The Woodlanders

In the opening section of The Woodlanders, Giles appears as a hapless victim of fate. Bad luck seemingly abounds when he meets Grace again after her education and acculturation far away from the sleepy town of Little Hintock: She arrives earlier than expected, they both feel embarrassed during their greeting, and he is unprepared to navigate their awkward conversation while driving her into town. It might also be bad luck that causes Giles to accidentally bid for wood that Grace’s father wants. More broadly, though, fate seems to dictate Grace’s father’s ambition, and her education, which brings her culture and refinement. These refinements now alienate her from the simple life of Giles and from her past in the town and push her toward the intellectually elevated worlds of Mrs. Charmond and Mr. Fitzpiers. The Woodlanders underscores this major pull by the scene with the light Grace sees at Mr. Fitzpiers’s window: “[the light] changed colour, and at length shone blue as sapphire” (41). The light here represents the superficial but inexorable appeal of new outside forces when compared with the dull shine of “homely farmsteads” (36).

Though bad luck or fate seems to shape the novel’s beginning, Giles is also a participant in his own demise. Or rather, his passivity in the face of circumstances acutely affects the outcome. He is aware that “external phenomena” (32), such as one’s clothing, “may have a great influence upon feminine opinion of a man’s worth,” but a peculiar stoicism prevents “any enthusiastic action on the strength of that reflection” (32). Fate may have conspired to bring Grace early when he was unready, but Giles makes no real effort to even anticipate this possibility or respond with action when it happens. Indeed, this incident serves as a metaphor for the problem with Giles’s approach to Grace in general. For example, he must know that Grace’s time away will have affected her outlook. Nevertheless, he talks as if she never left. On the way back from Sherton, he persists in questioning her about how “Brownley’s farm-buildings […] have been moved” (36) and on types of apples. Worse, he makes a clumsy allusion to an adolescent promise that they would marry when older. Stuck in the past, he makes no effort to adapt himself or his conversation to likely changes in Grace.

Giles’s trademark passivity continues when they arrive in Little Hintock. In the excitement of seeing Grace again, Mr. Melbury fails to notice Giles by the door and does not invite him in. Giles, however, “[…] said nothing” (39). Rather than asserting his right to acknowledgement, having brought Grace back, or simply walking in, he meekly submits to the loss opportunity created by Mr. Melbury’s oversight. He waits outside, takes the horse and cart to the yard, then returns home. Likewise, the next day, when he sees Mr. Melbury and Grace walk into the woods, he makes no serious attempt to catch them or seek an apology for the previous night. Instead, he timidly follows behind the couple, admiring Grace from a distance, behaviour which contributes to the wood bidding fiasco. In fact, it is Giles who ends up apologizing to Mr. Melbury later precisely for this, making no reference to Mr. Melbury’s own mistake in neglecting to invite him in the previous day. Giles has the approval of Mr. Melbury to step up and woo Grace, but Giles has thus far only shown a timid, bumbling side that doesn’t seem worthy of Grace’s affection.

Moreover, Giles’s passivity in his wooing of Grace is mirrored in Marty’s relation to Giles. Like Giles, Marty can be seen as a victim of unfortunate circumstance or fate. That she cannot have Giles appears to be ensured by an external force, the marital scheming of Mr. Melbury. Like with Giles’s initial failures with Grace, this also seems to be rooted in unalterable laws of social hierarchy and class. Yet, just as in Giles’s case, Marty too readily accepts as “fate” things which are in her power to change. She declares that “Giles Winterborne is not for me” (18), after hearing Mr. Melbury’s plan that Grace should marry Giles. However, she does not pay attention to, or wilfully ignores, the key ambiguity in Mr. Melbury’s speech. Namely, that while he feels obligated to let Giles pursue Grace because of Giles’s father, he would rather her marry someone of higher social standing. This should give her hope that Giles will not end up with Grace and empower her to take action to win him herself.

Instead, she does the opposite. Going even further than Giles, she does not merely accept her “fate” but seems actively to embrace it. She cuts off her chestnut hair, her most attractive feature, trying to make herself, as she says, “ugly—and hateful […]” (20). She thereby attempts to guarantee the fate that she, mistakenly, imagines has been dealt to her. Likewise, she ignores the latent romantic possibilities of working with Giles. She helps him in planting trees, in a scene charged with erotic symbolism and the joy of giving life. Yet she recognizes neither this nor the deep bond through shared labor she has with Giles that Grace does not. Rather, she reads into the process only a reaffirmation of her own tragic and fatalistic world view. For, as she says of the noise made by the newly planted trees in the wind, “they sigh because they are very sorry to begin life in earnest—just as we be” (55).