Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s The Hand of Ethelberta

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 5, 2025

First published as a serial in The Cornhill Magazine between July 1875 and May 1876, The Hand of Ethelberta represents Thomas Hardy’s sole published attempt at humor. Whether because his reading public did not expect him to write humor, or whether, as he states in his preface to the 1912 edition, the book simply arrived before its time, it was not popular and has been seldom read since.

Although its subtitle indicates it is a dramatic comedy converted to novel form, critically it reads like a comedy in search of humor. Little of the exaggeration or incongruity from which humor grows is present in the book. It purports to be a romance, focused on its poet/storyteller protagonist, Ethelberta Chickerel, yet offers at least one serious purpose, if not two. Hardy notes that his work “undertook a delicate task: to excite interest in a drama . . . wherein servants were as important as, or more important than, their masters.” Because this idea challenged the norm of his age regarding the importance of class distinctions, Hardy seems more intent on producing a social statement than humor.

In addition, much energy is spent in commenting on the life of a writer/artist and how that life can be manipulated by public expectation and reward, or the lack thereof. Hardy contends that circumstances which in his novel first struck readers as “eccentric and almost impossible,” were, as he wrote 35 years later, common on the stage and in novels, “and accepted as reasonable and interesting pictures of life; which suggests that the comedy (or, more accurately, satire)” appeared too soon. His struggle to categorize the piece as either satire, a biting, often-ruthless subgenre that never tries to pass off sarcasm for humor, or comedy, suggests his own ambivalence about the piece.

Ethelberta, born into a large family of 10 children headed by a butler and his kind wife, has moved up the social ladder to marry as a teenager the son and heir of Sir Ralph Petherwin and his widow. However, the son dies during their honeymoon, and she lives with her mother-in-law for the next three years. Opening the novel with the death of a beloved husband may be the first obstacle for readers in seeing the plot as comic.

Lady Petherwin becomes upset over poetry published anonymously by Ethelberta but later known as her own, because she feels Ethelberta has betrayed the memory of her son. The two women quarrel. Ethelberta foolishly states that she could not continue to love a memory, particularly one from her youth, and Lady Petherwin responds that extended love was exactly the expectation she had of Ethelberta. She then destroys her will, which left to her daughter-in-law a great deal of money, in a fit of passion. Although she later repents of her action and mails her brother a letter noting that Ethelberta is to receive a portion of his cash inheritance at her death, the brother declares the document not legal, and Ethelberta inherits only furniture and the lease on the home she had shared with her mother-in-law.

From the opening pages, she has been pursued by an ex-boyfriend named Christopher Julian, a musician who falls in love with her younger sister, Picotee, but does not realize it for a time. Ethelberta returns to live with her family, where she does not lack for romance. Three men court her: a painter named Eustace Lovell, a wealthy socialite named Alfred Neigh, and the older, wealthy Lord Mountclere. To earn a better living, she abandons her successful poetry career and turns instead to public storytelling.

She eventually chooses to marry Lord Mountclere, over the protestations of all, despite his doubtful reputation with women, in what seems to be a reaction against her earlier marriage to such a young man. Hardy offers no explanation to counter Mountclere’s reputation and adds little humor to the situation. Some sympathy for Mountclere is aroused in readers when he reacts with compassion and understanding following Ethelberta’s telling of her own story one night in a public place. He lets her know that he understands the “girl of the poorest and meanest parentage” with “strange dreams and ambitious longings” is actually Ethelberta.

The fact that he excuses her lack of social connection is admirable, and one can perhaps understand why this simple act moves Ethelberta to feel it a “great honour” to be his wife. However, no humor lightens the sorrow and shame felt by Ethelberta, or the pity felt by Mountclere. While Julian happily ends up with Picotee, neither character has personalities that permit any lighthearted banter. Their final discussion focuses on their unpromising financial state, eased by the knowledge that Ethelberta will provide for them.

In order to emphasize his desire to incorporate dramatic form into his work, Hardy titles each chapter with the name of a place, moving readers from one “set” to another. The detailed scenes and use of popular-culture references hold reader interest, as do the situations of the characters. What readers remember from the book are not humorous moments, however, but ones such as Julian’s performance as a hired musician at a social gathering and his bittersweet recollection of “when he had mingled in similar scenes, not as servant but as guest.”

And when Ethelberta explains to Julian that she decided to become a storyteller following her fall from the protection of Lady Petherwin, and he responds, “There is a way for everybody to live if they can only find it out,” little joy exists in her discovery of a new talent. Readers also may find it difficult to celebrate her later marriage when they recall she first mentioned marriage to Mountclere in order to “have some groundwork to enable me to keep up to the mark in my profession.”

Feminist critics and Hardy scholars find interesting the fact that Ethelberta is the only Hardy heroine who does not sacrifice herself to society’s expectations. Her unemotional pragmatic choice in marriage works in her material favor.