Specify Of Books The Trumpet-Major
| Title | : | The Trumpet-Major |
| Author | : | Thomas Hardy |
| Book Format | : | Kindle Edition |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 157 pages |
| Published | : | (first published 1880) |
| Categories | : | Classics. Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Literature. 19th Century. Victorian |
Thomas Hardy
Kindle Edition | Pages: 157 pages Rating: 3.68 | 2739 Users | 140 Reviews
Narrative Conducive To Books The Trumpet-Major
After reading Giap: The Victor in Vietnam I felt the need for something to settle my stomach - and hark what lay to hand but an old edition of The Trumpet-Major, ripe for re-reading.I read most of my Thomas Hardy in one go, one Easter in the mid 90s. I had got a boxed set from the Folio society of Hardy's novels for a fiver or some such in return for buying three full priced books a year from them (or something along those lines) and I read a hundred pages before breakfast, two hundred between breakfast and dinner and then as many as I could stomach before going to sleep. So I got through five novels in almost as many days. No doubt leaving me with literary indigestion and a Hardy reader's belly (view spoiler)[ like a beer belly, but less fun (hide spoiler)].
This one, The Trumpet Major, has a historical setting - in contrast to other more well known novels by Hardy which have contemporary or near contemporary settings. The action occurs during the invasion scare prior to 1805 when Napoleon moved the grand army away from Boulogne and crushed the Austrians and their Russian allies, as one recalls from War and Peace at Austerlitz instead, and that battle paralleled by Britain's victory at Trafalgar. The inevitable melancholy of a Hardy novel here is not over the loss of a rural culture, but instead over individual deaths, the drama of the story driven by the encampment of several regiments of horse and foot by the village of Overcome (Wessex), Hardy at moments will fire a canister of battle names at a sentence, reminding us that Waterloo and the Peninsula war lie ahead of these men and that there they will lie lonely in their graves before the fighting is done. This affected me with a little jolt of shock like the ballroom scene from The Leopard (view spoiler)[really - a must read (hide spoiler)], an idea that reaches its apogee I feel in Nostromo serving to show how little future there will be for the characters even before the story gets going as though the author had scrawled "Futility" in big blocky letters over the front page of the manuscript.
Aside from all that it is a charming love square story, in which charming young Anne Garland is obliged to chose (view spoiler)[ this is a narrow society in which an unmarried woman seen more than a couple of time in proximity to a man without bring married to him is thought to be a Jezebel, and a few times more, the same but multiplied by Potifer's wife, it is also a very English society marked by continual gradations in social status which some feel must be defended at the risk of social demotion (hide spoiler)]between two doughty sons of the neighbouring miller Loveday (in whose mill building the Widow Garland and her charming daughter rent a dwelling), one - unreliable and a sailor as well as being her childhood sweetheart, the second - the eponymous and faithful Trumpet-Major, the third option is Hardy's take on Mr Darcy - a bombastic, boozy, braggart in this story known as Festus Derriman, whose only merit is his relative wealth.
From the first it was surprisingly comic - humour isn't a word I tend to yoke with Tom Hardy together, what with its "trifling deficiency of teeth" and other sly observations, the widow preferring to think of the flour dust that permeates her home as the 'stuff of life' or delightfully understated accounts of war wounds(view spoiler)[ 'Why what's the matter with thy face, my son?' said the miller, staring. 'David, show a light here.' And a candle was thus against Bob's cheek, where there appeared a jagged streak like the geological remains of a lobster. 'O- that's where that rascally Frenchman's grenade busted and hit me from the Redoubtable, you know, as I told 'ee in my letter.' ' Not a word!' 'What , didn't I tell 'ee? Ah, no; I meant to, but I forgot it.' 'And here's a sort of dint in yer forehead too; what do that mean, my dear boy?' said the miller, putting his finger in a chasm in Bob's skull.'That was done in the Indies. Yes, that was rather a troublesome chop - a cutlass did it. I should have told 'ee, but I found 'twould make my letter so long that I put it off, and put it off; and at last thought it wasn't worth while.' (p350) (hide spoiler)] and cussing parrots. Since this is an early novel - of 1880, originally published in three volumes as was the custom of those times it seems his vision got only darker over time until he gave up writing novels altogether.
