48 pages • 1 hour read
The Woodlanders
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Symbols & Motifs
Psychosomatic illness
Throughout The Woodlanders, characters describe illness in terms that suggest psychosomatic disorder. This disorder heavily links mind and body, to the extent that physical illness arises from mental factors. The anticipated return of Dr. Fitzpiers, for instance, causes Grace to experience “a feverish, nervous attack, the result of recent events” (226). This is exacerbated when she sees a hat of Dr. Fitzpiers’s that had been found in the woods. Likewise, Grammer Oliver’s illness becomes morbidly aggravated by awareness of her deal with Dr. Fitzpiers. The doctor gave her 10 pounds to dissect Grammer’s brain when she dies. Grammer’s fear also highlights a phenomenon which recurs throughout the novel; namely, it’s not only events and their impact on the characters’ psyches that cause illness but a related fear of illness and death itself. Mrs Charmond underscores this concept when she says, “Then, when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I become full of fears, till I think I shall die for very fear” (165).
However, in most of these cases the characters recover. Grace’s fleeing from her house to Giles’s cottage resolves her nervous illness. Grammer returns to health once the contract with Dr. Fitzpiers for her brain is torn up. And Mrs. Charmond’s anxiety seems to dissipate when she goes to see a relative in Middleton. The one exception is John South. His illness, caused by fear that a tree outside his window will fall on him and kill him, does in fact lead to his death. This happens, oddly though, when the tree itself is cut down. What this symbolizes is that the tree to which he attributes “human sense” (86) is a symbol for his own, deeper fear of mortality. Paradoxically then, this projection and alleged concern over the tree allows him to avoid the real source of his anxiety: death. Thus, the removal of the tree, and the direct confrontation with his real fear, kills him.
Letters, Misunderstanding, and Fate
After declaring to her father that, despite his loss of home, she still wants to marry Giles, Mr. Melbury shows Grace a letter from Giles formally disavowing interest in her. She wonders whether Giles saw her change the writing on his wall to indicate that she still loved him. Either way, she concludes that “fate, it seemed, would have it this way” (92). This, along with Giles’s inaction, leads her to decide it was not to be, and she eventually ends up marrying Dr. Fitzpiers. Thus, letters and writing, and their misunderstanding and ill timing, play a central role in driving the narrative of The Woodlanders. This is also seen in Marty’s letter to Dr. Fitzpiers. This letter, explaining that part of Mrs. Charmond’s hair was bought from her, provokes a row between Dr. Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond. It is this row which causes Mrs. Charmond to chase after the departed Dr. Fitzpiers and get shot by an ex-lover.
However, it would be wrong to see letters in the novel as merely a plot device. Rather, they also play into what Hardy calls the “truly Sophoclean” (7) character of the dramas in The Woodlanders. As Grace’s comment suggests, the misfiring of letters and writing serves the role that would have been taken by the gods or “fate” in ancient Greek tragedy. They are a strangely arbitrary yet powerful force which can alter the course of entire lives. This is again seen when Giles receives the letter from Mrs. Charmond’s lawyer that makes him homeless. On the other hand, the mix-up of letters regarding Grace’s divorce allows him a rare moment of pleasure. Hearing the news about the divorce’s failure before Grace, he is able to kiss her while she still believes a divorce, and hence a legitimate relationship with Giles, is possible.
The Woods as a Communal and Subversive Stage
While some of the drama of The Woodlanders takes place indoors, in the houses of Marty, Mr. Melbury, Giles, and Mrs. Charmond, many of its important events happen in the Hintock woods. The “barking” process and the Midsummer Eve ritual that establish and cement Dr. Fitzpiers and Grace’s relationship, occur amongst these trees. So too does the climatic meeting between Grace and Mrs. Charmond. Lost in the woods, amidst “funereal trees” (201) and darkness, the two women huddle together for warmth, Mrs. Charmond revealing that she loves Dr. Fitzpiers. As also seen on Midsummer Eve, the woods serve as a social equalizer. Ordinary ideas of hierarchy, and the propriety linked to them, are suspended and problematized when characters share this communal place.
Subversiveness and community also occur in the novel’s defining event: The sacrifice and death of Giles. It is commitment to propriety, staying indoors in separate “properties,” which exacerbates Giles’s typhoid and brings on his demise. It is conversely Grace’s stepping out into the woods to rescue him, regardless of societal norms, which symbolizes her liberation from the strictures of class and propriety. The woods, then, serve as the setting for Giles’s funeral. Mr. Melbury, Grace, Dr. Fitzpiers, Marty, and Giles’s friend Robert Creedle all gather to mourn him there. Hardy describes how the whole wood is at that moment “pervaded by loss to its uttermost length and breadth,” and how the trees he had planted “seemed to show the want of him” (270). It is not just that the woods bring together these socially different individuals as “woodlanders,” it is also that in their sorrow, and their mourning, they are reunited with the wood itself as a place that bears the signs of Giles’s loss.
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By Thomas Hardy
