An Essay on The Withered Arm, by Thomas Hardy

An Essay on The Withered Arm, by Thomas Hardy

‘The past is a foreign country. They did things differently there.’

‘The Go Between’ by L.P. Hartley.

Thomas Hardy, a Victorian novelist, based his stories on experience of

growing up in rural Dorset. Growing up there, he became familiar with

the language, customs, practises and stories of the country folk.

These stories draw up on his experiences enabling him to write ‘Wessex

Tales’. Among many pieces of work is ‘The Withered Arm’. ‘The Withered

Arm’ is a well-crafted short story written in the prose format. The

quote above portrays what pre-twentieth century literature should

embrace; good literature should be insightable, realistic and

significant to all people from any era. In this essay I am going to

describe the ways in which Thomas Hardy has made his short story, ‘The

Withered Arm’ interesting to the modern reader.

‘The Withered Arm’ is about Rhoda Brook, a dark milkmaid who

retaliates on her lovers beautiful new wife, Gertrude, after her

lover, Farmer Lodge abandons her and their illigimate son. Hardy has

carefully structured all the elements of a short story making ‘The

Withered Arm’ interesting and perennial to the modern reader. Farmer

Lodge’s denial of the affair with Rhoda and the neglection of his son

causes Rhoda’s plotting revenge. Employing the character, Conjuror

Trendle, brings the involvement of witchcraft and supernatural powers,

giving the plot a paranormal twist. The public execution of The Boy

immediately grasps the interest of the reader because we learn that in

the Victorian times, committing such a petty crime, there is a massive

penalty. We also learn that the lives of the people were so habitual,

that they thought of executio...

... middle of paper ...

...led and brings out the best in his stories, yet his language maybe

a little hard to understand for a modern reader. I do not find the

character in ‘The Withered Arm’ a problem at all because although some

of those characters no longer exist, Rhoda, Conjuror Trendle, Hangman,

it is still interesting to read about their daily lives and how things

were for them; after all good literature should be giving the reader

and insight on how things were. Even though the reader may not always

agree to the philosophies hidden in his themes, it is captivating to

imagine how a Victorian writer can relate to such things. I think that

‘The Withered Arm’ is a fantastic example of pre-twentieth century

literature because not only is it interesting, but it gives us an

insight on the different lives of the different characters and yet is

still interesting to the modern reader.