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Hidden Guilt?
A Reading of Thomas Hardy's "The Workbox"

"The Workbox," an offering of the poet Thomas Hardy, tells the story of a day in the lives of a young couple living in a small village in a rural area of the English countryside. The characters in the story include the husband, a carpenter by trade, his wife, the recently deceased John Wayward, and the narrator. The opening lines begin with the husband presenting his wife with a gift made of his own hand, a sewing box "[t]hat [he] made of polished oak" (2). The wife seems genuinely pleased with his offering, smiling and saying, "'Twill last all my sewing years!" (8). As the story continues, the husband tells his wife about the origin of the wood (the wood was a remnant of John Wayward's coffin) of which her workbox is made and how he was thinking, as he labored on the box, of the various ways in which timber reached its end. As the husband tells his story, he notices his wife's reaction and realizes she has become......

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Approximate Word Count: 1888
Approximate Pages: 8 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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