Geography not being one of my strong points (do people actually have strong geographical points?) I found myself looking up Wessex on Wikipedia. The entry ran; Wessex ( Old English West Sussex/ The Kingdom Of The West Saxons.)was an Anglo-saxon kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from 519 until England was unified by Aethelstan in 927. Hmmmmm...
Was expecting something a wee bit more than as an introduction to a Parte Of Olde Englande I Am Not So Familiar With. Maybe I should have looked it up in the Hitch-hikers Guide To The Universe rather than Wikipedia. I imagine it would probably have an entry such as ; Mostly Farmland.
That is certainly what comes across in these six stories by Thomas Hardy. Plain old country folk going about their business in their old country ways. Yet simmering always beneath the surface are raging passions, some of which prove to be heart breakingly frustrated by the social norms of the day. Despite the wildness of the surrounding country side man made repression is everywhere. Emotions stifled and smothered under the weight of religious oppression.
Life is hard in the place and times these stories bridge. even the road to the end of life is not an easy pathway. Unrequited love abounds, as do melancholy hussars and frustrated farm workers, all mixed ina heady brew of insane landed gentry. These are sad tales which lean at times to the macabre.tales of foolish but very human hearts who awake to the possibilities of love just in time to be too late. Men and women who expire in despair or who perish of ennui. I found myself smiling grimly at one twist in a tale that would not have been out of place in a Roger Corman Edgar Allen Poe adaption, inspiring a head shaking ghostly reveal and all.
At this point I wonder if I am underselling or overselling this collection.
Thomas Hardy is very hard on the characters he created. Always providing the readers with more insight than he ever gives them. As such, we know the cures, the answers to their predicaments, but they being fictional and we being all too real, cannot share those answers with them.
Six tales of the rum and uncanny. Good company during this or any other lockdown.
