Avian Mobility and Its Social Significance in Hardy’s The Hand of Ethelberta

초록

Thomas Hardy’s fiction comes to prominence with his characteristic descriptive narration that draws upon visual images or forms. This paper aims to study his descriptive narration in The Hand of Ethelberta (1876) which at best registers socio-cultural significance through avian mobility the protagonist Ethelberta performs in Victorian hierarchical society. Ethelberta of obscure origins all along strives to fly high on the London literary stage but due to her low birth she undergoes difficulties and unbearable pain thereof. Describing her bodily action which recalls the movements of a bird, Hardy successfully visualizes her borderline psychology that manifests itself between high and lower classes. Particular attention is brought to Ethelberta’s flight between high and low or fiction and reality, which are not necessarily in opposition but complementary to each other. It is emphasized that the texture of Hardy’s descriptive narration, which is of a highly complex nature, is shot through by humor, irony, satire, sympathy and/or loving-kindness, rendering her a mysterious and undefinable character. It is concluded that if we scratch the comic surface of the novel, we will discover a black sense of humor aroused by the tension between the aforementioned binaries in opposition and that this tension makes the novel a tragic-comedy.

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