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A Review of Thomas Hardy's Life's Under the Greenwood Tree |
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Aficionados of the dour Hardy might take offense at the levity and light of this, his second published novel. Focused sharply and exclusively on the country folk of the rural England in which Hardy grew up, Under the Greenwood Tree melds a rather conventional boy-meets-girl plot to the characterizations and doings of the uneducated men who sing for the Lord at the Mellstock church. Though Hardy's trademark irony is present, it is submerged in and leavened by the goodwill and affection that animate this book. When young Dick Dewy is running late for his own wedding, because of the inopportune swarming of bees into the hive his mother has given him for his new household, Dick's grandfather James notes, "Well, bees can't be put off. . . . Marrying a woman is a thing you can do at any moment but a swarm o' bees won't come for the asking." Practical advice, that, and still worth a chuckle 130 years down the line. |
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