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his adored only child a superior education and no longer considers Giles good enough for her. When the new doctor – a well-born and handsome young man named Edred
Fitzpiers – takes an interest in Grace, her father does all he can to make Grace forget Giles, and to encourage what he sees as a brilliant match. Grace has misgivings prior to the marriage as she sees a village woman (Suke Damson) coming out of his cottage very early in the morning and suspects he has been sleeping with her. She tells her father that she does not want to go on with the marriage and he becomes very angry. Later Fitzpiers tells her Suke has been to visit him because she was in agony from toothache and he extracted a molar. Grace clutches at this explanation – in fact Fitzpiers has started an affair with Suke some weeks previously. After the honeymoon, the couple take up residence in an unused wing of Melbury's house. Soon, however, Fitzpiers begins an affair with a rich widow named Mrs. Charmond, which Grace and her father discover. Grace finds out by chance that Suke Damson has a full set of teeth and realises that Fitzpiers lied to her. The couple become progressively more estranged and Fitzpiers is assaulted by his father-in-law after he accidentally reveals his true character to him. Both Suke Damson and Mrs Charmond turn up at Grace's house demanding to know whether Fitzpiers is all right - Grace addresses them both sarcastically as "Wives -all". Fitzpiers later deserts Grace and goes to the Continent with Mrs Charmond. Grace realises that she has only ever really loved Giles but as there is no possibility of divorce feels that her love seems hopeless.
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sufficient for Grace to be entitled to a divorce. When
Fitzpiers quarrels with Mrs. Charmond and returns to Little Hintock to try to reconcile with his wife, she flees the house and turns to Giles for help. He is still convalescing from a dangerous illness, but nobly allows her to sleep in his hut during stormy weather, whilst he insists on sleeping outside. As a result, he dies. After it is learned that Mrs Charmond has died, murdered by a jealous former lover, Grace allows herself to be won back to the (at least temporarily) repentant Fitzpiers, thus sealing her fate as the wife of an unworthy man. This is after Suke's husband Timothy Tangs has set a man trap to try to crush Fitzpiers' leg but it only tears Grace's skirt.
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illness, she welcomes Mrs
Charmond and Suke Damson into the bedroom with the unsubtle, "Indeed, you have a perfect right to go into his bedroom Wives all, let's enter together!" When abandoned by him, she calls nature "bountiful" in so soon replacing him with another, tender form of "undiluted manliness" - Giles.
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marks the beginnings of controversy for Hardy's novels. At this point in his career he was established enough as a writer to take risks, especially in the areas of sexuality, such as marriage, divorce, marital fidelity, and the use of unconventional plots and tones, and seemingly immoral conclusions.
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The novel was later classified by Hardy for the Wessex
Edition of his works in the primary group of "Novels of Character and Environment". Yet despite it being regarded as one of Hardy's major novels, the novel is 'something of an anomaly', in comparison with the tragic depth of both its predecessor
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and
Charles Jarvis for permission to adapt it for performance in 1889. But although various drafts were written, the project came to nothing. It was not until 1913 that A.H. Evans' play in 3 acts was produced by the Dorchester Debating and Dramatic Society; the performance was also taken to London
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No one is left to mourn Giles except a courageous peasant girl named Marty South, who has always loved him. Marty is described as a plain girl but one with beautiful hair. She is persuaded to sell this at the start of the story to a barber who is procuring it for Mrs
Charmond, after Marty realises
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The story takes place in a small woodland village called Little
Hintock, and concerns the efforts of an honest woodsman, Giles Winterborne, to marry his childhood sweetheart, Grace Melbury. Although they have been informally betrothed for some time, her father has made financial sacrifices to give
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That marriage is less-than-exclusive in the novel is highlighted most clearly through the words and thoughts of Grace
Melbury; as heroine and betrayed wife of an unfaithful husband, she ought to represent the moral centre, but she openly acknowledges sexual and marital infidelity. On Fitzpiers'
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Melbury is told by a former legal clerk down on his luck that the law was changed in the previous year (making the setting of the action 1858) and divorce is now possible. He encourages Giles to resume his courtship of Grace. It later becomes apparent, however, that
Fitzpiers' adultery is not
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The novel reflects common Hardy themes: a rustic, evocative setting, poorly chosen marriage partners, unrequited love, social class mobility, and an unhappy, or at best equivocal, ending. As with most his other works, opportunities for fulfilment and happiness are forsaken or delayed.
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in 1983 and in the following century two dramatic adaptations of the novel went on tour in the West
Country. In 2013 the New Hardy Players put on Emily Fearn's version, and in 2016 the Hammerpuzzle Theatre Company put on Tamsin Kennard's version.
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that Giles loves Grace and not her. She precipitates the final quarrel between Fitzpiers and Mrs Charmond by writing to Fitzpiers and telling him of the origin of most of Mrs Charmond's hair.
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338:(1999) for soprano, two clarinets, violin and cello. This was described by Payne himself as "a strange hybrid, midway between song cycle and tone poem".
