Thomas Hardy's Pure English

This article examines Thomas Hardy's conflicting responses to late-Victorian debates about grammatical prescriptivism and linguistic purism. While Hardy claimed that “purism, whether in grammar or vocabulary, almost always means ignorance,” he also frequently expressed his interest the (perhaps unrealizable) ideal of a “pure English” founded on fixed unequivocal rules. Focusing Tess d'Urbervilles , novel subtitled “A Pure Woman,” I argue this ambivalence informed prose style fiction. In novel, employs ambiguous modality English language, imprecise distinction between indicative statement facts subjunctive elaboration conceptions hypotheses, both sustain interrogate binary real underpins simultaneous critique defense notion “purity.” use highlights an analogy views moral purity: each case, rejects narrow estimations purity, while nonetheless championing ideal—of woman”—that transcends limited perspectives conventional purisms.