Customer Reviews

Two on a Tower

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Two on a Tower was the 11th Thomas Hardy's 14 novels that I have read. Hardy can be depended upon to paint a vivid picture of the characters' environment, and their relationships to it, but this time with a twist: One of the two characters being an astronomer, most of the environmental descriptions are of the heavens, and are wonderfully appropriate for the characters' actions and 'aspects'.
Hardy had a gift of creating characters who are fascinating in their personalities and actions, and together with the environmental descriptions, reading his novels is just one step away from watching a really good movie of the story.
Of all Hardy's varied characters, I felt the most sympathy for the two on the tower. Viviette has a great need for love and is selfless in giving it. Swithin, a somewhat naive and literate scientist, is at the same time a tender and faithful lover. Of all Hardy's stories, I hoped that this one would somehow have that "happy ending", and I suffered uncounted times for both characters.
I highly recommend this book for emotional involvement, though it may tear you apart to read it!
I would also recommend another of Hardy's lesser known novels The Woodlanders, which I understand was his own favorite story, and remains mine also.

Beautifully written, Thomas Hardy goes all out to make the reader see, hear, and smell every scene in this book. From begining to end, you never know what's going to happen next, and just when you think the story is calming down, Hardy throws a swerve your way. Great surprises, not predictable at all.

Hardy perhaps one of the better describers of setting of his time, shows once again, why books were so highly read back in his age.

Thomas once again delivered another great book of sadness, happiness, pregnancy and marriage. Although the story is mostly sad, it is still a great book, especially for those who have read previous Hardy books. A great read.

Two on a Tower is among Thomas Hardy's least known novels, and though not in his top tier, is excellent and would be nearly anyone else's best. It certainly deserves a far wider readership, as it has both many usual strengths and is in several ways unique, making it worthwhile for both fans and others.

The main unique factor is the astronomy focus. Hardy had significant interest in and knowledge of astronomy, which pops up in his work here and there, but only Two deals with it extensively. The main male character is an astronomer, and the field gets considerable attention; readers can learn a fair amount about it from Two, as there are many technical terms, historical references, and other descriptions. The focus is indeed so strong that Two might almost be called proto-science fiction; astronomy is not integral to the plot, but its background importance is very high. Hardy was no scientist but researched extensively, taking great pains to be accurate, and it shows. The science has of course changed much in the century plus since, but the basics here focused on are essentially unaltered, and we also get an interesting historical perspective. Hardy in any case adapts astronomy to his purposes, not least by using terminology metaphorically - a risky move that could have been disastrously corny but is very well-done. More importantly, he shows it through the lens of his infamously pessimistic, naturalist philosophy. Many astronomers think of their field as one of wonder and beauty, but Hardy sees it very differently. Two is well worth reading for these factors alone, especially for anyone interested in astronomy.

The astronomy angle also has other important effects, not least in portraying the scientific mindset and culture of science just as it was beginning to arise. Much later novels like Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith (1925) are almost universally credited with first showing this, but Hardy was far ahead of his time here as in so many ways, essentially displaying it all in 1882. Two even anticipates stereotypes - such as scientists taking things too literally and being socially inept - not common until after World War II. It dramatizes many important related issues: scientists' single-minded devotion to study, the pure vs. practical research problem, the annoying but impossible to ignore finance issue, etc. It also incorporates related themes closer to Hardy's heart-centered, empathy-driven worldview: the problem of study vs. society, love vs. work, etc. Such dynamics are very complex, and he handles them deftly, making them not only interesting and thought-provoking but affecting.

All this may sound as if Two is inaccessible, but it is thankfully very far from so. Early chapters seem to move the book toward true early science fiction, well away from previous Hardy territory, but this soon proves untrue. It changes to his central concern: a story of - in this case quite literally - star-crossed lovers with consequent issues of class, law, morality, and religion. Fans will probably be glad, while some others may be disappointed, but the drama is so well-done that is surely impossible not to be at least moved. This plot aspect is very similar to several other Hardy works, and some elements are virtually verbatim, but many usual strengths are at near full force. Chief among them is Hardy's near-unparalleled portrayal of emotion; whatever else we think of the characters, it would take a hard heart indeed not to feel for them. Hardy always deals in universal human emotions, making his highly dramatic works accessible to all. The characters themselves are also very engaging; Hardy is famous for heroines, and Viviette is another in his long list of great ones and deserves to be much better known. Swithin is in many ways engrossing, if less sympathetic, while Louis and the bishop are two of his more memorable villains. The latter two may be somewhat one-dimensional, but the main characters are richly complex and full of verisimilitude. Finally, Hardy always pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable, and Two, like several of his other novels, was viciously attacked, even condemned, for undermining religion, law, and morality. Hardy's 1895 Preface notes that things had changed so much even by then that readers would be hard-pressed to find anything offensive, and Two is so superficially tame by our standards that the very idea of it causing controversy is laughable. However, time has allowed us to get past such trappings and appreciate Hardy's still unfortunately valid points about laws that are unjust and/or nonsensical, a church that is corrupt, and a society that is hypocritically prudish and optimistically self-important.

