In the past couple of months have read "Jude the Obscure" and "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and now "Tess." Hardy is a beautiful, sincere, interestingly didactic, and rather cinematic writer, although, in the case of "Tess," not always the most emotionally realistic. (I liked "Tess" the least of the three novels of his that I've read so far.)
Here's an excerpt that I noted from "Tess" (1892):
She was expressing in her own native phrases --- assisted a little by her Sixth Standard training --- feelings which might almost have been called those of her age --- the ache of modernism. The perception arrested him less when he reflected that what are called advanced ideas are really in great part but the latest fashion in definition --- a more accurate expression, by words in 'logy' and 'ism,' of sensations which men and women have vaguely grasped for centuries.
She was expressing in her own native phrases --- assisted a little by her Sixth Standard training --- feelings which might almost have been called those of her age --- the ache of modernism. The perception arrested him less when he reflected that what are called advanced ideas are really in great part but the latest fashion in definition --- a more accurate expression, by words in 'logy' and 'ism,' of sensations which men and women have vaguely grasped for centuries.
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