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This paper sets out to better understand Hardy's usage of the Dorset dialect in his work, more precisely in Tess of the d'Urbervilles and through a possible associated poem 'The Ruined Maid'.1 Yet, to delve into Hardy's dialect writing, one needs to overview Hardy's connection (or inner motives) with the Dorset dialect.
The interaction of dialect in Hardy's writing might partly be explained by his childhood in Dorset. At home, Hardy is more likely to have spoken Standard English, even if some subtle differences might be observed :
There were perceptible speech differences, too, at a time when the Dorset dialect was still a distinctive linguistic form, although Hardy's observation that the dialect was 'not spoken in his mother's house, but only when necessary to the cottagers, & by his father to his workmen', rather slides over the fact that both his parents spoke with local accents - so much that their father's speech became for Hardy and his elder sister, a shared source of affectionate humour, and their mother's, in her old age, an occasion of amusement to outsiders.2
There is therefore a sociolinguistic distinction within the family nest: the dialect is more likely to have been spoken with employees or country dwellers. When the French linguist Claude Hagège explains that 'Human environment, vital for children in order to learn their mother tongue, is even more so when it involves bilingual education',3 he is trying to prove that linguistic environment acts in favour of children and helps them to sharpen their memory and learn various languages or language registers. Yet, if Thomas Hardy was able to master those two idioms, it was because he used them regularly. The other Dorset poet, William Barnes, also spoke the dialect, and more probably at home. It aroused stronger feelings for him as it was his mother tongue. That might explain why he wrote his poetry entirely in dialect, or nearly so, compared to Hardy where dialect appears through light touches in poetry. A slight difference between the poets is thus significant: Barnes has a more active knowledge of the dialect (at home, he spoke the dialect), whereas Hardy has a passive knowledge of the dialect (Standard English was the home language spoken by his mother).
Hardy was...