Strong as Two's core is, occasionally questionable execution keeps it well below Hardy's best. Different as it is in some ways from his other novels, it in other ways exaggerates tendencies that many always dislike in him. The plot is very dense, probably too much for many, with multiple twists in such quick procession that it is easy to dismiss the book as unbelievable. Hardy's heavy coincidence use is often noted; it is common in Victorian fiction but even more so in him, which often annoys those favoring more straightforward recent novels. However, unlike weak writers who rely on it for plot and hope we will not notice, he uses it deliberately and even draws attention to it because of his deterministic beliefs. Fans inevitably come to terms with this, but he arguably simply goes too far here, especially as he does not take as much trouble to justify it as usual. In addition, while there are no plot holes in the usual sense, some points, especially about Louis, are never explained. To be fair, it must be noted that Two has an incredible amount of suspense, far more than we expect from Victorian works. He also has a nearly scientific ability to know what we expect and do something different, which is highly admirable in any writer. On the other hand, the dialogue is also almost certainly Hardy's most artificial - so much so that it is at times nearly risible. Finally, Two is arguably a bit overly melodramatic, especially the rushed ending. Hardy later classed it as one of his "Romances and Fantasies" where realism was not consciously maintained, and his Preface admits the book was not well put together. This is partly because, in contrast to his usual practice, he did not proof the serial or revise for book publication; in addition, several differing manuscripts floated around at once, and not all changes were implemented. Hardy was usually an inveterate reviser but gave Two unusually little attention, and it shows. A thorough revision would likely have fixed at least several weaknesses, but Two is still quite strong.

All told, though Two should be no one's first Hardy novel, anyone who likes his others should certainly pick it up eventually, and those who have disliked one or two may also find it appealing.

The story of a lonely woman caught between love and propriety, self-sacrifice and self-interest, "Two on a Tower" is one of the saddest novels I've read. I kept hoping for a description of a blissful-but-brief interlude for Viviette, but it never materialized. Instead, unhappiness dogged her to the novel's cruel end. Yes, cruel. The final event in the book was an unnecessary stroke. Also, while I usually accept a character's actions, I cannot believe that Viviette NEVER anticipated becoming pregnant. The possibility certainly haunted ME from the moment her secret marriage took place. For all of it's sadness, however, the story is engaging and provides a criticism of the unforgiving social conventions of Hardy's time.

It pains me to give one of my favorite authors less than four...-ish stars, but I really feel as if Two on a Tower is not that great. As someone coming from a scientific/engineering background, I did of course get giddy with excitement upon seeing Mr. Hardy discuss the beauties of the sciences and people's relations to them, and as far quotable quotes, Two on a Tower ranks among the best of Hardy's oeuvre. You also have the whole questioning attitude towards marriage/relationships similar to Jude the Obscure coming out of this like you do. But this book is no Jude the Obscure. It felt more draggy and dull...sort of like an episode of Happy Days after the series lost its stride. (And yes Happy Days did have a pretty nice stride there for a while). I don't know, keep Two on a Tower on the bench until you've exhausted most of the rest of Team Hardy, which for me has a starting lineup of Tess, Jude, Madding Crowd, the Native (slight Return), and the Mayor of Casterbridge.

Yay

... with one foot mired in Victorian propriety and the other in the modern world! On one hand to be so eager to challenge conventions, and on the other to be unable to bluntly declare his heroine pregnant! No novel I've ever read has been so plainly riven between two paradigms. Curiously, Two on a Tower begins in the democratic age of modern skepticism and then regresses inexorably to the class-conscious, superstition-bound era of Gothic romance.

