About Two Bridges

Post 1467:

There are data storage centers full of amateur and academic opinions on what makes good literature. It’s a big subject, so giving you a full rundown on what I’ve learned over the years would take more time than I have. My stripped-down conclusion goes something like this: Good literature needs to be dramatic AND at times say something more about life or the world or existence than is on the page. In other words, it should entertain and absorb with story and also get at something deeper.

Definitely not a perfect breakdown. But I don't hate it.

I’ve talked about Thomas Hardy before and done videos on his esteemed writing in the past. Today I want to look at a passage from The Mayor of Casterbridge to illustrate what I was referencing in the previous paragraphs.

This novel is about a little pastoral town in South England filled with people living and working very normal lives. Like any self-contained community before the tide of technology, it’s a lot like the world had been for hundreds of years previous. People farmed and hung out at the village tavern after long days and hoped good weather would bless them and prayed pestilence wouldn’t befall them. This is somewhere around the turn of the 20th century. The characters in the story are troubled and interesting. It’s actually a quirky plot with a lot of twists. Then comes this section about the two bridges leading to town.

For to this pair of bridges gravitated all the failures of the town; those who had failed in business, in love, in sobriety, in crime. Why the unhappy hereabout usually chose the bridges for their meditations in preference to a railing, a gate, or a stile, was not so clear.

There was a marked difference of quality between the personages who haunted the near bridge of brick and personages who haunted the far one of stone. Those of lowest character preferred the former, adjoining the town; they did not mind the glare of the public eye. They had been of comparatively no account during their successes; and, though they might feel dispirited, they had no particular sense of shame in their ruin. Their hands were mostly kept in their pockets; they wore a leather strap round their hips or knees, and boots that required a great deal of lacing, but seemed never to get any. Instead of sighing at their adversaries they spat, and instead of saying the iron had entered into their souls they said they were down on their luck…

…The miserables who would pause on the remoter bridge were of a politer stamp. They included bankrupts, hypochondriacs, persons who were what is called “out of a situation” from fault or lucklessness, the inefficient of the professional class—shabby-genteel men, who did not know how to get rid of the weary time between breakfast and dinner, and the yet more weary time between dinner and dark. The eyes of this species were mostly directed over the parapet upon the running water below. A man seen there looking thus fixedly into the river was pretty sure to be one whom the world did not treat kindly for some reason or other. While one in straits on the townward bridge did not mind who saw him so, and kept his back to the parapet to survey the passersby, one in straits on this never faced the road, never turned his head at coming footsteps, but, sensitive to his own condition, watched the current whenever a stranger approached, as if some strange fish interested him, though every finned thing had been poached out of the river years before.

Okay, sorry for the length, but actually I kept it as short as I could to at least give you a sense. He goes on for a bit, and I love it. Hardy is doing some mad literature here. There’s a good story going on, but then he takes a little time to talk about these two bridges, using them to make great observations about the human condition. I love how he breaks the lower and upper classes down, giving a certain defiance and nobility to the poor. After all, they’re used to being down. There’s no shame in bad times. They live in the real world and they’re not going to shy away from the fact that life can suck a big one. The despondent members of the upper crust are actually a lot more pathetic. They can’t court failure and discomfort so well, thus they hide on their fancy bridge deeper in the shadows. Their straits are mostly of their own making and, perhaps Hardy is saying, they should be ashamed and unable to face the world. They are certainly unequipped.

It makes me think of those stockbrokers who are happy to get rich when times are good but take a header off the Merrill Lynch building when the market crashes and they have to get a real job.

Hardy isn’t necessarily making a point or picking sides. He's saying if you think about it, there’s two kinds of bridges, two kinds of people. This, in a story about a dude looking for redemption and the bonds of love and family and community.

All them literatures. Get it. I’ve gotta go. There’s a river I need to stare at. I’m so ashamed. Cheers and see you after.