Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

• Tess Durbeyfield
• Alec d'Urberville
• Angel Clare

Plot summary:

• Tess is a simple country girl whose father's pretensions to social status lead her into the company of the nouveau-riche d'Urberville family.
• Tess is made pregnant by Alec d'Urberville but the child she bears soon dies. 
• While working as a milkmaid she encounters the morally upright Angel Clare who falls in love with her and marries her.
• Angel abandons Tess after learning about her past and Tess is lured into a liaison with Alec once again. Tess lives with Alec as his mistress.
• Angel, repentant, returns to reclaim her, and Tess murders Alec in order to be with her legal husband. 
• Tess and Angel flee together but the police catch up with them and Tess is hanged for the murder of Alec.

The Mayor of Casterbridge

• Michael Henchard
• Susan
• Elizabeth Jane
• Donald Farfrae
• Lucetta
• Newson

Plot summary:

• Under the influence of alcohol, Michael Henchard, a young hay-trusser, sells his wife and daughter in a country fair to a sailor, Newson. After the incident, he swears never to touch liquor again.
• 18 years later, Henchard, now a successful grain merchant and the mayor of Casterbridge, is reunited with Susan, his wife, and his daughter, Elizabeth Jane, but this sets in motion a decline in his fortunes.
• Elizabeth Jane falls in love with Donald Farfrae, whom Henchard has employed as an assistant.
• Until Susan's death, Henchard is unaware that Elizabeth Jane is not his own child, but that of the sailor's. 
• Henchard's growing resentment of Donald leads to his standing in the way of a marriage between Donald and Elizabeth Jane.
• Henchard's former mistress, Lucetta, arrives in town and marries Donald instead. Rumors of her previous relationship with Henchard are spread and both are disgraced. Lucetta dies.
• When Newson returns, Henchard, afraid of losing Elizabeth Jane's companionship, pretends she is dead. However, she is now married to Donald and is reunited with Newson anyway. Newson goes looking for Henchard to forgive him but he has already died.

Jude the Obscure

• Jude Fawley
• Arabella
• Sue Bridehead
• Phillotson

Plot summary:

• Jude Fawley is a stonemason who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modeled on Oxford. 
• Jude is denied entry to the university and instead is manipulated into marriage with a country girl, Arabella, who soon deserts him.
• Jude becomes obsessed with his cousin Sue Bridehead but she marries his former schoolteacher. Her marriage is however unhappy.
• Jude and Sue begin living together, but because of this illicit relationship, employers and landowners constantly dismiss and evict them. 
• Jude's eldest son from his previous marriage, also called Jude but known as "Little Father Time", after observing the problems he and his siblings are causing his parents, hangs his two half-siblings and himself. They leave a note, "Done because we are too menny."
• This tragedy ends Jude's relationship with Sue who returns to her first husband, Phillotson. Jude is tricked into remarrying Arabella.
• Jude falls ill and visits Sue one last time. Sue confirms her love for him before leaving him forever. Jude returns home and dies alone as Arabella is out courting his doctor.

Far from the Madding Crowd

Title taken from Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard."

• Batsheba Everdene
• Gabriel Oak
• William Boldwood
• Sergeant Francis Troy
• Fanny Robin
• Liddy Smallbury

Plot summary:

• Gabriel Oak, a shepherd, falls in love with Bathsheba Everdene, but she refuses his proposal of marriage. Bathsheba moves to Weatherbury.
• Gabriel loses all his money and seeks work in a town close to Weatherbury. On the way there he helps bystanders put out a farm on fire, which belongs to Bathsheba and which she has recently inherited. Bathsheba hires him.
• Bathsheba has a new admirer, William Boldwood. Bathsheba playfully sends him a valentine sealed with red wax on which she has embossed the words "Marry me", and Boldwood, not realizing the valentine was a joke, becomes obsessed with her. Bathsheba toys with the idea of accepting his proposal of marriage but she postpones giving him a definite marriage. When Gabriel rebukes her for her thoughtlessness, she fires him.
• When her sheep begin dying from bloat, she offers Gabriel back his job and their friendship is restored. 
• Sergeant Francis Troy returns to Weatherbury and piques Bathsheba's interest. She elopes to Bath with Troy but upon their return, Boldwood offers Troy a large bribe to give up Bathsheba. Troy pretends to consider but then scornfully announces that they are already married.
• Bathsheba discovers that Troy is a gambler with little interest in farming. He is also in love with Fanny Robin, whom he was supposed to marry - on the wedding day, Fanny went to the wrong church, but Troy was humiliated and called off the wedding. Fanny is pregnant with his child without his knowledge.
• Troy and Bathsheba encounter Fanny on the way to the workhouse but Troy sends Bathsheba onwards before she recognizes Fanny. She dies of childbirth, along with the baby. Bathsheba guesses Fanny's identity and arranges for the coffin to be left in her house overnight. 
• Troy comes home and sees the coffin. He erects a white marble tombstone in Fanny's honor. Then he leaves to the coast, where a strong current carries him away.
• A year later, Troy is presumed dead and Boldwood renews his suit. Bathsheba reluctantly agrees to marry him in six years. 
• Troy, however, is not dead, and returns to Weatherbury to reclaim his wife. When he demands Bathsheba to return with him from Boldwood's house, she screams, causing Boldwood to shoot Troy dead. 
• Boldwood is condemened to hang for murder but his friends petition for a plea of insanity. Boldwood is instead put into prison.
• Bathsheba buries Troy with Fanny Robin. She realizes that her only real friend has been Gabriel, but he gives notice to her that he is leaving her employ because people have been injuring her good name by gossiping that he wants to marry her. They eventually confess their feelings for each other and marry. 

"The Darkling Thrush"

I leant upon a coppice gate
   When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
   The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
   Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
   Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
   The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
   The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
   Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
   Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
   The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
   Of joy illimited;
An agèd thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
   In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
   Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
   Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
   Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
   His happy good-night air
Some blessèd Hope, whereof he knew
   And I was unaware.

"Channel Firing"

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgement-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worm drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God cried, “No;
It’s gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

“All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

“That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them’s a blessed thing,
For if it were they’d have to scour
Hell’s floor for so much threatening. . . .