The first three chapters of the book are as engaging an opening as any Hardy ever wrote, establishing a glorious setting in an abandoned tower in rural 'Wessex', introducing two prepossessing characters who will unquestionably become the love-interest of the tale, and brilliantly contrasting the folkways of a vanishing rural culture with the intellectual turmoil implicit in the discoveries of science in the modern world. The scene in which the new vicar attempts to persuade his local yokel choir to sing at A440 rather than the time-hallowed A415 is preciously funny, reminiscent of the earlier Hardy novels "Under the Greenwood Tree" and "Far from the Madding Crowd." But in close juxtaposition, the young 'leading man' - Swithin St. Cleeve - eloquently describes the fearsome anxiety he feels at realizing the infinitesimal insignificance of humankind in the scope of the cosmos. What he portrays is exactly what I (and you too, dear reader?) feel upon looking into deep time and empty space -- the feeling I call astrophobia. Swithin, admirably, is not daunted by his own insight; rather he aspires to contribute to that very knowledge which has made his traditional worldview unsustainable.

Enter the woman, of course. Lady Constantine is an abandoned, abused wife, living the hollowest chivalric mockery of traditional male-female relationships. She's beautiful, she has resources, she's impressionable and impulsive... and she's eight years older than Swithin. She will, obviously from first appearance in the text, seek to find her 'realization' in Swithin's potential as a scientist and in her own role in furthering that potential. Obstacles, need we say, will arise. From chapter four onward, this promising 'novel of ideas' quickly transforms itself into the most rhapsodic Avon Romance, superior to Danielle Steele only in the quality of descriptions. I should say, however, that as an Avon Romance, Two on a Tower is a darn good one.

Significant coincidences and momentous chance encounters are the heart's pulse of the Victorian novel, the organizing principle, the primary means of compression of action, the successors to the "deus ex machina" of earlier epics. Every Victorian novel has a few of them, and it's silly to object since they are intrinsic to the genre. This almost-Post Victorian novel has more than its share, and they seem awkward here precisely because they fail to serve the modernist themes and dispassionate observations of the author. Perhaps in the age of pre-modern credulity -- that is, of religious certainty -- such fortuitous interventions of 'fate' were taken for granted. One could build a critical career, I think, by maintaining that the 'modern' novel was born when the last coincidence was excluded from the plot.

I'm surprised that most of the previous reviewers have been charmed by this strangely tragic tale. I would have guessed that no one had ever been satisfied with its outcome. Certainly it was not a success at the time of its publication, and it hasn't received much respectful attention from literary scholars since. Me? I enjoyed it a lot, at the same time as feeling disappointed in it. Poor Thomas Hardy had the most divided 'soul' of any novelist who ever wrote, aching for the old certainties and the quaint tranquillity of pre-modern England yet somberly aware of their futility. He couldn't keep his footing on both sides of the chasm, so he chose to cultivate nostalgia for the very objects of his mockery. When a living man defines himself as 'conservative,' he effectively consigns his mind to hibernation. Hardy's 'conservatism' was a surrender to pessimism, a confession of defeat before the battle.

