The Woodlanders

As her honeymoon draws to a close, Grace sees Giles and a group of men preparing apples for cider fermentation in the yard outside. Observing Giles “moiling and muddling” (148) like this, Grace reflects that she could never have married him. Likewise, Dr. Fitzpiers says that he feels as if he “belonged to a different species” (149) from those men. In both deed and dialogue, work and labor are seen by the characters in the novel as an inverse barometer of social status. The more removed from labor, especially physical labor, you are, the higher your class. Conversely, the more involved you are with labor, the lower your status. Mrs. Charmond, for this reason, sits at the top. She is a woman who does no work whatsoever, is taken everywhere by carriage, and is so elevated that she needs someone else to write down her thoughts for her. As she herself puts it, “I think sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but float about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams” (51).

Dr. Fitzpiers’s social status is more ambiguous than Mrs. Charmond’s, though both idleness and work affect how he views others and vice versa. As a doctor, he is obliged to sometimes work with his hands, and his vocation is partly practical. But in his interests and aspirations, he is aristocratic. As Hardy says, the doctor “much preferred the ideal world to the real” (95). His penchant for idealist metaphysics shows a desire to transcend the material world, and that of work, toward a purely intellectual one. This same aspiration, albeit in different form, is present in Mr. Melbury. Unable to escape the middling status of a timber merchant himself, he pins his hopes, and substantial money, on Grace marrying into a higher social caste. If Grace can climb the social ladder and become a “lady,” she will not have to work. Conversely, Mr. Melbury’s anxiety about Grace marrying Giles is rooted in the thought of “her white hands getting redder everyday” (68), due to physical labor.

Despite Mr. Melbury’s filial and societal concerns, Hardy suggests that his valuation is wrong. While the society of its day, and the likes of Mr. Melbury, regarded labor as a sign of low status, in the novel it is in fact what brings dignity and redemption. Dr. Fitzpiers’s desire to help a dying man, Giles, shows a reengagement with the true practical function of his profession. It is also part of the positive transformation of his character, denoted by his abandonment of his idealistic speculations when he asks Grace to destroy the very books he used as a barometer of his intellect. Similarly, Grace redeems herself from her earlier social snobbery through work. She physically picks up the sick Giles and carries him to the cottage, before bathing and caring for him. In using her body and hands like this, she reconnects with Giles and his values. The value of labor is something that Marty realizes on a deeper level. Having labored with, rather than just for, Giles, Marty understands that his distinction lies not in words or ideas but in his work. As she says, “whenever I plant the young larches I’ll think that none can plant as you planted […] and whenever I turn the cider wring, I’ll say none could do it like you” (305).