“‘Lady—not a penny less than lady’”: Satire, Melodrama, and the Sensational Fiction of Class Status in The Hand of Ethelberta

Abstract

Hardy’s decision to provide a subtitle identifying The Hand of Ethelberta as a “Comedy in Chapters” ensured a critical concentration on genre that the author had cause to regret almost immediately. Leslie Stephen, already uncomfortable because the book seemed so different from Far from the Madding Crowd, the novel whose success had caused him to commit to this next work of fiction by Hardy, requested that the qualifying phrase be dropped for the novel’s serialization in the Cornhill Magazine, characteristically deflecting his commercial concerns onto a readership whose putative lack of sophistication required unfortunate indulgence:

I am sorry to have to bother you about a trifle! I fully approved of your suggestion for adding to “Ethelberta’s Hand” the descriptive title “A Comedy in Chapters.” I find however from other people that it gives rather an unfortunate idea. They understand by Comedy something of the farce description, and expect you to be funny after the fashion … of some professional joker. This, of course, is stupid; but then, advertisements are meant for stupid people. The question is, unluckily, not what they ought to feel but what they do feel… When the book is reprinted it can of course appear, because then the illusion would be immediately dispelled.¹