@thomas.hardly.happy

When I began forcing my friend Cooper to agree to read a Thomas Hardy book with me, I believe his exact reaction was

"Ullchgghh."

You see, someone had once told Cooper that Hardy specialized in depressive and tragic turns of event. This person wasn't wrong, really, because it is definitely true that tragedy has had (and Hardy's often fatalistic and foreboding tone promises that it will continue to have) a major presence in the novel. However, I do think this evaluation is shallow, as it is definitely missing an important facet of the tragedies Hardy chooses to incorporate. Though he certainly does torture his characters (see Tess of the D'Urbervilles, whose title character is 'a victim of her own provocative beauty'), the sadness the characters experience is still  evocative of beautiful, tender feelings; perhaps because of the way they, and many other elements of the novel, are exaggerated to a point just shy of surrealism.

Hardy cultivates scenes, characters, and surroundings his novel the way someone might cultivate an aesthetic on their Instagram. (I'm serious. Bear with me.)

Say you take a photo and decide you want to post it on your Instagram. Unfortunately, the camera of your iPhone doesn't pick up your surroundings as vividly as you remember them because of the fact that your vision is altered in small ways by the feelings you have toward your surroundings. Maybe you use a filter to bring out certain aspects of the photo. Or maybe you adjust the saturation, or the contrast, or the brightness, or the tone of the picture. Whatever it is you do, you're changing the photo from it's own reality, but bringing it closer to your own. Hopefully, you're also making it so the audience, your followers, see it the way you do.

I edit the photos on my account @fionasproject (where I post pictures of myself with strangers
 in the background) so the colors look more to me how I remember them actually being. 

The way I see it, Thomas Hardy does much the same thing with his writing - he exaggerates certain aspects of his story to create the overall feeling he desires. Often, this means inflicting unusual or uncalled for tragedies upon his characters (like Henchard's sale of Susan and his daughter) in order to emphasize the problems in their lives. In Henchard's case, he's showing the way a mistake made in a person's youth can haunt them for the rest of their days, especially if they don't really own up to it. 

It isn't only with tragedies that Hardy uses this technique. We also see it in a specific scene where Donald Farfrae (the Scotchman) and Elizabeth-Jane end up meeting in a mill. Elizabeth is covered in the debris of that building (husks and dust), and Donald meticulously blows on her (literally, he blows on her) to rid her hair, bonnet, fur collar, and dress of the stuff. Each time he lets out a breath, Elizabeth thanks him very politely.

It's a scene more surreal than any I've ever read, but one that still maintains an air of reality. It's not too far-fetched to imagine that two young people who might like to be in love would find themselves in this situation; but it is a little over-the-top that each of them carries the activity out so demurely, without so much as a giggle. It's the balance you have to find when you edit a photo for your Instagram, too. If you edit it too much, it will look fake; but if you don't do anything to it at all, it will be boring and drab, and your viewers won't get a feel for what it was actually like, or what you are trying to portray by posting the photo. The same goes for Hardy's writing. In this scene, he shows us through the awkward exaggeration of the two characters' interaction that they feel something for each other, but haven't quite realized it or don't know how to admit it yet (in this respect, Hardy might be the master of "show, don't tell"). 

The portraits Hardy takes of his characters, too, have slight exaggerations. Donald is an exaggerated version of the romantic Scotchman; a talented dancer and singer who charms everyone he meets. Elizabeth-Jane is so meek she hardly has a character of her own; rather, she is in every way a reflection of the person who at the moment who has the most influence over her. Henchard makes countless mistakes and never owns up to them, which really only makes his situation worse. Each of these characters seems as if their saturation had been turned up by about fifteen percent, so as to exaggerate their flaws. Saturating the characters as such allows Hardy to tell his story more dramatically, and to show his readers where the characters fail. For example, by exaggerating Henchard's never-ending mistakes, Hardy suggests the reason for the mayor's constant misfortune is his inability to take responsibility for anything he has done. 

This Artimesia Gentileschi painting of Judith slaying Holofernes uses dramatic lighting and blood splatters that may be inaccurate to real life,
but portray the meaning the artist was going for, just like the way Hardy uses slight exaggerations or dramatic imagery in his novel to get his point across. 

Hardy's figurative Instagram feed isn't only portraits of his characters and the situations they encounter, though. No, he also posts pictures of their surroundings, creating places where the air is "like velvet" (140), or where "a warm glow [pervades] the whole atmosphere" (14), or of a place that was once a famous Roman ampitheatre but is now mere ruins, a place that suggests concealment, mystery, and darkness. The landscapes of The Mayor of Casterbridge provide a stunningly beautiful and evocative backdrop for the tragic mishaps that befall Hardy's characters. Hardy's sweeping imagery sometimes contrasts light with the often present darkness and misfortune in his characters' lives, and sometimes makes the world seem even more melancholy and dour than the tragedies themselves do.

By exaggerating tragedies, or awkward encounters between his characters, or using words to paint landscapes fit for museums, Hardy adjusts the settings of the photo he took of 19th century British society to make it represent the way he viewed his time and the people who lived in it. His increasing of the contrast, or the way he turns up the saturation, makes the book much more interesting to read, and despite what Cooper's friend may once have said, I think the amount of tragedy is just right. 

If Thomas Hardy was on Instagram today, I'm pretty sure I'd follow him. Would you?