Two In A Tower and The Trumpet Major

Going through a major Thomas Hardy phase, as if teaching ‘Far From The Madding Crowd’ wasn’t enough. I felt his novella, ‘Two In A Tower’ is a marvellous achievement. It’s about a poor, young, pretty astronomer who falls in love with an unhappily married lady of the manor. The pair secretly marry, only to have their plans for happiness ruined by — as ever with Hardy — FATE! It’s the way Hardy paints a portrait of the neurotic, anxious woman and describes the endlessly circular conversations that lovers have that makes this such a subtle portrait. ‘The Trumpet Major’ is a much more inferior work but with moments of greatness: two brothers fall in love with the same girl and there’s endless messing about as to who will win her. The set-pieces, the descriptions of England preparing for the invasion of Napoleon, are great, but the characters felt undefined and unconvincing to me. The villain of the piece, Festus, a cowardly bullying soldier, never amounts to much, and the heroine is very irritating without being psychologically convincing.