SOURCE: Plotz, John. “Motion Slickness: Spectacle and Circulation in Thomas Hardy's ‘On the Western Circuit.’” Studies in Short Fiction 33, no. 3 (summer 1996): 369-86.

In the following essay, Plotz explores the meaning of technical advances and machinery in Hardy's short fiction, particularly the steam roundabout in “On the Western Circuit.”

Dreading the moment when the inexorable stoker, grimly lurking behind the rococo-work, should decide that this set of riders had had their pennyworth, and bring the whole concern of steam-engine, horses, mirrors, trumpets, drums, cymbals, and such-like to pause and silence, he waited for her every reappearance.

(“On the Western Circuit” 246)

The grim stoker, who makes only this one brief appearance in Thomas Hardy's 1891 story, “On the Western Circuit,” is the invisible producer of phantasmagoria, embodying all the evils that the steam roundabout's cheery whirl seems to belie. Harmless and beautiful as a ride on the roundabout may seem at...