The Hand of Ethelberta
“Fenella Woolgar gives an exemplary performance of this gentle comic novel, which skews the English class system…Woolgar provides Ethelberta with a youthful, light tone that belies her resolute nature…and her vivid depictions of rural and city settings add atmosphere. This novel is an easy listen and can serve as an introduction to Hardy’s works.”
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Opportunistic, shrewd and beautiful, Ethelberta resolves to disguise her humble beginnings and elevate her position in society.
Crafting her career as a society poet and staging her family as her servants, she proves admirably adept at sustaining her own web of deceit as she reinvents herself and navigates the attentions of four different suitors. The wealthiest is not the one she loves...what will she do?
This is a light-hearted, urban tale, offering a different side of Thomas Hardy. The master of pastoral realist novels was presenting a “somewhat frivolous narrative,” which nevertheless displayed his acute consciousness of class divisions and continues to delight those who discover it within his better-known works.
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