A Collection of Hardy Characters Quiz

Answer:

Most of Hardy's novels were set in the region he called Wessex, based on the Anglo-Saxon region of that name. It covers the southern and western areas of England, with the name still in everyday usage for sports leagues and businesses such as Wessex Water.

Hardy wrote 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' in 1886 and Michael Henchard is the main character - the mayor of the title. Early in the novel, he sells his wife and child to a sailor while under the influence of alcohol. Later in the novel, he has established a successful business when his former wife reappears with her daughter. Donald Farfrae is from the same novel, initially working for Henchard before becoming his rival and marrying the daughter, who is not actually Henchard's child. Henchard does not meet a happy end.

Fanny Robin, Gabriel Oak and William Boldwood are all characters from 'Far From the Madding Crowd', first published in 1874. The heroine of the novel is Bathsheba Everdene, who is courted by three men - Francis Troy, a dashing soldier, William Boldwood, an older local farmer, and Gabriel Oak, a shepherd who loses his own flock and ends up working for Bathsheba. She is charmed by Troy and marries him only to discover that he has made a local girl, named Fanny Robin, pregnant. When Fanny and her child die following a difficult birth, Troy declares her to be his true love and disappears, presumed dead. Bathsheba agrees to marry Boldwood, only for Troy to return. An enraged Boldwood shoots him dead and is arrested for murder. Eventually, the faithful Gabriel Oak wins the day and he and Bathsheba marry.

'The Return of the Native' dates from 1878 and was Hardy's sixth published novel. The 'native' of the title is Clym Yeobright who has been working in Paris as a diamond merchant. He attracts the attention of Eustacia Vye, who sees him as a way out of what she considers to be a boring and provincial life. They marry, but she discovers that his plan is to stay in his home area and become a teacher. Matters are complicated by the reappearance of an earlier suitor of Eustacia's and everything goes very badly wrong. Diggory Venn appears throughout the novel, initially as a seller of red ochre and later as a dairy farmer - he is present at the tragic ending but also ends up marrying his true love and having deserved happiness.

Angel Clare and Liza-Lu appear in 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles', which first appeared in 1891. Tess Durbeyfield is the heroine who, at her father's insistence, visits the wealthy d'Urberville family to claim a family connection - one which doesn't actually exist. She is given work as a poultry maid and is seduced, or worse, by the son of the family, Alec. Having given birth to a boy, who soon dies, Tess falls in love with Angel Clare, who she marries. When Angel tells her he had an affair, Tess tells him about Alec, something which Angel, hypocritically, is appalled by. He deserts her, which allows Alec back into Tess's life with disastrous consequences for both of them. Liza-Lu is Tess's younger sister who Angel marries, after Tess's death.

The final two characters are from Hardy's last novel, 'Jude the Obscure', published in 1895, The main character is Jude Fawley, whose ambitions to become a scholar at Christminster (based on the real life Oxford) are thwarted. He is trapped into marriage by Arabella Donn, who feigns pregnancy, while realising that his true love is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is herself in a loveless marriage. Numerous complications and tragedies follow and there is no happy ending. The reaction to this novel was so extreme that Hardy turned to poetry as his literary outlet and wrote no more novels.

The wrong answers are characters created by other Victorian era British authors. Edward Rochester and Alice Fairfax appear in 'Jane Eyre', by Charlotte Bronte and David Balfour is the main character in Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Kidnapped'. George Eliot wrote 'Middlemarch', featuring Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, while Allan Quartermain appears in several novels by H Rider Haggard, including 'King Solomon's Mines'.