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A Pair of Blue Eyes
'Elfride Swancourt was a girl whose emotions lay very near the surface.'Elfride is the daughter of the Rector of Endelstow, a remote sea-swept parish in Cornwall based on St Juliot, where Hardy began the book during the first days of his courtship of his first wife Emma. Blue-eyed and high-spirited, Elfride has little experience of the world beyond, and becomes entangled with two the boyish architect, Stephen Smith, and the older literary man, Henry Knight. The former friends become rivals, and Elfride faces an agonizing choice.Written at a crucial time in Hardy's life, A Pair of Blue Eyes expresses more directly than any of his novels the events and social forces that made him the writer he was. Elfride's dilemma mirrors the difficult decision Hardy himself had to make with this to pursue the profession of architecture, where he was established, or literature, where he had yet to make his name?ABOUT THE For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
429 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1873
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About the author
Thomas Hardy
2,314 books6,774 followersThomas Hardy, OM, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.
The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists, Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger of Victorian prose.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists, Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger of Victorian prose.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 678 reviews
November 5, 2019
"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."
This is my third Thomas Hardy novel, and I’ve now learned not to expect a joyful, sentimental sort of story from him. Melancholic and brutally honest – yes, that is more Hardy’s line of writing. I admire his keen insight regarding the social barriers surrounding both women and class. His perceptivity into the hearts of women is certainly worthy of esteem. I don’t typically quote from the bible or walk around with numerous biblical sayings floating around in my head, but I couldn’t help but think that Hardy would find 1 Corinthians 13 rather absurd. "… Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs…" Rather, love is challenging, judgmental and jealous. It is not tolerant - it demands perfection!
Hardy’s protagonist, Elfride Swancourt, might seem like a silly girl on the surface, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. Motherless and raised by her father, the vicar of Endelstow, Elfride is not the worldliest of women. Her social opportunities are naturally lacking, and her father is, let’s face it, a bit of a hypocrite and a blockhead! The plot revolves around Elfride and two men, a love triangle of sorts. Not the irritating sort of triangle, but one that gives the reader much food for thought. Stephen Smith is an up and coming architect, raised by parents from a lower social class than that of the Swancourts. Elfride doesn’t mind, but of course good ole’ papa does. The bankrupt vicar has more ambitious plans for his beautiful daughter. Henry Knight, mentor to Stephen Smith, is a more educated, cultured sort of fellow. Maybe he isn’t quite good enough for dear old dad either?! But Elfride falls for him hard and fast. Torn between the two men, Elfride develops in her own, subtle way. I ended up finding her to be an interesting heroine, flaws and all.
"Elfride’s capacity for being wounded was only surpassed by her capacity for healing, which rightly or wrongly is by some considered an index of transientness of feeling in general."
Victorian pressures and social norms would not have suited me at all (who would they suit?!). Elfride struggles against them constantly. The expectations that are placed on Elfride are stifling, and she may not always make the ‘right’ choices. I wanted to place all blame on the men in this novel, simply because they were ‘Victorian’ men; but that would be unjust. Through Hardy’s crystalline lens, I was able to see both Stephen and Henry as clearly as Elfride. No one has the advantage in love, regardless of rank, class or sex. It’s a sticky mess!
If you enjoy classics, then I can easily recommend this one. Hardy’s writing is lovely and engaging, not too dense. His observations are intelligent and relatable despite the distance of time. There’s even a breathtaking, perilous scene that left me super tense! And the ending was, well, quite perfect.
"If I really seem vain, it is that I am only vain in my ways—not in my heart. The worst women are those vain in their hearts, and not in their ways."
This is my third Thomas Hardy novel, and I’ve now learned not to expect a joyful, sentimental sort of story from him. Melancholic and brutally honest – yes, that is more Hardy’s line of writing. I admire his keen insight regarding the social barriers surrounding both women and class. His perceptivity into the hearts of women is certainly worthy of esteem. I don’t typically quote from the bible or walk around with numerous biblical sayings floating around in my head, but I couldn’t help but think that Hardy would find 1 Corinthians 13 rather absurd. "… Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs…" Rather, love is challenging, judgmental and jealous. It is not tolerant - it demands perfection!
Hardy’s protagonist, Elfride Swancourt, might seem like a silly girl on the surface, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. Motherless and raised by her father, the vicar of Endelstow, Elfride is not the worldliest of women. Her social opportunities are naturally lacking, and her father is, let’s face it, a bit of a hypocrite and a blockhead! The plot revolves around Elfride and two men, a love triangle of sorts. Not the irritating sort of triangle, but one that gives the reader much food for thought. Stephen Smith is an up and coming architect, raised by parents from a lower social class than that of the Swancourts. Elfride doesn’t mind, but of course good ole’ papa does. The bankrupt vicar has more ambitious plans for his beautiful daughter. Henry Knight, mentor to Stephen Smith, is a more educated, cultured sort of fellow. Maybe he isn’t quite good enough for dear old dad either?! But Elfride falls for him hard and fast. Torn between the two men, Elfride develops in her own, subtle way. I ended up finding her to be an interesting heroine, flaws and all.
"Elfride’s capacity for being wounded was only surpassed by her capacity for healing, which rightly or wrongly is by some considered an index of transientness of feeling in general."
Victorian pressures and social norms would not have suited me at all (who would they suit?!). Elfride struggles against them constantly. The expectations that are placed on Elfride are stifling, and she may not always make the ‘right’ choices. I wanted to place all blame on the men in this novel, simply because they were ‘Victorian’ men; but that would be unjust. Through Hardy’s crystalline lens, I was able to see both Stephen and Henry as clearly as Elfride. No one has the advantage in love, regardless of rank, class or sex. It’s a sticky mess!
If you enjoy classics, then I can easily recommend this one. Hardy’s writing is lovely and engaging, not too dense. His observations are intelligent and relatable despite the distance of time. There’s even a breathtaking, perilous scene that left me super tense! And the ending was, well, quite perfect.
"If I really seem vain, it is that I am only vain in my ways—not in my heart. The worst women are those vain in their hearts, and not in their ways."
September 26, 2023
My goodness, Mr Hardy. Although this might not be my favourite, you never disappoint. In fact, you delight and confound me.
I know you write through the lens of the Victorian era with all its repressed sexuality and social norms, but oh boy, your descriptions of the young female characters, in this case Elfride, as mere shadows of their intelligent male counterparts might come across as somewhat condescending in our times.
I was intrigued by the numerous passages devoted to Elfride arguing with her first love that his love and praise for his mentor from London was a cruel and irksome barrier against her affections. We would call this intense male bond a ‘bromance’, but I accept I needed to stop reading your text through a 21st Century lens.
In ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’ you give me not only the unfortunate misunderstandings and coincidences that plague your protagonists but also the enchanting and sometimes eerie English landscapes.
I know you write through the lens of the Victorian era with all its repressed sexuality and social norms, but oh boy, your descriptions of the young female characters, in this case Elfride, as mere shadows of their intelligent male counterparts might come across as somewhat condescending in our times.
I was intrigued by the numerous passages devoted to Elfride arguing with her first love that his love and praise for his mentor from London was a cruel and irksome barrier against her affections. We would call this intense male bond a ‘bromance’, but I accept I needed to stop reading your text through a 21st Century lens.
In ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’ you give me not only the unfortunate misunderstandings and coincidences that plague your protagonists but also the enchanting and sometimes eerie English landscapes.
September 11, 2020
I have no idea why I enjoy Thomas Hardy's novels so much. Normally I loathe romances, especially F/M romances, tragic or not.
However, there is something about Mr. Hardy's writing that reels me in every time. His writing style is clear and precise. The images his words evoke are vivid. He knows his characters and makes them real to his readers.
Elfride, the heroine of A Pair of Blue Eyes, is a young woman who is reaching for more than her quiet life in the country with her father allows. She's not the most likable character, but one cannot help but feel sorry for her.
Her heart is torn between two men and though the writing and her speech is overly sentimental and dramatic, it works because it's Thomas Hardy. It's mostly obvious where the story is headed and yet I had to keep turning the pages.
Speaking of turning the pages..... the term cliffhanger most likely originated with this novel. What an exciting scene it was, when Henry Knight was barely hanging on, desperately awaiting rescue, the churning sea 650 feet below!
Hardy is not everyone's cup of tea, but if you're a fan, you don't want to miss this one.
However, there is something about Mr. Hardy's writing that reels me in every time. His writing style is clear and precise. The images his words evoke are vivid. He knows his characters and makes them real to his readers.
Elfride, the heroine of A Pair of Blue Eyes, is a young woman who is reaching for more than her quiet life in the country with her father allows. She's not the most likable character, but one cannot help but feel sorry for her.
Her heart is torn between two men and though the writing and her speech is overly sentimental and dramatic, it works because it's Thomas Hardy. It's mostly obvious where the story is headed and yet I had to keep turning the pages.
Speaking of turning the pages..... the term cliffhanger most likely originated with this novel. What an exciting scene it was, when Henry Knight was barely hanging on, desperately awaiting rescue, the churning sea 650 feet below!
Hardy is not everyone's cup of tea, but if you're a fan, you don't want to miss this one.
June 20, 2022
“Men may love strongest for a while, but women love longest.”
This is the story of Elfride Swancourt, our blue-eyed heroine.
Elfride is torn between two lovers, the young, kind-hearted, socially inferior Stephen Smith, an architect; and much older and scrupulous Londoner, Henry Knight, a literary man and Stephen’s mentor. She also has to satisfy the expectations of her father, the Rector of Endelstow.
A Pair of Blue Eyes is a moving and poignant story about love, social conventions, limitations women faced in the 19th century, honor, sacrifice and loss.
Thomas Hardy sure knew how to portray women, their sentiments and state of mind. He was a true feminist who knew how to break hearts and sadden souls with his exceptional words.
This is the story of Elfride Swancourt, our blue-eyed heroine.
Elfride is torn between two lovers, the young, kind-hearted, socially inferior Stephen Smith, an architect; and much older and scrupulous Londoner, Henry Knight, a literary man and Stephen’s mentor. She also has to satisfy the expectations of her father, the Rector of Endelstow.
A Pair of Blue Eyes is a moving and poignant story about love, social conventions, limitations women faced in the 19th century, honor, sacrifice and loss.
Thomas Hardy sure knew how to portray women, their sentiments and state of mind. He was a true feminist who knew how to break hearts and sadden souls with his exceptional words.
December 25, 2019
Hardy's third published novel, A pair of blue eyes has often overshadowed by the popularity of its successor, far from the adding crowd. Yet it remains notable, not merely for showing the full emergence of those ironies of known work but also for its autobiographical qualities.
September 5, 2021
My question as I started reading my latest Hardy was not whether things would end badly - but how? And once again, Hardy had me enthralled. He portrays the inequities between men and women so sharply! Elfride is a frustrating character - strong willed and impulsive until she falls deeply in love and becomes docile and simpering. Yet, her mistreatment makes her a sympathetic character. In another time, perhaps she could have just thrown off her romantic entanglements and lived a life fully on her own terms. But that wouldn't be a Hardy novel!
June 26, 2019
What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
Elfride Swancourt is a vicar’s daughter, unschooled in the world, who falls in love with two men. Her first is a young impressionable boy himself and her second a more worldly, but dare I say no more emotionally developed, man of letters. At a number of junctions in the novel, Elfride might save herself a bad experience by being honest, but she elects to withhold the truth, for easily understandable reasons, and it is her undoing. Like Tess, she is doomed to heartbreak by the unreasonable expectations of men and the societal pressures put upon women.
Hardy never fails to surprise me with his understanding of the female characters he paints. They are full-bodied and thoughtful, and they breathe life. His men are so often cruel in exacting standards that a saint would be hard to live up to and that beg for the rules to be bent, if not broken.
Never were conditions more favourable for developing a girl’s first passing fancy for a handsome boyish face--a fancy rooted in inexperience and nourished by seclusion--into a wild unreflecting passion fervid enough for anything. All the elements of such a development were there, the chief one being hopelessness--a necessary ingredient always to perfect the mixture of feelings united under the name of loving to distraction.
I found here the same elements that have always made me such a avid fan of Thomas Hardy. There is such a feeling of doom, of having the cards stacked against happiness, and that tearing desire to whisper to the characters as you go, “don’t do this, listen to your gut, you are about to step off the edge of a cliff.”
Speaking of cliffs, this story has the distinction of being the source of the term, “cliffhanger”. When first produced in its serial form, it ended on a scene in which a major character is literally hanging from the side of a cliff by fingernails, and readers had to wait for the next installment to discover the fate ahead.
A lovely read for any fan of Thomas Hardy, which can rank alongside many of his other works for both plot, interesting characters and style. It seems to be less known, but I have no idea why, since it delivered for me on all levels.
Elfride Swancourt is a vicar’s daughter, unschooled in the world, who falls in love with two men. Her first is a young impressionable boy himself and her second a more worldly, but dare I say no more emotionally developed, man of letters. At a number of junctions in the novel, Elfride might save herself a bad experience by being honest, but she elects to withhold the truth, for easily understandable reasons, and it is her undoing. Like Tess, she is doomed to heartbreak by the unreasonable expectations of men and the societal pressures put upon women.
Hardy never fails to surprise me with his understanding of the female characters he paints. They are full-bodied and thoughtful, and they breathe life. His men are so often cruel in exacting standards that a saint would be hard to live up to and that beg for the rules to be bent, if not broken.
Never were conditions more favourable for developing a girl’s first passing fancy for a handsome boyish face--a fancy rooted in inexperience and nourished by seclusion--into a wild unreflecting passion fervid enough for anything. All the elements of such a development were there, the chief one being hopelessness--a necessary ingredient always to perfect the mixture of feelings united under the name of loving to distraction.
I found here the same elements that have always made me such a avid fan of Thomas Hardy. There is such a feeling of doom, of having the cards stacked against happiness, and that tearing desire to whisper to the characters as you go, “don’t do this, listen to your gut, you are about to step off the edge of a cliff.”
Speaking of cliffs, this story has the distinction of being the source of the term, “cliffhanger”. When first produced in its serial form, it ended on a scene in which a major character is literally hanging from the side of a cliff by fingernails, and readers had to wait for the next installment to discover the fate ahead.
A lovely read for any fan of Thomas Hardy, which can rank alongside many of his other works for both plot, interesting characters and style. It seems to be less known, but I have no idea why, since it delivered for me on all levels.
August 23, 2024
I absolutely adore and devoured this gothic book, a new favourite!
