Finding a method: A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)

Abstract

In the summer of 1871 Hardy was already sketching in outline his fourth novel, under the provisional title of ‘A Winning Tongue Had He’. Of three novels he had written, one had been abandoned on the advice of publishers and readers, another had been published in March of the same year, and a third was now being considered by Alexander Macmillan. The pressures of getting published inevitably influenced the young author’s artistic decisions, and Hardy’s uncertainty of direction is shown in the diverse qualities of his early novels. The Poor Man and the Lady had been a social satire thought to have missed its mark; Desperate Remedies was a sensation novel; and in Under the Greenwood Tree Hardy had changed direction again and written a pastoral romance. He was feeling his way to a method, as he put it, and A Pair of Blue Eyes, as the new novel was at last entitled, proved to be more than another interesting change. This time the influence of the three earlier works could be seen as Hardy tried to co-ordinate his best effects. It is a bridge between Hardy’s period of initial experimentation and what is generally seen as his mature work.