영어로 읽는 고전 _ 토마스 하디의 에델버타의 손_희극
토마스 하디의 『에델버타의 손: 장별 희극』은 19세기 후반에 쓰인 소설이다. 이 이야기는 복잡한 출신 배경과 뛰어난 영리함을 지닌 젊은 미망인 에델버타를 중심으로 전개된다. 그녀는 사회적 기대와 자신의 야망 사이를 헤쳐나가는 동시에, 과거의 사랑과 현재의 관계들을 감당해야 한다. 이 소설은 사회적 논평과 인물 중심의 유머를 절묘하게 결합할 것을 예고한다. 소설의 서두는 에델버타가 웨섹스의 한 마을에 있는 레드 라이언 여관에서 나오는 장면으로 시작되며, 미망인임에도 불구하고 지역 남성들의 시선을 사로잡는 그녀의 매력을 보여준다. 이야기는 그녀의 흥미로운 과거를 암시하는데, 가정교사에서 시작해 귀족 가문과의 결혼에 이르는 그녀의 상승 과정과 시어머니와의 복잡한 관계가 그것이다. 산책을 즐기는 에델버타 주변에는 그녀의 과거와 현재 상황을 추측하는 다양한 지역 인물들이 등장하며, 그녀를 호기심의 대상으로 자리매김한다. 소설의 시작은 옛 지인 크리스토퍼 줄리안과의 재회를 암시하며, 해소되지 않은 과거의 감정들과 과거와 현재 사이에서 균형을 잡아야 하는 그녀의 삶을 둘러싼 복잡한 문제들을 예고한다.
Classics Read in English _ The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters by Thomas Hardy
The Hand of Ethelberta is Thomas Hardy doing something he rarely gets credit for: being genuinely, sharply funny. Published in the late nineteenth century and subtitled — with characteristic Hardy deadpan — "A Comedy in Chapters," it is the novel that proves he was capable of a great deal more than tragedy, and that his social intelligence was as keen in comic mode as in any other.
At the center of it all is Ethelberta — widow, former governess, social climber, and one of the most resourceful women in Victorian fiction. She is not a woman things happen to; she is a woman who makes things happen, navigating the rigid architecture of class and expectation with a combination of charm, intelligence, and a cool-headed pragmatism that her society would never quite forgive in a woman. The novel opens with her stepping out of the Red Lion Inn in a Wessex town, and within moments every male eye in the vicinity has found her — not because she invites it, but because she is precisely the kind of woman a room reorganizes itself around without her having to ask.
Hardy sketches her backstory with an economy that is itself a kind of wit: governess to noblewoman to widow, her mother-in-law a complicating presence, her past a subject of endless local speculation. When Christopher Julian — an old acquaintance, and an old feeling left unresolved — reappears at the edges of her present life, the stage is set for a novel that is as much about the performance of selfhood as it is about love. Ethelberta knows exactly what the world expects of her. The question is whether she can afford to want something different.
Among the contents
Young Mrs. Petherwin stepped from the door of an old and well-appointed inn in a Wessex town to take a country walk. By her look and carriage she appeared to belong to that gentle order of society which has no worldly sorrow except when its jewellery gets stolen; but, as a fact not generally known, her claim to distinction was rather one of brains than of blood. She was the daughter of a gentleman who lived in a large house not his own, and began life as a baby christened Ethelberta after an infant of title who does not come into the story at all, having merely furnished Ethelberta’s mother with a subject of contemplation. She became teacher in a school, was praised by examiners, admired by gentlemen, not admired by gentlewomen, was touched up with accomplishments by masters who were coaxed into painstaking by her many graces, and, entering a mansion as governess to the daughter thereof, was stealthily married by the son. He, a minor like herself, died from a chill caught during the wedding tour, and a few weeks later was followed into the grave by Sir Ralph Petherwin, his unforgiving father, who had bequeathed his wealth to his wife absolutely.