July 10, 2024
This was a fast read, and I very much enjoyed it! If you are already a Hardy fan, I heartily recommend reading A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873); if you aren't, this just might make you one. A Pair of Blues Eyes was the third novel published by Hardy, and the first published under his own name. In his later years, Hardy created three categories in which he placed all of his fiction. The largest category, "Novels of Character and Environment," includes the well known core of his oeuvre also known as the Wessex Novels; this novel falls in Hardy's second category, the novels of "Romance and Fantasies; with the third category, "Novels of Ingenuity," containing just three relatively minor works.
A Pair of Blue Eyes is set in Hardy's fictional 'Wessex' of southwestern England; and, in fact, this novel is largely played out in 'Lower' and 'Off Wessex,' in reality that part of England referred to as Cornwall with its rural countryside and majestic sea-cliffs. As is typical of Hardy's prose, the novel does a wonderful job of connecting the reader with the characters and the character's place in the natural environment. Every time I read a Hardy novel, or short story, I have this over-whelming feel that I am experiencing the sights, sounds, smells and emotions of the characters that he is writing about. The reader can't help but fall in love with his pastoral scenes; feeling the breezes at it ruffles the leaves on the trees, and watching the hay-grasses waving back and forth in the fields and meadows. Hardy involves his reader, time and again, in the simple things like watching the sun set in all of its orange, red, and purple glory, or the glimmer of the stars and planets as they brighten in the darkening night sky. I think it is this deep connection with environment and the passage of time that seems to make the human elements and aspects of Hardy's stories resonate even more strongly with me.
Through Hardy's fiction, I find another example of my own understanding that the individual human experience and existence is nothing more than a infinitesimally tiny blip when compared to the history and time-line of the Cosmos; but that it also makes my understanding of those brief experiences we have with one another, and the emotions that we feel, so much more important and interesting.
In A Pair of Blue Eyes, Hardy addresses the well-trod literary ground associated with class-consciousness and its effects on courtship and Love. The novel's primary protagonist, Elfride Swancourt, the beautiful daughter of the local parson, struggles with becoming a woman and experiencing romantic feelings for the first time when she meets the young architect, Stephen Smith, upon his visit to 'Endelstowe' to begin restoring the old parish church. It is generally considered that much of the courtship between Stephen Smith and Elfride Swancourt is based upon Hardy's own courtship of Miss Emma Gifford, whom he later married in 1874. Like his character, Stephen Smith, Hardy was also trained as an architect, and undertook a trip to Cornwall to help restore the parish church of St. Juliot in Cornwall.
In the spirit of full-disclosure, I am inserting a 'Mild Spoiler Alert' here. If you are one who wants no hint of plot direction or details, I suggest that you scroll past the next paragraph and two block-quote sections.
Suffice it to say that the novel is not just a simple little tale of young blossoming love set in the quiet bucolic countryside. There is plenty of drama, passion, and intrigue involving various characters of all class levels of English life in the mid-Victorian period in Hardy's telling of Elfride's tale. During the initial serialization of the novel, the term "cliff-hanger" was coined, referring to one of the more exciting events that occurs on the precipice of the 'Cliff without a Name.' One of the characters is literally hanging by his fingertips on the edge of the cliff, with the rocks and thundering sea one-hundred feet below him. While the personal terror described by Hardy is palpable, as a geologist myself I just had to marvel as I read the following--
I hope you enjoy A Pair of Blue Eyes as much as I did. As for me; well, I am taking Far From the Madding Crowd off of the shelf now for a re-read over the next few days. It is time to spend some more time with 'Gabriel Oak' and 'Bathsheba Everdene.'
[My review is based upon the Wordsworth Classics softcover edition of A Pair of Blue Eyes, published in 1995, 305 pp.:]
A Pair of Blue Eyes is set in Hardy's fictional 'Wessex' of southwestern England; and, in fact, this novel is largely played out in 'Lower' and 'Off Wessex,' in reality that part of England referred to as Cornwall with its rural countryside and majestic sea-cliffs. As is typical of Hardy's prose, the novel does a wonderful job of connecting the reader with the characters and the character's place in the natural environment. Every time I read a Hardy novel, or short story, I have this over-whelming feel that I am experiencing the sights, sounds, smells and emotions of the characters that he is writing about. The reader can't help but fall in love with his pastoral scenes; feeling the breezes at it ruffles the leaves on the trees, and watching the hay-grasses waving back and forth in the fields and meadows. Hardy involves his reader, time and again, in the simple things like watching the sun set in all of its orange, red, and purple glory, or the glimmer of the stars and planets as they brighten in the darkening night sky. I think it is this deep connection with environment and the passage of time that seems to make the human elements and aspects of Hardy's stories resonate even more strongly with me.
Through Hardy's fiction, I find another example of my own understanding that the individual human experience and existence is nothing more than a infinitesimally tiny blip when compared to the history and time-line of the Cosmos; but that it also makes my understanding of those brief experiences we have with one another, and the emotions that we feel, so much more important and interesting.
In A Pair of Blue Eyes, Hardy addresses the well-trod literary ground associated with class-consciousness and its effects on courtship and Love. The novel's primary protagonist, Elfride Swancourt, the beautiful daughter of the local parson, struggles with becoming a woman and experiencing romantic feelings for the first time when she meets the young architect, Stephen Smith, upon his visit to 'Endelstowe' to begin restoring the old parish church. It is generally considered that much of the courtship between Stephen Smith and Elfride Swancourt is based upon Hardy's own courtship of Miss Emma Gifford, whom he later married in 1874. Like his character, Stephen Smith, Hardy was also trained as an architect, and undertook a trip to Cornwall to help restore the parish church of St. Juliot in Cornwall.
In the spirit of full-disclosure, I am inserting a 'Mild Spoiler Alert' here. If you are one who wants no hint of plot direction or details, I suggest that you scroll past the next paragraph and two block-quote sections.
Suffice it to say that the novel is not just a simple little tale of young blossoming love set in the quiet bucolic countryside. There is plenty of drama, passion, and intrigue involving various characters of all class levels of English life in the mid-Victorian period in Hardy's telling of Elfride's tale. During the initial serialization of the novel, the term "cliff-hanger" was coined, referring to one of the more exciting events that occurs on the precipice of the 'Cliff without a Name.' One of the characters is literally hanging by his fingertips on the edge of the cliff, with the rocks and thundering sea one-hundred feet below him. While the personal terror described by Hardy is palpable, as a geologist myself I just had to marvel as I read the following--
"By one of those familiar conjunctions of things wherewith the inanimate world baits the mind of man when he pauses in moments of suspense, opposite Knight's eyes was an imbedded fossil, standing forth in low relief from the rock. It was a creature with eyes. The eyes, dead and turned to stone, were even now regarding him. It was one of the early crustaceans called Trilobites. Separated by millions of years in their lives, Knight and this underling seemed to have met in their death. It was the single instance within reach of his vision of anything that had ever been alive and had had a body to save, as he himself had now."and
"Knight was a geologist; and such is the supremacy of habit over occasion, as a pioneer of the thoughts of men, that at this dreadful juncture his mind found time to take in, by a momentary sweep, the varied scenes that had had their day between the creature's epoch and his own. There is no place like a cleft landscape for bringing home such imaginings as these."I think that this is an important novel, and it is also one of his works that Hardy was known to be personally quite fond of. Typical of Hardy's fiction, Fate and Chance play a prominent role in this novel too. Also, the character of Elfride Swancourt, as a heroine, is interesting to consider in the evolutionary continuum from 'Fancy Day' (Under the Greenwood Tree), 'Bathsheba Everdene' (Far From the Madding Crowd), 'Eustacia Vye' (The Return of the Native), 'Tess Durbeyfield' (Tess of the d'Urbervilles), and that culminates with 'Sue Bridehead' (Jude the Obscure).
I hope you enjoy A Pair of Blue Eyes as much as I did. As for me; well, I am taking Far From the Madding Crowd off of the shelf now for a re-read over the next few days. It is time to spend some more time with 'Gabriel Oak' and 'Bathsheba Everdene.'
[My review is based upon the Wordsworth Classics softcover edition of A Pair of Blue Eyes, published in 1995, 305 pp.:]
December 1, 2022
Acest remarcabil roman a condus la afirmarea literara a lui Thomas Hardy precedand cartile care i-au adus consacrarea: "Tess of d'Urbervilles", "Jude, nestiutul", "Departe de lumea dezlantuita" sau "Primarul din Casterbridge", "Idila pe un turn"
"Doi ochi albastri" a aparut in 1873 si infatiseaza o poveste de dragoste si totodata o drama situata intr-un cadru pitoresc din Endelstow, Wessex. De asemenea reflecta si iubirea autorului pentru sotia sa, Emma. A fost ecranizata sub forma unui serial TV avandu-l pe Jeremy Irons in rolul lui Henry Knight.
"Povestea a trei inimi omenesti", asa cum spunea autorul despre prezenta carte, o are in prim-plan pe frumoasa si inocenta Elfride Swancourt. Cea mai de pret podoaba a sa sunt cei doi ochi albastri superbi:
"Ochii acestia erau albastri; albastri ca departarile toamnei, albastri ca albastrul ce se intrezareste printre coamele pierdute ale dealurilor si povarnisurilor impadurite intr-o dimineata insorita de septembrie."
Fata locuieste in casa parohiala din Endelstow, ce se afla sub stapanirea lordului Luxellian. Si, ca orice fata frumoasa, are doi pretendenti: Stephen Smith, un tanar baiat blajin, inocent si modest si cel de-al doilea, prietenul lui Stephen, Henry Knight. Acesta este om de litere, avocat, nobil, interesant si foarte masculin. El poate rivaliza cu brio celebrului Mr. Darcy.
Elfride si Stephen se iubesc dar tatal ei se opune casatoriei pentru ca baiatul este de origine modesta si acesta decide astfel sa plece in India pentru a aduna avere. Inainte de plecare o convinge pe Elfride sa fuga la Londra si sa se casatoreasca cu el in taina, insa fata da inapoi in ultimul moment de frica reputatiei.
Dupa plecarea baiatului Elfride publica un roman medieval de dragoste iar Henry Knight ii face o recenzie ironica si taioasa intr-o revista. Fata ii raspunde la ironii si astfel se cunosc. Intre cei doi sar scantei si se indragostesc. Cand Stephen se intoarce din India este deja prea tarziu. Totusi, cand Knight afla despre fuga Elfridei la Londra o paraseste. Cu cine va ramane pana la urma Elfride si ce se va alege de soarta ei trista ramane sa aflati citind romanul.
Cartea este foarte frumoasa iar stilul lui Thomas Hardy te unge pe suflet. Autorul exceleaza in crearea unor portrete, fiecare personaj fiind dezvoltat amanuntit atat la interior cat si la exterior.
Regatul Wessex este minunat descris, ca in fiecare roman al lui Hardy, fiind exact asa cum l-a denumit tot el: "un taram de vis si de taina". Avem foarte multa atentie acordata cladirilor, turnurilor, arhitecturii, detaliilor din domeniul constructiilor, pentru ca, asa cum stim, prima cariera a autorului a fost de arhitect.
In incheiere atasez cateva citate superbe si vrednice de amintit pentru ca este intr-adevar un roman pe care trebuie sa-l cititi odata in viata si care rezista testului timpului ramanand in memoria cititorului:
"Spune-i ca n-am ce sa-i ofer in schimbul comorii lui si ca eu sunt primul care regreta acest lucru. Dar toata dragostea, si toata viata, si toata stradania unui om cinstit iti vor fi inchinate tie."
"Dragostea inseamna credinta, si credinta e ca o floare smulsa din pamant, care traieste si fara radacina."
"... dar de sarutat nu saruti bine deloc. De fapt, prietenul meu Knight mi-a spus o data ca, daca-l intalnesti la o femeie, cusurul asta e ceva minunat."
"Femeia banuitoare si chibzuita, care nu vede decat apucaturi josnice si murdare la semenii sai, e mult prea sireata ca sa se lase amagita de barbati; femeile care cad sunt fiinte increzatoare, de felul Elfridei."
"Ah, Stephen, si cine stie daca n-ai sa ma si uiti! Uitarea, asta a fost, de cand lumea, durerea cea mai mare a asteptarii pentru femeia indragostita."
"Regretul cel din urma e ca regretul moare!"
"Maretia lumii nu se poate ridica decat din nimicnicie, asa ca n-avem de ce regreta ca avem si infirmitati."
"Doi ochi albastri" a aparut in 1873 si infatiseaza o poveste de dragoste si totodata o drama situata intr-un cadru pitoresc din Endelstow, Wessex. De asemenea reflecta si iubirea autorului pentru sotia sa, Emma. A fost ecranizata sub forma unui serial TV avandu-l pe Jeremy Irons in rolul lui Henry Knight.
"Povestea a trei inimi omenesti", asa cum spunea autorul despre prezenta carte, o are in prim-plan pe frumoasa si inocenta Elfride Swancourt. Cea mai de pret podoaba a sa sunt cei doi ochi albastri superbi:
"Ochii acestia erau albastri; albastri ca departarile toamnei, albastri ca albastrul ce se intrezareste printre coamele pierdute ale dealurilor si povarnisurilor impadurite intr-o dimineata insorita de septembrie."
Fata locuieste in casa parohiala din Endelstow, ce se afla sub stapanirea lordului Luxellian. Si, ca orice fata frumoasa, are doi pretendenti: Stephen Smith, un tanar baiat blajin, inocent si modest si cel de-al doilea, prietenul lui Stephen, Henry Knight. Acesta este om de litere, avocat, nobil, interesant si foarte masculin. El poate rivaliza cu brio celebrului Mr. Darcy.
Elfride si Stephen se iubesc dar tatal ei se opune casatoriei pentru ca baiatul este de origine modesta si acesta decide astfel sa plece in India pentru a aduna avere. Inainte de plecare o convinge pe Elfride sa fuga la Londra si sa se casatoreasca cu el in taina, insa fata da inapoi in ultimul moment de frica reputatiei.
Dupa plecarea baiatului Elfride publica un roman medieval de dragoste iar Henry Knight ii face o recenzie ironica si taioasa intr-o revista. Fata ii raspunde la ironii si astfel se cunosc. Intre cei doi sar scantei si se indragostesc. Cand Stephen se intoarce din India este deja prea tarziu. Totusi, cand Knight afla despre fuga Elfridei la Londra o paraseste. Cu cine va ramane pana la urma Elfride si ce se va alege de soarta ei trista ramane sa aflati citind romanul.
Cartea este foarte frumoasa iar stilul lui Thomas Hardy te unge pe suflet. Autorul exceleaza in crearea unor portrete, fiecare personaj fiind dezvoltat amanuntit atat la interior cat si la exterior.
