An Essay on The Withered Arm, by Thomas Hardy -- English Literature

An Essay on The Withered Arm, by Thomas Hardy ‘The past is a foreign country. They did things differently there.’ ‘The Go Between’ by L.P. Hartley. Thomas Hardy, a Victorian novelist, based his stories on experience of growing up in rural Dorset. Growing up there, he became familiar with the language, customs, practises and stories of the country folk. These stories draw up on his experiences enabling him to write ‘Wessex Tales’. Among many pieces of work is ‘The Withered Arm’. ‘The Withered Arm’ is a well-crafted short story written in the prose format. The quote above portrays what pre-twentieth century literature should embrace; good literature should be insightable, realistic and significant to all people from any era. In this essay I am going to describe the ways in which Thomas Hardy has made his short story, ‘The Withered Arm’ interesting to the modern reader. ‘The Withered Arm’ is about Rhoda Brook, a dark milkmaid who retaliates on her lovers beautiful new wife, Gertrude, after her lover, Farmer Lodge abandons her and their illigimate son. Hardy has carefully structured all the elements of a short story making ‘The Withered Arm’ interesting and perennial to the modern reader. Farmer Lodge’s denial of the affair with Rhoda and the neglection of his son causes Rhoda’s plotting revenge. Employing the character, Conjuror Trendle, brings the involvement of witchcraft and supernatural powers, giving the plot a paranormal twist. The public execution of The Boy immediately grasps the interest of the reader because we learn that in the Victorian times, committing such a petty crime, there is a massive penalty. We also learn that the lives of the people were so habitual, that they thought of executio... ...led and brings out the best in his stories, yet his language maybe a little hard to understand for a modern reader. I do not find the character in ‘The Withered Arm’ a problem at all because although some of those characters no longer exist, Rhoda, Conjuror Trendle, Hangman, it is still interesting to read about their daily lives and how things were for them; after all good literature should be giving the reader and insight on how things were. Even though the reader may not always agree to the philosophies hidden in his themes, it is captivating to imagine how a Victorian writer can relate to such things. I think that ‘The Withered Arm’ is a fantastic example of pre-twentieth century literature because not only is it interesting, but it gives us an insight on the different lives of the different characters and yet is still interesting to the modern reader.