Journal Article

The Adolescent Condition in Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders

Nunan, Rosanna

2017

Overview

Explanations of the developing adolescent body as a site of psychosomatic conflict surfaced in the last quarter of the nineteenth century as a result of altered social landscapes in developing industrial nations. Out of a \"new care and concern for older children\" among the emergent middle class arose \"the longer period of dependence that youth was now subjected to,\" and thus the very category of modern adolescence itself.3 Kent Baxter further describes the developing late nineteenth-century view of adolescence as a period of crisis in which \"the individual . . . [must] look beyond the primitive qualities of selfishness, and engag[e] in activities and emotions that promote the 'higher' species,\" illustrating a conception of adolescent growth that gained more traction in Victorian culture as the influence of evolutionary theory grew.4 In The Woodlanders, Hardy charts this alteration in the social and scientific landscape through his representation of the Melbury family, centering the conflict of the novel within the \"new care and concern for older children\" associated with the birth of adolescence in this era. Critics have discussed at length the economic dimension of George Melbury's obsessive interest in his daughter Grace's education and Grace's role as exploited bartering tool for the dubious prize of upward class mobility. [...]less has been written about adolescence itself in the novel, and, in particular, the anxiety surrounding arrested adolescent growth that Melbury's fixation on Grace's bartering potential betrays.5 The novel anticipates many of the concerns to arise in the following two decades on the...

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subject: 19th century / Anxiety / Authenticity / British & Irish literature / Child development / Children / Cultural anthropology / Cultural factors / English literature / Exegesis & hermeneutics / Fate / Folklore / Hardy, Thomas (1840-1928) / Heroism & heroes / Ideology / Literary characters / Literary criticism / Literary devices / Literature / Narrative techniques / Patriarchy / Plot (Narrative) / Publishing / Publishing industry / Social classes / Social history / Teenagers / Victorian period