“A struggle between man, on the one hand, and, on the other, an
omnipotentand indifferent Fate - that is Hardy’s interpretation of the
human scene.”
Lord David Cecil
Chapter 3
Analysis of selected novels of Thomas Hardy
1. Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874.
2. The Return of the Native, 1878.
3. The Mayor of the Casterbridge, 1886.
4. Tess of the D’ Urbervillies, 1891.
5. Jude the Obscure, 1895.
Chapter 3
Analysis of selected novels of Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy represented imaginative world of Wessex – it’s geography, landscape,
folkways, agricultural pursuits, quaint peasantry – all this forms a firm background for action
of his main characters. Along with beauty of Wessex, from the beginning, he was impressed
by the tragic pathos of humanity caught between its craving for happiness and the social
conventions as well as those rooted in the contradictions of human nature itself. His style is
simple and candid, notable for its almost scientific precision of statement and discreetly
rhythmical in cadence. His dialogues are sometimes stiff and stilted. His forte is setting his
characters against some vast backdrop of space and time. Their individual sufferings are
assimilated to the general pathos of humanity.
Love is central theme of Hardy’s novels. Woman’s passivity and frailty makes her
depends on fate. Hardy presented that destiny by employing a human instrument brings about
tragedy. Tess, Bathsheba, Thomasin and Grace all female figures of Hardy are the victims of
men with whom they fall in love. Love acts as predominating motive that actuates his
characters. His characters are fixed and non developing characters. Their fortunes may
change but they don’t change with their fortunes. They remain unchanged from the beginning
up to the end. The local colour, the folk customs, occupations, ambitions and interrelationships of the changeless characters are organic and present total scheme. Nature is also
presented as unchangeable. Characters are nearest to Nature so, they are changeless.
Changeful and changeless characters are in conflict and the tragedy takes place. Hardy
challenged many of the sexual and religious conventions of the Victorian age. The center of
his novels was the countryside around Dorchester.
Thomas Hardy's Wessex
(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, (October 2009)
Locations in Wessex
The English authorThomas Hardy set all of his major novels in the south
andsouthwest of England. He named the area "Wessex" after the medieval Anglo-Saxon
kingdom that existed in this part of that country prior to theNorman Conquest. Although the
places that appear in his novels actually exist, in many cases he gave the place a fictional
name. For example, Hardy's hometown of Dorchester is called Casterbridge in his books,
most famously in ‘The Mayor of the Casterbridge’. In an 1895 preface to the novel ‘Far from
the Madding Crowd’ he described Wessex as "a merely realistic dream country".
The actual definition of "Hardy's Wessex" varied widely throughout Hardy's career,
and was not definitively settled until after he had retired from writing novels. When he first
created the concept of a fictional Wessex, it consisted merely of the small area of Dorset in
which Hardy grew up; by the time he wrote ‘Jude the Obscure’, the boundaries had extended
to include all of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire, much of Berkshire, and
some of Oxfordshire, with its most north-easterly point being Oxford (renamed
"Christminster" in the novel). Similarly, the actual nature and significance of ideas of
"Wessex" were developed over a long series of novels through a lengthy period of time. The
idea of Wessex plays an important artistic role in Hardy's works (particularly his later
novels), assisting the presentation of themes of progress, primitivism, sexuality, religion,
nature, and naturalism; however, this is complicated by the economic role Wessex played in
Hardy's career. Considering himself primarily to be a poet, Hardy wrote novels mostly to
earn money: books that could be marketed under the Hardy brand of "Wessex novels" were
particularly lucrative, which gave rise to a tendency to sentimentalised, picturesque, populist
descriptions of Wessex - which, as a glance through most tourist giftshops in the south-west
will reveal, remain popular with consumers today.
Hardy's resurrection of the name "Wessex" is largely responsible for the popular
modern use of the term to describe the south-west region of England (with the exception of
Cornwall); today, panoply of organisations takes their name from Hardy to describe their
relationship to this area. Hardy's conception of Wessex as a separate, cohesive geographical
and political identity has proved powerful, despite the fact, it was originally created purely as
an artistic conceit, and has spawned a lucrative tourist trade, and even a secessionist Wessex
Regionalist Party.
An understanding of Hardy's Wessex, its physical features, etc., is necessary for a proper
understanding of his works, for this region forms the background to all that he has written. In
some of his novels, as in the Return of the Native, it is a dominant over-character influencing
both character and action.
Wessex was the name of the ancient kingdom of the legendary King Alfred. Hardy used
this name for the six odd counties in the South-West part of England. Wessex of Thomas
Hardy stretches from the English Channel in the South, to Cornwall in the West, and as far as
Oxford to the North. It is this limited region which forms the scenic background to each of
his eighteen "Wessex novels" and to his poems, and also reappears in the epic-drama. The
same physical features —hills and dales, rivers, pastures and meadows, woodlands and
heaths —appear and reappear in all his works. This imparts to his works a kind of scenic
continuity and a touch of realism difficult to match in any fiction. Every event in his novels
takes place within this locality. It is seldom that he strays out of it. It is for this reason that he
is also called a regional novelist.
Hardy's Treatment of Wessex: It’s Realism
The heart and centre of Hardy's Wessex is the country of Dorsetshire. It was here that he
was born and bred up and it was here that he settled in after life. It was here that he produced
the best of his works. He had acquired a thorough knowledge of this region. He was
permeated with its scents and substances, with its scenes and sights. He has described the
physical features of his Wessex with great accuracy and realism. He has expressed the very
spirit of this locality in his works. He has immortalized the land of Wessex which is a living,
breathing reality in his novel. That is why many a Hardy enthusiast and topographer has
taken the imaginary for the real and has gone in search of various landmarks described in the
Wessex novels. For example, the description of Casterbridge in ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’
is so realistic that many have taken it to be an exact reproduction of the town of Dorset.
Similarly, all visitors to the Hardy country have testified that the dreary and desolate
atmosphere of Flint Comb-Ash farm in Tess is exactly the same as that of the real place.
But this does not mean that Hardy's works have the literal fidelity of a guidebook. We
should not expect scientific accuracy from a writer of fiction. As Hardy himself pointed out,
his Wessex is partly a real and partly a dream country. It is a clever blending of fact and
fiction. The general features and broad outlines remain the same as of the real objects. The
spirit-of the place also remains the same. Thus much is realism. But the details are shifted,
modified or enlarged to suit the purpose of the novelist. For example, the powerfulness of his
imagination enabled the writer to magnify a small heath to epic proportions and immortalise
it in ‘The Return of the Native’. Similarly, he magnified the small wood near his native place,
and in ‘The Woodlanders’ imparted to it a vastncss and grandeur which is utterly lacking in
the original. He had acquired a thorough knowledge of this region. He was permeated with
its scents and substances, with its scenes and sights. He has described the physical features of
his Wessex with great accuracy and realism. As Hardy himself pointed out, his Wessex is
partly a read and partly a dream country. Hardy is fully alive to the historic character of the
region that he has chosen as a background to his works. Equally close is Hardy’s familiarity
with the life and custom of the Wessex rustics. Tess in the Tess of the D’Urbervilles is a
dairymaid. The use of local dialect, in which Hardy was well-versed, and through which all
his characters express themselves, imparts to his works a touch of realism difficult to be
matched in any fiction. No aspect of Wessex life escapes Hardy’s eyes. Dancing, singing
and drinking are their favorite recreations.
The Wessex of Hardy is an isolated country. Railways and modern industrialization
have not yet reached it. The Wessex rustics live their own life untouched by modernism.
Many quaint customs and superstitions still persist. They are still fatalistic. The Wessex
rustics are a superstitious lot. Education as yet has not dispelled the darkness of ignorance
from the land.
In every town, there are conjurers and fore-tellers.
There is also the
superstition “no moon, no man”, In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, we find that an evening crow
is considered an ill-omen as it signifies pre-marital sex experience on the part of the bride. In
this very novel, the cattle are supposed to withhold their yield on the arrival of a new hand
and give milk only when music is played to them. Hardy is suspicious of the advance of
modern civilization. Wessex is so far unaffected by it, but sophisticated people from the
town arrive to disturb the even tenor of the simple life of the Wessex folk. Such is Hardy’s
Wessex. He has immortalized it and put it on the world map.
Hardy is a great Regional novelist because he has imparted universal interest to a
particular region. The scenes of all his novels are laid in one particular region, alone. He
treats only of its life its history and its geography. Still his novels are of interest even to those
who have nothing to do with Wessex. This is so because he has succeeded in universalizing
the regional and the typical. He concentrates on passions and emotions which are universal;
they are the real themes of his novels. Hardy’s philosophy and pessimism tries to find out,
what is the cause of this universal suffering of man and nature alike. In Hardy’s view the real
cause is the, “imperfection of the laws that may be in force on high”. Thus, human suffering
is the result of the imperfections of the first cause, the power that caused or created this sorry
scheme of things. He rejects the orthodox Christian belief that this power is benevolent, all
merciful, omnipotent and omniscient. He cannot reconcile the fact of universal, underserved
suffering with the omnipotence and benevolence of God or the First cause. He indignantly
asks, “What makes suffering and evil, necessary to its omnipotence?” He regards this power
as blind, indifferent, if not actually hostile, and unconscious and unmoral. He uses ‘it’ and
not “He” for this power. This power has no sense of right or wrong, loves or hate. In its
blind, unconscious, impersonal working, it does not, and cannot, take into account human
wishes and aspirations. Hence, it’s working often causes men and women much pain and
suffering.
This power manifests itself in a number of ways. Sometimes, it expresses itself
through some force of Nature.
Usually Nature in Hardy remains indifferent to, and
unconscious of, the suffering of Hardy’s characters. For example, Tess’ suffering goes
unheeded in Nature. She is violated in the lap of Nature, but all Nature remains unconcerned
and indifferent. But sometimes, Nature seems to work against the characters of Hardy, or we,
in our sympathy for them, feel nature to be hostile. ‘The Return of the Native’ is a tragedy of
character and environment; Edgon Heath plays a prominent part in the novel and is largely
responsible for the tragedy. In ‘The Mayor of Caster bridge’, the very stars seem to be
hostile to Henchard. The fair organized by him, with such generosity and care, is ruined by
untimely and unexpected rain. The vagaries of whether ruin him financially and make him a
Bankrupt. Bad weather had been foretold and on that basis he made reckless purchases. But,
the weather cleared and he had to sell at far lower pieces. Then quite unaccountably the
weather changed again. There was rain and hail and Henchard was a financial wreck.
Nature, thus, seems to be the instrument of some hostile power working against Henchard. It
is in this sense that Nature is fate in Hardy’s novels.
