...form. "What has Providence done to Mr. Hardy," Edmund Gosse asked in a review of Jude the Obscure, "that he should rise up in the arable land of Wessex and shake his fist at his Creator?"4 The virulent backlash that greeted the publication oijude the Obscure eventually brought...

...and Mr. Hardy. The title refers to Edmond Gosse's question in his 1896 review of Jude the Obscure, What has Providence done to Mr Hardy that he should...rise up in the arable land of Wessex and shake his hand at his Creator? (Cosmopolis, January 1896) Lois Deacon was convinced that Hardy's whole life and...

...urge Mr. Hardy to struggle against the jarring note of rebellion which seems growing upon him? . . . What has Providence done to Mr. Hardy that he should...land of Wessex and shake his fist at his Creator? . . . We wish he would go back to Egdon Heath and listen to the singing of the heather. And as to the...

...the vicious ones. Chronology xlix Even his good friend Edmund Gosse writes a critical review, asking, "What has Providence done to Mr. Hardy that he should...land of Wessex and shake his fist at his Creator?" Emma was predictably outraged by the novel, which she took as a commentary on their marriage; she even...

...has Providence done to Mr. Hardy," said agnostic Gosse in a notice that strained their friendship, "that he should rise up in the arable land of Wessex and shake his fist at his Creator?" (Lerner and Holmstrom 121). For GK Chesterton in the Victorian Age in Literature (1913), Hardy finds...

...Hardy to struggle against the jarring note of rebellion which seems growing upon him? It sounded in Tess, and here it is, more roughly expressed, further...Mr. Hardy that he should rise up in the arable land ofWessex and shake his fist at his Creator? He should not force his talent, not give way to these chimerical...

...in general sympathetic about the novel it contained this for Hardy personally devastating sentence: "What has Providence done to Mr. Hardy that he should...the arable land of Wessex and shake his fist at his Creator?"236 Hardy's knowledge alone of certain reviews can therefore not be seen as a criterion for...

...anything Hardy went through. This is part of what made even Hardy's friend Gosse ask in his review, 'What has Providence done to Mr Hardy that he should...the arable land of Wessex and shake his fist at his Creator?'11 Part of the answer might be that he was writing at a time when Britain seemed to be permanently...