When you look at faded photographs of the aged Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) the elderly gentleman looks like anything but an insightful author whose speciality is the human heart. Bald! Stooped over and clad in black. An old man who loved old dogs, his old home in Dorset and old memories of the days of yore in his childhood home in the West of England.
Yet Hardy produced some of the greatest novels in the English language. In this minor work of 1882 he presents us with a tragic/comic love tale of
starcrossed lovers.
Swithin St. Cleeve is a twenty year old amateur astronomer. Each night the young man ascends an old tower built on the site of a Roman campsight. The Tower is on the property of the Constantine farm. Swithin becomes acquainted with Mrs. Constantine whose name is Viviette. She is forlorn and lonely. Her wastrel and wealthy husband has left for a safari junket in distant Africa. Viviette is a romantic woman who dreams of poetry and love. She quickly becomes enamored of the Apollo of the Tower joining him for long evening sessions of watching the stars in panoply over the dark skies of Wessex. Her interest leads her to purchase expensive astronomical equipment for Swithin. With the improvements in the tower telescope the boy hopes to become famous as an astronomer. Perhaps, the couple dream, Swithin will become a member of the famed Royal Academy having his research work published to wide acclaim. Swithin does submit a paper for publication only to learn, to his deep chagrin, that an earlier scientist had already been published on the subject.
Viviette and Swithin fall in love-she harder than he!. They secretly wed but are spotted in the town where they get the wedding license. Viviette's brother has seen them. He and the society in the village frown on marriage between two partners coming from different classes.
Later, to her utter horror, Viviette learns that the odious husband she had thought had died in Africa was still alive at the time of her clandestine wedding to Swithin. Constantine did die in Africa but still breathed when the marriage with Swithin was consummated. Viviette also learns that Swithin will receive an annual bequest of 400 pounds per annum if he follows the instructions of his late benefactor a relative.
The relative was a doctor who was a hater of marriage. Swithin will lose the bequest if he marries before he is 25! Therefore, the couple decide to keep the marriage a secret. Complications and accidents abound!
Viviette decides that Swithin should have his career opporunities spiked by his leaving on a long scientific trip to South Africa. While he is gone she learns she is pregnant with his child. The couple had planned to publicly wed in a ceremony when he reached 25 but now this idea is scotched. Viviette has lost her fortune due to her husband's death. She hastily is wed to a dull, pompous, fat and old bishop. He dies soon after the wedding. She is left to raise the boy who is really the son of Swithin and not the deceased cleric.
After a few years Swithin returns home to discover Viviette a widow. His son is now a toddler. Viviette has aged badly though she is till in her 30s. Swithin has fallen out of love with her. Instead, he is smitted by the fetching beauty and talent of Tabitha Lark the organist of the local church.
Hardy shows nature as apathetic with the human predicaments of his characters. The Hardyian universe is bleakly godless. People are the mere playthings of the chances of nature. In Hardy's view we are open to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune on a dangerous rock called earth. There is no consolation to be found in the church.
This novel evinces the author's interest with older and younger lover. Also on display is his examination of love between a poor man and a richer woman.Class is important since Swithin comes from a lower social order than Lady Viviette. Such marriages were condemned by the prim Victorian society abhorred by Hardy.
Viviette is a woman of complexity, romance and compassion. Her heart and not her head rule her lugubrious existence. She is the one character in the book to be remembered; Swithin is a cardboard lover who is lacking in maturity and wisdom.
Thomas Hardy is a poet whose prose is evocative of the English rural countryside.His evocative picture of the peasants is well drawn from childhood remembrances. The transient glories of an English year in the country is well drawn. This is a short but satisfying way for Hardy fans to read another fine novel. It is also a good first novel for Hardy newcomers.

Thomas Hardy entitled his first attempt at a novel "The Poor Man and the Lady". The work was never published, and the manuscript is now lost, but its theme of love between people of different social classes is one he returned to time and time again. Its title could serve as an alternative title for several of his published novels, and several others, notably "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", could equally well be titled "The Poor Woman and the Gentleman".

"Two on a Tower" falls into the "poor man and the lady" category. The lady in this case is Viviette, Lady Constantine, the unhappily married wife of a country squire, and the poor man is Swithin St. Cleeve, a penniless young astronomer. The two meet and fall in love when Viviette gives Swithin to use a tower on her country estate for his observations. The death of Viviette's husband Sir Blount while on a hunting expedition in Africa leaves the lovers theoretically free to marry, but as so often happens in Hardy circumstances conspire to force them apart. They are quite literally "star-crossed lovers"; Hardy himself said that his intention was to "set the emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe", and the book shows evidence of his own interest in astronomy.

The most important factor preventing their union is the force of social convention. Swithin and Viviette are divided both by class and age, she being some eight years older than he. The class structure of Victorian England was far more complex than a simple rich/poor or upper/lower divide, and the complexities of that structure are exemplified by the positions in which both main characters find themselves. Swithin's father was a clergyman and therefore, almost by definition, a "gentleman", but one who compromised his social status by marrying the daughter of a local peasant-farmer, which means that Swithin himself cannot lay claim to any social rank, especially as he was orphaned at a young age and raised by his maternal grandmother.

Although Viviette is a titled lady, she is not particularly wealthy, her late husband having left her, apart from the manor-house she lives in, little but debts. She is, however, still regarded as a member of the upper classes with a social position to maintain, and after she is widowed her family, especially her domineering brother Louis, expect her to restore her fortunes and position by making an advantageous second marriage. An ideal (from their viewpoint) candidate presents himself in the shape of the wealthy Bishop of the local diocese.

The second factor dividing the lovers is sheer bad luck. Hardy here makes use of plot two devices beloved of Victorian novelists- the bungled attempt to marry, something which also occurs in "Far from the Madding Crowd" and "A Pair of Blue Eyes", and the eccentric legacy. Swithin is left a considerable amount of money by his uncle, a prosperous doctor and a confirmed bachelor, to further his scientific studies, but this comes with a condition that he will forfeit the legacy should he marry before the age of 25.

