{{Short description|1873 novel by Thomas Hardy}} {{Use British English|date=September 2013}} {{Use dmy dates|date=January 2024}} {{Infobox book | | name = A Pair of Blue Eyes | title_orig = | translator = | image = File:A Pair of Blue Eyes.jpg | caption = First edition title page | author = Thomas Hardy | illustrator = | cover_artist = | country = United Kingdom | language = English | series = | genre = Novel | publisher = Tinsley Brothers | release_date = 1873 | english_release_date = | media_type = Print (hardcover) | pages = 3 volumes | preceded_by = Under the Greenwood Tree | followed_by = Far from the Madding Crowd }}
'''''A Pair of Blue Eyes''''' is the third published novel by English author Thomas Hardy, first serialised in eleven instalments, between September 1872 and July 1873, by ''Tinsley's Magazine'' and then in book form by Tinsley's in 1873. It was the first of Hardy's novels to bear his name and was included by Hardy in his "romances and fantasies".
==Plot summary== The book describes the love triangle of a young, blue-eyed 19-year-old woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors who come from very different backgrounds. Stephen Smith is a socially inferior but ambitious young man who adores her and with whom she shares a country background. Henry Knight is the respectable, established, though sexually immature and inexperienced, older man who represents London society. Although the two are friends, Knight is not aware of Smith's previous liaison with Elfride.
Elfride finds herself caught in a battle with her heart, her mind and the expectations of those around her – her parents and society. When Elfride's father finds that his guest and candidate for his daughter's hand, architect's assistant Stephen Smith, is the son of a stone mason, he immediately orders him to leave. Knight, who is a relative of Elfride's stepmother, is later on the point of seeking to marry Elfride, but ultimately rejects her when he learns she had been previously courted.
Elfride, out of desperation, marries a third man, Lord Luxellian. The conclusion finds both suitors travelling together to Elfride, both intent on claiming her hand, and neither knowing either that she already is married nor that they are accompanying her corpse and coffin as they travel.
The novel has various settings including gothic churches, coastal cliffs, hills, valleys, and beaches.
==Characters== '''Elfride Swancourt''', the blue eyed 19-year-old heroine, is both extremely attractive and emotionally naïve; a Victorian Miranda.<ref>see article, which describes her as "openly compassionate and unaware of the evils of the world that surrounds her".</ref>
'''Stephen Smith''', her first suitor is socially inferior, also has this childish innocence, and she loves him because he is "so docile and gentle" (chapter 7).
'''Henry Knight''', the second suitor, is more socially superior and dominantly masculine but sexually inexperienced and immature, with the expectation of Elfride's spiritual and physical virginity. Knight is also Stephen Smith's mentor.<ref name=Steig/>
'''Lord Luxellian''', Elfride's eventual husband.
==Background== This was the third of Hardy's novels to be published and the first to bear his name. It was first serialised, in eleven instalments, between September 1873 and July 1873, in ''Tinsley's Magazine'' and then published in book form, in three hardback volumes, by Tinsley's in 1873. About 500 copies were printed.<ref>https://www.abebooks.co.uk/first-edition/Pair-Blue-Eyes-HARDY-Thomas-Tinsley/11953348304/bd</ref><ref>https://victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/diniejko6.html</ref>
The novel is notable for the strong parallels to Hardy and his first wife Emma Gifford. In fact, of Hardy's early novels, this is probably the most densely populated with autobiographical events.<ref name=Wittenburg/>
==Reception== A review in the ''Examiner'' of ''Far from the Madding Crowd'' retrospectively referred to it as "not so exclusively pictoral [as ''Under the Greenwood Tree'']; it was study of a more tragic kind, with more complex characters and a more stirring plot... Both ''Under the Greenwood Tree'' and ''A Pair of Blue Eyes'' are very remarkable novels, which no one could read without admiring the close and penetrating observation, and pictoral and narrative power of the writer."<ref name=Minto>{{cite news|last=Minto|first=W|title=Far from the Madding Crowd|newspaper=Examiner|date=5 December 1874}}</ref>
Late in his life, Hardy met composer Sir Edward Elgar and discussed the possibility of Elgar basing an opera on the novel. Hardy's death put an end to the project.{{citation needed|date=April 2013}}
In 2008 BBC Radio 4 recorded the book as a serial, with Jeremy Irons as Harry Knight.<ref>https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jphk</ref>
==Literary criticism== ''A Pair of Blue Eyes'' normally is categorised as one of Hardy's minor works, "a book with a few good points but a failure as a whole".<ref name=Steig>{{cite journal|last=Steig|first=Michael|title=The Problem of Literary Value in Two Early Hardy Novels|journal=Texas Studies in Literature and Language|date=Spring 1970|volume=12|issue=1|pages=55–62|jstor=40754081}}</ref><ref name=Wittenburg>{{cite journal|last=Wittenburg|first=Judith Bryant|title=Early Hardy Novels and the Fictional Eye|journal=Novel: A Forum on Fiction|date=Winter 1983|volume=16|issue=2|pages=151–164|jstor=1345082|doi=10.2307/1345082}}</ref> Like ''Desperate Remedies'', it contains melodramatic scenes that appear disconnected from the characters and plot.<ref name=Wittenburg/>
A focus of critical interest of the novel is the scene in which Henry Knight reviews the entire history of the world as he hangs over the edge of a cliff (reputedly the origin of the term "cliffhanger"), and eventually is rescued by a rope of Elfride's underwear. Carl J. Weber sources the scene to a picnic Hardy and his wife had, in which he was sent to search for a lost earring, claiming this passage is the "first indication in the novels of Hardy's ability to sustain interest in a tense situation by sheer power of vivid description."<ref name=Halperin>{{cite journal|last=Halperin|first=John|title=Leslie Stephen, Thomas Hardy, and 'A Pair of Blue Eyes'|journal=The Modern Language Review|date=October 1980|volume=75|issue=4|pages=738–745|jstor=3726582|doi=10.2307/3726582}}</ref> On the other hand, Millgate claims the scene forms part of the "irrelevant" description suited to the "rag-bag" of a novel.<ref name=Halperin/> For Jean Brooks, the scene is "macabre" and an illustration of "cosmic indifference", also highlighting the comic in the rescue.<ref name=Halperin/>
British critic Robert Gittings, however, claims it is more likely that the scene was inspired by Leslie Stephen's essay "Five minutes in the Alps".<ref name=Gittings>''Young Thomas Hardy'', by Robert Gittings; published 1975 by Penguin Books; p. 187</ref> Literary scholar John Halperin posited that the "cliff without a name" is probably based on Beeny Cliff.<ref name=Halperin/>
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/thomas-hardy/a-pair-of-blue-eyes}} * {{gutenberg|no=224|name=A Pair of Blue Eyes}} * {{librivox book | title=A Pair of Blue Eyes | author=Thomas Hardy}}
{{Thomas Hardy}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pair Of Blue Eyes, A}} Category:1873 British novels Category:Novels by Thomas Hardy Category:Novels first published in serial form Category:Works originally published in British magazines Category:Works originally published in literary magazines