Paula Byrne: evaluation

Transcript context

…The story in, say, Jude the Obscure: there’s two women, there’s two men, there’s multiple marriages. The Mayor of Casterbridge, doubling is a theme. It seems very Shakespearean that there’s an ensemble of tragedy, and different stories mirror each other or they show different facets of each other. I’ve never thought about it, but I think it’s a really lovely point. I think that it’s a great plot technique as well, that shadowing and that mirroring. I love his plots. It’s just so hard to get a plot right, and he does that really, really well. Again, for me writing the book, I was always conscious of, this is a man that — those later novels — wants to get out of his marriage. He’s always looking at the alternative relationship. Like what would happen if this happens, or what happens if that wife dies? He’s always got that refrain going through in those later novels, but not in the first ones when he’s still so madly in love. Also, with Hardy, he’s always in love with the unattainable. That’s the whole thing with him. That’s why I think The Well-Beloved is so interesting because it’s the pursuit of the well-beloved that, once you get it, you don’t want it. I see that in couples counseling a lot. It’s that once you get it — you might have an affair, and then you’ve got what you want. Then suddenly all those small, horrible things that you haven’t seen because it’s all been so romantic, like, “Oh, God, he doesn’t brush his teeth before breakfast,” or those tiny things, and the illusion is broken. Then you’re just back in the same place. I think for me, for Hardy, almost as soon as he married Florence, he was falling in love with somebody else. That’s just what he seems to do all throughout his life, that unattainable beauty, because he’s so susceptible to female beauty. In your readings, what do you take to be the primary Shakespearean element in Hardy, just subjectively?…

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