Regatul Wessex este minunat descris, ca in fiecare roman al lui Hardy, fiind exact asa cum l-a denumit tot el: "un taram de vis si de taina". Avem foarte multa atentie acordata cladirilor, turnurilor, arhitecturii, detaliilor din domeniul constructiilor, pentru ca, asa cum stim, prima cariera a autorului a fost de arhitect.
In incheiere atasez cateva citate superbe si vrednice de amintit pentru ca este intr-adevar un roman pe care trebuie sa-l cititi odata in viata si care rezista testului timpului ramanand in memoria cititorului:
"Spune-i ca n-am ce sa-i ofer in schimbul comorii lui si ca eu sunt primul care regreta acest lucru. Dar toata dragostea, si toata viata, si toata stradania unui om cinstit iti vor fi inchinate tie."
"Dragostea inseamna credinta, si credinta e ca o floare smulsa din pamant, care traieste si fara radacina."
"... dar de sarutat nu saruti bine deloc. De fapt, prietenul meu Knight mi-a spus o data ca, daca-l intalnesti la o femeie, cusurul asta e ceva minunat."
"Femeia banuitoare si chibzuita, care nu vede decat apucaturi josnice si murdare la semenii sai, e mult prea sireata ca sa se lase amagita de barbati; femeile care cad sunt fiinte increzatoare, de felul Elfridei."
"Ah, Stephen, si cine stie daca n-ai sa ma si uiti! Uitarea, asta a fost, de cand lumea, durerea cea mai mare a asteptarii pentru femeia indragostita."
"Regretul cel din urma e ca regretul moare!"
"Maretia lumii nu se poate ridica decat din nimicnicie, asa ca n-avem de ce regreta ca avem si infirmitati."
September 11, 2017
Yet another story of love and life by Hardy, he advocates for women and understands them in ways i don't know how but he does, and he is a wizard with words and he knows the sunset and the moonlight and everything in between as passionately as humanly possible.
"A lady would have said there was a smell of tobacco in the room, a man that there was not."
"A lady would have said there was a smell of tobacco in the room, a man that there was not."
March 12, 2023
3.5 stars
Elfride Swancourt grew up in a restricted environment with no one to guide her and satisfy her thirst of conversation with someone who understands her. She comes across a boy Stephen Smith, has an infatuation, and mistakes it for love. Her hypocritical dad encourages it till it inconveniences his puritanical customs. She has an independent spirit but is impressionable and naïve. She craves respect and love, without much understanding of both. Stephen is inexperienced, immature, and impressionable as well.
It is certain that the young girl's love for Stephen received a fanning from her father's opposition which made it blaze with a dozen times the intensity it would have exhibited if left alone. Never were conditions more favourable for developing a girl's first passing fancy for a handsome boyish face - a fancy rooted in inexperience and nourished by seclusion - into a wild unreflecting passion fervid enough for anything. All the elements of such a development were there, the chief one being hopelessness - a necessary ingredient always to perfect the mixture of feelings united under the name of loving to distraction.
While Stephen is away, earning to meet her father’s standards, she meets another man, Henry Knight and truly falls in love with him. But he has strong ideals that his partner must live up to, and misguided prejudices and standards to judge people by.
'Am I such a - mere characterless toy - as to have no attraction in me, apart from - freshness? Haven't I brains? You said - I was clever and ingenious in my thoughts, and - isn't that anything? Have I not some beauty? I think I have a little - and I know I have - yes, I do! You have praised my voice, and my manner, and my accomplishments. Yet all these together are so much rubbish because I- accidentally saw a man before you!'
It was quite melodramatic at some points but perhaps I am judging harshly since those times were quite melodramatic!
Every character had their faults. Miscommunication gave momentum to the plot. An honest discussion at any point in the story could have avoided so much misunderstanding.
The writing and characterization were brilliant. I don’t think I could critique it justifiably. The setting and descriptions were so tangible that they transported the reader to the scene.
I was quite confused between 3/3.5/4 stars, I will be honest. But the understanding displayed by Hardy, of how people behave, of their caprices, choices, ideals, and so on, was too fascinating to have missed. But not just that, the story was definitely engaging and did keep my attention.
The overall melancholic nature of the book did exhaust me. Will pick up a mystery next, to change the pace a bit 🤔
Elfride Swancourt grew up in a restricted environment with no one to guide her and satisfy her thirst of conversation with someone who understands her. She comes across a boy Stephen Smith, has an infatuation, and mistakes it for love. Her hypocritical dad encourages it till it inconveniences his puritanical customs. She has an independent spirit but is impressionable and naïve. She craves respect and love, without much understanding of both. Stephen is inexperienced, immature, and impressionable as well.
It is certain that the young girl's love for Stephen received a fanning from her father's opposition which made it blaze with a dozen times the intensity it would have exhibited if left alone. Never were conditions more favourable for developing a girl's first passing fancy for a handsome boyish face - a fancy rooted in inexperience and nourished by seclusion - into a wild unreflecting passion fervid enough for anything. All the elements of such a development were there, the chief one being hopelessness - a necessary ingredient always to perfect the mixture of feelings united under the name of loving to distraction.
While Stephen is away, earning to meet her father’s standards, she meets another man, Henry Knight and truly falls in love with him. But he has strong ideals that his partner must live up to, and misguided prejudices and standards to judge people by.
'Am I such a - mere characterless toy - as to have no attraction in me, apart from - freshness? Haven't I brains? You said - I was clever and ingenious in my thoughts, and - isn't that anything? Have I not some beauty? I think I have a little - and I know I have - yes, I do! You have praised my voice, and my manner, and my accomplishments. Yet all these together are so much rubbish because I- accidentally saw a man before you!'
It was quite melodramatic at some points but perhaps I am judging harshly since those times were quite melodramatic!
Every character had their faults. Miscommunication gave momentum to the plot. An honest discussion at any point in the story could have avoided so much misunderstanding.
The writing and characterization were brilliant. I don’t think I could critique it justifiably. The setting and descriptions were so tangible that they transported the reader to the scene.
I was quite confused between 3/3.5/4 stars, I will be honest. But the understanding displayed by Hardy, of how people behave, of their caprices, choices, ideals, and so on, was too fascinating to have missed. But not just that, the story was definitely engaging and did keep my attention.
The overall melancholic nature of the book did exhaust me. Will pick up a mystery next, to change the pace a bit 🤔
September 2, 2025
Perhaps 3.5. An interesting Hardy read - not my favourite but one that certainly has given me a lot to think about. In general I found the characters engaging and the plotting well done, with some stunning scenes, although the ending was a little disappointing.
March 19, 2013
This is a novel I would highly recommend to everybody, not only to Hardy's fans. The story is so nicely unfolded and detailed that you can almost feel the wind in that spellbinding cliff scene.
This is a simple story, don't expect great literary references or witty remarks. But it is told with so much gentleness and the characters are very well portrayed and developed.
Elfride, though, is not as the other Hardy's heroines, she is young, gullible and has grown up protected by her father. I thought she was too innocent and easily impressed and lacked resolve and character. But what can you expect from a barely 18 year old who hasn't been shown to the world? She is not to blame...
Stephen, I like immensely. He's got but a true heart through all the story, he is consistent in his love and protects Elfride when the time comes even if it breaks his heart.
Mr. Knight. He is a complicated character but I found him fascinating. The initial passages where he meets Elfride are funny and they seem so natural you find yourself falling in love with him too.
You've got the three key pieces for a tearing love triangle, where there's no good or bad characters, just love and the unfairness of life.
Though written well before the famous "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", the story contains many similarities to his best known masterpiece. The moral issues regarding the treatment of women in the late eighteenth century , their unconscious power over men and the struggle to overcome social backgrounds are present in this story.
A piece not to be missed and treated unjustly because it hasn't been noticed as it deserves.
This is a simple story, don't expect great literary references or witty remarks. But it is told with so much gentleness and the characters are very well portrayed and developed.
Elfride, though, is not as the other Hardy's heroines, she is young, gullible and has grown up protected by her father. I thought she was too innocent and easily impressed and lacked resolve and character. But what can you expect from a barely 18 year old who hasn't been shown to the world? She is not to blame...
Stephen, I like immensely. He's got but a true heart through all the story, he is consistent in his love and protects Elfride when the time comes even if it breaks his heart.
Mr. Knight. He is a complicated character but I found him fascinating. The initial passages where he meets Elfride are funny and they seem so natural you find yourself falling in love with him too.
You've got the three key pieces for a tearing love triangle, where there's no good or bad characters, just love and the unfairness of life.
Though written well before the famous "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", the story contains many similarities to his best known masterpiece. The moral issues regarding the treatment of women in the late eighteenth century , their unconscious power over men and the struggle to overcome social backgrounds are present in this story.
A piece not to be missed and treated unjustly because it hasn't been noticed as it deserves.
August 29, 2017
[Spoilers!] Thom’s third novel is a classic Victorian tale of a scatterbrained ingenue who falls for a working class upstart and changes her mind about eloping with him in London while eloping with him in London who then starts seeing the working class upstart’s posher middle-class mentor who over a number of pages learns about her time with the working class upstart (not his name) and the botched elopement and turns against her for social embarrassment and Victorian deportment reasons and who then marries a much richer man who is allowed to have sex with her but who kills her with his penis thanks to a miscarriage and later in the novel the lovers realise the whole stupid thing because names were never used and that ends the thing. A tremendous read.
October 21, 2012
Curse you Thomas Hardy! Curse you for tearing my heart out and making me cry like a dummie over fictional characters. I thought I was so smart and knew what was going to happen and you ripped the rug out from under me. You left me without my happy ending. Curse you! And the saddest thing is that I am no newcomer to Hardy. I've read your work before. As I cracked this one open I thought of my teenage favorite, Return of the Native. I should have thought of Tess! Yeah, you heard me. Poor TEss and Poor Elfride! But at least, even though you are a man, your sympathies do obviously lie with the poor misused females. I can tell you hated that Mr KNight as much as me. You did. Alright, I'm done ranting and raving now. The least you could do is pop up beside me (in your ghostly self as it is now) and hand me a tissue at just the right moment. I had to fumble for one.
May 20, 2021
I really enjoyed this one. The story is fairly simple but I like how it’s constructed and of course it’s beautifully written. Hardy is good at showing all the silly class distinctions even in a time when class mobility is becoming more possible for men like architect Stephen. I knew that Stephen and Elfride were doomed not to be together(it’s Hardy!) but her father has wasted all his first wife’s money, then marries a woman 20yrs older than him for her money and property and that’s perfectly reasonable!, made me laugh anyway. Set in Cornwall, the scenery is used in such a brilliant way (literal cliffhanger!) and the old church tower was always an ominous building. The creepy Mrs Jethway, Stephen’s parents and some of the other side characters are all used to good effect. The ending is perfectly tragic as expected.
December 8, 2019
This is my fourth read from Thomas Hardy and each one I have enjoyed. A Pair of Blue Eyes brings to light many of Hardy’s repeated themes within his novels: human emotions and conflicts, the nature of love and relationships, an examination of social class structure, and picturesque depictions of rural life and Nature.
At the very heart of A Pair of Blue Eyes is a love triangle that involves the three central characters: Elfride Swancourt (I always love Hardy’s character’s name), a blue-eyed, young daughter of a pastor; Stephen Smith, a young architect; and Henry Knight, an older man who is a reviewer and friends with Stephen.
After the initial love and courting between Elfride and Stephen, certain elements come to the surface about Stephen’s social status and standing which creates a bit of a problem and conflict. When a bit later in the narrative Elfride becomes acquainted with a man who reviewed a book she wrote (the aforementioned Henry), suddenly she becomes romantically involved with him. This creates quite the love triangle and quite a bit of tension within the plot. I have to say that I was very interested to see how everything would pan out, so the plot moves rather quickly.
An interesting aspect from A Pair of Blue Eyes is that it not only examines Elfride’s relationship with Stephen and then Henry, but it also examines Stephens’s relationship and friendship with his mentor, Henry. So, in that way, there are many revolving conflicts that must be resolved in some way, and I think this also pushes the flow of the book forward in quick manner.
Additionally, another interesting element and tidbit about this novel is that is supposedly the first novel to coin the term “cliffhanger”, a term that literally and figuratively come into play in the novel. Literally because there is a character whose life is in jeopardy in a scene involving a cliff, but figuratively because Hardy has an amazing knack to leave the reader hanging with suspense at the end of chapters with certain developments with the plot. It really is very Dickensesque.
Moreover, I do believe that Hardy captures certain Shakespearean elements within his plot. Through his characters, he not only examines the frailty of humans and the emotions that they deal with in daily life and society and its structure, but also there is a level of pathos and emotion, both in romance, and in tragedy, that he also brings to the table. We become invested in these characters, and empathize with them and their predicaments.
Of all the elements, I did believe that the ending was just a tad rushed and hastily put together compared to everything else in the plot and how we arrive to certain developments in the conclusion, but other than that, just another enjoyable and engaging book from Hardy.
At the very heart of A Pair of Blue Eyes is a love triangle that involves the three central characters: Elfride Swancourt (I always love Hardy’s character’s name), a blue-eyed, young daughter of a pastor; Stephen Smith, a young architect; and Henry Knight, an older man who is a reviewer and friends with Stephen.
After the initial love and courting between Elfride and Stephen, certain elements come to the surface about Stephen’s social status and standing which creates a bit of a problem and conflict. When a bit later in the narrative Elfride becomes acquainted with a man who reviewed a book she wrote (the aforementioned Henry), suddenly she becomes romantically involved with him. This creates quite the love triangle and quite a bit of tension within the plot. I have to say that I was very interested to see how everything would pan out, so the plot moves rather quickly.
An interesting aspect from A Pair of Blue Eyes is that it not only examines Elfride’s relationship with Stephen and then Henry, but it also examines Stephens’s relationship and friendship with his mentor, Henry. So, in that way, there are many revolving conflicts that must be resolved in some way, and I think this also pushes the flow of the book forward in quick manner.
Additionally, another interesting element and tidbit about this novel is that is supposedly the first novel to coin the term “cliffhanger”, a term that literally and figuratively come into play in the novel. Literally because there is a character whose life is in jeopardy in a scene involving a cliff, but figuratively because Hardy has an amazing knack to leave the reader hanging with suspense at the end of chapters with certain developments with the plot. It really is very Dickensesque.
Moreover, I do believe that Hardy captures certain Shakespearean elements within his plot. Through his characters, he not only examines the frailty of humans and the emotions that they deal with in daily life and society and its structure, but also there is a level of pathos and emotion, both in romance, and in tragedy, that he also brings to the table. We become invested in these characters, and empathize with them and their predicaments.
Of all the elements, I did believe that the ending was just a tad rushed and hastily put together compared to everything else in the plot and how we arrive to certain developments in the conclusion, but other than that, just another enjoyable and engaging book from Hardy.