Wessex: Its Historical Associations
Dorsetshire and its neighbouring counties —the South-Western part of England, are
rich in historic associations. The Romans ruled it for a number of years and have left their
monuments behind. Many other invading hoards came to it one after another. Race by race
and tribe by tribe as they came and went they have left the traces of their arrival, which time
has failed to obliterate. Hardy is fully alive to the historic character of the region that he has
chosen as a background to his works. Every sod in Hardy's Wessex breathes history. He
invokes history, even pre-history and geology, to cast over the land of Wessex a romantic
glow. In ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’, for example, we are told that even if we dig a few feet
we are sure to find some skeleton of Roman warrior, with its feet touching its abdoman and
its vessels hurried near him. Such "Skellingtons" are a common sight for the Wessex farmers
and urchins. Near Casterbridge there is the Roman ring or ampitheatre, the ancient relic of the
Roman Empire, which no one likes to frequent out of fear of its bloody associations. In Tess
we get the temple of Stonehenge which the ancients had built of placate the powers that be.
Then there are the palaces of ancient Wessex families like that of the D'urbervilles, now in
ruins and unfrequented but still important landmarks in Hardy's landscapes. In ‘A Pair of
Blue Eyes’ we are given an account of the various races and tribes that came to Wessex from
time to time. We are then taken into the realm of pre-history, and made to see with our mind's
eyes the different animal species that have- successively stalked the land of Wessex. A
similar condition of things obtains in all other Wessex works.
Life and Customs of Wessex
Equally close is Hardy's familiarity with the life and customs of the Wessex rustics.
He knows every detail of the business of the farmer, the wood-cutter, the hay-trusser, the
cider-maker, the shepherd, the dairymaid and the dairyman. This knowledge is not that of a
person who has studied their life from apart, with a sense of superiority, but of one who has
lived with them and mixed with them on an equal footing as one of them. Characters in the
Wessex novels are drawn not from the upper strata of society, from the lowest and the
humblest rank of life. Henchard in ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ is a hay-trusser. Clym also
turns a hay-trusser and furze-cutter. Tess in the ‘Tess of the D'urbervilles’ is a dairy maid,
Giles an humble cider-maker and pine-planter, and Marty South makes spars for her
livelihood, He reveals to us the intimate details of their respective professions, their skills
and the hardships of their lives.
He reveals to us the inherent nobility of their souls, their persistance and their
struggle against heavy odds. They have to wrest their humble livelihood from Nature and
depend upon her vagaries for their life. In ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’, we are told that the
Wessex farmer often regards the Weather-God as a person hostile to him and bent upon
destroying him. In Tess we are taken to a dairy farm in the vale of the Great Dairies and are
shown their life from day to day, and intimate details of their profession are described with
great accuracy. The use of local dialect, in which Hardy was well-versed, and through which
all his characters express themselves, imparts to his works a touch of realism difficult to be
matched in any fiction. Not only this, he also knows that the Wessex rustic suggests more
through his movements than through his speech. In a characteristic passage in ‘The Mayor of
Casterbridge,’ the various ways through which the Wessex rustic expresses himself have
been graphically and humorously described.
Wessex Rustics: Their Recreations
No aspect of Wessex life escapes Hardy's eye. Dancing, singing, and drinking are
their favourite recreations. In the evening, or whenever they have leisure, they assemble in
some inn and pass their time in drinking and singing or in idle gossip. For example, in ‘The
Mayor of Casterbridge’ the rustics gather at ‘The Three Mariners’, drink as they gossip, and
pass comments on the events of the day. They heartily enjoy the song of Farfrae, and press
him to repeat his performance. Village fairs are also a good source of entertainment for them.
In the opening of this very novel, we are given an account of the annual fair at Weydon-Prior
where Henchard sells his wife in the tent of the furmity-seller. We also get an account of such
a fair in ‘The Return of the Native’, at which Eustacia dances with Wildieve. Later on, we get
vivid accounts of the respective fairs organised by Farfrae and Henchard and which lead to
the latter's undoing.
Wessex: Orthodoxy and Fatalism
The Wessex of Hardy is an isolated country. Railways and modern industrialisation
have not yet reached it. The Wessex rustics live their own life untouched by modernism.
Many quaint customs and superstitions still persist. They are still fatalistic. In ‘The Mayor of
Casterbridge’, we get the 'Skimmity Ride'. The residents of Mixen Lane take out on an ass the
effigies of Henchard end Lucetta in close embrace, symbolising their immoral relations.
Elizabeth-Jane passively accepts her sorry fate because what is lotted cannot be blotted. Tess
when confronted with misfortunes passively exclaims, "It was to be", and goes on as usual
about the daily business of her life.
Some Wessex Superstitions
The Wessex rustics are a supertitious lot. Education as yet has not dispelled the
darkness of ignorance from the land. In every town, there arc conjures and fortune-tellers. In
‘The Mayor of Caster bridge’, there is (he Conjurer Fall, the Weather-prophet, whom
Henchard consults before making his rash purchases. When crossed in his luck, he feels that
somebody must be melting his image made in wax to spell his ruin. Later on, the sight of his
own effigy floating in the dark water of the river prevents him from committing suicide. In
‘The Return of the Native’, Susan Nunsuch burns a wax effigy of Eustacia whom she regards
as a witch. There is also the superstition "no moon, no man." In ‘Tess of the D'urbervilles’,
we find that an evening crow is considered an ill-omen as it signifies pre-marital sex
experience or the part of the bride. In this very novel, the cattle are supposed to withhold their
yield on the arrival of a new hand and soften only when music is played to them. In the other
works of Hardy also, we are told of one or the other of the Wessex superstitions.
The Impact of Modernism: It’s Tragic Consequences
Hardy is suspicious of the advance of modern civilization. Wessex is so far unaffected
by it, but sophisticated people from the town arrive to disturb the even tenor of the simple life
of the Wessex folk. The rustics are happy and contented inspite of their backwardness, their
poverty and their humdrum ways. The impact of modernism leads to tragedy. Henchard
would have prospered with his old, unsystematic ways and rough and ready methods of
accountancy. But then Farfrae arrives on the scene. With his systematic business like ways,
with his new-fangled machines and with his polished manners, he pushes Henchard out of
business as well as out of the hearts of the people. Similarly, sophisticated Luceta, with her
refined manners and fashionable dresses, conquers the heart of Farfrae and causes untold
suffering to simpler but far noble Elizabeth-Jane. In Tess, it is the sophisticated and selfcentred Angel Clare and Alec who are responsible for the tragedy of Tess, a pure woman
more sinned against than sinning. It is the same in all other prose works of Hardy.
The Universal Element
Such is Hardy's Wessex. He has immortalised it and put it on the world map. Hardy is
a great regional novelist because he has imparted universal interest to a particular region. The
scenes of his entire novel are laid in one particular region. He treats only of its life, its history
and its geography. Still his novels are of interest even to those who have nothing to do with
Wessex. This is so because he succeeded in universalising the regional and the topical. He
concentrates on passions and emotions which are universal; they are the real themes of his
novels.
Art of Characterization: “Hardy’s greatness in the field of characterization is beyond
question. He is the creator of a large number of the undying figures of literature. The variety
of his characters in immense, his command over human personality is extensive. Angel
Clare, Clym Yeobright, Gabriel Oak, Giles Winterbourne, Henchard, the Mayor of
Casterbridge. Tess, Eustacia, Bathseba, Elizabeth-Jane are only a few out of the many
immortal personages of Hardy. It is all, ‘a gallery of everlasting delight.’ Of course, in all
novels as well as in all drama, the central action is the expression of the central character.”
(Mc Dowall Arthur, ‘Thomas Hardy: A Critical Study’)
The character is developed in Hardy, as in other novelists, through the stress of
circumstances. Delicate incidental touches of portraiture, vivid descriptive phrases, met
phobic illuminations and revealing comparisons, chance utterances of the man himself… etc.
are Hardy’s means of developing his characters and vivifying their personalities. The very
movements and gestures of his personages often reveal their characters. For example, the
cynical and dogged indifference of Henchard is revealed in the every turn and plant of each
foot, nay in the very creases behind his knees. His character is further developed through the
use of a wealth of metaphors, scattered all over the novel. We quote a few examples selected
at random: he loves and hates with, “buffaloe wrong-headedness”. Emotion sways him, “as
wind a great tree”. His personality besides that of Farfrae is as the sun besides the moon.
The ground work of Hardy’s power in character drawing lies in the varied and reiterated
emphasis on prominent traits through delicate, incidental touches and illuminating metaphors.
It is in this way that, gradually and imperceptibly, Thomas Hardy builds up the personality of
his protagonists.
The method of set-description in characterization is also used by, him, though not so
frequently. It has been used, and with rare success, in the case of Eustacia Vye in ‘The
Return of the Native.’ An entire chapter has been devoted to visualize her personality.
Hardy has given her a treatment, more deliberate and more thorough than in the case of any
other character, either because, he regarded her as a rare, unique creature, or because the
entire action of the novel depends upon her personality. First, we get a succession of light
touches in the usual manner of Hardy, and then it follows a full chapter of description, as
marvelously rich, as if the splendor and romance of ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes,’
should be prolonged over eight pages.
Every phrase is salient and arresting and hence, the chapter must be read out in full to
be really appreciated. However, even in this instance of set-description, Thomas Hardy does
not give us, as an inferior artist would have done, a catalogue of Eustacia’s charms of her
hue, form and features. Rather, Hardy tells us, ‘what she suggests and what she stands for’.
Thus, her hair is not said to be black, but that a whole winter does not contain darkness
enough to form its shadow. Similarly, her motion suggests the ebb and flow of the sea, and
her voice the viola. Clym Yeobright, too, in this very novel, has been given a lengthy and set
treatment, though in his case only two or three pages suffice. Another character, who gets
such a set treatment, is farmer Boldwood in Far from the Madding Crowd. Hardy knows that
a man or a woman cannot be de cribbed precisely by ‘items of face and figure’. He rarely
describes a man or woman like a photographer, not even like the common portrait-painters,
but like one who rises above the physical and tries to understand the mind and soul of the
person under study.
Thomas Hardy’s characters are real, life-like. They are like ordinary human beings
subject to ordinary joys and sorrows and common human passions. He does not have either
angles or gods. His characters are gems, but flawed gems all. They are all of the earth. Here
and there we do find a character more perfect than others. Garbiel Oak in the Far from the
madding crowd nearly reaches perfection. But, such instances of perfection are few and far
between. Just as Hardy has few perfect characters, so also, he has no under deemed villains.
Troy, Wild eve, Alec all has a likeable side to their natures. Even Arabella Donny is not
wholly bad, we cannot help liking her.
There are villains in Hardy’s novels, but they have some good also in them. The fact
is he cannot simply paint at full length odious people, and mean people neither feel deeply
nor are aware of any issues larger than those involved in the gratification of their own selfish
desires. He can only draw at full length people whose nature is of a sufficiently fine quality
to make them realize the greatness of the issues in which they are involved. Hardy simply
cannot get into the heart of such people. It does not mean that all his successful creatures are
virtues. Henchard and Eustacia commit sins but they do so in the grand manner. This grand
manner is the expression of an over-mastering passion, not the calculated consequence of
selfish lust. Moreover, they know they are doing wrong; they are torn with conscience.
Therefore, we do not dislike them.
