Hardy's chronologically told story starts with an event
calculated to provide an in-depth character sketch of the heroine and her son Randolph. They are
at a public concert in a "neighboring parish" thus strangers to the locals who are all curiosity
to know about the delicate looking woman with intriguingly arranged hair who is in a wheelchair.
This exposition equally importantly establishes the relationship of domineering superiority her
"twelve or thirteen" year old son has over her as he "fastidiously" corrects her grammar in a
manner "that was almost harsh."
Hardy then gracefully dips into her
backstory that takes us to the village of Gaymead when she was a young woman of nineteen and in
love with Sam, a gardener ... and Sam was in love with her--Sophy. This flashback opens when
Sophy's employer's wife has just died and she and Sam are tentatively speaking of what will come
next: Will she stay with the widower vicar? Will she wait for Sam to prepare her a home and marry
him? Before the hardest of these questions could be satisfactorily answered, Sophy fell down
staris while removing a tray from the vicar's sickroom. The surgeon says it is such a bad injury
she will never walk or work normally again.
As a result, the vicar
saw his way clear to owning and stating his feelings for her. She consented to be his wife; he
takes a lucrative vicarage in South London; their son is born and generously educated among the
best; and fourteen years later, she still is ill-favored in society because she speaks in a lower
dialect of English and has ...
confused ideas on the use of 'was' and 'were,' which did
not beget a respect for her among the few acquaintances she
made.
Eventually she is widowed, her
son enters college to become a clergyman, and she encounters Sam seemingly by chance one day.
They proceed to rekindle their friendship and romance but when Randolph is notified by her of
their intentions to marry, he exerts his male veto authority over her by bursting into a protest
of "passionate tears":
He hoped his stepfather would be a gentleman? he
said.
'Not what you call a gentleman,' she answered timidly. ... The youth's
face remained fixed for a moment; then he flushed, leant on the table, and burst into passionate
tears.
As time goes by, Sophy tries
again and yet again and always receives the same authoritative negative veto on her plans and
happiness. In the end, the veto wins out as she dies alone leaving Sam to continue to live alone.
Randolph is a clergyman himself now and rides in the carriage that bears his mother to her grave
in Gaymeade. The procession passes Sam who mourns the loss of love and life while Randolph looks
like so many black clouds in his stern person, clothes, and
profession:
From the
railway-station a funeral procession was seen approaching ... towards the village of Gaymead. [A]
man, whose eyes were wet, held his hat in his hand ... while from the mourning coach a young
smooth-shaven priest in a high waistcoat looked black as a cloud
....
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