The elusive ideal woman

The Well-Beloved was moving house — had gone over to the wearer of this attire.

Thomas Hardy, The Well-Beloved

For Jocelyn Pierston, a sculptor who is the central figure in Thomas Hardy's The Well-Beloved, the object of his affection changes with the wind — or with the woman. What he thinks of as his Well-Beloved is not a real woman but an image, an ideal, a mirage.

In the opening pages he becomes engaged to two women. He jilts Avice to propose to Marcia, who then jilts him. Through the years of young manhood, he wanders from one Well-Beloved to another, never marrying any of them. 

Hardy's novel skips ahead at 20-year intervals, so we next find Jocelyn at 40 meeting Avice's lovely daughter, also called Avice, who instantly becomes his new Well-Beloved. Yet she must turn down his proposal because she is already married, even if unhappily.

Twenty years later, Jocelyn at 60 spots the third Avice, a girl even lovelier than her mother or grandmother at the same age. His chances of marrying her look good, especially with her mother working to make the marriage happen. She missed her chance to marry the wealthy artist and wants her daughter to take advantage of her own opportunity.

Hardy gives us some plot twists at the end that add interest to a short novel that otherwise seems artificial and bland. Yet a few years after this book was published, Hardy himself would marry a woman 39 years younger than him. So maybe the story is not quite as fanciful as it may appear.