Hardy’s characters are life-like, realistic; they are compounds of good and evil, like
real human beings. Moreover, they are neither realistic only, nor types only, they are
universals as well. Like a photographer. Hardy gives us an outside view of his creation in
the case of his minor rustic characters alone. They alone are realistic, though over them also
is thrown a veil of romantic glamour. They are divested of all vulgarity and grossness of real
rural life, and in this way they are idealized, an “atmosphere of poetry laps them round”.
There are other character-creators who get below individual differences and qualities, classify
individuals and thus arrive at types.
But such types do not give us any profound understanding of human nature, types are
countless and one type tells us nothing of another. Some of Hardy’s characters As Angel
Clare are mere types and that is why their appeal is limited. But Hardy’s greatest characters,
his most successful creations, are neither types nor individuals, they are universals. Each of
them comprehends within itself the whole of human nature, and that is why they appeal to all,
and once we have made their acquaintance we can never forget them. In each of them, every
reader of Hardy recognizes something of himself. They are built of the elemental material
that is common to all humanity. Tess, Jude, Henchard, Oak, Eustacia, Clym are all universal,
elemental figures, rising like granite mountains out of the pages of Hardy. Women are more
elemental than men, and so Hardy’s female characters are more effective and vivid.
Limitations of Hardy’s art of characterization may now be noted. His imaginative
range is extremely limited. Almost all his successful characters belong to Wessex and to the
lower strata of society. Whenever he strays out of Wessex, he makes a sorry mess of it.
Great ladies and great men, people of the city, etc, are all outside the range of Thomas Hardy.
However, it may be pointed out in Hardy’s defence that he deliberately chooses characters
from the lowest ranks of society because, as he himself tells us, “the conduct of the upper
classes is screened by conventions and thus the real character is not seen.” In the lower ranks
of society, conduct or action is the real expression of character. He wanted to understand
human nature, and so he goes to the simplest specimen of it.
Just as Thomas Hardy cannot portray men and women from the upper classes, so also,
he is not successful in the portrait of intellectuals. His intellectuals are selfish, hard-hearted
and contemptible. There is no generous impulse in them, they show the evil effects, of cold
reason. Clym’s treatment of his wife and mother is unflinching in its hardness. Clare fails
Tess at the greatest crisis of her life because of his, ‘hard logical deposit,’ and Henry Knight
is an egotist. The Novels of Character and Environment (also known as "The Wessex
Novels") are tragic in their conception. Hardy was very much the social critic. In his fiction
not only natural forces, but also human society seem bent on crushing the sensitive and
imaginative individual. Society inflicts its gratuitous suffering through exercising outworn
conventions and superficial values, as well as through the new age's emphasis on efficiency.
In the novels of Thomas Hardy, time moves rhythmically, in seasons and ages, rather than
mechanically, according to watch and even calendar.
Hardy's attitudes towards women were complex because of his own o experiences.
Certainly the latter stages of his own marriage to Emma Lavinia Gifford must have
contributed much to his somewhat equivocal attitudes. On the one hand, Hardy praises
female endurance, strength, passion, and sensitivity; on the other, he depicts women as meek,
vain, plotting creatures of mercurial moods. Rarely do his minor female characters have
either inner strength or spiritual power or physical beauty. He treats them with a fond irony.
Hardy's heroes, like Clym and Jude and Henchard, are able to struggle actively with their
destiny, form plans for opposing it, try to hew out a recognized place in the world. The
women in his novels have no such outlet, and this makes their situation more tragic. They are
limited to a very few, easily recognizable social roles, and they are always subject to sexual
domination and destruction from men.
(Williams Merryn, ‘Thomas Hardy and Rural England’ 9091)
Carl J. Webber notes the following characteristics of Hardy's fiction evident in what was
probably a re-working of his first effort:
1. Its stage is chiefly set in rural Wessex.
2. It is topographically specific, to a degree unparalleled in English literature.
3. It deals with Dorset farmers, and shows sympathetic insight into the life of this class.
4. It does not avoid an impression of artificiality whenever "polite society" is involved.
5. The dialogue is often unreal, and there is occasional stiffness of language, with
involved sentences, awkward inversions, split infinitives, etc.
6. In marked contrast with these rhetorical defects, there is frequent felicity of phrase,
particularly in descriptive passages, and the author's alert senses, all of them, often leave
their mark.
7. Nature interests him for her own sake, and his treatment of her is often poetic.
8. There are many literary allusions and quotations, and references to painters,
musicians, and architects.
9. The use of coincidents and accidents is overdone; and plausibility is often stretched to
the extreme.
10. There is a secret marriage.
11. There is a pervading note of gloom, only momentarily relieved.
12. It all comes to a tragic end (sudden death).
(Weber C.J ‘Hardy of Wessex: His life and literary career’)
Hardy’s use of Destiny and Fate: Hardy took comfort in the realization that probability of
character is far more important than probability of incident. Hardy saw man beaten down by
forces within and without .He sought to record man's eternal struggle with fate. His tragic
heroes and heroines cry out defiantly against their fate, but accept their doom with an insight
into and an awareness of the forces of evil which have effected their downfall; by the very
strength of their passions, Hardy's protagonists command our sympathies and we experience a
feeling that someone of great worth has been lost when we see them destroyed. Although we do
not meet them on the stage, Hardy's heroes and heroines are specifically "tragic".
Hardy's Novels of Character and Environment convey a strong sense of fatalism,
a view that in life human actions have been predetermined, either by the very nature of
things, or by God, or by Fate. Hardy dramatized his conception of destiny in human
affairs as the Imminent will in his novels. By his emphasis on chance and circumstance in
the plots of his stories Hardy consistently suggests that human will is not free but fettered.
'Fate' has a more impersonal connotation than 'destiny', and is usually perceived as a more
hostile force. It can be seen through Hardy’s novels. He uses various prefiguring devices,
such as omens to prepare us for such patterns of malevolence working through apparent
coincidences. At times, the character of Time itself seems to act as fate. Readers are drawn to
the concepts of coincidence, Fate and destiny in Hardy's novels because they seem central to
the way in which he makes his plots work. Hardy’s novels use coincidence.
•
To tie up the plot or sub-plots, and to resolve mysteries and secrets.
•
To bring characters together.
•
To create ironies and surprises.
Coincidences, of themselves, are neutral. It is how they affect the characters that
matters. In fiction, any coincidence has to be made to work and to turn the plot in one
direction or another.
Hardy's coincidences may appear to be happy at the outset, but
ironically they often turn out badly.
For revelation of man and destiny in Hardy’s novels following statement is very
effective.Hardy presented the same view through his novels, Thomas Gould states, “We are
not ‘free,’ and we cannot blame anyone for anything: a man’s character is made for him, not
by him, and his every act is already determined before he is born”. In Oedipus the King,
Sophocles demonstrates that humans are unable to control their own fate.
(Gould Thomas, ‘Translation of Oedipus Rex’)
Sigmund Freud suggests that Oedipus the King is known as a tragedy of destiny. Its
tragic effect lies in the contrast between the supreme will of the gods and the vain attempts of
mankind to escape the evil that threatens them. One of the oldest and most debated questions
of all time is whether our lives are governed by fate or by our personal choice. A definition of
fate would be a power which is believed to settle ahead of time how things will happen.
Fatalism is the idea that everything that happens and our very actions not only will take place,
but are unavoidable. Therefore, free will is only an illusion and the “choices” we think we are
making were actually predetermined by past events. “Fate” is commonly defined as a
predetermined state or end: something that you have no control over and it will occur whether
you want it to or not. Hardy’s most novels present all above ideas.
We notice that in Hardy’s novels, Fate plays a crucial role. It works as the supreme
over-character in his works that controls the destinies of his characters and sends them to
their doom. His characters seem to be the puppets in the hands of malignant Fate or Destiny.
They are always in conflict with their fate. While they work to one end, fate seems to be
working to some opposite end. The result is tragedy, misery and suffering for puny mortals. It
is for this reason that through his novels we can see the ill-judged execution of well-judged
plan of things, the call that rarely reaches to the comer, the lover becomes indifferent, Nature
never changessuitable for the characters…etc. The blind working of Fate results into victim
shriek and pain. Man and woman wander about the earth, like two halves of a perfect whole,
each waiting for the missing counterpart and outcome of all of this is anxieties,
disappointments, shocks, etc. Commenting on the importance of Fate in the novels of Thomas
Hardy, D. Cecil writes, “A struggle between man, on the one hand, and, on the other, an
omnipotent and indifferent Fate - that is Hardy’s interpretation of the human scene.” (Cecil
David, ‘Hardy, the novelist’)
The fundamental basis of Thomas Hardy's fatalism is seen embodied in his youthful
actions and the very first works he wrote, and there is evidently a gradual development up to
the day of his death. He had a fatalistic outlook throughout his whole life. In fact, even his
birth seemed to be caused by a mere twist of fate. When Hardy was born, the attending
surgeon pronounced him dead. He was thrown aside until Fate stepped in and summoned a
nurse to realize that Hardy was in fact alive. Probably stemming from this, never in Hardy's
whole life did he look upon existence as being much worthwhile. He felt that his stoically
born life was a record of unhappiness. He believed that Fate maintains a disinterested attitude
toward man. Hardy incorporates these feelings into the novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
Fateful incidents, overheard conversations, and undelivered letters symbolize the forces of
Fate working against man's destiny.
Hardy's tender sympathy with nature and his belief in her as an instrument of Fate, is
to be explained that his entire childhood was spent close to the soil. Growing up in the
countryside of a small village of Egdon Heath, he could carefully observe the relentless
regularity of natural changes. It is evident that Hardy considered Egdon Heath a personality,
and likewise thought of it as, an agent of Fate. Hardy lived in an age of transition which
added to his natural disposition toward a melancholy view of life. The industrial revolution
was in the process of destroying the agricultural life and the nature around him that he was so
fond of. Subsequent shifting of population caused a disintegration of rural customs and
traditions which had meant security, stability, and dignity for the people. It was a period
when fundamental beliefs - religious, social, scientific, and political - were shaken to their
very core and brought in their stead the "ache of modernism".
Hardy's early struggle with religious problems was an important factor in shaping his
fatalistic nature. As a child, it was Hardy's dream to become a parson. He had several clerical
relatives who supported him in his goal. His grandfather, father, uncle, brother, cousin, and
two sisters had been musicians in various churches. As a young man, he frequently read
church lessons and became curious of the different religions of Christianity.
The Conflict between Fate and Individual can be seen through Hardy’s novels. In
his view, Fate is indifferent and blind and often works against human happiness. To the
victims it is hostile and malevolent. It is omnipotent and the cause of all human suffering. In
his novels, the real conflict is not between man and man or between man and society, but
between man and the impersonal, omnipotent Fate. All are puppets in the hands of Fate. His
good and bad characters both are the victims of Fate. Thus, Alec is as much in the hands of
Fate as Tess. Henchard is as much a plaything of Fate as Farfrae or Eliabath-jane. All are to
be equally pitied; none is to be blamed, because all are creatures of circumstances. They are
helpless victims of a blind, indifferent and all powerful Fate. We see that Fate is presented as
an abstraction. It plays an effective role in the human drama. It can be objectified as some
natural force. For example in ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’, Fate expresses itself as hostile
weather which ruins Henchard. But more frequently, Fate expresses itself as chance and love.
