(Mis)Reading Hardy: ‘Wessex’ as green imaginary

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the parallels between Thomas Hardy’s depiction of ‘Wessex’, and Kirkpatrick Sale’s utopian vision of the bioregion. Although a fragmentary composite of the ideal and the actual, Hardy’s Wessex can be (re)interpreted as a form of ‘green imaginary’, an idea that finds its fullest expression in The Woodlanders. Nevertheless, there are contrasts as well as similarities between Wessex and bioregion. In particular, Hardy’s ‘partly real, partly dream country’ challenges both the viability and desirability of the bioregion as exclusionary entity, concerns that have grown steadily more relevant in the light of both globalised capitalism and a global environment crisis. However, Hardy’s sense of place is itself more fluid and wide ranging than the (perhaps inevitable) association of Wessex with the local and parochial. Reread in terms of a process of imaginative reinvestment in the local and the global – a process that is most obvious in The Dynasts – Hardy’s Wessex suggests a different and more adaptable kind of ‘ecological thought’. It also raises serious questions about the extent to which human ‘nature’ is itself compatible with environmental ideals. Ultimately, therefore, the most ecotopian aspect of Hardy’s Wessex may be its conventional, realist emphasis on human scale and human agency, and the promissory possibility that the individual can in the end make a difference.

Keywords:

• Thomas Hardy
• Wessex
• Kirkpatrick Sale
• bioregion
• sustainable
• utopia

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adrian Tait

Adrian Tait completed his PhD in 2011, entitled ‘An Eco-critical Approach to the Poetry of Thomas Hardy: from Wessex Poems to Time’s Laughingstocks’. He continues to research Hardy’s poetic vision of the environment, and he has published related papers in Green Letters (2011) and The Hardy Society Journal (2012).