The musicality of Thomas Hardy: a study of his mature fiction

Ingham, Helen R.A. ORCID: 0000-0002-8602-960X (2025). The musicality of Thomas Hardy: a study of his mature fiction. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates how Hardy, as a man who viewed the world in musical terms, interprets this viewpoint in his fiction as a means of preserving the past as he heard it, and coming to terms with a future he had not anticipated. Through an in-depth analysis of his later fiction, each chapter considers the relationship between Hardy’s past and present moments with an increasing awareness of Hardy’s own interrogation of the music and sounds he encountered. Chapter one considers time and transition in The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), chapter two analyses musicalised sexuality through a comparison of Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) and the short story ‘The Fiddler of the Reels’ (1894), and chapter three delves into the sonic substratum of Jude the Obscure (1895).

For Hardy, music is not just an aspect of his work, but the quintessential element. His use of music throughout his writing, as allusion, metaphor, description, and reminiscence, is then concentrated on the tension between the past and his current cultural moment. Through the whole body of his work, Hardy strives to preserve the soundscape and musical heritage of his youth. His biographical grounding in church music and the folkloric traditions of his community means he does this by deconstructing music into its constituent parts, in order to understand the significance of music on a universal scale. Hardy uses music to frame the past and interrogate impending modernity. This is worked out across his novels as an arc which moves, as his own musicality develops, from traditional festivals, dancing and music to modern ideas of corrupted voice and distorted meaning, reflecting the bigger issues of the day.

Through his characters and their engagement with their sonic environments, Hardy reveals an understanding of music, not only as the supreme expression of emotion and a sure way of experiencing life at its fullest, but also as a universal experience which fuses all past with the ever unfolding present moment in a universal soundscape.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):