Chance plays an important role, even an exaggerated role, in the novels of Thomas Hardy.
Many things which are mysterious, and sudden, and which cannot be accounted for in any
natural way take place. The unexpected often happens and always it is the undesireable
unexpected. Such chance events are heavy blows aimed at the heads of Hardy’s protagonists
and the send them to their dooms. Hardy’s novels are dominated by chance events. In his
novels tragedy takes place due to wrong things happening unexpected, at the wrong moment.
His characters suffer because everything happens contrary to their wishes and expectations,
in a way that cannot be accounted for, except by reference to a hostile Fate.
Hardy has presented Fate as love. Sometimes, Fate takes the form of love. All
Hardy’s novels are love stories. Love is the predominant factor in the lives of his characters,
more specialy in female characters. Love as conceived by Hardy is as a blind irresistible
power that controls human beings whether they will or not, and always bringing grief to
them. After her betrayal, Tess had regained equilibrium and she would have lived contentedly
enough, had she not beer mastered by her passion for Angel Clare. But her love for him
carries her off her feet and throws her down broken and despairing. She loves Clare with all
the warmth of her emotional nature.
She worships him and inspite of all her resolution to the contrary marries him. She
consideres it an act of treachery to conceal anything from her beloved and so reveals to him
all about her past. The result is terrible. Angel Clare, that man with a hard ‘logical deposit’,
cannot forgive her. He deserts her. Tess pays, and pays terribly for loving him so much. It is
again on account of her love for him that, in a fit of desperation, she stabs Alec and ends her
life on the gallows. Love is equally the cause of tragedy in ‘The Return of the Native’.
Eustacia is dominated by her passion and the result is not happiness but tragedy. It is rarely
that love leads to happiness, but it always leads to tragedy. Elizabeth-Jane, too, suffers in
love, though ultimately she gets the objects of her desire.
Another limitation of Hardy results from the impact of his philosophy on his novels,
his theme is, “man’s predicament in the universe,” in each one of his novels he shows man
ranged against cruel, malevolent destiny. Therefore, his characters come to have a family
likeness.Certain qualities strike him as significant, and it is only these qualities that are
developed. In one novel after another, his characters can easily be divided into few
categories.The same types are repeated. It has also been said that Thomas hardy is successful
only in painting simple natures; we do not get from him any complex characters. He is
incapable of that subtle psycho-analysis, that analysis of human motives which we get, say
from Henry James. There is much truth in this statement, but it must be said to his credit that
though the very greatest of his heroes and heroines are drawn from the lowest strata of
society, yet they have a soul which the novelist dissects and analyses in order to show to his
readers its grandeur and beauty.
In all his greatest novels we are concerned with something which is spiritual in
essence, something which pertains to the conflict and high-maneuvering of souls. Each one of
his great novels is a Soul’s Tragedy, In other words, his characterization is not only external,
it is internal also. Hardy goes down to the lowest ranks of society for his heroes and heroines
and shows that they, too, have souls as beautiful, as mysteriously interesting and as spiritually
adventurous, as those of kings and queens. Tess has a beautiful soul and the tragedy arises
from the fact that this pure soul is crushed into impurity. Eustacia is also gifted with an
equally noble soul, and Hardy makes us see that soul despite her many faults of conduct. The
deep anguish of Henchard is similarly revealed.This probing of the hidden depths of the soul,
this exploring of hidden mysteries of the souls of ordinary people gives Hardy a quite
extraordinary position among the great creators of character.
Hardy’s love of nature is extremely provincial and local. Born and bred in that
tract of South England which he called Wessex, he loved it all his life with the glow of a
lover. He was permeated with its sights and sounds, with its odors and substances, Hills,
dales, heaths, rivers, meadows and woodlands of Wessex appears in one novel after another,
and constitute at least one half of the charm of his works. He has intimate familiarity with his
beloved Wessex and renders it with great fidelity. It is not only a scenic background to his
stories, but is almost on over-character dominating the course of action. In ‘The Return of
the Native’, for example, Egdon Heath is a super-character casting a shadow over the lives of
all the characters and influences the course of their lives at critical moments. It is seldom that
he stays out of the Wessex, and whenever he does so he makes a sorry hash of it. He is never
at his best when out of Wessex.
Moreover, in his love of Nature there is nothing mystic or transcendental as in that of
Wordshorth. Though he habitually personifies nature-objects, he never believed that nature
has a separate life, a soul, of her own. He loves nature for her beauty, and not for any mystic
qualities that she might have. He does not worship her as a kind and benevolent goddess,
watching benignly over those whose souls are in harmony with her own soul. He is too much
of a realist to care for such romantic nonsense. But in another respect, his love of nature is
more comprehensive and thorough than that of any of the romantics. He loves and enjoys the
conventional beauty of nature.
The beauty of moonlit glades, hills and dales, the arrival of spring when a thousand
flowers blooms and birds make sweet melody, the murmuring of rivers, the beauty of the
sunset and the day dawn, all fire his soul, move him to ecstasy and inspire him to poetic
descriptions. Beautiful nature passages, that bear eloquent testimony to his love of
conventional nature, are scattered all up and down his works. But he also finds beauty of a
new kind in such desolate wastes as Egdon Heath. He finds haggard Egdon sublime and
majestic and waxes lyrical in praise of its grandeur. In ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ he finds
an unconventional beauty of a tragic tone in a desolate, forlorn tract of land called Cross-in
Hand. He has a special love for the bleak and barren, for the wild and the stormy. His love of
the beauteous forms of nature, as well as of her uglier aspects, makes nature alternately
lovely and sinister in his works.
Thomas Hardy is both a poet and a scientist. As a poet he loves the beauty of nature,
but a scientist he does not ignore her faults. He is conscious of the ephemeral nature of her
spring shows. He enjoys the sweet music of birds, but also knows that it is short lived. The
rose may be beautiful but it has a thorn which pricks the chin of his beautiful Tess. He knows
that the serpent also hisses where the swept birds sing. He gives us both the sides of the
picture, the ugly as well as the beautiful, the bright as well as the dark. He portrays nature
completely. Contemporary science has also made him aware of the brutal struggle for
existence that goes on everywhere within the apparent calm of nature. He finds nature rich
with rapine, red in tooth and slaw. Life lives upon life, the strong prey upon the weak, and he
comes to the sorry conclusion that mutual butchery is the law of nature. There is no harmony
in nature, but everywhere there is an internecine warfare. In disgust he turns from nature to
his own kind, for there at least he finds, “Life Loyalties.”
He fails to find any, “Holy plan” at work in nature. How can anyone talk of a holy
plan of nature when there is lawlessness and warfare everywhere within her and when
children after children are born to shiftless parents like the Durbey fields? Why does nature
bring out innocent children in to this world, when she cannot provide for them? Nature is not
benevolent or kind, but rather she is indifferent to human lot, Nature’s indifference is again
and again emphasized in the works of Hardy. Thus, Nature remains indifferent as the chastity
of Tess is violated in her lap. She remains indifferent to this heinous crime and does nothing
to protect her. Her thought of the life of Tess has been ruined, but everything in nature goes’
on as usual. As hot anger burns in the heart of Hardy at the spectacle of Tess, suffering, he
goes to the extent of calling nature, “Shameful”, “Cruel” and treacherous. It is nature’s
indifference which makes life “a strange orchestra of victim’s shriek and pain.”
Hardy’s keen powers of observation and wordpainting make him a notable
landscape painter. “If word pictures could be hung on walls, Hardy’s nature-pieces would
fill up an entire gallery. Hardy’s nature descriptions are fresh and accurate. They are not
bookish, but based on first hand observation of the facts and phenomena of nature. He
observes everything, nothing escapes his eye, but he selects only those details as are likely to
serve his purpose. Thus, in his nature-descriptions he combines imagination with realism fact
with fiction. By the careful selection and ordering of material, he heightens the significant
aspects of a scene and renders it with greater effectiveness.
This research deals with the following novels of Thomas Hardy.
1. Far from the Madding Crowd – (1874)
This novel was published in 1874. It represents essential originality of Hardy’s
temperament. Title of this novel is taken from Thomas Gray’s famous elegy, ’Elegy written
in country churchyard.’ It presents increasingly dramatic struggle between man and evil. This
novel appeared anonymously in Cornhill’s, in 1874.It can be termed as a novel of setting.
In the prefaceof this novel Hardy writes, ‘In reprinting this story for a new edition I
am reminded that it was in the chapters of “Far from the Madding Crowd” as they appeared
month by month in a popular magazine, that I first ventured to adopt the word “Wessex”
from the pages of early English history, and give it a fictitious significance as the existing
name of the district once included in that extinct kingdom. The series of novels I projected
being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition of some
sort to lend unity to their scene. Finding that the area of a single country did not afford a
canvas large enough for this purpose, and that there were objections to an invented name, I
disinterred the old one.
The press and the public were kind enough to welcome the fanciful plan, and
willingly joined me in the anachronism of imagining a Wessex population living under
Queen Victoria; - a modern Wessex of railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping
machines, union workhouses, lucifer matches, labourers who could read and write, and
National school children. But I believe I am correct in stating that, until the existence of this
contemporaneous Wessex was announced in the present story, in 1874, it had never been
heard of, and that the expression, “a Wessex peasant” or “a Wessex custom” would
theretofore have been taken to refer to nothing later in date than the Norman Conquest.
I did not anticipate that this application of the word to a modern use would extend
outside the chapters of my own chronicles. But the name was soon taken up elsewhere as a
local designation. The first to do so was the now defunct Examiner, which, in the impression
bearing date July 15, 1876, entitled one of its articles “The Wessex Labourer,” the article
turning out to be no dissertation on farming during the Heptarchy, but on the modern peasant
of the south-west counties, and his presentation in these stories.
Since then the appellation which I had thought to reserve to the horizons and
landscapes of a merely realistic dream-country, has become more and more popular as a
practical definition; and the dream-country has, by degrees, solidified into a utilitarian region
which people can go to, take a house in, and write to the papers from. But I ask all good and
gentle readers to be so kind as to forget this, and to refuse steadfastly to believe that there are
any inhabitants of a Victorian Wessex outside the pages of this and the companion volumes
in which they were first discovered.’
Moreover, the village called Weatherbury, wherein the scenes of the present story of
the series are for the most part laid, would perhaps be hardly discernible by the explorer,
without help, in any existing place nowadays; though at the time, comparatively recent, at
which the tale was written, a sufficient reality to meet the descriptions, both of backgrounds
and personages, might have been traced easily enough. The church remains, by great good
fortune, unrestored and intact, and a few of the old houses; but the ancient malt-house, which
was formerly so characteristic of the parish, has been pulled down these twenty years; also
most of the thatched and dormered cottages that were once lifeholds.