When it first came out in1882 the novel was the subject of much hostile criticism, with some reviewers condemning it either as immoral, or as anti-religious satire, or both. Like many contemporary attacks on works now regarded as classics, this one seems absurd today. Hardy was far from being the "village atheist brooding and blaspheming over the village idiot", as Chesterton called him, and his attitude to religion, although sometimes doubting, was certainly not hostile. Although Bishop Helmsdale may come across as pompous and self-satisfied, there is nothing in the novel which might be construed as an attack on Christianity.

Swithin has certain similarities with Angel Clare in "Tess". Both men are the sons of clergymen, both leave the women they love to travel in the Southern Hemisphere and both eventually return from their travels with unhappy consequences for those women. There is, however, a difference between them. The rationalist Angel has consciously rejected his father's faith in a way that Swithin has not. Certainly, he may experience doubts about divine providence when contemplating the vastness of the heavens, but he later takes the step of presenting himself to the Bishop for confirmation- a symbolic reconciliation of scientific endeavours with Christian belief.

As for the supposed "immorality" of "Two on a Tower", what is likely to strike the modern reader is the caution with which Hardy approaches his theme and the circumlocutions he adopts in an attempt to avoid saying, in so many words, that Viviette is pregnant by a man who is not her husband. This was, in any case, not an unprecedented theme in the 1880s; earlier novelists such as Dickens, Mrs Gaskell and Trollope had all tackled the subjects of illegitimacy and unmarried motherhood.

Hardy divided his novels into three categories, which he entitled "Novels of Character and Environment", "Romances and Fantasies" and "Novels of Ingenuity", and it is noteworthy that all those major novels upon which his reputation now chiefly rests, except perhaps "A Pair of Blue Eyes", fall into the first category. "Two on a Tower", which he classed as a "Romance and Fantasy", is today widely regarded as one of his minor works. Although even minor Hardy is at least as good as a whole lot of other writers working at the height of their powers, I think that there is a reason why this novel has not caught the public imagination in the same way as the likes of "Tess",
"The Return of the Native" or "The Mayor of Casterbridge".

The story seems rather rushed, something possibly due to the fact that it was being written for serialisation. It is considerably shorter than most of Hardy's other novels, yet seems to pack in at least as much incident as any of them, which means that matters such as character development are rather neglected. This is perhaps why Hardy did not classify it as a "novel of character and environment". Viviette makes an attractively spirited heroine (her name appropriately derives from the Latin for "lively") but she is not as powerfully drawn as, say, Tess or Bathsheba Everdene. Hardy's greatest novels all end tragically for at least some of the characters, but the tragedy derives logically from some flaw inherent in their characters or in their social environment. The final tragedy of "Two on a Tower" is down to nothing more than pure bad luck. In the final chapter, in fact, Hardy seems to be working his way towards a rare happy ending, only to reverse this with a sudden and shocking denouement in the last couple of sentences, doubtless realising that he was in danger of losing his reputation as the Great Pessimist of English literature. For this reason we are not moved in the way that we are moved by the climaxes of some of his other novels.

I am a huge Thomas Hardy fan, and I was not disappointed with this book. At first all the technical astronomical information was slow, but the love story started and that was forgotten. My only complaint about Two on a Tower is the ending. It seems very rushed - everything comes crashing together in about 10 pages. It wasn't realistic for Viviette to age so much and no longer be beautiful 4 years later, considering she was only 33 at the end of the story. Sir Constantine was possessive, jealous and terrifying but she still kept her health and beauty after suffering with him. The bishop was full of himself - how is that worse? A few years with him and all of a sudden she's an old woman with a heart condition? Swithin comes back and says he'll marry her, she's overcome with joy and BOOM! She dies in his arms. I also find it strange that neither Swithin or Viviette acknowledged that the boy was his. Didn't people in the village realize who he looked like, since people were already suspicious of the lovers? What will happen next, Swithin takes his son in and marries Tabitha Lark? A very good, sad, complicated romance.

The language of Hardy is exceptional. His understanding of love and its motivations is too. If anyone else would have written this story, it would be worthless. Since he did, it's worth reading, though slow the first seventy-five pages and the ending is unexpected and unnecessary. I strongly suggest reading Wolf's Revolution for a story of this kind.Revolution