''A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of To-Day'' is the eighth published novel by English author

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Literary realism, Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry ...

, first published in 1880–81 in '' Harper's New Monthly Magazine''. The plot exhibits devices uncommon in Hardy's other fiction, such as falsified

telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...

s and faked photographs.

Synopsis

Paula Power inherits a medieval castle from her industrialist father who had purchased it from the

aristocratic Aristocracy (; ) is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. Across Europe, the aristocracy exercised immense economic, political, and social influence. In Western Christian co ...

De Stancy family. She employs two architects, one local and one, George Somerset, newly qualified from London. Somerset represents modernity in the novel. In the village there is an amateur photographer, William Dare, the illegitimate son of Captain De Stancy, an impoverished scion of that family. Captain De Stancy represents to Paula the notion of medieval nobility. She is attracted to each man for his respectively different virtues. William Dare, bastard and unrecognised son of Captain de Stancy, and a thorough wastrel, decides to intervene to promote his father in her affections (solely so that he, Dare, can continue to gamble and live off Paula's income). He fakes a telegram and a photograph to make it appear that Somerset is leading a dissolute lifestyle as a drunken gambler. His subterfuge is discovered by Captain De Stancy's sister Charlotte who has befriended Paula. She decides to tell Paula the truth and Paula pursues Somerset to the continent where he has gone mistakenly believing Paula and the Captain to have been married. She finds him and they are reunited and marry. In revenge, Dare burns down the castle using his family's portraits and furniture as kindling; Somerset proposes to build a modern house in its place. The last line has Paula summing up her dichotomy of mind between modernity and romantic medievalism, and thus the two men, also emphasising the title "a Laodicean" (someone indifferent or half-hearted) — "I wish my castle wasn't burnt; and I wish you were a De Stancy!" The usage of "Laodicean" to mean someone lacking commitment comes from a reference in the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

Reception and criticism

In his 1910 ''Essays on Modern Novelists'', American critic and scholar William Lyon Phelps, wrote:

No one of Mr Hardy's novels contain more of the facts of his own life than ''A Laodicean'', which was composed on what the author then believed to be his death bed; it was mainly dictated, which I think partly accounts for its difference in style from the other tales... Not only does Mr Hardy's scientific profession speak through the mouths of his characters, but old and beautiful buildings adorn his pages as they do the landscape he loves.

References

External links

* 1881 British novels English novels Novels by Thomas Hardy Novels about architects {{1880s-novel-stub