Wessex Tales

Wessex Tales Summary

Wessex Tales is Thomas Hardy's first collection of short stories, published in 1888. Set in the fictional region of Wessex, these tales explore themes of love, fate, and social class, reflecting the rural life of 19th-century England. The collection includes notable stories such as 'The Three Strangers' and 'The Withered Arm'.

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Wessex Tales Excerpt

Short Summary: This collection of short stories delves into the lives of rural characters in Hardy's fictional Wessex, highlighting their struggles, superstitions, and the impact of societal norms on their destinies.

Excerpt from 'An Imaginative Woman':

"When William Marchmill had finished his inquiries for lodgings at a well-known watering-place in Upper Wessex, he returned to the hotel to find his wife. She, with the children, had rambled along the shore, and Marchmill followed in the direction indicated by the military-looking hall-porter.

'By Jove, how far you've gone! I am quite out of breath,' Marchmill said, rather impatiently, when he came up with his wife, who was reading as she walked, the three children being considerably further ahead with the nurse.

Mrs. Marchmill started out of the reverie into which the book had thrown her. 'Yes,' she said, 'you've been such a long time. I was tired of staying in that dreary hotel. But I am sorry if you have wanted me, Will?'

'Well, I have had trouble to suit myself. When you see the airy and comfortable rooms heard of, you find they are stuffy and uncomfortable. Will you come and see if what I've fixed on will do? There is not much room, I am afraid; but I can light on nothing better. The town is rather full.'

The pair left the children and nurse to continue their ramble, and went back together.

In age well-balanced, in personal appearance fairly matched, and in domestic requirements conformable, in temper this couple differed, though even here they did not often clash, he being equable, if not lymphatic, and she decidedly nervous and sanguine. It was to their tastes and fancies, those smallest, greatest particulars, that no common denominator could be applied. Marchmill considered his wife's likes and inclinations somewhat silly; she considered his sordid and material. The husband's business was that of a gunmaker in a thriving city northwards, and his soul was in that business always; the lady was best characterized by that superannuated phrase of elegance 'a votary of the muse.' An impressionable, palpitating creature was Ella, shrinking humanely from detailed knowledge of her husband's trade whenever she reflected that everything he manufactured had for its purpose the destruction of life. She could only recover her equanimity by assuring herself that some, at least, of his weapons were sooner or later used for the extermination of horrid vermin and animals almost as cruel to their inferiors in species as human beings were to theirs.

She had never antecedently regarded this occupation of his as any objection to having him for a husband. Indeed, the necessity of getting life-leased at all cost, a cardinal virtue which all good mothers teach, kept her from thinking of it at all till she had closed with William, had passed the honeymoon, and reached the reflecting stage. Then, like a person who has stumbled upon some object in the dark, she wondered what she had got; mentally walked round it, estimated it; whether it were rare or common; contained gold, silver, or lead; were a clog or a pedestal, everything to her or nothing.

She came to some vague conclusions, and since then had kept her heart alive by pitying her proprietor's obtuseness and want of refinement, pitying herself, and letting off her delicate and ethereal emotions in imaginative occupations, day-dreams, and night-sighs, which perhaps would not much have disturbed William if he had known of them.

Her figure was small, elegant, and slight in build, tripping, or rather bounding, in movement. She was dark-eyed, and had that marvellously bright and liquid sparkle in each pupil which characterizes persons of Ella's cast of soul, and is too often a cause of heartache to the possessor's husband. Her mouth had a rare sweetness, and as perfect a curve as any moulded by the sculptrice Phryne; and this, too, notwithstanding a trace of firmness that was even sternness. The characteristic expression of her face was a thoughtful, even dreamy, abstraction; and though this was partly the natural shape of its parts, it was also in some measure the result of her own will.

When they reached the house to which he had engaged a lodging, they found the landlady waiting in the passage. She was a placid woman who had never been out of the house in her life, and she received them with a deference that was almost painful to those who did not know her to be glad to welcome lodgers. 'A very airy and comfortable sitting-room,' she said, with a wave of the hand towards the apartment. 'And the bedroom just behind it, and another on the next floor. I hope you'll find everything agreeable, sir?'

Mrs. Marchmill looked round the room. It was indeed airy and light, and commanded a view of the sea. 'The season has been very full, I suppose?' she said.

'Yes, ma'am: a great many visitors have been in town. But things have gone off a little now.'

'And what books have you?' asked Ella, whose eye had been wandering over the table.

'Well, I have not a great many books. But still, there are some. You can see them in the little bookcase.'

Ella went to the case and opened its glass doors. She glanced over the shelves, and saw that the books were not of the ordinary sort that lodging-house keepers keep for visitors. They were a well-selected little library of thoughtful literature—poetry, philosophy, essays, plays; and in the midst of them was a complete set of the works of a well-known poet. 'Whose books are these?' she asked.

'They belong to a gentleman who occupied these apartments for a time. He was a writer—one of the cleverest in England, they say. He left them behind because he could not take them with him.'

Ella felt a momentary thrill. She knew the poet’s name well; she had read many of his works, and admired them. The thought that she was in a room that he had occupied, and among books that he had handled, lent the place a subtle charm.