Saving Face
Saving Face

Respecting Nature’s Inversions in Thomas Hardy’s "A Pair of Blue Eyes"

Author(s): Rebecca W. Boylan
Subject(s): Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Studies of Literature, Philology, History of Art, British Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Thomas Hardy; inversion; gender; class; nature; perception; image; realism
Summary/Abstract: In Thomas Hardy’s "A Pair of Blue Eyes", nature precipitates a drama in which female ingenuity and chivalry save the life of the cliff-clutching Henry Knight. Hardy narrates this in photographic impressions of disrupted realism: while Nature’s inversion both protects and threatens to destroy, a woman’s rescue of a man momentarily promises a new regard for the woman but eventually releases a torrent of destructive secrets and lies. This article contemplates Hardy’s regard for such inversions in nature – both human and atmospheric – to reflect on the novel’s preoccupation with gender identity. Borrowing from such scholars as Jonathan Crary, J. Hillis Miller, Mary Rimmer, and Timothy Hands, it observes the nineteenth-century transformation of human and natural forces as “inversions” that bring romantic confusions. Hardy’s sympathies suggest that inversion can actually preserve the fraught truths of both natural and human experiences.

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