August 30, 2023
A tragic love triangle story, soaked in Hardy’s lovely, descriptive prose. I loved the writing, the way it was put together, and Hardy’s typical scrutiny of character and society.
A young girl, the one with the blue eyes, becomes an object of obsession for three men. The first one, she just plain doesn’t like. He doesn’t last long. The second she falls for, but finds a little wanting and it turns out he’s in a class too far below her for her snob of a father to approve. The third one, like Goldilocks bowls, is just right!
Of course, being Hardy, it doesn’t go well. There’s lots of wrangling over social status, community involvement, a rescue from certain death, mixed messages, and betrayals. I really liked the last part of the novel where bachelor number two and bachelor number three find each other and compare notes.
Hardy apparently used incidents from his own life, including modeling the young Elfride on his first wife. (Emma Gifford was his first wife, but they were married, mostly unhappily, for almost 40 years.) A case of being too close to the material, I think. I felt he wanted me to sympathize with Elfride, but I just couldn’t. Is it because I saw her through his eyes, and he kept seeing the wife who troubled him?
“When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often than not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.”
I’m still a Hardy newbie; this is my third of his novels. So far, I’ve found they work beautifully when you can sympathize with the tragic hero or heroine. But he draws complicated, flawed people, and just like real people, sometimes they rub us the wrong way. Elfride bugged me. She had some good traits, but she had a desperate need to be thought well of that seemed really childish to me and got on my nerves. That need to always be thought beautiful/smart/faultless caused her to be deceitful, and led to the tragedy of the story.
I suppose I should have forgiven her. She didn’t have a mother or any siblings. Maybe we learn that we aren’t always the best by growing up with siblings, or going to school, or being with other children our age, and Elfride had none of that. And her father was no help--the parish rector who had little visible religious feeling but a huge sense of entitlement.
This is what it’s like after reading a Hardy novel. The character analysis he sets in motion continues on and on …
A young girl, the one with the blue eyes, becomes an object of obsession for three men. The first one, she just plain doesn’t like. He doesn’t last long. The second she falls for, but finds a little wanting and it turns out he’s in a class too far below her for her snob of a father to approve. The third one, like Goldilocks bowls, is just right!
Of course, being Hardy, it doesn’t go well. There’s lots of wrangling over social status, community involvement, a rescue from certain death, mixed messages, and betrayals. I really liked the last part of the novel where bachelor number two and bachelor number three find each other and compare notes.
Hardy apparently used incidents from his own life, including modeling the young Elfride on his first wife. (Emma Gifford was his first wife, but they were married, mostly unhappily, for almost 40 years.) A case of being too close to the material, I think. I felt he wanted me to sympathize with Elfride, but I just couldn’t. Is it because I saw her through his eyes, and he kept seeing the wife who troubled him?
“When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often than not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.”
I’m still a Hardy newbie; this is my third of his novels. So far, I’ve found they work beautifully when you can sympathize with the tragic hero or heroine. But he draws complicated, flawed people, and just like real people, sometimes they rub us the wrong way. Elfride bugged me. She had some good traits, but she had a desperate need to be thought well of that seemed really childish to me and got on my nerves. That need to always be thought beautiful/smart/faultless caused her to be deceitful, and led to the tragedy of the story.
I suppose I should have forgiven her. She didn’t have a mother or any siblings. Maybe we learn that we aren’t always the best by growing up with siblings, or going to school, or being with other children our age, and Elfride had none of that. And her father was no help--the parish rector who had little visible religious feeling but a huge sense of entitlement.
This is what it’s like after reading a Hardy novel. The character analysis he sets in motion continues on and on …
January 7, 2025
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Absolutely incredible! Yet another cheerful Hardy ending.. 🤣🤣
This is now joint first for my favourite Hardy (tied with Madding Crowd) There isn't a single detail about this book that I'm not obsessed with.
I couldn't put it down, I inhaled every word, every sentence, every page.
*Shout out to my beautiful bookish friend Ellie for this recommendation, I hadn't even really heard of this book until I read her incredible praise-filled review 🥰😍
Absolutely exquisite book 🤩✨💫
Absolutely incredible! Yet another cheerful Hardy ending.. 🤣🤣
This is now joint first for my favourite Hardy (tied with Madding Crowd) There isn't a single detail about this book that I'm not obsessed with.
I couldn't put it down, I inhaled every word, every sentence, every page.
*Shout out to my beautiful bookish friend Ellie for this recommendation, I hadn't even really heard of this book until I read her incredible praise-filled review 🥰😍
Absolutely exquisite book 🤩✨💫
August 10, 2023
Uscito dapprima a puntate per una rivista letteraria tra l'autunno del 1872 e l'estate del 1873, e pubblicato in volume unico nel 1873, cronologicamente Due occhi azzurri è il terzo romanzo scritto dall'autore ma il primo pubblicato con il suo nome. Proprio in quegli anni l'autore inglese faceva la corte ad Emma Gifford – che sposerà l'anno dopo – che ispirerà la figura della protagonista del romanzo.
Ambientato nella selvaggia costa della Cornovaglia, Due occhi azzurri racconta la vicenda della giovane Elfride Swancourt, orfana di madre e figlia unica di un reverendo di un piccolo villaggio del Wessex, vive con quest'ultimo nella casa parrocchiale. La chiesa e il campanile hanno però bisogno di un urgente restauro e il padre si rivolge ad uno studio di architettura londinese. L'ufficio manda a fare i rilievi un giovane apprendista, Stephen Smith che ha il compito di definire i lavori necessari. Credendolo di famiglia benestante, il reverendo incoraggia la figlia a trascorrere del tempo con lui. Elfride e Stephen si innamorano e pensano di sposarsi, ma quando il reverendo Swancourt scopre le umili origini del giovane corteggiatore della figlia, nega la sua benedizione e tronca la relazione tra i due giovani; non sa però che i due si sono giurati amore eterno e sono pronti anche a compiere delle azioni avventate. Per ottenere quella posizione sociale ed economica che gli permetterà di ottenere la mano di Elfride, Stephen accetta un incarico in India e parte in cerca di fortuna; tra i due inizia una fitta corrispondenza che mantiene vivo il loro rapporto. Durante il periodo di assenza di Stephen, il reverendo Swancourt si risposa ed Elfride fa la conoscenza di Harry Knight, un parente della matrigna e antico amico e mentore di Stephen. Ben presto anche Harry rimane affascinato da Elfride, tanto da chiederle di sposarlo e lei accetta. Da allora in poi quest'ultima si sentirà sempre divisa tra la fedeltà a Stephen e la passione per Knight e cerca in ogni modo di risolvere la sua lotta interiore.
Eh si anche stavolta, il caro Thomas, è riuscito a farmi emozionare, commuovere e coinvolgere come solo lui sa fare.
Anche se non è tanto conosciuta, Due occhi azzurri è forse la prima opera veramente importante di Hardy e in cui ritroviamo parecchi elementi tipici della sua prosa anche se l'autore non è così spietato come nei romanzi successivi. È un Hardy parecchio ispirato quello che ritroviamo qui, in cui descrive un raffinato e triste triangolo d'amore, e la gelosia che ne scaturisce; gelosia che porta inevitabilmente alla distruzione di persone e relazioni.
Nel leggere questo romanzo è impossibile non riscontrare parecchie affinità con la sua opera più famosa “Tess dei D'Urberville”, ma che per fortuna non ha tutta la spirale drammatica di quest'ultimo.
Due occhi azzurri è un romanzo che parte molto lentamente e poi si fa via via più interessante e intenso, man mano che si procede con la lettura. In ogni suo romanzo, Hardy, riesce a tenerti col fiato sospeso in un crescendo di drammaticità sino allo spiazzante finale, tra amori, gelosia, spettri del passato, colpi di scena e stupende descrizioni paesaggistiche. Anche qui ritroviamo le intense descrizioni paesaggistiche che riescono a farti immergere pienamente negli ambienti descritti. Le vivide descrizioni della natura e dei luoghi è una caratteristica distintiva delle opere di Hardy, che mi fanno apprezzare questo scrittore ogni volta che leggo una sua opera. Le immagini della natura avversa, selvaggia, del mare in tempesta, del buio, dell'alba sul mare, della scogliera a picco sul mare spazzata dal vento, sono talmente magnifiche che ti lasciano senza fiato. Pochi scrittori riescono ad immortalare i colori e la bellezza della natura circostante che, allo stesso tempo, riflette i conflitti interiori dell'animo umano come sa fare Hardy. Anche stavolta lo scrittore inglese si rivela un fine indagatore dell'animo umano e straordinario nel delineare i personaggi nelle loro più intime sfaccettature, nei loro pensieri e nelle loro azioni. I personaggi principali sono tre minuziosamente caratterizzati: gli vediamo soffrire, gioire, compiere errori anche fatali ma nonostante tutto riusciamo a compatirli, comprenderli, perdonarli e sì anche ad emozionarci con loro e ad affezionarcisi anche se, lo ammetto, in certi momenti non mi sono stati così tanto simpatici e ho trovato difetti in ognuno di loro.
Elfride la protagonista i cui occhi azzurri danno il titolo al romanzo, è una giovane ragazza ingenua e inesperta, dotata “inconsapevolmente” di una bellezza ammaliatrice. È cresciuta libera, perché il padre non si preoccupa troppo di lei in quanto è una brava ragazza senza grilli per la testa, ma questo le fa assumere una condotta che, come si rivelerà in seguito, può portarla alla rovina. Elfride è una ragazza piena di contraddizioni, orgogliosa, impulsiva, incoerente, intraprendente, intelligente, vivace, dolce, determinata e allo stesso tempo fragile, che ama leggere romanzi e qualche volta scrive i sermoni per il padre; si diletta a scrivere un romanzo ambientato nel Medioevo che vorrebbe pubblicare. Desidera vivere la sua vita senza subirla come accade invece alle donne della sua epoca. Piano piano vediamo tutte le sfumature del suo carattere, la sua sensibilità e il suo egoismo.
Quando fa la conoscenza di Knight, Elfride rivela il suo peggio. Si lascia sopraffare dall'amore e dagli eventi; pur di restare fedele all'immagine di donna pura e ingenua, al di sopra di ogni dubbio, e soprattutto per il timore che i suoi errori possano ostacolare la possibilità di essere felice, modifica il suo carattere, arriva continuamente a sbagliare, a mentire a se stessa e agli altri e ciò la porta a vivere con un costante senso di colpa. Elfride annulla la propria personalità a favore di quella di Knight, che idolatra: è troppo plagiata, troppo soggiogata e remissiva nel suo rapporto con lui, che considera un dio in terra. Questo suo comportamento mi ha proprio infastidito e a tratti irritata; non sono riuscita ad empatizzare con lei, anche se in verità con le donne di Hardy non riesco mai ad empatizzare totalmente anzi spesso finisco per odiarle.
I due personaggi maschili sono molto diversi tra loro per età, carattere ed estrazione sociale, ma hanno alcune caratteristiche in comune; sono entrambi costanti, devoti, onesti, attaccati ai loro principi, sinceri in amore e vittime dello stesso errore cioè quello di idealizzare la donna amata.
Il primo è Stephen Smith, un giovane architetto apprendista, leale, appassionato, impetuoso, irragionevole e romantico. Resta fedele al suo amore incondizionato per Elfride. Quando scopre che lei ormai si è allontanata da lui ha il tatto di evitare scandali e ciò lo rende intellettualmente rispettabile e secondo me superiore al suo mentore. Il suo rapporto con Elfride naufraga sia perché lei si innamora di un altro sia per la mancanza di dialogo; ma anche perché il loro è un rapporto più acerbo e per l'estrazione sociale dei genitori di Stephen – “dai costumi limitati” – che gioca un ruolo non secondario.
Stephen Smith, durante la prima parte del libro, continua a tessere le lodi di un uomo che ha incontrato al suo arrivo a Londra e considera suo mentore e amico, Harry Knight che, invece come veniamo a sapere, considera Stephen, “solo un ragazzo di campagna a cui è assurdo e incongruo presentargli una ragazza che sta al suo fianco”.
Harry Knight è il secondo uomo nella vita di Elfride. Quando appare in scena si rimane subito affascinati da lui, dal suo modo di parlare, dal suo fascino di uomo di mondo. Il rapporto iniziale tra Elfride ed Harry è una schermaglia amorosa, un scambio di vedute e di pensieri, una continua partita a scacchi in cui però la giovane ragazza perde sempre. Harry è un uomo maturo, riflessivo, rispettabile che appartiene alla società bene londinese; è un letterato, un filosofo, un critico letterario e un saggista affascinante. Ha però un carattere freddo, pieno di sé, troppo possessivo, rigido, inflessibile, poco pratico e a tratti veramente ingenuo soprattutto nei rapporti con le donne.
L'amore per Elfride cresce in lui lentamente, senza quasi che se ne accorga, fino a diventare molto intenso; la corteggia sempre in maniera impercettibile tanto da non sembrare un vero e proprio corteggiamento agli occhi degli altri.
Knight è un uomo tutto d'un pezzo e ha dei severi principi riguardo le donne: è ancorato al pregiudizio che la ragazza che sceglie per diventare sua moglie deve essere vergine e non accetta che non sia lui il primo uomo della donna; in questo somiglia molto ad un successivo personaggio di Hardy, Angel Clare (da me soprannominato il re degli ipocriti), ma per fortuna non raggiunge i livelli di ipocrisia di quest'ultimo (e meno male aggiungo io).
Anche se Harry Knight è un uomo di mondo, intelligente e integerrimo, non riesce ad affrancarsi dai suoi principi e ciò minerà in maniera irreversibile il suo rapporto con Elfride.
É sicuramente il personaggio meglio riuscito; lo scrittore inglese è talmente bravo nel delineare questo personaggio che noi lettori riusciamo a comprendere, malgrado tutto, il suo punto di vista.
Terminata la lettura, Due occhi azzurri si rivela un altro stupendo romanzo uscito dalla penna di Thomas Hardy. Intenso, delicato, scorrevole e coinvolgente, in cui non mancano pathos e romanticismo; scritto con passione, ma sempre venato da quel pessimismo e malinconia tipici dello stile di Hardy; in cui non mancano argomenti cari allo scrittore inglese (il ruolo della donna, l'ipocrisia della società vittoriana, le convenzioni sociali che distruggono i rapporti tra i sessi). Un'opera dalla trama semplice, dai dialoghi splendidi, dalle scene memorabili, dalla scrittura come sempre elegante e poetica, a tratti anche ironica; dallo stile inconfondibile che anche stavolta non smentisce la sua capacità di farci immergere nelle magnifiche descrizioni e sentirci vicino ai personaggi da lui descritti. Un'opera in cui il destino, il fato incombe e si accanisce contro i poveri protagonisti anche se questa volta lo fa in maniera leggermente più tenue e meno spietata.
