Dialect in Hardy’s Short Stories

Abstract

While a good deal has been written about Hardy’s use of dialect, most discussions of the subject have centred on the novels.¹ In fact, dialect also plays an important part in many of the short stories, and we do not have to look far in these for explicit references to the question of standard and non-standard English. Thus, at the beginning of ‘The Son’s Veto’, Sophy is upbraided by her son for using have instead of has. ‘That question of grammar bore upon her history’, Hardy remarks (ii, 34),² and, indeed, it also bears upon her future, it gradually becomes clear. In ‘On the Western Circuit’ we are told that Anna is taught by her mistress to talk correctly (ii, 95), an accomplishment that stands her in good stead in the initial stages of her relationship with Raye, since if she had been rough-spoken he would hardly have been deluded into believing that she had penned the letters he received from her. Comparable versatility, though with similar consequences, is shown in ‘Dame the Tenth’ by the hotel page-boy, who picks up the polite accent of the summer guests, but in winter reverts to the local dialect in all its purity’ (i, 351f).