Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s Two on a Tower

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 21, 2025

First appearing as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly between May and December of 1882, Thomas Hardy’s Two on a Tower has been considered an extreme example of Hardy’s employing enormous settings, in this case the universe, to minimalize the importance of human suffering. Hardy had long expressed an interest in astronomy, including multiple references to the heavens in his poetry. His family had owned a telescope, and Hardy as a teen had read voraciously from The Popular Educator, which carried much information about astronomy. In addition, his was an era with a great interest in science. Hardy remarked, as recorded by editor Michael Millhouse, that he and his wife saw “the new comet from the conservatory” of their house in east Dorset, that comet being Tebbutt’s Comet, which excited the public.

The novel focuses on the astronomer Swithin St. Cleeve, who pursues with a stellar backdrop a doomed love affair with Lady Viviette Constantine. The tower of the title refers to a monument standing between their houses, which seems to point to the stars. Challenging the taboo of Viviette being 10 years his senior, Swithin engages in clandestine meetings with her at his observatory, Rings-Hill Speer. The observatory is located on the property of Viviette’s husband, Sir Blount. The Constantines share an unhappy marriage, and the news of Sir Blount’s disappearance and presumed death while hunting in Africa does not grieve Viviette.

Hardy makes use of a traditional romance plot in which a deserted wealthy woman falls in love with a poor earnest suitor. However, he subverts some traditional elements, making the woman the older member of the couple, and she is also the aggressor in this relationship, playing a male role. In addition, Swithin takes on a traditionally female role when he falls ill, assuming a prone position due to emotional distress over a disappointment.

Viviette secretly weds Swithin, even though he could collect an inheritance if he adhered to a provision that he not marry until age 25; he ignores the potential fortune in favor of his love of Viviette and the wealth she already possesses. Viviette insists on a secret marriage, hoping to preserve the appearance of propriety, but also, Hardy implies, because she enjoys her role as lady of the manor. Hardy inserts a storm, a destructive hurricane that serves as a symbol that the couple have inverted the natural order. The partial destruction of the observatory and Swithin’s home; his receiving letters of import the day before their wedding that are ignored by both lovers; and, finally, the black tie that Swithin dons for the ceremony all act to foreshadow a negative future.

In his usual twist of fate, Hardy plots that Sir Blount had remained alive for six weeks following the marriage, rendering the marriage illegal. At Viviette’s urging, Swithin claims his inheritance, moving to South Africa to continue his study of astronomy. Viviette then discovers she is pregnant and marries at the urging of her scheming brother Louis, the bishop of Melchester, to bring legitimacy to the baby. She does so due to her obsession over the 10 years that separate her in age from Swithin. She cannot visualize a future for them, fearing that by the time he returned she would be at least 35 years old with fading beauty. The “frost” she feels at that thought begins to immediately kill their love before it can reach maturity.

Having begun the novel apparently a nontraditionalist, Viviette falls right in line with society’s expectations and fate’s determination to inhibit any development of self-awareness outside those expectations succeeds. The proper completion of social and religious activities replaces her interest in the stars, symbolic of a boundless existence, shortly following her marriage to Swithin. She never again finds the passion that they had shared.

Viviette’s marriage to the bishop scandalized many readers who condemned the novel as immoral fiction as well as subversive literature, categorized as satire against the Church of England. Melchester dies, and when Swithin returns a few years later, he finds Viviette to again propose marriage. In true Hardy form, Viviette dies of joy, never experiencing a legitimate love.

The novel is not Hardy’s most widely read work, although it remains important in his oeuvre. He categorized Two on a Tower, along with only one other novel, The Trumpet-Major (1880), under the heading “Romance and Fantasies.”

Bibliography
Ahmad, Suleiman M. Introduction to Two on a Tower, by Thomas Hardy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. xi–xxii.
May, C. E. Thomas Hardy: an Agnostic and a Romantic. Lawrenceville, Va.: Brunswick Pub. Corp., 1992.
Millhouse, Michael, ed. The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy. London: Macmillan, 1985.