Si dice che gli occhi sono lo specchio dell'anima, e gli occhi azzurri, chiari e limpidi come il cielo terso in un giorno di primavera di Elfride, rispecchiano molto la profondità del suo animo.
Una cosa in lei, però, l'avreste notata: i suoi occhi. […] Quegli occhi erano azzurri. Azzurri come la distanza autunnale, come l'azzurro che si vede tra i profili sfuggenti delle colline e dei pendii boscosi che si perdono nella lontananza di un'assolata mattina di settembre. Un azzurro nebbioso e ombroso, senza principio né superficie, da scrutare in profondità e non, semplicemente, da guardare.
Ambientato nella selvaggia costa della Cornovaglia, Due occhi azzurri racconta la vicenda della giovane Elfride Swancourt, orfana di madre e figlia unica di un reverendo di un piccolo villaggio del Wessex, vive con quest'ultimo nella casa parrocchiale. La chiesa e il campanile hanno però bisogno di un urgente restauro e il padre si rivolge ad uno studio di architettura londinese. L'ufficio manda a fare i rilievi un giovane apprendista, Stephen Smith che ha il compito di definire i lavori necessari. Credendolo di famiglia benestante, il reverendo incoraggia la figlia a trascorrere del tempo con lui. Elfride e Stephen si innamorano e pensano di sposarsi, ma quando il reverendo Swancourt scopre le umili origini del giovane corteggiatore della figlia, nega la sua benedizione e tronca la relazione tra i due giovani; non sa però che i due si sono giurati amore eterno e sono pronti anche a compiere delle azioni avventate. Per ottenere quella posizione sociale ed economica che gli permetterà di ottenere la mano di Elfride, Stephen accetta un incarico in India e parte in cerca di fortuna; tra i due inizia una fitta corrispondenza che mantiene vivo il loro rapporto. Durante il periodo di assenza di Stephen, il reverendo Swancourt si risposa ed Elfride fa la conoscenza di Harry Knight, un parente della matrigna e antico amico e mentore di Stephen. Ben presto anche Harry rimane affascinato da Elfride, tanto da chiederle di sposarlo e lei accetta. Da allora in poi quest'ultima si sentirà sempre divisa tra la fedeltà a Stephen e la passione per Knight e cerca in ogni modo di risolvere la sua lotta interiore.
Eh si anche stavolta, il caro Thomas, è riuscito a farmi emozionare, commuovere e coinvolgere come solo lui sa fare.
Anche se non è tanto conosciuta, Due occhi azzurri è forse la prima opera veramente importante di Hardy e in cui ritroviamo parecchi elementi tipici della sua prosa anche se l'autore non è così spietato come nei romanzi successivi. È un Hardy parecchio ispirato quello che ritroviamo qui, in cui descrive un raffinato e triste triangolo d'amore, e la gelosia che ne scaturisce; gelosia che porta inevitabilmente alla distruzione di persone e relazioni.
Nel leggere questo romanzo è impossibile non riscontrare parecchie affinità con la sua opera più famosa “Tess dei D'Urberville”, ma che per fortuna non ha tutta la spirale drammatica di quest'ultimo.
Due occhi azzurri è un romanzo che parte molto lentamente e poi si fa via via più interessante e intenso, man mano che si procede con la lettura. In ogni suo romanzo, Hardy, riesce a tenerti col fiato sospeso in un crescendo di drammaticità sino allo spiazzante finale, tra amori, gelosia, spettri del passato, colpi di scena e stupende descrizioni paesaggistiche. Anche qui ritroviamo le intense descrizioni paesaggistiche che riescono a farti immergere pienamente negli ambienti descritti. Le vivide descrizioni della natura e dei luoghi è una caratteristica distintiva delle opere di Hardy, che mi fanno apprezzare questo scrittore ogni volta che leggo una sua opera. Le immagini della natura avversa, selvaggia, del mare in tempesta, del buio, dell'alba sul mare, della scogliera a picco sul mare spazzata dal vento, sono talmente magnifiche che ti lasciano senza fiato. Pochi scrittori riescono ad immortalare i colori e la bellezza della natura circostante che, allo stesso tempo, riflette i conflitti interiori dell'animo umano come sa fare Hardy. Anche stavolta lo scrittore inglese si rivela un fine indagatore dell'animo umano e straordinario nel delineare i personaggi nelle loro più intime sfaccettature, nei loro pensieri e nelle loro azioni. I personaggi principali sono tre minuziosamente caratterizzati: gli vediamo soffrire, gioire, compiere errori anche fatali ma nonostante tutto riusciamo a compatirli, comprenderli, perdonarli e sì anche ad emozionarci con loro e ad affezionarcisi anche se, lo ammetto, in certi momenti non mi sono stati così tanto simpatici e ho trovato difetti in ognuno di loro.
Elfride la protagonista i cui occhi azzurri danno il titolo al romanzo, è una giovane ragazza ingenua e inesperta, dotata “inconsapevolmente” di una bellezza ammaliatrice. È cresciuta libera, perché il padre non si preoccupa troppo di lei in quanto è una brava ragazza senza grilli per la testa, ma questo le fa assumere una condotta che, come si rivelerà in seguito, può portarla alla rovina. Elfride è una ragazza piena di contraddizioni, orgogliosa, impulsiva, incoerente, intraprendente, intelligente, vivace, dolce, determinata e allo stesso tempo fragile, che ama leggere romanzi e qualche volta scrive i sermoni per il padre; si diletta a scrivere un romanzo ambientato nel Medioevo che vorrebbe pubblicare. Desidera vivere la sua vita senza subirla come accade invece alle donne della sua epoca. Piano piano vediamo tutte le sfumature del suo carattere, la sua sensibilità e il suo egoismo.
Quando fa la conoscenza di Knight, Elfride rivela il suo peggio. Si lascia sopraffare dall'amore e dagli eventi; pur di restare fedele all'immagine di donna pura e ingenua, al di sopra di ogni dubbio, e soprattutto per il timore che i suoi errori possano ostacolare la possibilità di essere felice, modifica il suo carattere, arriva continuamente a sbagliare, a mentire a se stessa e agli altri e ciò la porta a vivere con un costante senso di colpa. Elfride annulla la propria personalità a favore di quella di Knight, che idolatra: è troppo plagiata, troppo soggiogata e remissiva nel suo rapporto con lui, che considera un dio in terra. Questo suo comportamento mi ha proprio infastidito e a tratti irritata; non sono riuscita ad empatizzare con lei, anche se in verità con le donne di Hardy non riesco mai ad empatizzare totalmente anzi spesso finisco per odiarle.
I due personaggi maschili sono molto diversi tra loro per età, carattere ed estrazione sociale, ma hanno alcune caratteristiche in comune; sono entrambi costanti, devoti, onesti, attaccati ai loro principi, sinceri in amore e vittime dello stesso errore cioè quello di idealizzare la donna amata.
Il primo è Stephen Smith, un giovane architetto apprendista, leale, appassionato, impetuoso, irragionevole e romantico. Resta fedele al suo amore incondizionato per Elfride. Quando scopre che lei ormai si è allontanata da lui ha il tatto di evitare scandali e ciò lo rende intellettualmente rispettabile e secondo me superiore al suo mentore. Il suo rapporto con Elfride naufraga sia perché lei si innamora di un altro sia per la mancanza di dialogo; ma anche perché il loro è un rapporto più acerbo e per l'estrazione sociale dei genitori di Stephen – “dai costumi limitati” – che gioca un ruolo non secondario.
Stephen Smith, durante la prima parte del libro, continua a tessere le lodi di un uomo che ha incontrato al suo arrivo a Londra e considera suo mentore e amico, Harry Knight che, invece come veniamo a sapere, considera Stephen, “solo un ragazzo di campagna a cui è assurdo e incongruo presentargli una ragazza che sta al suo fianco”.
Harry Knight è il secondo uomo nella vita di Elfride. Quando appare in scena si rimane subito affascinati da lui, dal suo modo di parlare, dal suo fascino di uomo di mondo. Il rapporto iniziale tra Elfride ed Harry è una schermaglia amorosa, un scambio di vedute e di pensieri, una continua partita a scacchi in cui però la giovane ragazza perde sempre. Harry è un uomo maturo, riflessivo, rispettabile che appartiene alla società bene londinese; è un letterato, un filosofo, un critico letterario e un saggista affascinante. Ha però un carattere freddo, pieno di sé, troppo possessivo, rigido, inflessibile, poco pratico e a tratti veramente ingenuo soprattutto nei rapporti con le donne.
L'amore per Elfride cresce in lui lentamente, senza quasi che se ne accorga, fino a diventare molto intenso; la corteggia sempre in maniera impercettibile tanto da non sembrare un vero e proprio corteggiamento agli occhi degli altri.
Knight è un uomo tutto d'un pezzo e ha dei severi principi riguardo le donne: è ancorato al pregiudizio che la ragazza che sceglie per diventare sua moglie deve essere vergine e non accetta che non sia lui il primo uomo della donna; in questo somiglia molto ad un successivo personaggio di Hardy, Angel Clare (da me soprannominato il re degli ipocriti), ma per fortuna non raggiunge i livelli di ipocrisia di quest'ultimo (e meno male aggiungo io).
Anche se Harry Knight è un uomo di mondo, intelligente e integerrimo, non riesce ad affrancarsi dai suoi principi e ciò minerà in maniera irreversibile il suo rapporto con Elfride.
É sicuramente il personaggio meglio riuscito; lo scrittore inglese è talmente bravo nel delineare questo personaggio che noi lettori riusciamo a comprendere, malgrado tutto, il suo punto di vista.
Terminata la lettura, Due occhi azzurri si rivela un altro stupendo romanzo uscito dalla penna di Thomas Hardy. Intenso, delicato, scorrevole e coinvolgente, in cui non mancano pathos e romanticismo; scritto con passione, ma sempre venato da quel pessimismo e malinconia tipici dello stile di Hardy; in cui non mancano argomenti cari allo scrittore inglese (il ruolo della donna, l'ipocrisia della società vittoriana, le convenzioni sociali che distruggono i rapporti tra i sessi). Un'opera dalla trama semplice, dai dialoghi splendidi, dalle scene memorabili, dalla scrittura come sempre elegante e poetica, a tratti anche ironica; dallo stile inconfondibile che anche stavolta non smentisce la sua capacità di farci immergere nelle magnifiche descrizioni e sentirci vicino ai personaggi da lui descritti. Un'opera in cui il destino, il fato incombe e si accanisce contro i poveri protagonisti anche se questa volta lo fa in maniera leggermente più tenue e meno spietata.
Si dice che gli occhi sono lo specchio dell'anima, e gli occhi azzurri, chiari e limpidi come il cielo terso in un giorno di primavera di Elfride, rispecchiano molto la profondità del suo animo.
Una cosa in lei, però, l'avreste notata: i suoi occhi. […] Quegli occhi erano azzurri. Azzurri come la distanza autunnale, come l'azzurro che si vede tra i profili sfuggenti delle colline e dei pendii boscosi che si perdono nella lontananza di un'assolata mattina di settembre. Un azzurro nebbioso e ombroso, senza principio né superficie, da scrutare in profondità e non, semplicemente, da guardare.
January 11, 2018
2,5/5 Un poco meh.
Mi menos preferida de Hardy con 'El alcalde de Casterbridge', aún así tiene sus momentos.
Mi menos preferida de Hardy con 'El alcalde de Casterbridge', aún así tiene sus momentos.
June 10, 2015
I love this Thomas Hardy novel almost as much as Tess of the D'Urbervilles. It is partly autobiographical, with the heroine Elfride based on his first wife Emma Gifford. It is a short, romantic novel with interesting characters and many twists and turns that are unexpected, especially the ending. Well written as are all of Hardy's novels.
September 4, 2016
The third of Hardy's novels t be published and the first to bear his name, A Pair of Blue eyes is one I highly recommend.
Most of the themes in this novel are similar to all - or most of his other works - but yet, as always, Hardy manages to give us a unique story with a very unique feel.
Readers of Hardy will no doubt recognise many Hardy trademarks in this one, as well as what could have perhaps been the seeds for his latter novels, notably his mega-monster success, Tess.
The narrative has a nice quick pace and is filled with twists and turns. Characters come across as Real People, and like Real People, they make mistakes, many, and suffer the consequences.
Of interest is that having been published originally in a serial format (rather than as the novel tome we know it to be today), the cliff-hanger scene in the novel which serves to change the heroine's path, is reputed to be the origin for the term "cliffhanger" that we use today.
Most of the themes in this novel are similar to all - or most of his other works - but yet, as always, Hardy manages to give us a unique story with a very unique feel.
Readers of Hardy will no doubt recognise many Hardy trademarks in this one, as well as what could have perhaps been the seeds for his latter novels, notably his mega-monster success, Tess.
The narrative has a nice quick pace and is filled with twists and turns. Characters come across as Real People, and like Real People, they make mistakes, many, and suffer the consequences.
Of interest is that having been published originally in a serial format (rather than as the novel tome we know it to be today), the cliff-hanger scene in the novel which serves to change the heroine's path, is reputed to be the origin for the term "cliffhanger" that we use today.
October 30, 2024
Publicada entre 1872 y 1873 por medio de fascículos mensuales en una revista, “Unos Ojos Azules” fue la novela que consagro a Thomas Hardy como escritor y le proporciono fama. Además, se considera una obra de cierta relevancia en la historia de la literatura, porque no pocos estudiosos consideran que ahí surgió el término“cliffhanger” para designar una narrativa que hace un descanso o parón en un momento de suspenso e intriga, de esos que dejan al lector desesperado por saber como va a continuar la historia y que es lo que va a ser de los personajes. Porque es así como se quedaron los lectores victorianos al cierre del capitulo XXI, cuando uno de los personajes de la novela se quedaba literalmente"colgando de un acantilado" esperando el rescate.
En el entorno costero de Endelstow, la pacifica y anodina vida de Elfride Swancourt (la hija de 19 años del párroco local que apenas conoce el mundo exterior y la vida) se ve interrumpida por la aparición de Stephen Smith, un amable albañil que llega a la zona con el fin de restaurar varios edificios medievales. Los dos jóvenes se enamoran, pero los humildes orígenes de Stephen obligan a mantener la relación en secreto. Lo que Elfride no puede imaginarse es que, mientras Stephen trata de hacer fortuna en la India, ella terminará siendo el pináculo de un triángulo amoroso que incluirá al escritor Henry Kinght, amigo y tutor de Stephen.