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London and the Life of Literature in Late Victorian England: the Diary of George Gissing, Novelist. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978, p24.
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Casagrande, Peter J. (March 1971). "The Shifted '"Centre of Altruism" in The Woodlanders: Thomas Hardy's Third "Return of the Native"".
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recounted that Hardy named it to him as his "favourite novel", and 25 years after its publication, Hardy wrote that, "On taking up
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read the novel in March 1888 "with much delight" but felt that the "human part is...painfully unsatisfactory".
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asked for a new serial in October 1884. It was published as a serial in this magazine and in the American
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Icons in the Fire: The Rise and Fall of Practically Everyone in the British Film Industry 1984–2000
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was also drawn from this by Paulus and in 1999 four descriptive passages were set by
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Music in Their Time: The Memoirs and Letters of Dora and Hubert Foss
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and reading it after many years, I like it as a story best of all."
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and published in three volumes in 1887. It is one of his series of
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Soon after the novel's publication, Hardy was approached by
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Lloyd, Stephen, Sparkes, Diana, Sparkes, Brian (editors):
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Weber, Carl J. (July 1939). "Hardy and The Woodlanders".
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201:. It was intended to be the successor to his 1874
509:(2005), "Introduction", in Kramer, Dale (ed.),
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287:made the novel into a film in 1970, starring
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322:in 1985. A decade later it was performed at
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1296:British novels adapted into films
1057:Poems of the Past and the Present
389:or Realism in Sheep's Clothing".
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1239:Florence Dugdale (second wife)
326:in February 1995. A 15-minute
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1049:Wessex Poems and Other Verses
1017:Barbara of the House of Grebe
977:A Changed Man and Other Tales
534:The Review of English Studies
405:10.1525/ncl.1955.9.4.99p0250g
1173:The Convergence of the Twain
336:Scenes from “The Woodlanders
320:Opera Theatre of Saint Louis
745:public domain audiobook at
583:, Palgrave Macmillan 1994,
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1316:Novels adapted into operas
1031:A Tragedy of Two Ambitions
854:Far from the Madding Crowd
392:Nineteenth-Century Fiction
328:Suite from the Woodlanders
308:Scene from The Woodlanders
203:Far from the Madding Crowd
16:1887 novel by Thomas Hardy
1234:Emma Gifford (first wife)
918:Tess of the d'Urbervilles
902:The Mayor of Casterbridge
822:The Poor Man and the Lady
158:Tess of the D'Urbervilles
152:The Mayor of Casterbridge
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1024:The Fiddler of the Reels
870:The Return of the Native
838:Under the Greenwood Tree
654:, Orion Books, 2005 p271
547:10.1093/res/os-XV.59.330
33:First edition title page
1152:The Respectable Burgher
1080:Satires of Circumstance
945:Short story collections
567:Coustillas, Pierre ed.
515:Oxford University Press
312:Oxford University Press
1306:Novels by Thomas Hardy
1224:Thomas Hardy's Cottage
1166:A Trampwoman's Tragedy
961:A Group of Noble Dames
862:The Hand of Ethelberta
174:Marriage and sexuality
1255:Thomas Hardy's Wessex
1065:Time's Laughingstocks
969:Life's Little Ironies
581:Thomas Hardy on Stage
596:University of Ottawa
237:Arthur Quiller-Couch
210:Macmillan's Magazine
195:Florence Emily Hardy
116:Macmillan's Magazine
1291:1887 British novels
1138:The Darkling Thrush
996:The Three Strangers
846:A Pair of Blue Eyes
692:Charles C. Pettit,
277:Salisbury Playhouse
241:William Lyon Phelps
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1041:Poetry collections
830:Desperate Remedies
650:Alexander Walker,
517:, pp. xi–xxvi
155:and its successor
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1159:The Man He Killed
1088:Moments of Vision
878:The Trumpet-Major
730:Project Gutenberg
629:Hammerpuzzle site
431:"The Woodlanders"
318:and premiered by
144:Literary analysis
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1260:Egdon Heath
1201:(1904–1908)
1198:The Dynasts
1104:Human Shows
1096:Late Lyrics
886:A Laodicean
579:K. Wilson,
293:Ralph Bates
266:Adaptations
1285:Categories
369:References
272:Jack Grein
190:Background
97:Wikisource
921:(1891/92)
429:(1990) .
299:of 1997.
222:Reception
67:Publisher
1229:Max Gate
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747:LibriVox
585:pp.29-30
123:novels.
49:Language
1248:Related
482:2872365
413:3044391
52:English
1209:(1923)
1115:(1928)
1107:(1925)
1099:(1922)
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814:Novels
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760:(1997)
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165:Themes
121:Wessex
39:Author
1190:Plays
1123:Poems
551:JSTOR
478:JSTOR
409:JSTOR
342:Notes
61:Novel
57:Genre
1217:Life
770:IMDb
758:IMDb
439:ISBN
291:and
283:The
87:Text
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768:at
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