There are moments in the book where idiom is used to invest a sense of specific geography and chronology into the speech of the characters. In Chapter 16, the young corn expert Farfrae throws a much more successful and well-attended town celebration than Henchard does, embarrassing Henchard and causing people to directly compare them to one another. Hardy uses a regional proverb, “Jack’s as good as his master,” to describe the complex feeling of a student having surpassed the teacher, to the teacher's displeasure:
“What’s this, Henchard,” said Alderman Tubber, applying his thumb to the corn-factor like a cheese-taster. “An opposition randy to yours, eh? Jack’s as good as his master, eh? Cut ye out quite, hasn’t he?”
Phrases like this contribute to the realism of the book because they make sense in context, allowing the reader to feel party to something that would otherwise be private. This proverb is understandable only in the framing provided by the omniscient narrator and in the time and location in which it is placed. Its legibility in this situation plays a key role in putting the reader in the “same space” as Hardy’s characters.
These phrases allow the author to sum up a complex set of feelings in a short phrase or sentence, while also imbuing those feelings with local color. Because Alderman Tubber says this proverb to Henchard as a joke at his expense, Hardy also makes the reader feel complicit in both Henchard’s frustration and impotence and Farfrae’s evident comparative success. The reader participates in both laughing at Henchard and in feeling his rage.