La verdad es que mi trayectoria con las lecturas de las obras de Thomas Hardy es, cuanto menos, variada y curiosa. El primer libro que leí del celebre autor victoriano fue “Tess, la de los d'Urberville”, que no me gusto especialmente. Siempre he dicho que creo que esto se debe a que leí demasiado deprisa esta novela, cuando Hardy es un autor que requiere su tiempo y prestarle no poca atención; y luego, además he leído que la traducción de la edición que manejé no es bastante buena (como veréis más arriba, por lo visto, hay una especie de maldición en torno a las ediciones que leo de este autor). Sea como sea, lo cierto es que esa experiencia está ahí, y yo tengo muy pendiente releerme ese libro para ver si mi impresión cambia y mejora. Después de esto, estuve muchos años sin tocar Hardy. Hasta que llegaron en años consecutivos “El Alcalde de Casterbridge” y “Lejos del Mundanal Ruido”, ambas lecturas de cinco estrellas como cinco soles, estando en mi Top cinco de mejores lecturas de esos años. También leí y disfruté mucho, aunque menor medusa, de la polémica “Jude el Oscuro”. Así que, después de dos años, sin haberme animado a leer a Hardy, cogí “Unos Ojos Azules“ con bastantes ganas, expectativas, esperando encontrarme con una trama trágica y costumbrista, muy bien ambientada y con una historia que fluyera estupendamente, pero sin perder de vista el desarrollo de la personalidad de los caracteres.
Y sí, no voy a decir que no me haya encontrado eso. En “Unos Ojos Azules” he podido encontrarme con algunas de las mejores características literarias de Hardy como autor. Para empezar, incluso en sus inicios, su prosa era depurada y elegante. Su capacidad de hacer y recrear en entornos rurales ingleses y su capacidad de hacer descripciones plagas de simbolismo también está ya ahí, siendo soberbia y logrando que el lector se transporte perfectamente a la belleza no extensa de peligros de los acantilados de Castel Boterel, la serenidad de campiña costera del entorno de Endelstow de la misma forma que bullicioso vibrante y plagado de gente del Londres victoriano, la beatitud oscura y solemnemente opresora de un panteón familiar, la casa de una típica familia de baja extracción social inglesa. estas descripciones de entornos naturales, llenos de peligros y sorpresas, sirven como una suerte de aperitivo hacia los trágicos acontecimientos que marcarán los compases de la trama, anticipando los sentimientos y sensaciones de los personajes. Así, nos encontramos con una salvaje tormenta que simboliza la vorágine emocional en la que Elfride está sumergida. Esta técnica, típica de los autores románticos, viene acompañada de ciertos momentos proféticos que nos van dando una pista de por donde van a ir los oscuros designios de la obra. Como ese momento impagable de Elfride y Stephen sentados encima de la lápida de un antiguo pretendiente de la primera, cuya difusa presencia resultará vital en el futuro de los amantes…
En ciertos momentos ,la historia me ha recordado mucho a “Tess, la de los d'Urberville”, “Lejos del Mundanal Ruido” y “Jude el Oscuro”, e incluso a “Tess, la de los d'Urberville”, por las cosas que en ella ocurrían. Siento que quizás esta obra no sea tan ambiciosa como las otras que menciono, y que en varios momentos se nota que Hardy, aunque ya había escrito varias obras, aún era un autor, en cierto sentido, novel. Pero esta falta de pretensiones a mí me parece un plus a la hora de emprender la lectura, ya que se trata de una propuesta sencilla, fácil de seguir y en la que todos sus elementos, la mayor parte del tiempo, se conjuga para crear una historia solvente y que, normalmente, fluye muy bien.
Thomas Hardy pone sobre el tapete varios temas chocantes para la bien pensante y, aparentemente, timorata sociedad victoriana en la que le tocó vivir y publicar, especialmente relacionados con la eterna entre hombres y mujeres y las dificultades de las relaciones románticas. El autor nos habla, principalmente, de las ideas que los hombres tienen entorno a las mujeres, y del choque que supone descubrir que esos ideales no suelen ser reales. Los personajes de la obra son absoluta y profundamente humanos, Hardy nos lo presenta de una manera desprejuiciada, tratando de justificarles y explicando, dando mucha importancia a sus sentimientos y a la introspección, esforzándose por mostrarles como seres de carne y hueso que sufren y se equivocan, para nada perfectos, víctimas de sus propios impulsos y decisiones. Y eso da a toda la novela una patina de realismo y cercanía que para mí define muy bien lo que es un clásico: una obra que maneja temas imperecederos, y que por más años que pase, no perderá el interés para el lector. A todo esto también hay una fuerte crítica al rígido protocolo que marcaba las relaciones amorosas entre hombres y mujeres; a los prejuicios sociales que impedían que dos personas de diferentes extracciones pudieran casarse (y que nos lleva a una crítica a la falta de movilidad social y economica con la que muchos sujetos perfectamente hábiles y capaces se topaban) la posición de la mujer dentro del organigrama victoriano, que implicaba que ésta tuviera un papel sumiso y pasivo limitando sus libertades y dejando en un segundo plano, sus deseos más íntimos,, que la convertía, en la practica, en una niña mental y jurídicamente, siempre bajo el amparo de un protector masculino. Esas Pollitas están ahí, aunque a veces resulte difícil encontrarlas, para eso tienes que escarbar en muchos de los comentarios que hacen los personajes varones de la novela que, a día de hoy, sorprenden por lo misógino que resultan. No olvidemos que estamos ante un libro escrito en el siglo XIX, hijo y heredero de una forma de ser que era la imperante de la época.
La protagonista de la novela, Elfride, no me parece, ni de lejos, el mejor personaje femenino sacado de la pluma de Hardy. Es demasiado fluctuante como para llegar a comprenderla totalmente. Está compuesta con tantas paradojas que a veces resulta difícil pillarla el ritmo, pero al mismo tiempo esa es la esencia del personaje y lo que hace que brille por encima del resto del elenco de la novela Por más voluble que sea, uno siente cierta compasión por ella al ver como es víctima, ya no solo de unos prejuicios sociales contra los que ella no lucha, sino que trata de encajar en ellos. Y creo que eso, Hardy lo expone de una manera muy concisa y magistral. Incluso, aunque el personaje no me cayera bien, he cerrado el libro, sintiendo hasta pena por ella me pareció muy interesante como su carácter idealista y el de su primer pretendiente, Stephen, contrastan fuertemente contra la visión más férrea y pragmática del mundo que tienen otros caracteres de la novela, como Kinght, que mi opinión es uno de los personajes con mayor evolución de la trama. Elfride es víctima, ya no solo. de su propio carácter infantil e impulsivo, principalmente lo es de las figuras masculinas que la rodean, que enfocan en ella sus ideales y deseos, pero que cuando ven que no encaja en ellos, la acusan sin ningún tipo de compasión. Y esa es la gran tragedia de “Unos Ojos Azules”, que como en su momento me lo pareció “Lejos del Mundanal Ruido”, no es una novela romántica, sino que habla sobre el amor y las turbulentas relaciones humanas. Y es que, al fin de cuentas, la novela trata sobre el tema universal del amor, las locuras que nos hace cometer y como puede cambiar nuestra forma de ser y ver el mundo.
Entonces ¿cual ha sido mi problema con “Unos Ojos Azules“ ? Pues, aunque yo os anticipo que no me parece ni la mejor de Harvey, ni desde luego va a pasar como una de mis favoritas de este escritor, mi problema ha sido, ni más, ni menos, que la edición del tomo que he manejado, lo compré hace bastantes años en un mercadillo y es de una editorial Low Cost y aquí se puede decir que lo barato a veces sale caro, porque creo que voy a tener que comprarme el libro de otro sello. Porque esta edición me ha parecido horrible. Es del 2016, y sospecho que ya se usó para el trabajo de edición y traducción la IA por estas fechas tempranas, porque si no nos explica alguna de las cosas con las que me he encontrado. Errores gramaticales y topográficos varios, frases y párrafos traducidas de manera literal del inglés (había momentos que el verbo“ To Be” estaba traducido como “soy” cuando lo que pedía la traducción al español era “estar”y viceversa, por poneros algún ejemplo), nombres que en una misma página aparecían tanto en su versión inglesa como en la española, y párrafos enteros que no tenían ningún sentido gramatical o contextual, por lo que me ha tocado buscarme una audición del libro online gratuita para enterarme muchas veces de que era lo que estaba leyendo exactamente. No me considero una persona especialmente quisquillosa con estas cosas, poco que leáis mis reseñas, que yo misma meto muchos errores gramaticales y de ortografía, pero cuando me encuentro tantas , a veces en una misma página, en una libro que se supone que ha sido preparada por profesionales del sector, pues por más barata que me haya sido la compra eso me molesta. Y es una pena, porque el exterior del volumen no es para nada feo. Y porque creo que si no hubiera sido por este tema, el libro habría acabado teniendo cuatro estrellas y no las tres que le puesto al final. El problema ha sido que en encontrarme muchas veces con párrafos que no entendía del todo y con una traducción que, sin saber yo mucho del tema, me parecía muy farragosa, y me ha sacado de la lectura la mayor parte del tiempo que me ha durado. y me temo que por ello apenas la he podido saborear, como me hubiera gustado, o como creo que Hardy se merece.
Pero independientemente de eso, en las más de 400 páginas de la novela no he conseguido conectar nada, ni con la historia que nos propone Hardy, ni con sus personajes. Están muy bien desarrollados, los tres principales tienen una evolución detallada y fluida, y la gran capacidad del autor para manejar la psicología y darnos sus descripciones más íntimas es una de las mayores bazas de la lectura. Pero aún así, me ha faltado algo en el desarrollo de estos personajes, había ciertos puntos en los cuales no es que solo, como he dicho antes, no conectase nada con ellos, es que tampoco entendía muy bien que es lo que se proponían y buscaban, en ciertos momentos de la lectura me parecía todo demasiado embrollado o apenas bosquejado. Y es que siento que en este libro, a diferencia de cualquiera de los anteriores que he leído de Hardy, ese destino cruel y endémico que se ceba en torno a los protagonistas, creado piedra a piedra por sus propias decisiones y forma de ser, las rígidas costumbres sociales imperantes de la época y la mala suerte; ese sino al cual todos los caracteres nacidos de la pluma del autor parecen dramáticamente abocados; acaba yendo, en cierta forma, en el progreso de la trama y de los personajes. a veces me ha dado la impresión de que Hardy tenía en su cabeza una historia perfectamente trazada, pero que de alguna forma no ha terminado de lograr plasmarla sobre el papel y la tinta. En otros trabajos, sentía que se maléfico trágico a favor de la trama totalmente, que muchas de las crueles, coincidencias o actuaciones de satinadas de los personajes tenían sentido dentro de la historia. Aquí, en muchos momentos siento que los personajes han actuado de una manera arbitraria y sin mucho sentido.
Creo que en esto también ha tenido mucho que ver que la estructura de la novela haya estado supeditada a su publicación por capítulos en una revista mensual. En ciertos momentos he percibido que el autor intentaba alargar momentos que en menos frases y páginas podrían haberse liquidado con mayor soltura y brevedad, y hubieran aportado a la lectura más ligereza.
Para resumir, “ Unos Ojos Azules” es una obra llena de virtudes, pero también de muchos defectos. El genio de Thomas Hardy está ahí, pero aún le queda por pulirse plenamente. La carga de crítica hacia la sociedad de la época resulta un complemento perfecto para un triángulo amoroso sencillo, pero que es tratado con muchos matices y cuyo interés vital nace en las diferencias sociales e ideológicas de sus tres componentes, y en las terribles consecuencias que trae consigo. Qué pena que no haya podido disfrutar plenamente de una lectura con tanto potencial por culpa de lo que os he comentado…
En fin, espero y confío que mi próximo Hardy me guste más. O por lo menos que este mejor editado.
En el entorno costero de Endelstow, la pacifica y anodina vida de Elfride Swancourt (la hija de 19 años del párroco local que apenas conoce el mundo exterior y la vida) se ve interrumpida por la aparición de Stephen Smith, un amable albañil que llega a la zona con el fin de restaurar varios edificios medievales. Los dos jóvenes se enamoran, pero los humildes orígenes de Stephen obligan a mantener la relación en secreto. Lo que Elfride no puede imaginarse es que, mientras Stephen trata de hacer fortuna en la India, ella terminará siendo el pináculo de un triángulo amoroso que incluirá al escritor Henry Kinght, amigo y tutor de Stephen.
La verdad es que mi trayectoria con las lecturas de las obras de Thomas Hardy es, cuanto menos, variada y curiosa. El primer libro que leí del celebre autor victoriano fue “Tess, la de los d'Urberville”, que no me gusto especialmente. Siempre he dicho que creo que esto se debe a que leí demasiado deprisa esta novela, cuando Hardy es un autor que requiere su tiempo y prestarle no poca atención; y luego, además he leído que la traducción de la edición que manejé no es bastante buena (como veréis más arriba, por lo visto, hay una especie de maldición en torno a las ediciones que leo de este autor). Sea como sea, lo cierto es que esa experiencia está ahí, y yo tengo muy pendiente releerme ese libro para ver si mi impresión cambia y mejora. Después de esto, estuve muchos años sin tocar Hardy. Hasta que llegaron en años consecutivos “El Alcalde de Casterbridge” y “Lejos del Mundanal Ruido”, ambas lecturas de cinco estrellas como cinco soles, estando en mi Top cinco de mejores lecturas de esos años. También leí y disfruté mucho, aunque menor medusa, de la polémica “Jude el Oscuro”. Así que, después de dos años, sin haberme animado a leer a Hardy, cogí “Unos Ojos Azules“ con bastantes ganas, expectativas, esperando encontrarme con una trama trágica y costumbrista, muy bien ambientada y con una historia que fluyera estupendamente, pero sin perder de vista el desarrollo de la personalidad de los caracteres.
