Rural Life and Love-a study of two short stories by Thomas Hardy

Both the Withered Arm and the Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion are both set in small villages in rural England. Village life in England was then and still is a lot different than city life in cities you don't really know many people and you aren't as isolated as in villages where everyone knows everyone and every bodies business you know what someone has done or is going to do before their closet friends …

…desert Gould for Tina and ends up finding out that he is deserting her for some over woman. In these two stories there is a lot of irony and coincidence throughout but in the end both women end up sad and lonely. There is also a lot of fate involved in the stories they both go through these great long adventures only to end up sad and lonely in the end until they both die.