Motion sickness: spectacle and circulation in Thomas Hardy's "On the Western Circuit."

Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1996 by John Plotz

To put it another way, "On the Western Circuit" benefits by being read through the lens Adorno turned on Wagner:

Wagner belongs to the first generation to realize that in a world

that has been socialized through and through it is not possible

for an individual to alter something that is determined over the

heads of men. Nevertheless it was not given to him to call the

overarching totality by its real name. In consequence it is

transformed for him into myth. (87)

The mythic structure abides in most of Hardy--even in "On the Western Circuit." Hardy begins nonetheless to tell the story of the advent of simulations (moving from London to the provinces), which is also the story of the relinquishment of human autonomy and decision-making to a mechanical structure. Hardy finds (or manufactures) in his Wessex a breathing-space, a space from which to confront a modern life that by 1891 had held London in its thrall a full 60 years. In a space where modernity is dilatory, where it is late in arriving, the steam roundabout becomes visible in its full, complicated relationship to other roundabout systems of the modern age: to the fiscal system that sends cash to Wessex, and carnivals to gather that cash; to the judicial circuit that wheels Charles through Wessex; and to the postal system that sends letters from Charles to Anna, and from Anna to Edith, and from Edith back to Charles. That same postal system also sends Hardy's manuscripts up to London and his published stories down to subscribers of The English Illustrated Magazine. Thomas Hardy himself, the stoker of textual machinery and the "amanuensis" (the book's first title [Manford 95]) of textual lovers, is part of the spin cycle too.

The steam roundabout exists on a slightly different plane of reality from its surroundings: it is "in the agricultural world, but not of it" (Tess 319). We might say that it systematically distorts visual stimuli around it. Debord's definition of "spectacle" is relevant here, especially given Thomas Hardy's notable concern with distinguishing between work and play:

The spectacle is not identifiable with mere gazing even combined

with hearing. It is that which escapes the activity of men, that

which escapes reconsideration and correction by their work.(18)(6)

What is seen on the roundabout is disconnected from any of the ordinary standards by which any sensory input can be judged. Vision gains some unquantifiable added essence.

The results of the roundabout's visual plus-power are enormous, ranging from Charles's paying for (one) young beauty to continue riding the roundabout, to the judicial circuitry wheeling young Charles away at just the right (or wrong) moment, to the eventual entire misguided correspondence. But the salient fact is that all of these later misuses of three entirely different circulatory systems of the world--money, the judicial circuitry, and letter writing--are the results of an initial visual misapprehension. All the subsequent trouble can be indirectly traced back to the original spectacular mistake, the thing seen that not only was not there, but could never even have been imagined without the roundabout.