Hardy’s work frequently explores and critiques Victorian social norms, morals, and class structures. All of these were extremely rigid in Victorian society, and Hardy himself rejected the rigidity of Victorian norms in his own life, choosing to leave London after realizing that he would never fit in due to his own modest background. This is not to say, though, that Hardy necessarily valorizes country life. The novel explicitly undermines the idea that country life is any better or more upstanding than city life: the title, in fact, is an ironic twist on Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” which contrasts idyllic country life with frenzied city life, as Hardy’s Wessex proves to be anything but calm and idyllic.

The narrator takes the position of knowledgeable outsider to rural life, including frequent asides that help to “explain” the customs of the people of Wessex to a presumably urban reader. In doing so, though, the narrator comes off as just as naïve as Gray’s speaker, adopting a tone and phrasing that suggest a calm simplicity that is very clearly at odds with the actual events of the novel. The novel begins with a sudden marriage proposal, followed shortly by a sheep genocide at the hands of an overeager and underexperienced sheepdog, which bankrupts the suitor; a short while later, a Valentine’s jest turns into feverish harassment and another marriage proposal, which is itself dashed by a secret wedding to a man who secretly loves and has fathered a child with his current wife’s former servant, who dies in a poorhouse, leading to the disappearance of the husband; the husband’s villainous return leads to his murder at the hands of the former suitor; all this ends with the woman marrying the original suitor (who has also inherited the farm of a former suitor).