Y sí, no voy a decir que no me haya encontrado eso. En “Unos Ojos Azules” he podido encontrarme con algunas de las mejores características literarias de Hardy como autor. Para empezar, incluso en sus inicios, su prosa era depurada y elegante. Su capacidad de hacer y recrear en entornos rurales ingleses y su capacidad de hacer descripciones plagas de simbolismo también está ya ahí, siendo soberbia y logrando que el lector se transporte perfectamente a la belleza no extensa de peligros de los acantilados de Castel Boterel, la serenidad de campiña costera del entorno de Endelstow de la misma forma que bullicioso vibrante y plagado de gente del Londres victoriano, la beatitud oscura y solemnemente opresora de un panteón familiar, la casa de una típica familia de baja extracción social inglesa. estas descripciones de entornos naturales, llenos de peligros y sorpresas, sirven como una suerte de aperitivo hacia los trágicos acontecimientos que marcarán los compases de la trama, anticipando los sentimientos y sensaciones de los personajes. Así, nos encontramos con una salvaje tormenta que simboliza la vorágine emocional en la que Elfride está sumergida. Esta técnica, típica de los autores románticos, viene acompañada de ciertos momentos proféticos que nos van dando una pista de por donde van a ir los oscuros designios de la obra. Como ese momento impagable de Elfride y Stephen sentados encima de la lápida de un antiguo pretendiente de la primera, cuya difusa presencia resultará vital en el futuro de los amantes…
En ciertos momentos ,la historia me ha recordado mucho a “Tess, la de los d'Urberville”, “Lejos del Mundanal Ruido” y “Jude el Oscuro”, e incluso a “Tess, la de los d'Urberville”, por las cosas que en ella ocurrían. Siento que quizás esta obra no sea tan ambiciosa como las otras que menciono, y que en varios momentos se nota que Hardy, aunque ya había escrito varias obras, aún era un autor, en cierto sentido, novel. Pero esta falta de pretensiones a mí me parece un plus a la hora de emprender la lectura, ya que se trata de una propuesta sencilla, fácil de seguir y en la que todos sus elementos, la mayor parte del tiempo, se conjuga para crear una historia solvente y que, normalmente, fluye muy bien.
Thomas Hardy pone sobre el tapete varios temas chocantes para la bien pensante y, aparentemente, timorata sociedad victoriana en la que le tocó vivir y publicar, especialmente relacionados con la eterna entre hombres y mujeres y las dificultades de las relaciones románticas. El autor nos habla, principalmente, de las ideas que los hombres tienen entorno a las mujeres, y del choque que supone descubrir que esos ideales no suelen ser reales. Los personajes de la obra son absoluta y profundamente humanos, Hardy nos lo presenta de una manera desprejuiciada, tratando de justificarles y explicando, dando mucha importancia a sus sentimientos y a la introspección, esforzándose por mostrarles como seres de carne y hueso que sufren y se equivocan, para nada perfectos, víctimas de sus propios impulsos y decisiones. Y eso da a toda la novela una patina de realismo y cercanía que para mí define muy bien lo que es un clásico: una obra que maneja temas imperecederos, y que por más años que pase, no perderá el interés para el lector. A todo esto también hay una fuerte crítica al rígido protocolo que marcaba las relaciones amorosas entre hombres y mujeres; a los prejuicios sociales que impedían que dos personas de diferentes extracciones pudieran casarse (y que nos lleva a una crítica a la falta de movilidad social y economica con la que muchos sujetos perfectamente hábiles y capaces se topaban) la posición de la mujer dentro del organigrama victoriano, que implicaba que ésta tuviera un papel sumiso y pasivo limitando sus libertades y dejando en un segundo plano, sus deseos más íntimos,, que la convertía, en la practica, en una niña mental y jurídicamente, siempre bajo el amparo de un protector masculino. Esas Pollitas están ahí, aunque a veces resulte difícil encontrarlas, para eso tienes que escarbar en muchos de los comentarios que hacen los personajes varones de la novela que, a día de hoy, sorprenden por lo misógino que resultan. No olvidemos que estamos ante un libro escrito en el siglo XIX, hijo y heredero de una forma de ser que era la imperante de la época.
La protagonista de la novela, Elfride, no me parece, ni de lejos, el mejor personaje femenino sacado de la pluma de Hardy. Es demasiado fluctuante como para llegar a comprenderla totalmente. Está compuesta con tantas paradojas que a veces resulta difícil pillarla el ritmo, pero al mismo tiempo esa es la esencia del personaje y lo que hace que brille por encima del resto del elenco de la novela Por más voluble que sea, uno siente cierta compasión por ella al ver como es víctima, ya no solo de unos prejuicios sociales contra los que ella no lucha, sino que trata de encajar en ellos. Y creo que eso, Hardy lo expone de una manera muy concisa y magistral. Incluso, aunque el personaje no me cayera bien, he cerrado el libro, sintiendo hasta pena por ella me pareció muy interesante como su carácter idealista y el de su primer pretendiente, Stephen, contrastan fuertemente contra la visión más férrea y pragmática del mundo que tienen otros caracteres de la novela, como Kinght, que mi opinión es uno de los personajes con mayor evolución de la trama. Elfride es víctima, ya no solo. de su propio carácter infantil e impulsivo, principalmente lo es de las figuras masculinas que la rodean, que enfocan en ella sus ideales y deseos, pero que cuando ven que no encaja en ellos, la acusan sin ningún tipo de compasión. Y esa es la gran tragedia de “Unos Ojos Azules”, que como en su momento me lo pareció “Lejos del Mundanal Ruido”, no es una novela romántica, sino que habla sobre el amor y las turbulentas relaciones humanas. Y es que, al fin de cuentas, la novela trata sobre el tema universal del amor, las locuras que nos hace cometer y como puede cambiar nuestra forma de ser y ver el mundo.
Entonces ¿cual ha sido mi problema con “Unos Ojos Azules“ ? Pues, aunque yo os anticipo que no me parece ni la mejor de Harvey, ni desde luego va a pasar como una de mis favoritas de este escritor, mi problema ha sido, ni más, ni menos, que la edición del tomo que he manejado, lo compré hace bastantes años en un mercadillo y es de una editorial Low Cost y aquí se puede decir que lo barato a veces sale caro, porque creo que voy a tener que comprarme el libro de otro sello. Porque esta edición me ha parecido horrible. Es del 2016, y sospecho que ya se usó para el trabajo de edición y traducción la IA por estas fechas tempranas, porque si no nos explica alguna de las cosas con las que me he encontrado. Errores gramaticales y topográficos varios, frases y párrafos traducidas de manera literal del inglés (había momentos que el verbo“ To Be” estaba traducido como “soy” cuando lo que pedía la traducción al español era “estar”y viceversa, por poneros algún ejemplo), nombres que en una misma página aparecían tanto en su versión inglesa como en la española, y párrafos enteros que no tenían ningún sentido gramatical o contextual, por lo que me ha tocado buscarme una audición del libro online gratuita para enterarme muchas veces de que era lo que estaba leyendo exactamente. No me considero una persona especialmente quisquillosa con estas cosas, poco que leáis mis reseñas, que yo misma meto muchos errores gramaticales y de ortografía, pero cuando me encuentro tantas , a veces en una misma página, en una libro que se supone que ha sido preparada por profesionales del sector, pues por más barata que me haya sido la compra eso me molesta. Y es una pena, porque el exterior del volumen no es para nada feo. Y porque creo que si no hubiera sido por este tema, el libro habría acabado teniendo cuatro estrellas y no las tres que le puesto al final. El problema ha sido que en encontrarme muchas veces con párrafos que no entendía del todo y con una traducción que, sin saber yo mucho del tema, me parecía muy farragosa, y me ha sacado de la lectura la mayor parte del tiempo que me ha durado. y me temo que por ello apenas la he podido saborear, como me hubiera gustado, o como creo que Hardy se merece.
Pero independientemente de eso, en las más de 400 páginas de la novela no he conseguido conectar nada, ni con la historia que nos propone Hardy, ni con sus personajes. Están muy bien desarrollados, los tres principales tienen una evolución detallada y fluida, y la gran capacidad del autor para manejar la psicología y darnos sus descripciones más íntimas es una de las mayores bazas de la lectura. Pero aún así, me ha faltado algo en el desarrollo de estos personajes, había ciertos puntos en los cuales no es que solo, como he dicho antes, no conectase nada con ellos, es que tampoco entendía muy bien que es lo que se proponían y buscaban, en ciertos momentos de la lectura me parecía todo demasiado embrollado o apenas bosquejado. Y es que siento que en este libro, a diferencia de cualquiera de los anteriores que he leído de Hardy, ese destino cruel y endémico que se ceba en torno a los protagonistas, creado piedra a piedra por sus propias decisiones y forma de ser, las rígidas costumbres sociales imperantes de la época y la mala suerte; ese sino al cual todos los caracteres nacidos de la pluma del autor parecen dramáticamente abocados; acaba yendo, en cierta forma, en el progreso de la trama y de los personajes. a veces me ha dado la impresión de que Hardy tenía en su cabeza una historia perfectamente trazada, pero que de alguna forma no ha terminado de lograr plasmarla sobre el papel y la tinta. En otros trabajos, sentía que se maléfico trágico a favor de la trama totalmente, que muchas de las crueles, coincidencias o actuaciones de satinadas de los personajes tenían sentido dentro de la historia. Aquí, en muchos momentos siento que los personajes han actuado de una manera arbitraria y sin mucho sentido.
Creo que en esto también ha tenido mucho que ver que la estructura de la novela haya estado supeditada a su publicación por capítulos en una revista mensual. En ciertos momentos he percibido que el autor intentaba alargar momentos que en menos frases y páginas podrían haberse liquidado con mayor soltura y brevedad, y hubieran aportado a la lectura más ligereza.
Para resumir, “ Unos Ojos Azules” es una obra llena de virtudes, pero también de muchos defectos. El genio de Thomas Hardy está ahí, pero aún le queda por pulirse plenamente. La carga de crítica hacia la sociedad de la época resulta un complemento perfecto para un triángulo amoroso sencillo, pero que es tratado con muchos matices y cuyo interés vital nace en las diferencias sociales e ideológicas de sus tres componentes, y en las terribles consecuencias que trae consigo. Qué pena que no haya podido disfrutar plenamente de una lectura con tanto potencial por culpa de lo que os he comentado…
En fin, espero y confío que mi próximo Hardy me guste más. O por lo menos que este mejor editado.
June 9, 2019
Easily the best book I've read so far in 2017.
Ahh, Thomas Hardy, how I love thee. And how I always forget how much I love thee until I read another of thy books. You bring me so much melodrama, so much angst, so much romance, and so many men that I can curse for their stupidity and/or misogyny. These are the kind of books that I shake in anger and whisper 'no' at when it's 1am and I should have stopped reading hours ago. These are the kind of books that I want to talk about for hours on end because I'm so invested in the plot and the characters and everything that's happening. These are the kind of books that, every day, I look forward to reading because I know that something amazing is going to happen. That's not a feeling that I've been getting very often these days, but I know I can always rely on the master of 19th Century novels to provide me with it.
This was a very different novel from what I was expecting. For at least the first volume-and-a-half, A Pair of Blue Eyes was... happy? The tone of the novel was... humorous? And the love stories (Stephen and Elfride in particular) seemed... healthy? Considering that the last Hardy novel that I read and loved was Tess of the D'Urbervilles - by far THE most miserable book I've ever read in my life, which is awash with awful men - that came as a pretty big shock to me. Course, it didn't last. A glorious love triangle kicked off and Elfride's 'purity' came under fire and a chapter ended with someone LITERALLY HANGING OFF A CLIFF. The cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers (or, if Wikipedia is to believed, the cliffhanger that spawned the term cliffhanger). The initial happiness of this book was slowly eroded away as the pages flew by, but I'm not going to complain about that because I live for Hardy's dramas. His books always read like 19th Century soap operas to me and I think that's the reason why I love them so much. Well, that, but also the incredible craft that goes into his writing and the amazing connections he draws between his characters and, of course, his controversial presentations of women.
I can't think of anyone else who weaves connecting threads through his narrative quite so perfectly as Hardy. He draws everything and everyone together; every small detail given earlier in the novel later becomes significant. There are moments of foreboding (like Elfride's premonition on the tower) and dreams that translate through to reality, and even the return of some long-lost earrings causes some HUGE problems. It's really quite remarkable. Fair enough, some of Hardy's connections in A Pair of Blue Eyes weren't quite as elegantly drawn as in his other novels (the revelation that Henry Knight, who had previously never been so much as alluded to by anyone in the novel other than Stephen, was Mrs Swancourt's cousin felt more than just a little bit convenient), but as this is such an early novel I can forgive that. I just think it's remarkable that, even so early on, Hardy had mastered the art of writing interconnecting lives which are part of wholly relevant narratives. Everything about this book and all his others is so well-thought through, and that makes reading them a very smooth and enjoyable experience.
It also amuses me to no end that, so often in Hardy novels, a character (most often a woman) hastens their downfall by making bad decisions when it comes to sending/not sending letters. That really isn't relevant to this review at all, but I thought it was an interesting observation.
If you read Tess of the D'Urbervilles before reading A Pair of Blue Eyes (which I imagine that most people do), some of the characters might seem quite familiar to you. Elfride is like a spunkier and, arguably, less fallen Tess (although Elfride chooses to do what she does, whilst poor Tess is very much subject to the will of others) and Knight is a more likeable version of the horrid Angel Clare (probably the literary man I despise the most, although Alec D'Urberville is up there). Stephen - who is quite lovely - finds no equal in Tess, because everyone in Tess apart from Tess herself is horrible. Good old Stephen. Yet, even though Elfride and Knight are familiar types, they're still extremely good characters. Elfride's journey from beginning to end - which is representative of her slow submission to the patriarchal ideas which she realises that she alone can't change - is quite extraordinary. And as for Knight... Honestly? I really liked Knight to start off with. I thought that his competitive, challenging dynamic with Elfride was quite charming, and that one quote about how he'd fallen in love with her soul was gorgeous. Then he turned out to be Angel Clare in disguise. Ugh. However, Knight never occupies quite the same level of despicableness as Angel Clare in my opinion. He's an idiot and poor Elfride's fate is probably his fault, but he is slightly misled, and Hardy goes to great pains to highlight how amazing he is before he makes his fateful decision. Therefore, despite their familiarity, there remains a great complexity to these characters. Plus, Elfride and Knight actually predate Tess and Angel, so if you're going to criticise one pair of characters for being recycled it really should be the latter.
Do I think that this novel is a condemnation or a defence of women like Elfride? Although it is less clear-cut in A Pair of Blue Eyes than in Tess of the D'Urbervilles (which I read as a passionate plea for change), I do think that Hardy supports Elfride just as he supports Tess. The truth about Elfride's previous romantic conduct, as told by Elfride, is far less damning that Mrs Jethway makes it out to be, positioning Elfride as the victim of an overexaggeration rather than the guilty party. I think this realisation is reached by the two male characters at the end, absolving Elfride's blame somewhat. Even without that, it seems to me that Hardy is OK with the choices Elfride makes. He allows her to stand up to Knight, and he also criticises Knight's 'wrongheadedness', which suggests to me that his sympathies lie with the woman rather than the man. It is a little inconsistent, particularly when compared to Tess, and the end result is a little questionable, but it's a good start. A Pair of Blue Eyes, more than anything, showed me that Hardy was sympathetic towards the women that Victorian society so often condemned right from the beginning of his career and merely extended that as he wrote more and more. In light of that, he's even higher up on my list of favourite authors than it was before.
