Love through a Victorian writer’s lens

It’s Valentine’s Day and our thoughts turn to love… But our placement student, Kirsty O’Rourke, has been pondering the subject for some time now! Here’s what she has to say:

“Valentine’s Day – a time of romance, love and heartbreak! The day where we question if it should be celebrated or if it is too cliché. Luckily, I have been researching for Wessex Museums’ first ever podcast on Thomas Hardy, a Wessex writer influenced by Victorian Britain, and one of these episodes happens to be on his idea of love. So, I am going to use Hardy to help me explore what love is.

“Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were ‘couple goals’ of the day. It appeared to many Victorians as the ultimate romance. It’s been suggested that they fell in love almost instantly and the relationship appeared passionate from beginning to end. The Victorians fell in love with the idea of love. I say this as though the Victorians are unique in this.

“I have grown up with romantic films. Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Keira Knightly. Notting Hill, About Time, and (I’m ready for judgement) Twilight. These films have influenced my vision of the ‘perfect’ relationship. The all-consuming, instantaneous love, a relationship filled with passion. Your eyes meet with a stranger and you know that they are the ‘one’. This love, Hardy seemed to desire, too.

“Hardy’s piece Louisa in the Lane was about a girl he had once seen out riding. He caught a glimpse of her and was smitten, but never actually spoke to her. A position I am sure we have all been in where, for no reason, we fall in love with a stranger. Another student who smiled at you, your colleague that opened a door for you, that stranger sat on the train reading the same book as you. Your mind starts whirring. It must be fate. These fleeting moments that we turn into our future is something Hardy experienced, something that seems to be human nature.

“After his wife, Emma Gifford, died he wrote When I Set Out for Lyonnesse. This was about his first encounter with Emma. He wrote about his lack of expectations on his journey there. However, on his way back he had ‘magic in his eyes’ – he had met Emma and fallen in love. But Hardy realised that love was more than ‘first-sight’. He placed love on a pedestal, but his relationships showed him that it doesn’t always last. As Thomas and Emma grew older, they both changed and drifted apart. They were no longer the same people that each other had fallen in love with.

“From the characters in his books, Hardy shows that relationships based on friendship and mutual respect were the relationships that succeeded. In Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy includes three love options for Bathsheba – William, an eligible bachelor, Sergeant Troy, the reckless love that was not love at all, and Gabriel a lifetime friend. The love that triumphed was the one that was based on friendship, forgiveness, and respect. The other possibilities were mere infatuation, or a ‘sensible option’, not love.

“He also wrote about toxic relationships and approached marriage with cynicism. But these topics seem quite heavy for Valentine’s Day, so I’ll stop there.

“Hardy wrote of messy relationships, of love at first sight, and of his experience of marriage and drifting apart. Hardy’s relationships are ones that most of us have experienced. So, on this day of love, what Hardy has shown me is that it is normal to fall in love and to fall out of love. Maybe the Hollywood love I have grown up with is not the love that will last a lifetime. Love is something you work at, a partnership in which your partner may change, a friend. Don’t compare your relationship to the fairy tale love we are brought up on, love is not always that easy.”

If you are interested in the upcoming podcast series on Thomas Hardy, read more about it here.“

Photo: Hardy and his second wife, Florence. Courtesy of Dorset Museum.