Under the Greenwood Tree

This is my personal favourite book - probably of all time. Which is surprising, because it's a book with about the least plot you will ever find in a novel. It's also on the short side. Unusually for Hardy's novels. it has a happy ending - however Far from the Madding Crowd, the next one he wrote, does too - it was only as Hardy's reputation grew that he could afford to upset his public at the end of every book. It is quite an autobiographical book. The fictional "Mellstock" is closely based upon the real villages and hamlets of Stinsford and Bockhampton, where Hardy was born and brought up; the Dewey's house is clearly Hardy's birthplace, and the ejection of the quire from the West Gallery based upon the Hardy family's experience with the vicar c. 1840.

The original of the Tranter's House - "Hardy's", Higher Bockhampton, Dorset.  Thomas Hardy's birthplace. 

There are two sub-plots more-or-less intertwined in this story - one is the story of Dick Dewey and his attempts to marry the new schoolmistress, Fancy Day. And that's about all there is to say about that plot.

The other sub-plot is the confrontation between the new vicar, Parson Maybold, and the "quire" of the church. At the time just prior to Hardy's birth, many churches in Dorset still retained the old "quire" - a group of musicians and singers, who led the music in services from the West Gallery, which is behind the congregation. In fact, Hardy's father, grandfather and uncle all played in the Stinsford church quire. The quire at Stinsford was replaced with an organ just about the time of Hardy's birth, and subsequent resentment about this explains why Maybold's removal of the quire is explained, in near-libellous terms, as due to his infatuation with Miss Day himself.

The novel contains the common thread of nearly all Hardy's writing - that of class. While Dick Dewey has been better-educated than the rest of his family, he is still marginally below the class of Fancy Day; her Father may only be a gamekeeper, but her mother was more elevated, and Fancy has had an expensive education. Hence Mr Day's interest in Farmer Shiner, the churchwarden, as a prospecive husband for Fancy; and also Fancy's interest in Maybold the parson. The class distinctions are also made clear between the leading members of the choir and the lesser lights.

Although this is a light-hearted book, the tragic thread of Hardy's writing is always there as well. The sadness of life shows through Mr Penny's daughter, who is pregnant with her fifth child, having already buried three. Thomas Leaf the village idiot is the only one of twelve brothers and sisters to survive even the first few days of life. And Dick gets soaking wet, walking to the funeral of a young friend of his who has died of tuberculosis.

But the reason why the novel is so good, is the portrayal of the assorted rustics. The quire-members are full of traditional reason, pious reasoning and common sense. They enjoy a good time, sing their Christmas carols with devotion, fight with the vicar, gossip and swap old stories. The story brims with all the things that Hardy must have enjoyed in his own childhood, with the problems only hinted at - good drink, good food, good friends, (generally) loving families and the love a naive young man can have for a slighlty more calculating young woman. There are some finely-drawn characters - the wry, cynical "tranter", Reuben Dewey; his father, the cellist in the quire; the determined but unworldly vicar; the gormless but loveable Leaf; the witch; and Geoffrey Day's amazingly strange wife. It's a book that, with a minimal amount of plot, manages to make the atmosphere, and the descriptions of the English seasons, go a long way.

As an aside, the characters turn up in other Hardy novels and poems - Reuben Dewey and Farmer Ledlow (the latter always just off-stage, although his wife gets her own mention in the description of the Christmas Day service) are both dead in Mellstock Churchyard, as is Grandfather William, in Friends Beyond, while William's grave also gets a mention in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The Deweys also crop up, in reference to their playing, in the short story, The Fiddler of the Reels.

Most famous quote - "Good, but not religious-good"

 

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