The game of prisoner’s base, which not so long ago seemed to enjoy a perennial
vitality in front of the worn-out stocks, may, so far as I can say, be entirely unknown to the
rising generation of schoolboys there. The practice of divination by Bible and key, the
regarding of valentines as things of serious import, the shearing-supper, and the harvesthome, have, too, nearly disappeared in the wake of the old houses; and with them have gone,
it is said, much of that love of fuddling to which the village at one time was notoriously
prone. The change at the root of this has been the recent supplanting of the class of stationary
cottagers, who carried on the local traditions and humours, by a population of more or less
migratory labourers, which has led to a break of continuity in local history, more fatal than
any other thing to the preservation of legend, folk-lore, close inter-social relations, and
eccentric individualities. For these the indispensable conditions of existence are attachment to
the soil of one particular spot by generation after generation.
Summary
Gabriel Oak is a young shepherd. With the savings of a frugal life, and a loan, he has
leased and stocked a sheep-farm. He falls in love with a newcomer eight years his junior,
Bathsheba Everdene, a proud beauty who arrives to live with her aunt, Mrs. Hurst. She comes
to like him well enough, and even saves his life once, but when he makes her an unadorned
offer of marriage, she refuses; she values her independence too much and him too little.
Gabriel's blunt protestations only serve to drive her to haughtiness. After a few months, she
moves to Weatherbury, a village some miles off.
When next they meet, their circumstances have changed drastically. An inexperienced
new sheep dog drives Gabriel's flock over a cliff, ruining him. After selling off everything of
value, he manages to settle all his debts, but emerges penniless. He seeks employment at a
work fair in the town of Casterbridge (a fictionalised version of Dorchester). When he finds
none, he heads to another fair in Shottsford, a town about ten miles from Weatherbury.On the
way, he happens upon a dangerous fire on a farm and leads the bystanders in putting it out.
When the veiled owner comes to thank him, he asks if she needs a shepherd. She uncovers
her face and reveals herself to be none other than Bathsheba. She has recently inherited the
estate of her uncle and is now a wealthy woman. Though somewhat uncomfortable, she hires
him.
Meanwhile, Bathsheba has a new admirer: the lonely and repressed William
Boldwood. Boldwood is a prosperous farmer of about forty whose ardour Bathsheba
unwittingly awakens when – her curiosity piqued because he has never bestowed on her the
customary admiring glance – she playfully sends him a valentine sealed with red wax on
which she has embossed the words "Marry me". Boldwood, not realising the valentine was a
jest, becomes obsessed with Bathsheba, and soon proposes marriage. Although she does not
love him, she toys with the idea of accepting his offer; he is, after all, the most eligible
bachelor in the district. However, she postpones giving him a definite answer. When Gabriel
rebukes her for her thoughtlessness, she fires him.When her sheep begin dying from bloat,
she discovers to her chagrin that Gabriel is the only man who knows how to cure them. Her
pride delays the inevitable, but finally she is forced to beg him for help. Afterwards, she
offers him back his job and their friendship is restored.
At this point, the dashing Sergeant Francis "Frank" Troy returns to his native
Weatherbury and by chance encounters Bathsheba one night. Her initial dislike turns to
infatuation after he excites her with a private display of swordsmanship. Gabriel observes
Bathsheba's interest in the young soldier and tries to discourage it, telling her she would be
better off marrying Boldwood. Boldwood becomes aggressive towards Troy and she goes to
Bath to prevent Troy returning to Weatherbury, as she fears Troy may be harmed on meeting
Boldwood. On their return, Boldwood offers his rival a large bribe to give up Bathsheba.
Troy pretends to consider the offer then scornfully announces they are already married.
Boldwood withdraws humiliated and vows revenge.Bathsheba soon discovers that her new
husband is an improvident gambler with little interest in farming. Worse, she begins to
suspect that he does not love her. In fact, Troy's heart belongs to her former servant, Fanny
Robin. Before meeting Bathsheba, Troy had promised to marry Fanny; on the wedding day,
however, the luckless girl goes to the wrong church. She explains her mistake, but Troy,
humiliated at being left waiting at the altar, angrily calls off the wedding. When they part,
unbeknownst to Troy, Fanny is pregnant with his child.
Some months afterward, Troy and Bathsheba encounter Fanny on the road, destitute,
as she painfully makes her way toward the Casterbridge workhouse. Troy sends his wife
onward with the horse and gig before she can recognise the girl then gives her all the money
in his pocket, telling her he will give her more in a few days. Fanny uses up the last of her
strength to reach her destination. A few hours later, she dies in childbirth, along with the
baby. Mother and child are then placed in a coffin and sent home to Weatherbury for
interment. Gabriel, who has long known of Troy's relationship with Fanny, tries to conceal
the child's existence – but Bathsheba, suspecting the truth and wild with jealousy, arranges
for the coffin to be left in her house overnight. When all the servants are in bed, she unscrews
the lid and sees the two bodies inside – her husband's former lover and their child.
Troy then comes home from Casterbridge, where he had gone to keep his appointment
with Fanny. Seeing the reason for her failure to meet him, he gently kisses the corpse and
tells the anguished Bathsheba, "This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you
were, or are, or can be." The next day he spends all his money on a marble tombstone with
the inscription "Erected by Francis Troy in beloved memory of Fanny Robin...” Then,
loathing himself and unable to bear Bathsheba's company, he leaves. After a long walk he
bathes in the sea, leaving his clothes on the beach. A strong current carries him away, though
he is rescued by a rowing boat.A year later, with Troy presumed drowned, Boldwood renews
his suit. Burdened with guilt over the pain she has caused him, Bathsheba reluctantly
consents to marry him in six years; long enough to have Troy declared dead.Troy, however,
is not dead. When he learns that Boldwood is again courting Bathsheba, he returns to
Weatherbury on Christmas Eve to claim his wife. He goes to Boldwood's house, where a
party is underway, and orders Bathsheba to come with him; when she shrinks back in
surprise, he seizes her arm, and she screams. At this, Boldwood shoots Troy dead and tries
unsuccessfully to turn the gun on himself. Although he is condemned to hang for murder, his
friends petition the Home Secretary for mercy, citing insanity. This is granted and
Boldwood's sentence is changed to "confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure". Bathsheba,
profoundly chastened by guilt and grief, buries her husband in the same grave as Fanny and
their child, and adds a suitable inscription.
Throughout her tribulations, she comes to rely more and more on her oldest and (as
she admits to herself) only real friend, Gabriel. When he gives notice that he is leaving her
employ for California, she finally realises how important he has become to her well-being.
That night, she goes alone to visit him in his cottage, to find out why he is (in her eyes)
deserting her. Pressed, he reluctantly reveals that it is because people have been injuring her
good name by gossiping that he wants to marry her. She exclaims that it is "...too absurd –
too soon – to think of, by far!" He bitterly agrees that it is absurd, but when she corrects him,
saying that it is only "too soon", he is emboldened to ask once again for her hand in marriage.
She accepts, and the two are quietly wed.
Revelation of man and destiny in the novel can be seen through
•
Variety of themes used by the novelists.
•
Through fate in the novel.
•
Through concept of man and nature.
•
Through different symbols, actions, dialogues of main and minor characters.
•
Through disillusionment of characters.
•
Sometimes, way of thinking of character hints it.
Hardy makes use of it and shows that man can be master of his fate in limited sense
but at the end destiny overpowers man. After facing many difficulties final settlement is
possible. Destiny plays crucial role in uniting couples Life partner of man is also determined
by destiny, it is suggested here.
Plot of the novel revolves round central figure Oak. It is
perfectly symmetrical. Earlier insignificant incidents became significant later on. Through
Gabriel Oak’s figure, Hardy presented that characters that succeed are generally happy.
Collective use of the rustics is the main feature of Hardy’s characterization that can be seen
here. Harshness of nature can be seen in this novel. Here, nature is presented as hard,
unrelenting force. Glimpses of both Victorian and modern society can be seen here. This
novel exposes Hardy’s best balanced philosophy. Through female figures e.g. Bathsheba,
Hardy presented conflict between the desire for marriage and that for individuality and
independence.
Far from the Madding Crowd offers in ample measure the details of English rural life
that Hardy so relished. Hardy took the title from Thomas Gray's poem ‘Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard’ (1751):
‘Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.’
(Bentley Richard, ‘Six poems of Thomas Gray.’)
"Madding" means "frenzied" here. The title may be ironic: the five main characters –
Bathsheba, Troy, Boldwood, Oak, and Fanny Robin – are all passionate beings who, find the
"vale of life" neither quiet nor cool.
Hardy's growing taste for tragedy is also evident in the novel: Fanny, Troy, and
Boldwood all come to bad ends. Certain incidents, such as Fanny's pregnancy with a bastard
child and Boldwood's sudden lapse into murderous violence present that the protagonist is
plagued by relentless misfortunes, and dies young at the end. In Madding Crowd, however,
the fate favours the lead character that escapes two unfortunate entanglements, survives the
mistakes of her youth, and finally finds contentment. The book might also be described as an
early piece of feminist literature, because it features an independent woman with the courage
to defy convention by running a farm herself. Although Bathsheba's passionate nature leads
her into serious errors of judgment, Hardy endows her with sufficient resilience, intelligence,
and good luck to overcome her youthful folly. However, it is important to note the many
critical comments about women that are frequent in the novel, especially in the parts that are
not narrative but are instead philosophy. Finally, in Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy
explores the proper basis for a happy marriage. Bathsheba's physical attraction to the Troy
leads to a disastrous marriage that might have ended in financial ruin. A marriage to the
strait-laced Boldwood, to whom she is bound only by feelings of guilt and obligation, would
have meant emotional suffocation. Gabriel Oak is her colleague, friend, and advocate. He
offers her true comradeship and sound farming skills; and, although she initially spurns him,
telling him she doesn't love him, he turns out to be the right man to make her happy.
The novel and Hardy's Wessex:
"Far from the madding crowd" was how Thomas Hardy wished us to view his beloved
native country and the types who inhabited it. Thus isolation furnished both the theme and the
title of the novel. Far from the Madding Crowd might well entitle his whole series of Wessex
novels. Hardy, with the eye of the artist, loved the color and line of the landscape. Thus he
personalized nature. His horses were "sensible," his cat "with half-closed eyes" viewed birds
"affectionately."
Hardy first employed the term "Wessex" in Far from the Madding Crowd to describe
the "partly real, partly dream-country" that unifies his novels of Southwest England. He
found the word in the pages of early English history as a designation for an extinct, preNorman Conquest kingdom. In the first edition, the word "Wessex" is used only once, in
chapter 50; Hardy extended the reference for the 1895 edition. The village of Puddletown,
near Dorchester, is the inspiration for the novel's Weatherbury. Dorchester, in turn, inspired
Hardy's Casterbridge.
Major Themes: The major theme of the novel is that true love persists and wins. Three men,
Gabriel Oak, Sergeant Troy and Farmer Boldwood, love Bathsheba Everdene. Gabriel Oak
loves her dearly, but his initial love petition to Bathsheba is rejected. Troy is a philanderer
who charms Bathsheba, hides his love affair with Fanny, and marries Bathsheba. The
marriage is an unhappy one and is terminated by Boldwood's shooting of Troy. Boldwood's
love for Bathsheba has been an obsession bordering on insanity. Gabriel Oak's patience and
true love enable him to win Bathsheba, who realizes the true worth of Gabriel at the end of
the novel.
