Irving Howe's "At the Center of Hardy's Achievement"

For this blog I will be focusing on one essay in particular: Irving Howe’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles—At the Center of Hardy’s Achievement”.  A major theme in his essay is the protection and defense of women.  How opens his essay with “Thomas Hardy was endowed with a precious gift:  he liked women.”(Howe 406)  He acknowledges that some readers may not like Hardy’s novel and the way he chose to write it, and claims that Hardy himself is a character in the novel, which serves the role of the omniscient narrator who “does not care to pass judgment on his characters.”(407) Howe comes full circle to this observation in the end of his essay when he brings into discussion the idea of Hardy placing himself in the novel to watch over her, “like a stricken father.  He is as tender to Tess as Tess is to the world.  Tender; and helpless.”(422) Howe really stresses in this essay that Hardy is a talented author, but that the “secondary characters” have just as much to say and could serve just as much of a purpose as Tess herself, but that Hardy does not give them the opportunity to do so, particularly in his omniscient role, which is why he stresses the “helpless” in his character.

            I think it’s really refreshing to hear from a critic who is defensive of the author while acknowledging the current criticism surrounding their work; Howe even identifies some of Hardy’s faults, in his writing, such as the plainness of the plot, and it’s similarity to the popular literature at the time.  He says, “As for the plot, it seems in isolation a paltry thing, a mere scraping together of bits and pieces from popular melodrama:  a pure girl betrayed, a woman’s secret to be told or hidden, a piling on of woes that must strain the resources of ordinary credence.”(409)  Howe’s criticism is mingled in with his praise of Hardy’s work, which definitely an indication that he can understand that Hardy has imperfections in his work, but it can also be “one of the greatest examples we have in English literature of how a writer can take hold of a cultural stereotype and, through the sheer intensity of his affection, pare and purify it into something that is morally ennobling.”(408) I can really appreciate the opinion of a critic when they not only present the reasons they support an author’s work, but they also acknowledge its imperfections, and Howe does exactly this in his essay.