Harold Frederic

March Hares Harold Frederic

"Capricious, surprising, written to give the Average Man a headache." Henry Harland



The expression "mad as a March hare" is a reflection on the hares excitable and unpredictable behavior during their March mating season. They leap into the air and the female tests the male by making him chase her over several miles, if he catches her, she'll mate with him; if not, "he was poor paternal material anyway." If a female isn't ready to mate with a male who is chasing her, she might stand up and throw a couple of punches right at him.



Set in London, March Hares is a story that chronicle the romance of two people: David Mosscrop who, on the morning of his thirtieth birthday, finds himself standing against the railing of Westminster Bridge ready to jump and Vestalia, the woman with whom he falls in love and finds a new meaning to his life.



Vestalia tells David that, having met him, she feels as if she is in fairyland and the two agree to act as though they are. This none-too-subtle device allows the author a degree of lightness that he exploits fully. As the novel progresses it begins to take on the attributes of a fairy tale: false identities are uncovered, family histories exposed, a rich and generous uncle appears, a secondary love-plot entwines itself with the first.



The characters of the novel are in no way tied to reality; besides their need for food, their demeanor and actions come across as insane. It is fiction posing as reality posing as fiction, teetering on modernism but finally resisting it and resorting instead to mock-naturalism. It is partly the stuff of popular romance, but the author plays with the genre, undermining the narrative by irony and unintentional lapses in mood from the sublime to the trivial to the ridiculous.



March Hares is an original, witty, and delightful story, a fantasy of meetings and separations, discoveries and denouements. The novel subverts itself openly and joyously, enjoying its contradictions and uncertainties, celebrating its own willfulness with overt and tantalizing shifts between reality and imagination. However, reality is seldom allowed to obtrude, or to interfere with the plot. When it does, it is swiftly undermined.



Harold Frederic was an American journalist and novelist. Born in New York in 1856, Frederic moved to London in 1884 to work as correspondent of the New York Times. Frederic wrote several early stories, but it was not until he published Illumination (The Damnation of Theron Ware) followed by Gloria Mundi that his talent as a novelist was fully realized.