I’m currently reading Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd. One thing that strikes me is his poetic language, the rich imagery which is rooted in the landscape of agrarian life.
This is in sharp contrast to the Dickens’ novels which I’m more familiar with. Dickens considers the life of progress, the industrious Victorians and the landscape is very much more concrete and urban.
What’s perhaps more interesting is that both authors were writing in a similar time period: Charles Dickens b.1812 – d.1870; and Thomas Hardy b.1840 – d.1928
Charles Dickens, it could be said, belonged to a time when progress was new and exciting. His upbringing in the city was besieged with poverty. George III was on the throne when he was born, and Queen Victoria when he died. He was more enthused by progress and excited by industriousness. This passion and cynicism is evident in his writing. He talks about the destruction of Staggs’ Garden through the passing comments of local residents who watched the building of the railway through the countryside. While his characters may have lamented the loss of such a beautiful piece of land, nothing, it seems, stands in the way of progress.
For Hardy, on the other hand, while born after Dickens, the sweeping progress had mostly passed him by. The main railways had already been built, the modern urban city was already industrious. He didn’t talk about station time, but we saw Farmer Oak struggle with a pocket watch, always slow, fast or lagging in some way. We see him checking the position of the stars, and thus he knows the when the lambing season begins, he can tell the time through the night sky. Hardy is showing us the connection to the universal world; he’s saying, ‘But look what we’re leaving behind.’
Both writers in their own way, Dickens with his exaggerated pathos of the situation of progress and Hardy with his lyrical prose are giving us a glimpse into the landscape of their time in different ways. Reading these writers from a business perspective highlights the way in which the authors have captured the idea of progress in what we often refer to as the first age of contemporary globalisation.
There is another author from this time who also deserves a business perspective on her writing, Elizabeth Gaskell, 1810-1865. This will be the subject of another blog post.
Postcards from the edge 