire tone of the novel is set in the title, as someone who is indifferent to these very subjects.

For its time it was a bit of a radical novel, putting forward concepts that contractual marriage was unnecessary and even outdated, and that organized Christianity had out-lived its relevance in society.

One has to wonder if, in fact, Hardy was a mysogynist, because certainly he doesn't cast women in a particularly good light, portraying them as flighty, show more inconstant and coy. Perhaps, though, this was a nature cultivated by middle to upper class society and considered the norm. Difficult to say from this historical vantage.

Still, very much a novel worth exploring. show less

Although I had read this before, it was one of the Hardy novels that I hadn’t remembered which is nice – as it is rather like coming to it for the first time. Hardy was an architect before he was a novelist and again in this novel we have a young architect who appears to resemble the young Hardy.
The sun blazed down and down, till it was within half-an-hour of its setting; but the sketcher still lingered at his occupation of measuring and copying the chevroned doorway--a bold and quaint example of a transitional style of architecture, which formed the tower entrance to an English village church. The graveyard being quite open on its western side, the tweed-clad figure of the young draughtsman, and the tall mass of antique masonry show more which rose above him to a battlemented parapet, were fired to a great brightness by the solar rays, that crossed the neighbouring mead like a warp of gold threads, in whose mazes groups of equally lustrous gnats danced and wailed incessantly.
One of the things I so love about Hardy is what is often called his pastoral scenes, and as this is not in any way a pastoral novel, I did miss that a bit. A Laodicean is rather an unusual Hardy novel, in some ways it doesn’t feel quite like I expect a Hardy novel to feel, although I did enjoy it very much. There is something rather reminiscent of Francis Brett Young in A Laodicean. When I have read Brett Young novels, I have often fallen into describing them as being a little Hardyesque. There were moments in this novel that put me rather in mind of Francis Brett Young’s ‘White Ladies’. One recurring theme in many Hardy novels of course is the demise of traditional ways of life juxtaposed with the new world that was emerging at that time. A Laodicean is very much about that new world, there is no nostalgia for the old.
The Laodicean (someone whose beliefs are “lukewarm”) of the title is Paula Power (even the character’s name to me has a more modern sound to it) who longs to be a part of the modern world. Her father made his fortune as a railway contractor, and bought the ancient castle De Stancy, that Paula is passionately determined to restore. Paula has the telegraph connected to the castle – and uses it all the time in the course of the story.
George Somerset is a young architect – who is invited to compete for the chance of the commission to restore the castle, falls in love with Paula. George represents the new nobility of “talent and enterprise.” However the brother of Paula’s great friend Charlotte De Stancy – of the ancient aristocratic family that once owned the castle – returns, and aided by his villainous illegitimate son, sets out to win Paula for himself, by any means. Paula likes the idea of being a De Stancy, but is drawn to George from the start. As so often with Hardy heroines, Paula keeps her options open in matters of the heart, although in every other way knows her own mind completely and is a strong modern woman. The various machinations of De Stancy and his son allow this fast paced novel to become quite a page turner – and for me it was a quicker read than I might have expected.
In a novel which sees the frequent use of telegraphing and photography and where characters journey back and forth to the continent with the ease that characters in other novels journey to Casterbridge, the feel is altogether different. Paula is seen through the eyes of others far more than she is observed by the reader, and so she is seen at something of a distance.
This could never be my favourite Thomas Hardy novel, but it is interesting for its differences and really very readable. Hardy was obviously interested in the new technologies that were all around him, I can imagine him meeting someone who had a telegraph in their home – and finding out all about it, how it worked, maybe having a go at sending a message – boys and their toys! Maybe things don’t change that much after all. show less

I love the odd books that LIbriVox turns up. I really enjoy this reader and have been seeking out his books that are mostly English Victorians. This was an unknown to me Thomas Hardy, not typical of what I usually think of as Hardy but quote enjoyable. Mainly a love story with devious characters and side plots and deceptions and a rather totally unexepected ending.

I love Thomas Hardy. His writing is magnificent but this book was not up to par. He seemed too caught up in describing the pastoral scenery in this work.