by Thomas Hardy Away from the madding crowd is a 19th century novel set in a provincial society. The theme of death in the narrative is represented by the murder of Sergeant Troy and the tragic end of his mistress Fanny Robin. This article discusses Fanny’s death, exploring various narrative techniques and literary devices that Hardy employs, as well as evaluating certain genres to which the novel might be considered to belong.
Away from the madding crowd initially it appears to be a typical realist novel of the 19th century. However, further analysis would reveal the multitude of genres subtly incorporated into its carefully constructed framework. It is this considered combination of popular literary forms, such as the pastoral tale, classical tragedy, and comic romance, that greatly contributes to the novel’s enduring appeal, undermining any dismissive categorization of realistic fiction. Consequently, it is difficult to determine exactly what genre Hardy’s novel could potentially belong to.
One of the literary devices that Hardy uses most frequently is images. Away from the madding crowd it is a novel rich in intensely descriptive detail, a feature that is not merely arbitrary but part of a formidable pictorial design, drawing heavily on the visual arts. Most of the story chapters are clearly episodic in nature, partially implied through the name of each of them. ‘On Casterbridge Highway’ details Fanny Robin’s solitary journey to her asylum where she subsequently dies. Like so many others, this chapter functions as a kind of set piece, with Fanny’s arduous journey framed almost as if it were a scene from a painting, with the author’s prose style occasionally alluding to the academic vernacular of pictorial art. .
This pictorial language manifests itself in a variety of ways, the first in this chapter being the description of Casterbridge Highway, of which the reader is informed as “now indistinct in the gloom of night” (XL, p.258) . The use of the word “twilight” is typical of Hardy’s artistic sensibility, where various light effects and gradations of color are employed to outline certain characters and objects, along with the use of elaborate framing and shifting perspectives, all creating a complex visual image. choreography. The contrast is also evident in the description of the town of Casterbridge as a “luminosity that seems brighter” in relation to the “circumscribed darkness” of the “moonless and starless night” (XL, p.258).
Hardy’s imaginative design has much in common with contemporary impressionist painting of his day, and is perhaps most noticeably dislodged in this particular scene when Fanny catches a glimpse of a woman in a passing carriage. Although Fanny only saw her face momentarily, she still describes herself in great detail: “the general outlines were supple and childish, but the finer features had begun to become sharp and slender” (XL, p.258). What Impressionist painting and Hardy’s prose seem to share is a quality of perception that suggests a fleeting apprehension of a certain object or event rather than a studied and established account.
The 19th-century art critic John Ruskin believed that poets and painters routinely colored their landscapes with subjective moods and emotions, referring to this as “the pathetic fallacy”. In light of his imaginative design, this concept seems especially applicable to Hardy’s fiction, and is evident in the Casterbridge chapter. The vocabulary employed, with descriptive details such as “concave black”, “remote shadow” and “far depths of shadow”, effectively creates a bleak atmosphere of isolation and despair that mirrors Fanny’s situation. This impression is reinforced by the role of sound in the narrative: the manor house clock striking the hour with a “small, subdued tone” (XL, p.258). The sound of a bell is a recurring motif during Fanny’s death, and occurs again during the scene where she frees her coffin from her asylum.
Hardy incorporates a variety of genres in his depiction of the dead Fanny Robin, such as gothic, tabloid, and melodrama. These three stylistic devices are evoked during the scene where Bathsheba looks into Fanny’s coffin. As with many of the places in Away from the madding crowd, the residence of Bathsheba has been vividly described. The reader is aware that it is an “ancient building from the first stage of the Classical Renaissance” with “some gables topped with finials and similar features that still retain traces of their Gothic extraction” (IX, p.73), an appropriate place for the work of Bathsheba. morbid curiosity that suggests the old crumbling castles of eighteenth-century Gothic literature. At night and by candlelight, Bathsheba’s terrible suspicions – “I hope, I hope it’s not true that there are two of you” (XLIII, p.288) – are confirmed when she is received with the body of Fanny and that of the dead babe of the young maiden. , a gruesome and evocative spectacle of tabloid fiction. The narration invokes the nature of melodrama when, as if on cue, Sergeant Troy enters the house: “the front door opened and closed, footsteps crossed the hall, and her husband appeared at the door of the room” ( XLIII, p.291). ), cemented by the somewhat theatrical dialogue between the two characters. The use of these devices undermines any possible realist construction, and by calling attention to the artifice of his novel, Hardy’s writing often seems to question the very notion of realism.
controversial aspects of Away from the madding crowd they are taught through a highly organized imaginative design that incorporates a wide range of genres, such as the pastoral tale, gothic literature, sensational fiction and theatrical melodrama.