The Hand of Ethelberta

Sol's bitter chiding had been the first thing to discompose her fortitude. It reduced her to a consciousness that she had allowed herself to be coerced in her instincts, and yet had not triumphed in her duty. She might have pleased her family better by pleasing her tastes, and have entirely avoided the grim irony of the situation disclosed later in the day.

Class disguise, Mountclere marriage, and Sol's discovery form a comedy of social climbing with ironic domestic close rather than Hardy tragedy; the ledger is complete but lighter, so plot scores 84.

Young Mrs. Petherwin stepped from the door of an old and well-appointed inn in a Wessex town to take a country walk. By her look and carriage she appeared to belong to that gentle order of society which has no worldly sorrow except when its jewellery gets stolen; but, as a fact not generally known, her claim to distinction was rather one of brains than of blood.

Ethelberta, Picotee, Christopher, Mountclere, and the Chickerels are individuated by class performance and kinship loyalty without flattening into farce only, so cast scores 86.

At the Lodge at this time a discussion of some importance was in progress. The scene was Mrs. Chickerel's bedroom, to which, unfortunately, she was confined by some spinal complaint; and here she now appeared as an interesting woman of five-and-forty, properly dressed as far as visible, and propped up in a bed covered with a quilt which presented a field of little squares in many tints.

Forty-seven chapters of balls and drawing-rooms; Mountclere accelerates late, but Lodge and social-visit dilations keep middle tempo social rather than thriller, so pace scores 82.

This somewhat frivolous narrative was produced as an interlude between stories of a more sober design, and it was given the sub-title of a comedy to indicate—though not quite accurately—the aim of the performance. A high degree of probability was not attempted in the arrangement of the incidents.

Light Hardy comedy prose — Lucretian motto, quilt market-garden, crinkled Mountclere hand — witty and exact about servant sightlines without Tess fatalism, so prose scores 87.

Mr. Joyce—that's the butler—said that your name was mentioned to our old party, when he was in the room, by a young lady staying with us, and mistress says then, "The Julians have had a downfall, and the son has taken to music."

Anglebury, Sandbourne, Wyndway, Knollsea — Wessex society mapped from the butler's pantry and servants' hall upward, so world scores 85.

She was the daughter of a gentleman who lived in a large house not his own, and began life as a baby christened Ethelberta after an infant of title who does not come into the story at all, having merely furnished Ethelberta's mother with a subject of contemplation.

Brains-over-blood comedy of naming and class disguise invites the reader before rivals appear — light rather than shocking, so hook scores 84.

to excite interest in a drama—if such a dignified word may be used in the connection—wherein servants were as important as, or more important than, their masters; wherein the drawing-room was sketched in many cases from the point of view of the servants' hall.

Reversing the social foreground of the drawing-room novel — Chickerel hall as true stage — is Hardy's deliberate comedy experiment, so innov scores 88.

'Berta will never let us come to want,' she said, with vivacity, when she had recovered. 'She always gives me what is necessary.' 'We will endeavour not to trouble her,' said Christopher, amused by Picotee's utter dependence now as ever upon her sister, as upon an eternal Providence.

Mountclere marriage sealed under Sol's irony; Picotee's quieter match under Berta's purse closes comedy without tragic justice, so ending scores 83.