This is an extraordinarily long review, but I still don't think that it has done justice to just how much I love this book. To put it in much simpler, more concise terms, I am obsessed with this book. Pretty much all that has been on my mind over the last few days has been A Pair of Blue Eyes because I loved reading it so much and I was so invested in each and every thing that happened within it. Also, this book felt a lot to me like a mixture of Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Great Gatsby - two of my favourite books of all time. It explored many of the same themes and recalled many of the elements that I loved in one or both of those others, and, when you put it that way, how was I supposed to not love it? A Pair of Blue Eyes was just an absolute joy to read and it made me happier than any other book has in a while. I highly recommend it, both as a precursor to Hardy's masterpiece, Tess (although I will always maintain that Far from the Madding Crowd is his best novel) and as a pretty awesome book in its own right.
Ahh, Thomas Hardy, how I love thee. And how I always forget how much I love thee until I read another of thy books. You bring me so much melodrama, so much angst, so much romance, and so many men that I can curse for their stupidity and/or misogyny. These are the kind of books that I shake in anger and whisper 'no' at when it's 1am and I should have stopped reading hours ago. These are the kind of books that I want to talk about for hours on end because I'm so invested in the plot and the characters and everything that's happening. These are the kind of books that, every day, I look forward to reading because I know that something amazing is going to happen. That's not a feeling that I've been getting very often these days, but I know I can always rely on the master of 19th Century novels to provide me with it.
This was a very different novel from what I was expecting. For at least the first volume-and-a-half, A Pair of Blue Eyes was... happy? The tone of the novel was... humorous? And the love stories (Stephen and Elfride in particular) seemed... healthy? Considering that the last Hardy novel that I read and loved was Tess of the D'Urbervilles - by far THE most miserable book I've ever read in my life, which is awash with awful men - that came as a pretty big shock to me. Course, it didn't last. A glorious love triangle kicked off and Elfride's 'purity' came under fire and a chapter ended with someone LITERALLY HANGING OFF A CLIFF. The cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers (or, if Wikipedia is to believed, the cliffhanger that spawned the term cliffhanger). The initial happiness of this book was slowly eroded away as the pages flew by, but I'm not going to complain about that because I live for Hardy's dramas. His books always read like 19th Century soap operas to me and I think that's the reason why I love them so much. Well, that, but also the incredible craft that goes into his writing and the amazing connections he draws between his characters and, of course, his controversial presentations of women.
I can't think of anyone else who weaves connecting threads through his narrative quite so perfectly as Hardy. He draws everything and everyone together; every small detail given earlier in the novel later becomes significant. There are moments of foreboding (like Elfride's premonition on the tower) and dreams that translate through to reality, and even the return of some long-lost earrings causes some HUGE problems. It's really quite remarkable. Fair enough, some of Hardy's connections in A Pair of Blue Eyes weren't quite as elegantly drawn as in his other novels (the revelation that Henry Knight, who had previously never been so much as alluded to by anyone in the novel other than Stephen, was Mrs Swancourt's cousin felt more than just a little bit convenient), but as this is such an early novel I can forgive that. I just think it's remarkable that, even so early on, Hardy had mastered the art of writing interconnecting lives which are part of wholly relevant narratives. Everything about this book and all his others is so well-thought through, and that makes reading them a very smooth and enjoyable experience.
It also amuses me to no end that, so often in Hardy novels, a character (most often a woman) hastens their downfall by making bad decisions when it comes to sending/not sending letters. That really isn't relevant to this review at all, but I thought it was an interesting observation.
If you read Tess of the D'Urbervilles before reading A Pair of Blue Eyes (which I imagine that most people do), some of the characters might seem quite familiar to you. Elfride is like a spunkier and, arguably, less fallen Tess (although Elfride chooses to do what she does, whilst poor Tess is very much subject to the will of others) and Knight is a more likeable version of the horrid Angel Clare (probably the literary man I despise the most, although Alec D'Urberville is up there). Stephen - who is quite lovely - finds no equal in Tess, because everyone in Tess apart from Tess herself is horrible. Good old Stephen. Yet, even though Elfride and Knight are familiar types, they're still extremely good characters. Elfride's journey from beginning to end - which is representative of her slow submission to the patriarchal ideas which she realises that she alone can't change - is quite extraordinary. And as for Knight... Honestly? I really liked Knight to start off with. I thought that his competitive, challenging dynamic with Elfride was quite charming, and that one quote about how he'd fallen in love with her soul was gorgeous. Then he turned out to be Angel Clare in disguise. Ugh. However, Knight never occupies quite the same level of despicableness as Angel Clare in my opinion. He's an idiot and poor Elfride's fate is probably his fault, but he is slightly misled, and Hardy goes to great pains to highlight how amazing he is before he makes his fateful decision. Therefore, despite their familiarity, there remains a great complexity to these characters. Plus, Elfride and Knight actually predate Tess and Angel, so if you're going to criticise one pair of characters for being recycled it really should be the latter.
Do I think that this novel is a condemnation or a defence of women like Elfride? Although it is less clear-cut in A Pair of Blue Eyes than in Tess of the D'Urbervilles (which I read as a passionate plea for change), I do think that Hardy supports Elfride just as he supports Tess. The truth about Elfride's previous romantic conduct, as told by Elfride, is far less damning that Mrs Jethway makes it out to be, positioning Elfride as the victim of an overexaggeration rather than the guilty party. I think this realisation is reached by the two male characters at the end, absolving Elfride's blame somewhat. Even without that, it seems to me that Hardy is OK with the choices Elfride makes. He allows her to stand up to Knight, and he also criticises Knight's 'wrongheadedness', which suggests to me that his sympathies lie with the woman rather than the man. It is a little inconsistent, particularly when compared to Tess, and the end result is a little questionable, but it's a good start. A Pair of Blue Eyes, more than anything, showed me that Hardy was sympathetic towards the women that Victorian society so often condemned right from the beginning of his career and merely extended that as he wrote more and more. In light of that, he's even higher up on my list of favourite authors than it was before.
This is an extraordinarily long review, but I still don't think that it has done justice to just how much I love this book. To put it in much simpler, more concise terms, I am obsessed with this book. Pretty much all that has been on my mind over the last few days has been A Pair of Blue Eyes because I loved reading it so much and I was so invested in each and every thing that happened within it. Also, this book felt a lot to me like a mixture of Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Great Gatsby - two of my favourite books of all time. It explored many of the same themes and recalled many of the elements that I loved in one or both of those others, and, when you put it that way, how was I supposed to not love it? A Pair of Blue Eyes was just an absolute joy to read and it made me happier than any other book has in a while. I highly recommend it, both as a precursor to Hardy's masterpiece, Tess (although I will always maintain that Far from the Madding Crowd is his best novel) and as a pretty awesome book in its own right.
January 31, 2021
I read the curiously named A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) as part of a very enjoyable series of forays into Hardy’s ‘minor’ novels over the past few years. It’s my fifth so far, following Desperate Remedies (1871), The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), The Trumpet Major (1880), The Woodlanders (1887), and The Well Beloved (1897). There are none I regret reading, even the madly quirky Ethelberta and The Well Beloved, but A Pair of Blue Eyes is perhaps the pick of the bunch so far.
Interestingly, as I learned from the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition (of which more later), when Hardy came to sift his novels into ‘novels of character and environment’, ‘romances and fantasies’, and ‘novels of ingenuity’, A Pair of Blue Eyes proved tricky for him to place. It migrated between the first and second categories.
You can see Hardy’s point. There are certainly elements of romance in the novel (pointedly, the heroine, Elfride Swancourt, is the author of a medieval romance), and the insistent formal patterning of the novel, with certain key recurring spaces (the clifftop, the church tower, a family vault) gives it a dreamy and fabulistic quality. On the other hand, APOBE works perfectly well as a realist novel. The characters are for the most part strongly drawn—not only the components of the main love triangle (Elfride, the young architect Stephen Smith, his older friend and mentor, Henry Knight), but also Elfride’s self-satisfied, socially climbing vicar father. Hardy’s treatment of the dynamics of love is both faintly perverse (no surprise coming from the author of The Well-Beloved!) and also, to my mind, quite believable. He is very interesting on gender and class and the ways in which they inflect relationships. (APOBE cannibalises Hardy’s first, unpublished novel The Poor Man and the Lady, which shared some of these themes).
Apart from its own strengths as a novel, APOBE holds a great deal of interest for the Hardy fan, both for its foreshadowing of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, which reprises Elfride’s story in a very different key, and also for its autobiographical component. The first part of the novel, describing Stephen’s meeting with Elfride while in Cornwall assisting with the restoration / despoilment of an ancient church, reworks the circumstances of Hardy’s meeting with his first wife Emma Gifford. (I was fascinated to read that Gifford collaborated with Hardy in his composition of the novel, especially given Elfride’s touching and fresh, but, in some ways, rather ambiguous characterisation.) Hardy draws powerfully on the church restoration theme, with its rich metaphorical resonances. It is barely exploited at the beginning, but it later supplies one of the most dramatic and haunting scenes in the book.
APOBE was one of Hardy’s favourites among his novels and a great success with the reading public, even though it’s not much read today. I found myself pondering as I read about canon formation and why some novels within an author’s oeuvre are designated ‘major’, others ‘minor’. Ideally, these are judgements each generation should revisit, not ones that should remain fixed for all time.
One warning: I’d be wary of the Penguin edition, unless you’re prepared to ignore its endnotes until you’ve finished reading. Despite stating in its introduction that ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes depends very heavily upon its surprise ending’, the edition manages to inject three or four massive spoilers into its notes—an annoying and oddly pea-brained editorial choice in what is usually an excellent series.
Interestingly, as I learned from the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition (of which more later), when Hardy came to sift his novels into ‘novels of character and environment’, ‘romances and fantasies’, and ‘novels of ingenuity’, A Pair of Blue Eyes proved tricky for him to place. It migrated between the first and second categories.
You can see Hardy’s point. There are certainly elements of romance in the novel (pointedly, the heroine, Elfride Swancourt, is the author of a medieval romance), and the insistent formal patterning of the novel, with certain key recurring spaces (the clifftop, the church tower, a family vault) gives it a dreamy and fabulistic quality. On the other hand, APOBE works perfectly well as a realist novel. The characters are for the most part strongly drawn—not only the components of the main love triangle (Elfride, the young architect Stephen Smith, his older friend and mentor, Henry Knight), but also Elfride’s self-satisfied, socially climbing vicar father. Hardy’s treatment of the dynamics of love is both faintly perverse (no surprise coming from the author of The Well-Beloved!) and also, to my mind, quite believable. He is very interesting on gender and class and the ways in which they inflect relationships. (APOBE cannibalises Hardy’s first, unpublished novel The Poor Man and the Lady, which shared some of these themes).
Apart from its own strengths as a novel, APOBE holds a great deal of interest for the Hardy fan, both for its foreshadowing of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, which reprises Elfride’s story in a very different key, and also for its autobiographical component. The first part of the novel, describing Stephen’s meeting with Elfride while in Cornwall assisting with the restoration / despoilment of an ancient church, reworks the circumstances of Hardy’s meeting with his first wife Emma Gifford. (I was fascinated to read that Gifford collaborated with Hardy in his composition of the novel, especially given Elfride’s touching and fresh, but, in some ways, rather ambiguous characterisation.) Hardy draws powerfully on the church restoration theme, with its rich metaphorical resonances. It is barely exploited at the beginning, but it later supplies one of the most dramatic and haunting scenes in the book.
APOBE was one of Hardy’s favourites among his novels and a great success with the reading public, even though it’s not much read today. I found myself pondering as I read about canon formation and why some novels within an author’s oeuvre are designated ‘major’, others ‘minor’. Ideally, these are judgements each generation should revisit, not ones that should remain fixed for all time.
One warning: I’d be wary of the Penguin edition, unless you’re prepared to ignore its endnotes until you’ve finished reading. Despite stating in its introduction that ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes depends very heavily upon its surprise ending’, the edition manages to inject three or four massive spoilers into its notes—an annoying and oddly pea-brained editorial choice in what is usually an excellent series.
August 9, 2018
Triste come solo Thomas Hardy sa essere, ma ormai questo è il suo quarto libro che leggo e ci sono abituata. Dopo un po' ti fai le ossa e accetti il destino nefasto dei suoi personaggi. In "Due occhi azzurri" il protagonista è un triangolo amoroso tra Elfride, figlia di un pastore, Stephen, un giovane architetto e Mr Knight, amico e mentore di quest'ultimo. Da una parte c'è il primo amore per Stephen, l'innocenza e l'inesperienza, dall'altra c'è un uomo più maturo che idealizza tantissimo questa ragazza e questa sarà un po' la rovina di tutto. Nei romanzi di Hardy le donne sono quelle che se la passano peggio, ma questo è normale visto l'epoca vittoriana in cui siamo.
Elfride subisce il giudizio di tutti ma la cosa che la corrode di più sono i sensi di colpa.
Risulta comunque una lettura meno tragica rispetto ad altre sue opere, come Jude l'Oscuro. Mentre in Jude il dramma filtrava da quasi ogni pagina qui si percepisce solo nelle ultime pagine (se questo può consolare).
"Due occhi azzurri" è una lettura scorrevole, forse grazie anche a una buona traduzione. Non il "classicone" che tutti credono pesante. Fantastiche come sempre le sue descrizioni dei luoghi, che ti fanno venire voglia di immergerti nei suoi paesaggi.
Elfride subisce il giudizio di tutti ma la cosa che la corrode di più sono i sensi di colpa.
Risulta comunque una lettura meno tragica rispetto ad altre sue opere, come Jude l'Oscuro. Mentre in Jude il dramma filtrava da quasi ogni pagina qui si percepisce solo nelle ultime pagine (se questo può consolare).
"Due occhi azzurri" è una lettura scorrevole, forse grazie anche a una buona traduzione. Non il "classicone" che tutti credono pesante. Fantastiche come sempre le sue descrizioni dei luoghi, che ti fanno venire voglia di immergerti nei suoi paesaggi.
December 7, 2012
From BBC radio 4 Extra:
Thomas Hardy's partly autobiographical story about the love triangle between a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from very different backgrounds
Jeremy Irons is splendid!!!
Thomas Hardy's partly autobiographical story about the love triangle between a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from very different backgrounds
Jeremy Irons is splendid!!!
February 13, 2016
Unforgettable, one of my favorites. To re read one day.
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