Minor Themes: One minor theme of the novel is developed through the rustic characters that
show that humor is good for the soul. These rustics provide comic relief to the tragic tension
of the novel and act as the chorus, commenting on the major events. They provide comedy of
character, comedy of situation, and verbal humor arising out of their handling of the
language.
Another minor theme is that nature provides a solace to the soul. This theme is
developed through the character of Gabriel Oak who lives in peace and harmony with nature,
working the land, telling time by the stars, noticing the scurrying of insects and animals,
appreciating the beauty of the landscape, and sensing the weather because he is at peace with
whom and what he is. Gabriel, unlike Troy and Boldwood, can wait patiently for Bathsheba.
In the end, he wins his true love, largely because he has served her well on the land. The
essential mood of the novel is serious and tragic. This mood, however, is often relieved by
the comic mood, provided by the rustic characters in the novel.
One cannot be unaware of Hardy's sense of the unity of man with nature: the eternal
hills of his Wessex, the sounds of wind and weather, the ever-circling constellations, the light
at different times of day and different seasons, the growth of vegetation, and the behavior of
living creatures. His characters convey a general feeling of being a part of the universe; his
narrative captures its rhythms. Far from the madding crowd, he seems to say, man comes into
his own. Gabriel continues his service as an on-the-spot observer for Hardy. The farmer has
been matured by the reverses he has experienced and is learning to compromise. Even as the
workers are "waiting on Chance," so is Gabriel. In Hardy's works, many such evidences of
belief in fate and fortune exist. Oak's effort to "help" the fates by changing his costume is
unavailing. When he decides to continue to Shottsford in his search for employment, the
motivation is not too farfetched, for there are not many roads to choose; he is poor and cannot
afford an inn. His rest in the wagon and the overheard conversation gives Hardy an
opportunity to introduce more dialect and to further characterize the Wessex folk.
When one thinks of Hardy the novelist, that aspect of his work that comes to mind
most readily is his frequent use of chance and circumstances in the development of his plots.
But the reader must learn to view Hardy's stories in the light of the author's fatalistic outlook
on life, for Hardy fluctuates between fatalism and determinism. Fatalism is a view of life
which acknowledges that all action is controlled by the nature of things, or by a Fate which
does a great, impersonal, primitive force exist through all eternity, absolutely independent of
human wills and superior to any god created by man. Determinism, on the other hand,
acknowledges that man's struggle against the will behind things is of no avail that the laws of
cause and effect are in operation — that is, the human will is not free and human beings have
no control over their own destiny, try as they may. Hardy sees life in terms of action, in the
doomed struggle against the circumstantial forces against happiness. Incident, for example,
plays an important role in causing joy or pain, and often an act of indiscretion in early youth
can wreck one's chances for happiness. In Hardy's novels, then, Fate appears as an artistic
motif in a great variety of forms — chance and coincidence, nature, time, woman, and
convention. None is Fate itself, but rather all of these are manifestations of the Immanent
Will.
The use of chance and coincidence as a means of furthering the plot was a technique
used by many Victorian authors but with Hardy it becomes something more than a mere
device. Fateful incidents (overheard conversations and undelivered letters, for instance)
are the forces working against mere man in his efforts to control his own destiny. In
addition, Fate appears in the form of nature, endowing it with varying moods that affect
the lives of the characters. Those who are most in harmony with their environment are
usually the most contented; similarly, those who can appreciate the joys of nature can find
solace in it. Yet nature can take on sinister aspects, becoming more of an actor than just a
setting for the action.
Besides the importance of nature in Hardy's novels, one should consider the concept
of time. There is tremendous importance placed on the moment, for time is a great series of
moments. The joys of life are transitory and the moments of joy may be turned to bitterness
by time. Woman, also, is used by Hardy as one of Fate's most potent instruments for
opposing man's happiness. Closer to primitive feelings than man, woman is helpless in the
hands of Fate and carries out Fate's work. In her search for love, the motivating passion of her
life, woman becomes an agent in her own destiny. In short, one is, according to Hardy,
powerless to change the workings of Fate, but those things that are contrived by man —
social laws and convention, for example — and which work against him can be changed by
man. Man is not hopelessly doomed.
Hardy is a fatalist and to him destiny is always hostile to mankind. Fate acts
according to its own whims in the form of chances, accidents and coincidences. Hardy thinks
that the expected happy reality; the unexpected happens suddenly. The fate of his characters
especially the hero or the heroine depends on the working of fate. In far from the Madding
crowd, there are number of events which make the characters to place them in the odd
situation from which they have no way to get out. Chance in its purely malevolent aspect
enters our life and spoils it, brings trails and tribulations, sorrows and sufferings, pain and
agony in its train. Ultimately, life is filled with sorrows and sufferings, pain and agony. After
facing many difficulties final settlement is possible. Destiny plays crucial role in uniting
couples .Life partner of man is also determined by destiny, it is suggested here. What is the
use of being plaything in the hands of “the President of the Immortals”.Hardy's novel ‘Far
from the Madding Crowd’ is also a wanton field of destiny.
Following incidents in this novel better present this view of Thomas Hardy.
1. The sudden loss of the sheep of Gabriel brings a great change and destruction in the life of
Gabriel. It is dog that chased two hundred sheep which were kept aloof from the fifty sheep
which already had given birth two lambs. When Oak came out he saw the dog standing at the
covering point of the hedges just on the crag from where two hundred sheep lay dead below
in the chalk pit. Oak was now totally ruined.
2. Another incident which makes the possibility of getting place and to live with Bathsheba
comes purely by an accident in the life of Gabriel Oak. When Oak was taking rest in an inn
after his deplorable plight he suddenly saw a luster of fire at a distant spot. On reaching the
spot he saw some way stocks which had been mostly burnt. It was difficult to save them, but
Oak showed his spirit of adventure in putting out the fire. It was the most important moment
in Oaks life because he started to play besides Bathsheba and ultimately this proved his
happiness.
3. The life of Fanny has been harmed by her failure to keep the appointment of marriage.
Troy reaches the appointed place in time. But Fanny does not reach the place as she reaches
the wrong place. Fate seems to have played a trick on Fanny and this will lead the tragic
death of Fanny.
4. Another event is the effect of valentine on Boldwood. When Bathsheba writes a love letter
to Boldwood it produces an electric effect on Boldwood. The love letter kindles passion for
Bathsheba in the heart of Boldwood. The pent up passion takes the form of ‘volcanic
Eruption’. Nobody could have thought that the serious minded gloomy Boldwood would fall
in love so wildly and desperately. Boldwood’s whole life is ruined by unconforllable passion.
5. Bathsheba and Troy meet accidentally one night as Troy is returning home after his round
of the farm. This accidental meeting creates many complications in the novel. Bathsheba falls
in love with this handsome soldier. She elopes with him to avoid Boldwood. She marries him
and finally they have to lead a most unhappy life. This marriage brings the ruin in
Bathsheba’s life.
6. The chance - meeting with Fanny and Troy in another key event of the novel. One day
when Bathsheba and Troy were riding towards Caster bridge, they met a most wretched
woman (F. Robin) , Tory recognizes her and he promises her to meet her in the next day.
Fanny dies and she was carrying a baby. The dead body was brought to Bathshebs’s house
and Troy expresses his grief whole heartedly. The cord between Bathsheba and Tory is now
completely broken concerning this incidence.
7. Troy has suddenly disappeared from the scene. It is rumored that he is drowned. Bathsheba
is under a spell of sorrow. Boldwood pursues his courtship with Bathsheba with greater
vigour and obtain promise from Bathsheba to marry him. When everything is going well,
Troy appears in the scene. Boldwood loses his temper and kills him instantly with him gun.
In Far from the Madding crowd, the use of chance as a deciding factor is not
excessive. It does not make the plot unrealistic. It does not create improbable situations. In
real life chances and coincidences are mixed tragic and pleasant but in Far from the Madding
crowd all chance happenings are tragic. We can therefore conclude that in Far from the
Madding Crowd, Hardy continuously hints at some external force or forces at work. These
forces according to Hardy are blind and express themselves through chance happenings.
Hardy has used chance and coincidence in the novel to illustrate his theory of immanent will
which is amoral.
Hardy's use of fate
Hardy's view of life is essentially tragic, caused by the hand of Fate (or chance) in
human affairs. Sometimes, fate operates through natural occurrences. In Far from the
Madding Crowd, Gabriel must work feverishly to protect Bathsheba's harvest from a terrible
storm. Although Gabriel succeeds in overcoming the fate of the storm, Boldwood is not so
lucky and loses all his crops. Gabriel Oak also loses his fortunes through an occurrence of
natural fate; his sheep fall off a cliff to their deaths, and Gabriel must sell out to repay his
debts.
Fate is responsible for Bathsheba's changes in fortune as well. Her uncle happens to
die and leaves her on the farm. Gabriel happens to go to sleep in a wagon that carries him
near Bathsheba's farm; he then happens to see the fire and is concerned enough to go and help
put it out, thus earning a position for himself near the woman he loves. Bathsheba happens to
see Boldwood and be offended by his lack of attention just at the time of Valentine's. She and
Troy happen to pass Fanny on the road when Fanny is about to die. Bathsheba's sheep happen
to take ill when she has just foolishly sent Gabriel away, forcing her to call him back. Hardy
combines these and many other fateful incidents with a carefully crafted sense of realism to
make them seem natural rather than contrived. Therefore he makes the plot, driven by fate,
seem believable to the reader.
“Hardy is primarily a storyteller and should be viewed more as a chronicler of moods
and deeds than as a philosopher. Yet a novel such as Far from the Madding Crowd, which
raises many questions about society, religion, morals, and the contrast between a good life
and its rewards, is bound to make the reader curious about the author who brings them up.”
(Bridgman Joan. ‘Another look at Thomas Hardy’, Contemporary Review, vol.289)
Hardy lived in an age of transition. The industrial revolution was in the process of
destroying the agricultural life, and the subsequent shifting of population caused a
disintegration of rural customs and traditions that had meant security, stability, and dignity
for the people. It was a period when fundamental beliefs — religious, social, scientific, and
political — were shaken to their core and brought in their stead the "ache of modernism." The
new philosophies failed to satisfy the emotional needs of many people. As a young man,
Hardy read Darwin's Origin of the Species and Essays and Reviews (the manifesto of a few
churchmen who held radical theological opinions), both of which were to influence his views
toward religion. He found it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the idea of a beneficent,
omnipotent, and omniscient deity with the fact of omnipresent evil and the persistent
tendency of circumstances toward unhappiness.
2. The Return of the Native (1878)
This novel of Thomas Hardy first appeared in the magazine ‘Belgravia’ in 1878.Due
to controversial themes, Hardy had some difficulty in finding publisher for it. But, in the 20th
century, it became very popular. It can be viewed as a study of the way communities control
their misfits. Hardy’s use of irony can be seen here. Throughout the novel bad things happen
to good people. Dismal view of life in which coincidenceand accident combine to produce
the worst is presented. Indifference of will to issues of equality and justice is at the centre in
it.
