19th century novelists spent a lot of time thinking about relationships, and even though society has changed dramatically since then, many of their insights are still useful. My copy of this novel contains two different editions: the 1892 serialized version, and the edited 1897 novel version with a slightly different plot. Both versions offer an interesting look at the costs of obsession: we can't ever truly understand why we sometimes become fixated on certain people, but what do we do with that knowledge? How much do we let an obsession affect our relationships with other people, how do we analyze what specific qualities of it are meaningful, how does it relate to the uncertainty we feel about any relationship, and can anything good ever come from it? While Hardy is often too verbose in that excessively discursive Victorian English way, his keen eye for the essential irrationality of attraction makes this study of the costs of unhealthy romantic patterns quite relevant to the modern reader.

Jocelyn Pearston (Pierston in the 1897 edition) is the scion of a stoneworking dynasty who has an issue with his romantic attractions: he becomes fixated on any woman who has been inhabited by a "migratory, elusive idealization he called his Love" - the "Well-Beloved" of the title. It's the spirit that precedes the woman, so he can actually become obsessed with someone before he even sees her, but once he detects that a woman has the halo, he doesn't care about anyone else. He has several relationships in the novel, which takes place from when he is 20 to the age of 60, but most troublesome for him are his obsessions with three generations of a woman from his same isolated home town of Portland: Avice Caro. The three Avices each become the object of Pearston's attention when they reach the age of 20, which would be creepy and pathetic if it didn't have such shades of Wooderson's famous line in Dazed and Confused that "That's what I like about these high school girls; I get older, they stay the same age". Though they're all different people, his consistent infatuation with each incarnation deeply affects his ability to commit to the other women he meets in his life.

Wanting to marry a woman, her daughter, and her granddaughter in turn is a fairly extreme parody of the notion of having a "type". Some people try to date within a range while others play the field, but is one actually better than the other when it's driven by irrationality? In this case, it's clear that going back to the same well too often is the wrong choice, as Pearston chases his memories of the first Avice, who, though she at first had captivated him, is "the only woman he had NEVER loved of those who had loved him", and therefore according to the dream logic of obsession is the one he can't let go of. Try as he might to find her original magic in her descendants, he's disappointed each time by the fact that their reality doesn't measure up in some essential way to his fantasy. But obsession is usually immune to reproof, and the dramatic failure of each attempt to marry an Avice doesn't dissuade him from trying again. Pearston's a successful sculptor of statues of women, and Hardy draws the obvious metaphorical parallels between his art and his life.

Along the way he becomes involved with two other women, Marcia Bencomb and Nichola Pine-Avon. His affairs with these two women differ slightly between the two versions, but it is with both that the price of his obsession with Avice become apparent. Marcia, whose family history is entwined with his in a Romeo and Juliet-ish way, is a rebound after the first Avice rejects him whose incompatibility dooms their relationship (his eventual reconnection with her at the end is fairly ghastly in the serialized version; the novel's retelling is less depressing, but the way they "settle" for each other is not exactly joyous). Nichola is a London society woman who honestly would have been just fine for him, and Pearston's abandonment of her to chase after the various Avices leads to her deciding to marry his best friend at just the time when he decides that maybe she's not so bad after all. As life is all about choices, pursuing a fantasy means that you have to give up on something real. At least Pearston recognizes the limits of his unreason, and helps the lesser Avices find happiness when he realizes that he can't have them.

One thing I found weird about the novel is that, according to the introduction, society was scandalized by sexual content in the book, but in fact there's zero sex whatsoever: Pearston's failed attempt to sleep with the first Avice before they're married (according to "island custom", as if premarital sex hasn't been ubiquitous since forever) is what sets the whole story in motion, and he spends the entire rest of the book utterly failing to sleep with any of the other hosts of his "Well-Beloved". What gives? Perhaps the idea of a 60 year old man desperately trying to marry young girls was so shocking that society just couldn't handle it, but it's worth pointing out that in real life, about 20 years after Hardy published this novel he married his secretary, who was 40 years younger than him. Hmm. Another thing that's odd is that although marital status is taken very seriously, the process of getting married is not - Pearston proposes to half the women in the book at the drop of a hat, and most of them seem to treat it with less gravity than a decision on where to go for lunch.

Still, Hardy's exposition of the absurd lengths some people will go to in order to chase an idea instead of a person is well-done and very relevant. How do you know whether your desire is "real", as opposed the kind of phantom that Pearston can't stop chasing, and when should you give up on the ghost and embrace what you have? Unsurprisingly, Hardy is a bit less helpful on that score, but anyone who has lamented their own tendencies to excessive romanticism will find plenty to ponder here. ( )

I enjoyed parts of this novel, but it didn’t appeal greatly to me overall.

Can’t remember any specifics, unfortunately, as I’m reviewing this nearly six years after reading it, but as it’s Thomas Hardy, I’d give it a second read some time. ( )