Thomas Hardy and Comedy

This essay is based on two short stories from Thomas Hardy these stories are Old Mrs Chundle and Tony Kytes the Arch Deceiver. Thomas Hardy was an English Novelist. He was born on 2nd of June 1840 and passed away the 11th of January 1928. His stories are based in the Victorian Times. He wrote stories mainly for financial gain. He also was of an Anglican Religion and he was known for his Poetry.   He wrote a book full of his poetry called Wessex Poetry in which he had wrote over 30 years.
        The Victorian era was during the reign of Queen Victoria from June 1837 until her death in January 1901. This was a time where there was a class system. The class system is still widely used today There was Upper, Upper middle, Middle and Working class.   This era is often described as a peaceful period and profits gained from overseas allowing the Middle class to receive a much higher standard of education.
            Throughout the two stories we see many types of comedy one of these is Farce comedy. This is where the comedy is exaggerated and based on events that are simply ridiculous.   We see an example of this where all three women and Tony Kytes fall out of the wagon after hitting a bend at high speeds. This is funny and is clearly classed as comedy. The reason that this is farce comedy is because it would be highly unlikely that all three of the women and Tony would fall out of the wagon and then walk away without a scratch. “The horse went at his own pace, and coming to the corner where we turn round to drop down the hill to Lower Longpuddle he turned off to quick, the off wheels, the wagon rose sideways till it was quite on edge upon the near axles, and out rolled the three maidens into the road in a heap.”   The off wheels means the wheels on the right hand side of the wagon   Firstly we should note that the story of Tony Kytes is being told by a cart driver as a bit of hearsay or gossip, Therefore it is likely that the story will be exaggerated. We know that the...