In the preface of this novel, we find following description that clears all ideas about
the main happenings of the novel.
The date at which the following events are assumed to have occurred may be set
down as between 1840 and 1850, when the old watering place herein called “Budmouth” still
retained sufficient afterglow from its Georgian gaiety and prestige to lend it an absorbing
attractiveness to the romantic and imaginative soul of a lonely dweller inland.
Under the general name of “Egdon Heath,” which has been given to the sombre scene
of the story, are united or typified heaths of various real names, to the number of at least a
dozen; these being virtually one in character and aspect, though their original unity, or partial
unity, is now somewhat disguised by intrusive strips and slices brought under the plough with
varying degrees of success, or planted to woodland.
Summary
The novel takes place entirely in the environs of Egdon Heath, and, with the exception
of the epilogue, Aftercourses, covers exactly a year and a day. The narrative begins on the
evening of Guy Fawkes Night as Diggory Venn drives slowly across the heath, carrying a
hidden passenger in the back of his van. When darkness falls, the country folk light bonfires
on the surrounding hills emphasizing not for the last time the pagan spirit of the heath and its
denizens.
Venn is a reddleman; he travels the country marking flocks of sheep with a red
mineral called 'reddle', a dialect term for red ochre. Although his trade has stained him red
from head to foot, underneath his devilish colouring he is a handsome, shrewd, well-meaning
young man. His passenger is a young woman named Thomasin Yeobright, whom Venn is
taking home. Earlier that day, Thomasin had planned to marry Damon Wildeve, a local
innkeeper known for his fickleness; however, a minor technical difficulty delayed the
marriage and Thomasin, in distress, ran after the reddleman's van and asked him to take her
home. Venn himself is in love with Thomasin, and unsuccessfully wooed her a year or two
before. Now, although he knows Wildeve is unworthy of her love, he is so devoted to her that
he is willing to help her secure the man of her choice.
At length, Venn reaches Bloom's End, the home of Thomasin's aunt, Mrs. Yeobright.
She is a good woman, if somewhat proud and inflexible, and she wants the best for
Thomasin. In former months she opposed her niece's choice of husband, and publicly forbade
the banns; now, since Thomasin has compromised herself by leaving town with Wildeve and
returning unmarried, the best outcome Mrs. Yeobright can envision is for the postponed
marriage to be duly solemnized as soon as possible. She and Venn both begin working on
Wildeve to make sure he keeps his promise to Thomasin.
Wildeve, however, is still preoccupied with Eustacia Vye, an exotically beautiful
young woman living with her grandfather in a lonely house on Egdon Heath. Eustacia is a
black-haired, queenly woman who grew up in Budmouth, a fashionable seaside resort. She
holds herself aloof from most of the heathfolk; they, in turn, consider her an oddity, and one
or two even think she's a witch. She is nothing like Thomasin, who is sweet-natured and fair.
She loathes the heath, yet roams it constantly, carrying a spyglass and an hourglass. The
previous year, she and Wildeve were lovers; however, even during the height of her passion
for him, she knew she only loved him because there was no better object available. When
Wildeve broke off the relationship to court Thomasin, Eustacia's interest in him briefly
returned. The two meet on Guy Fawkes Night; and Wildeve asks her to run off to America
with him. She demurs.
Eustacia drops Wildeve when Mrs. Yeobright's son Clym, a successful diamond
merchant, returns from Paris to his native Egdon Heath. Although he has no plans to return to
Paris or the diamond trade and is, in fact, openly planning to become a schoolmaster for the
rural poor, Eustacia sees him as a way to escape the hated heath and begin a grander, richer
existence in a glamourous new location. With some difficulty, she arranges to meet Clym,
and the two soon fall in love. When Mrs. Yeobright objects, Clym quarrels with her; later,
she quarrels with Eustacia as well. When he sees that Eustacia is lost to him, Wildeve marries
Thomasin, who gives birth to a daughter the next summer. Clym and Eustacia also marry and
move to a small cottage five miles away, where they enjoy a brief period of happiness. The
seeds of rancour soon begin to germinate, however: Clym studies night and day to prepare for
his new career as a schoolmaster while Eustacia clings to the hope that he'll give up the idea
and take her abroad. Instead, he nearly blinds himself with too much reading, and then further
mortifies his wife by deciding to eke out a living, at least temporarily, as a furze-cutter.
Eustacia, her dreams blasted, finds herself living in a hut on the heath, chained by marriage to
a lowly labouring man.
At this point, Wildeve reappears; he has unexpectedly inherited a large sum of money,
and is now in a better position to fulfill Eustacia's hopes. He comes calling on the Yeobrights
in the middle of one hot August day and, although Clym is at home, he is fast asleep on the
hearth after a gruelling session of furze-cutting. While Eustacia and Wildeve are talking, Mrs.
Yeobright knocks on the door; she has decided to pay a courtesy call in the hopes of healing
the estrangement between herself and her son. Eustacia looks out at her and then, in some
alarm, ushers her visitor out the back door. She hears Clym calling to his mother and,
thinking his mother's knocking has awakened him, remains in the garden for a few moments.
When Eustacia goes back inside, she finds Clym still asleep and his mother gone. Clym, she
now realises, merely cried out his mother's name in his sleep.Mrs Yeobright, it turns out, saw
Eustacia looking out the window at her; she also saw Clym's gear by the door, and so knew
they were both at home. Now, thinking she has been deliberately barred from her son's home,
she miserably begins the long, hot walk home. Later that evening, Clym, unaware of her
attempted visit, heads for Bloom's End and on the way finds her crumpled beside the path,
dying from an adder’s bite. When she expires that night from the combined effects of snake
venom and heat exhaution, Clym's grief and remorse make him physically ill for several
weeks. Eustacia, racked with guilt, dare not tell him of her role in the tragedy; when he
eventually finds out from a neighbour's child about his mother's visit - and Wildeve's - he
rushes home to accuse his wife of murder and adultery. Eustacia refuses to explain her
actions; instead, she tells him you are no blessing, my husband and reproaches him for his
cruelty. She then moves back to her grandfather's house, where she struggles with her despair
while she awaits some word from Clym.
Wildeve visits her again on Guy Fawkes at night and offers to help her get to Paris.
Eustacia realises that if she lets Wildeve help her, she'll be obliged to become his mistress.
She tells him she will send him a signal by night if she decides to accept. Clym's anger,
meanwhile, has cooled and he sends Eustacia a letter the next day offering reconciliation. The
letter arrives a few minutes too late; by the time her grandfather tries to give it to her, she has
already signalled to Wildeve and set off through wind and rain to meet him. She walks along
weeping, however, knowing she is about to break her marriage vows for a man who is
unworthy of her.
Wildeve readies a horse and gig and waits for Eustacia in the dark. Thomasin,
guessing his plans, sends Clym to intercept him; she also, by chance, encounters Diggory
Venn as she dashes across the heath herself in pursuit of her husband. Eustacia does not
appear; instead, she falls or throws herself into nearby Shadwater Weir. Clym and Wildeve
hear the splash and hurry to investigate. Wildeve plunges recklessly after Eustacia without
bothering to remove his coat, while Clym, proceeding more cautiously, nevertheless is also
soon at the mercy of the raging waters. Venn arrives in time to save Clym, but is too late for
the others. When Clym revives, he accuses himself of murdering his wife and mother.In the
epilogue, Venn gives up being a reddleman to become a dairy farmer. Two years later,
Thomasin marries him and they settle down happily together. Clym, now a sad, solitary
figure, eventually takes up preaching.
POSTSCRIPT
To prevent disappointment to searchers for scenery it should be added that though the
action of the narrative is supposed to proceed in the central and most secluded part of the
heaths united into one whole, as above described, certain topographical features resembling
those delineated really lie on the margin of the waste, several miles to the westward of the
centre. In some other respects also there has been a bringing together of scattered
characteristics.
The first edition of this novel was published in three volumes in 1878.
There are six books having fourty eight chapters and different titles.
Revelation of Man and Destiny in the novel.
Thomas Hardy expresses a fatalistic view of life in his tragic novel The Return of the
Native. He depicts human actions as subject to the control of an impersonal force- destiny or
fate. Chance and coincidence drives the life and man has no right to change its way. The
character in Hardy’s novel does not have control over their lives. Hardy believes that
characters are governed by fate.
It is fate that brings Eustacia and Clym together. Eustacia hears from Charley that the
Christmas mummers will be performing at the Yeobrights', and she schemes to meet Clym by
performing as a mummer. With the passing of time Clym proposes to Eustacia. She asks for
time to think it over and begs him to talk about Paris. She tells him that she will marry him if
he will take her back to Paris. Clym is destined to do far greater things with his life than
staying on the heath, Eustacia believes, although Clym disagrees. Eustacia suddenly decides
to marry him. Clym feels that he has to use his services for the people in Egdon Heath.
He has vowed to stay on the heath and become a schoolteacher. In order to be of some
service to the people, he wants to stay in the Heath. His misfortune, semi blindness disables
him from executing the educational project. Clym is very much attracted by the charm and
beauty of Eustacia. Ignoring his mother’s strong opposition he takes a cottage at Alderworth,
several miles away from Blooms-End. But the utter incompatibility of temperaments had
foredoomed their marriage. Accidentally he loses his mother also. That means Clym’s
misfortune drives him to a painful life. The heroine of the novel, Eustacia was fully aware of
the beauty, which nature has bestowed upon her. She didn’t care about what people may tell
about her. She can’t bear the loneliness that heath has. She says, “Tis my cross, my shame
and will be my death”. Eustacia dreamed of a life in Paris. She hopes that if she marries
Clym, he may take her to Paris. She has fascination for the pompous city life. But Clym on
the other hand wants to settle in Edgon. So, she had to stay in Heath. In the later part of the
novel she tries to escape from the Edgon Heath with the help of Wildeve. Coincidentally
Clym writes Eustacia a letter begging her to return to him - but he sends the letter too late.
Eustacia does not see the letter before she leaves to flee with Wildeve. If she had, she might
have no die like this. That means her death in Heath was also predestined. The characters in
Hardy’s novel do not have control over their lives. First of all, Hardy believes that characters
are governed by fate. In This novel Hardy symbolises game of ‘fate’ by his presentation of
chance and co-incidence. It is the tragedy of Clym, Clym’s mother, Eustacia and Wildeve.
In introduction to the "standard edition," Eustacia says, "How destiny has been against
me!" She is unaware of the probability that, in the Parisian society she aspires to, she would
be one among many and might find herself unable to compete with the elite courtesans,
mistresses, and wives of Paris. "I was capable of much," she claims. Hardy, however, never
makes clear what this "much" might be exactly, as Eustacia's intelligence, learning, and wit
are incompletely and imperfectly portrayed, and one does not make a splash in society based
on looks and pride alone. Eustacia hasn't "tried and tried"; and her youthful, ambitious
impatience has led her to miss the clues that Clym is not going to "try and try," either.