In Hardy's later novels we see the destruction and disappearance of a way of life to be replaced by an English rural new order which in turn vanished round about WWII to be replaced by another, which with the possible appearance of US style Mega- dairies and potentially the end of some farm subsidies in our current brave new economic and political environment is itself to disappear, however in setting his story back in the 'good old days' we see a society that is not bucolic, it is interconnected with a wider world of violence, which is out of it's control, not just the shadows of future deaths but also the veterans of past wars like a man with a metal plate fixed in his skull and rattling arm bones. This is also an interconnected world, fine fabrics and fancy hats from foreign places also intrude but not yet tea or coffee, here beer & cider still reign supreme, and in that the happiness of some is affected by the inabilities of others to live with their own emotions, Derriman differs from D'arbyville in being unsuccessful as a rapist, his efforts tend more towards the comically melodramatic of a Dick Darstardly, winding up to marry that other threat to rural society - the actress who may, for a consideration rendered in coin of the realm,in a most intimate manner, have raised the morale of most of the officers of a regiment of dragoons, not for his own pleasure, but in the false belief that by so doing he'd spite a love rival (view spoiler)[ This one would be easily adaptable for television but for the pesky regiments of horse and foot, though Festus might add too much a flavour of Benny Hill, the evinced patriotism and sense of a little island prepared to fight off hordes or foreigners threatening to visit our shore would suit, sadly, current preoccupations (hide spoiler)]. As tends to be the case in Hardy, and may be you've noticed this some times - hopefully at a safe distance - in the lives of others too, self-destructive drives produce a lot of collateral damage.
This volume I misappropriated from my mother's shelves, an old paperback originally six shillings in price, which sounds like an incredible sum of money even though 'tis only thirty pence in new money.
Itemize Books Toward The Trumpet-Major
| Original Title: | The Trumpet-Major John Loveday, A Soldier in the War with Buonaparte, and Robert His Brother ASIN B004UJI9NW |
| Edition Language: | English |
Rating Of Books The Trumpet-Major
Ratings: 3.68 From 2739 Users | 140 ReviewsColumn Of Books The Trumpet-Major
The Trumpet-Major is a novel by Thomas Hardy set during the time of the Napoleonic Wars and first published as a serial in Good Words from January to December 1880. It seems like a lot of books in the 1800's were published in serial form, I'm glad I wasn't there for it, I want to read my books all at one time. Hardy says of the novel in the introduction: "The external incidents which direct its course are mostly an unexaggerated reproduction of the recollections of old persons well known to theOh Thomas, Read June 2014We were doing so well, you and I. I was thinking of reading your poetry and planning Far from the Madding Crowd as my next big read. And then came along The Trumpet-Major. It started well, although a bit mellow for you, but then turned into what felt like (but was not actually) a long, long, long read. Your love quandrangle between boring Anne and her three suitors is a bit, well, dull. The plot and choices are very Austen, but without her sparkle. Your characters are a
I am amazed this is the first Thomas Hardy book I have ever read, and can't believe it took me this long to read one by this fantastic author! My husband gave me the DVD of "Far from the Maddening Crowd" and I decided to read some of his other works, this being one of them.The plot of "The Trumpet-Major" is fantastic, with so many twists along the way that I was shocked on the last page at the outcome!To summarise, Anne is a woman sought out by three different men... two brothers and the
Anne Garland is quite possibly Hardy's least appealing heroine, which unfortunately makes this his least appealing novel. Status-conscious, shy, cold, boring beyond her years, with no apparent talents or hobbies, Anne finds herself the object of the affections of two working-class brothers as well as the heir of the kindly local squire. Anne is unlike other 'Hardy Girls' and Hardy is unlike himself in this story. He more interested in the military maneuvers during the Napoleonic wars than he is
A good time at reading with the beautiful Anne Garland and the two brothers John and Bob Loveday, and many other minor characters (not always nice elsewhere), all in a beautiful English countryside at the time of the Napoleonic wars. A provincial idyll? Not only.3 worthy stars.
fraudionapoleonicwar1880victorianhistorical fic (believe this is the only foray into hist-fic that Mr Hardy made)Unabridged; 10.7 hours; read by Simon Vance.blurb - Anne Garland, who lives with her widowed mother in a mill owned by Miller Loveday, has three suitors: the local squire's nephew Festus and the miller's two sons, Robert and John. While Festus' aggressive pursuit deters the young woman from considering him as a husband, the indecisive Anne wavers between light-hearted Bob and gentle,
Hardy as historian (w/ the prefatory note & footnotes) made for an interesting extra to the narrative, and I was lucky enough to be wandering/driving round some of the settings while reading it. Not sure what to make of Ms Garland and her eventual situation, however, nor of the author's attitude towards her. Still thinking about it -- but a typically rich and rewarding read. Plenty of lexical challenges, too, whether via dialect or era; even the OED was stumped occasionally.(Didn't get to
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