The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved and The Well-Beloved (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Thomas Hardy (Author), Patricia Ingham (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1998 | Series: Penguin Classics

This is Hardy's two versions of a strange story set in the weird landscape of Portland. The central figure is a man obsessed both with the search for his ideal woman and with sculpting the perfect figure of Aphrodite.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

PATRICIA INGHAM is General Editor of all Hardy's fiction in the Penguin Classics Edition. She is a Fellow of St. Anne's College, Reader in English and The Times Lecturer in English Language, the University of Oxford.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (April 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140435190
• ISBN-13: 978-0140435191
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,129,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Atonement By Marriage, July 31, 2004

By 

Plume45 "kitka12345" (Westchester, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved and The Well-Beloved (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

This novel, which depicts a young man's lifelong search for the feminine Ideal, represents the latter end of Hardy's literary output, as he was turning to the poetic genre. First appearing in serialized form in the London News in 1892, this story was written between Tess and Jude. By the time it assumed final book form in 1897 it had undergone extensive revision. It is the heart-wrenching story of a passive native of the Isle of the Slingers, just south of London (accessible via a railroad causeway.) The three major sections of the novel are chronologically spaced twenty years apart, featuring the protagonist at 20, 40 and at 60. Young Jocelyn Pierston courts Avice of the Isle, but her delicate refusal to meet him one night on the beach inadvertently precipitates his flight with another young woman, whom he was courteously trying to help in a storm. The plot offers frequent instances of coincidence, bad timing, and poor choices causing inevitable misunderstanding. Fate seems to provide the wrong mate at crucial junctures in his life, and that of the three women he courts. It is almost
ridiculous and pathetic that Pierson attempts to marry the daughter (and even the granddaughter) of the woman to whom he first spontaneously proposed. There are distinct undercurrents interwoven in THE WELL BELOVED as well: the bond between the sculptor's Hands, striving to recreate in stone the perfection which his Heart desperately seeks in various female forms. There is also the interplay of Rock: the granite island, his artistic medium and his steadfast determination to seek the Ideal Woman for the rest of his days versus Water: Ocean water which tirelessly seeks to reduce the granite to pebbles, salty straits which provide a psychological barrier between islander and mainlander; Well water so crucial to village life; and lastly the Tears of a woman abandoned, guilty of selfishness or wed to a battering husband. This Native often returns to his
island home, to find surprising changes on the Isle of quarries and masons, yet he is perplexed to discover that some things are timeless. He has achieved artistic recognition as evidenced by being named an Academician, yet he privately is tortured by the Curse (his deepest secret) of his all-consuming quest for the Ideal. The only way Pierston can be freed of 40 years of bondage to heartache is to accept the fact that he has lost all chances of claming an Avice as his bride. Unfortunately this emotional freedom is purchased at the cost of his talent. Will he merely fade into the granite twilight of his native isle, a sadder but wiser old man who recognizes his physical limitations and accepts the ravages of time? A thought-provoking read, lightly based on the author's own situation, concerning the eternal yearnings of the human heart.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How I came to accept that anatomy truly is destiny, December 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved and The Well-Beloved (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Hardy has essentially written the same story twice here, with a few significant variations in the second version. This makes for a rather peculiar experience, as the reader will encounter identical passages in both versions. Nevertheless, I am haunted by this work and the insights it supplied. It explores the life of a man tormented by desire for an ideal love. Much to his chagrin, the ideal (referred to as the well-beloved) inhabits the bodies of a series of women, and never for long. He lives his life in anguished pursuit. What is truly upsetting is his total reliance on physical attributes, which becomes a source of humiliation as his life progresses. Hardy helped me understand how men approach women in a way no other writer has had the courage to explain. Once again, I am overwhelmed by his brutal honesty and unrelenting power. He will force you to open your eyes.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Well Beloved-Thomas Hardy's last novel in book form is a strange tale of recurrent love through three generations, August 4, 2008

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C. M Mills "Michael Mills" (Knoxville Tennessee) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved and The Well-Beloved (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

The Pursuit of the Well Beloved was a serial published by the prolific pen of England's famed Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). The short serialized novel was published in the London Illustrated News beginning on October 1, 1892. The novel was extensively revised by Hardy. Retitled "The Well-Beloved" the new novel appeared in 1897. He had completed the much better classic
"Jude the Obscure" in 1895-1896 before finishing this final printed novel. Thereafter, Hardy would return to the lyric poetry which was his first love. Hardy is a great novelist and poet.
The Well-Beloved unfolds as a strange story about an architect Jocelyn Pierson who falls in love with Avice Caro. her daughter and granddaughter!
Avice I is a country girl living on the Isle of Slingers in the south of England where she and his family have resided for generations. Pierson has become a noted sculptor who returns to his native isle to become reacquainted with Avice with whom he grew up. He leaves Avice I after being attracted to Marcia Bencombe a Junoesque beauty. Avice II weds Pierson only to reveal she has already been married! This marriage is, therefore, bigamous! Avice III loves a French tutor and forsakes marriage to Pierson. Pierson's love stories occur when he 20, 40 and 60 years of age.
This is,therefore, a story of one man's quest for the perfect Aphrodite. It is like a romantic quest which is never fulfilled. Hardy alludes to the famous "Judgment of Paris" by Rubens. Pierson can't make up his mind as to a mate and is incapable of maturely judging which maid is for him. He believed that the spirit of this femme fatale transported itself from one woman to another in the Caro family, (does the name "Avice" allude to " a vice" of sexual attraction calling the artist to seek for his perfect muse in the flesh?") "Caro" is the Italian word for "dear."
This story is unrealistic in the extreme! I much prefer Hardy dealing with more mundane affairs in his mythical Wessex county! His descriptions of wave and stone upon the isle of Portland are well done. Hardy loved and admired women throughout his life. His long marriage to Florence Gifford Hardy was childless and unhappy. The two lived apart in their home in Dorset. His later marriage to Florence Dugdale, a plain, placid and dull younger woman did not keep his eye from wandering to a fetching figure or smiling face. Even in extreme old age he was attracted to the local actress Gertrude Bugler who played "Tess" in a stage adaption of his classic tragic novel. He also had close but platonic relationships with society lasses and artists such as Florence Henniker.
Marcel Proust admired Hardy's idealization of the female. It reminds me of Scotty's fixation on Madeline his lost love reincarnated in the shopgirl Judy in Hitchcock's film classic "Vertigo." The novel can be seen as an artist's quest for the unattainable in his life's work. This is a very personal essay into the heart of Thomas Hardy. It is also a good reading of how fickle men are when it comes to wooing and wedding a woman.
The book is never sexually explicit but Hardy expresses how the young Pierson reacted when he sat with Marcia Bencomb under a boat as he was in a state of physical arousel! One doesn't read this often in a Victorian novel!
Hardy was a genius but this book is for devoted fans and not newcomers to his vision.