Far from the maddening accidents

I must confess to only ever having read one novel by Thomas Hardy. It wasn't even one of the famous ones: it was The Hand of Ethelberta, an unusually light-hearted Hardy novel where nothing very terrible happens. That, I'm afraid, is exactly why I read it. But even without grave misfortunes hailing down on the characters, I found the prose pretty hard going. Yes, the plotting was good, there were memorable set-pieces and the characterisation was strong - it is quite an achievement when you can make readers care for a pronounced goody like Ethelberta's sweet sister. But when even The Hand of Ethelberta isn't an altogether easy read, I wonder what Jude the Obscure must be like.

As someone who claims to have a great interest in Victorian novels, I have often felt that I should read something more by Hardy. I have toyed with the idea of reading Far from the Madding Crowd, as it ends - kind of - happily and I know about the tragic bits in it. But after having re-watched the ITV adaptation with Paloma Baeza, I feel less inclined to give it a go than ever.

I watched the film with Julie Christie when very young, and chiefly remember one thing about it: the dishy Peter Finch as farmer Boldwood gazing devotedly at Julie Christie's Bathsheba with those wonderful eyes. I spent the whole film thinking Bathsheba a goose for not wanting to marry Boldwood - and a good-for-nothing, flirtatious goose at that, sending him that Valentine card and making his heartache worse. The ITV adaptation's handling of the Boldwood affair was enlightening. I'm not saying Nigel Terry doesn't cut a fine and upstanding figure as Boldwood, but he's not Peter Finch, and I suspect that farmer Boldwood really shouldn't be a Peter Finch. A catch in the eyes of the neighbourhood, yes, but not too dreamboaty. Furthermore, in this version, Boldwood has no interest in Bathsheba before he receives the Valentine card - which makes her joke less insensitive - and his passion for her and inability to take no for an answer is slightly unhinged from the start. This makes Bathsheba's behaviour more understandable, though she is still darn silly. In the ITV version, Gabriel Oak, Bathsheba's "best" suitor, is played by Nathaniel Parker, and it's clearly shown that he is shrewd as well as loyal and honest. Falling for the flashy Sergeant Troy instead is about the worst thing Bathsheba could do - but fall for him she duly does.

Silly heroines are nothing new, and I think I could be able to stand Bathsheba Everdene even in the novel format. But the sheer bad luck that keeps upsetting the lives of Hardy's characters, now that's something else. The most well-known - and most parodied - feature of Hardy's novels is the cruel tricks of fate he visits on his poor characters. It is always satisfying to be able to claim that the generally held opinion of an author is a mistaken one or at the very least a simplification, but I'm afraid I've seen nothing to contradict it so far. In Far from the Madding Crowd, Gabriel's farm goes bust because his untutored dog chases all his sheep over a cliff; Sergeant Troy is prevented from marrying his true love Fanny Robin due to a mix-up over the churches; Boldwood goes nuts over that Valentine card which, but for chance, would have been sent to a boy at Bathsheba's farm instead who would have had the sense to take it as the joke it is; and Boldwood's attempts to draw a promise of marriage from Bathsheba are always frustrated at the last minute (admittedly, this is more Troy's fault than fate's). And this all happens in a book which is considered to be lighter fare than the usual run of Hardy novels!

The prolonged agony of Tess Durbeyfield in Polanski's film Tess doesn't exactly have me reaching for Tess of the d'Urbervilles either. If she has to hang, she has to hang, but was all that suffering beforehand really necessary? I'd better stick with what I know, i.e. Dickens and Collins and such - even the villains fare better with them than Hardy's protagonists do.