Perhaps she, like Sue in Jude the Obscure, represents the dilemma of the intelligent woman in
the 1800, which can shape her own destiny only through attachment to the right man in a
socially acceptable way. When that fails (Eustacia), tragedy is inevitable.
Thomas Hardy has a very pessimistic philosophy of life and his characters also
suffer from disillusionment of their lives. He shows man lives in an indifferent world.
Return of the Native is based on the assumption that man is destined by God to suffer the
overwhelming pain and suffering which exits in the world. All the main characters of Return
of the Native namely- Clym, Eustacis, Wildeve, and Mrs Yeobright have their own aim
ambition. But all their plans turn into vain. All of their lives are full of aim. But they are
trapped in a series of bitterly ironic events. They are faced with an incomprehensible
universe. Destiny shows its power in more glaring form, namely in the form of accidents and
coincidences. The most crucial coincidence or accident in the novel is Mrs. Yeobright’s
arrival at Clym’s house precisely at the time when Wildeve and Eustacia are engaged in an
intimate conversation inside the house. Hardy has a very pessimistic philosophy of life as his
characters seem to have little control over their own lives. Hardy saw external circumstances
and uncontrollable internal urges as controlling human actions. The will is blind and
distributes good or bad without regard to merit, expression of this principle of Hardy is
clearly seen in this novel. Chance, change and coincidence are agents of fate.
The Return of the Native is centered round Eustacia Vye, a beautiful outsider wrenched
from the society she craves by orphanhood and exiled to live on Egdon Heath with her
maternal grandfather. Spoiled, vain, fickle, and selfish, Eustacia is not a sympathetic heroine.
Although she claims to belong to Damon Wildeve, she really belongs to who ever can grant
her what she desires and, in her mind, deserves. While Wildeve is a step above the local
rabble, Eustacia can never fully commit herself to him. Each time she considers it, she is held
back by the thought that even he lacks something and that surely she can do better. "He's not
great enough for me to give myself to—he does not suffice for my desire! . . . If he had been
a Saul or a Bonaparte—ah! But to break my marriage vow for him—it is too poor a luxury!"
In another place, like the Paris, Eustacia longs for, she would have become a mistress
or a courtesan—the consort of a powerful man or men. On Egdon Heath, however, there are
neither powerful men nor courtesans. There is only Damon, an equally fickle young man who
hotly desires that which he cannot have—sometimes Eustacia, sometimes the naïve Thomasin
Yeobright. To complicate matters, Thomasin's cousin Clym returns from Paris, where he has
a financially rewarding and spiritually stifling career. In Eustacia's eyes (blinded to what she
doesn't want to see, just as Clym's sight becomes literally blurred to that which he does want
to see), Clym appears to be the ideal replacement for Wildeve.
While not Hardy's best, The Return of the Native is a must read for his readers,
incorporating a grim yet objective setting, memorable characters, and a tragic plot driven by
human failings more so than the destiny at which Eustacia rails. Ignore the awkward,
unconvincing happy ending, as Hardy's censors forced him to tack it on.
Universial Themes in "The Return of the Native"
Victorian novel such as Thomas Hardy's ‘The Return of the Native’ is the best
example of literary classics that has universal themes. Hardy's tale illustrates the role of
chance in his characters lives. Through the story we encounter events of pure
coincidence and their effects. Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native displays a theme of
chance. Following ideas and incidendents present it1. Book First, chapter 8 contains a perfect example. Eustacia persuades young Johnny
Nunsuch into helping her feed a fire. She dismisses him and begins to walk home.
Before reaching home, he is frightened by the light coming from the heath and
returns
to
discover
Wildeve
meeting
with
Eustacia.
By
pure
chance,
Venn
discovers the boy and quizzes him.
2. “Then I came down here, and I was afeard, and I went back; but I didn't like to
speak to her, because of the gentleman, and I came on here again” [Johnny Nunsuch]
“A
gentleman--ah! What did
she
say to
him,
my
man?”
[Diggory
Venn]
“Told him she supposed he had not married the other woman because he liked his
old
sweetheart
best;
and
things
like
that” [Johnny
Nunsuch]
[Book First, chapter 8, pp. 82]
This chance exchange reveals that Wildeve is meeting with Eustacia. Venn uses this
to
his
advance
by
announcing
himself
to
Mrs.
Yeobright
as
a
suitor
for
Thomasin. This backfires because Mrs. Yeobright tries to use the second suitor
to force Wildeve to marry Thomasin. These events all occur from the chance
meeting between Venn and Johnny Nunsuch.
3. Another example of chance and coincidence can be seen in the famous gambling scene of
Book Third, chapter VII.
This is perhaps one of the most critically examined parts of the book.
“Very well,” said Wildeve, rising. Searching about with the lantern, he found
a large flat stone, which he placed between himself and Christian, and sat down
again. The lantern was open to give more light, and it's rays directed upon the
stone. Christian put down a shilling, Wildeve another and each threw. Christian
won. They played for two. Christian won again.” [Book Third, chapter 7, pp. 229]
This quote begins the drama of the scene. Mrs. Yeobright had entrusted Christian to
deliver a minor inheritance to Clym and Thomasin. He gets involved in a dice game with
Damon and unfortunately loses all hundred guineas. By chance, Diggory Venn passes by and
in the hope of protecting Thomasin, wins back all the money from Wildeve. He mistakenly
hands over all the winnings to Thomasin without understanding that part of the money
belongs to Clym. This chance occurrence led to a tragic end. Although he was trying to do
good Venn succeeded to further create conflict. Critics agree with this standpoint.
“The Return of the Native is concerned with the 'general malaise in the life of
humanity. Man is a pawn in life's lottery. Man's life avails him nothing.
Men are just incidental in creation. Man may protest against his fate, but it
makes no difference, he only a plaything, he cannot master his destiny.” In these
examples and critical quotes, we see the revelation of man and destiny.
In this novel, Hardy embodies the idea that we live in an indifferent universe. He also
implies that the universe can be hostile, but he does not use this novel as a vehicle to remind
us that "it's a jungle out there." Critics usually refer to Hardy's themes as fatalistic — a view
of life that shows human actions being controlled by an impersonal force, perhaps called
Destiny or Fate, which is independent of both humanity and its gods.
Chance and
coincidence are two ways in which this seeming indifference expresses itself in our lives.
When we say an event has taken place by chance or coincidence, we are simply expressing
our own view of the matter; it is simply all we are able to see at the moment. For Hardy,
chance or coincidence is used as a way of showing his theme on the level of events or plot.
The themes of marriage and vocation
Hardy’s realistic understanding of the actual conditions of women’s life in society
goes hand in hand with a highly moralistic interpretation of life which colours his perception.
The themes of marriage and vocation relate directly to two categories: individual destinies
and the public sphere. While both marriage and the choice of vocation appear to relate only to
the private world of the individual destinies, in reality both serve as a kind of bridge between
individual hopes and expectations and the larger concerns of social and moral life.
For Thomas Hardy the proper choice and persuit of vocation are indeed a major, if
not the most crucial criterion of an individual’s social and moral worth. Nor is marriage less
important in placing the individual within the larger framework of communal relationships.
The success, or conversely, the failure in finding a meaningful vocation or in establishing a
happy marriage relation , not only has implications in terms of individual happiness or
unhappiness and fulfilment but also relates to the well being or otherwise of the community
at large. In the case of women, however, the issues of vocation and marriage are given a new
angle by the fact that the only vocation then open to women was marriage.
Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Return of the Native’ demonstrates a discontented
passionate woman searching for fulfillment in the dreary surroundings of Egdon Heath,
where the inhabitants are steeped in the older traditional ways of life. Eustacia Vye is the
dominant female character of the novel and the one considered to be the restless and
passionate dreamer who dismisses the opinions of society. She is mysterious by nature and
seems to have some interaction with virtually every other character in the novel. She has
“Pagan eyes, full of nocturnal mysteries…….Assuming that the souls of men and women are
visible essences, you could fancy the colour of Eustacia’s soul to be flame-like.” (p. 54).
Only men had access to the sphere of public affairs where the question of vocation
can rise. Women could gain access to the world of social activity only through the medium of
marriage. This is the motive which attracts Eustacia to get married with a man who seems to
be equipped to help her to gain access to that world whether of yearning, freedom or wealth.
Under such conditions of marital servitude, it is but natural. The only professions then
thought suitable for women, that of governess or school teacher, as they were within domestic
ambit, had such connotations of servitude and exploitation as would make them the last resort
of impoverished gentlewomen, rather than an honourable way to freedom and self fulfilment.
It is, thus, natural that Thomas Hardy should attempt to reconcile his perceptions of
women’s actual position in society, his own conception of a superior social and moral
existence, and the natural aspirations of women, by seeking a redefinition of the concept
“women’s duty.” The spirit of self sacrifice and long suffering passivity which went with the
traditional concept of “woman’s duty” is certainly not native to Thomas Hardy’s spirited
heroines. If they do eventually have to submit to women’s lot it is in more active spirit of a
deliberately ‘chosen’ renunciation, achieved through struggle and effort. It is against this
background that the so called “Queen of Night” in The Return of the Native can be set. The
common element here is the high spirited woman rebelling against the constrictions of her
prescribed ‘woman’s lot’ and seeking a life of wider personal freedom than customarily
granted to women.
As a task of his egalitarian attitude, Hardy demonstrates no complete woman in his
novels; like men, women fall short of perfection. In fact, a thorough reading of Hardy’s
fiction will expose an underlying current of tenderness and affinity for human beings
especially for women, in their attempts and battle against natural and social laws.The Return
of the Native is perhaps the strongest example of Hardy’s demonstration of the struggle of
women to establish their identities. Eustacia Vye rebels against the traditional view of women
and revels in romantic dreams of Paris and passion. Throughout the novel she continues
searching for her identity. When she realizes she cannot escape her disastrous marriage or
experience the excitement available in Paris, she suddenly dies, illustrating the futility of
becoming someone other than one’s true self.
But being too responsive to conventional conception and discretion, Hardy was made
to pay a little attention to customs and taste, or to conceal his true emotion. In his novels,
Hardy develops several love-affairs and matrimonial troubles to display his recognition of the
hardships the patriarchal structure imposed upon women. He represents Sue’s unwillingness
to marry Stem as much from her fear of powerlessness as it does from her fear of sex. He
depicts firmly unconventional women like Bathsheba Everdane, who rejects to become a
man’s estate as a wife, a defenceless passionate Eustacia who was bound to a limited and
confining heath. Hardy introduces male sadism in characters like, Alec, and Angel Clare.
Likewise, Henchard’s treatment of his wife and daughter as a saleable commodity is harshly
condemned.
Theme of Coincidence in ‘The Return of the Native’
Numerous themes run through Thomas Hardy’s novel ‘The Return of the Native’.
They serve as a means of collecting together the different ideas that Hardy wanted to
incorporate into the novel, and introduce the main plots. One of the novels central themes is
coincidence. It links to most of the other themes and many of the events in the book come
about because of a coincidence. Hardy's use of coincidence in his novel is well known and
often criticized. Some critics have suggested that coincidence is so often to be found because
Hardy uses it as a way of expressing his idea that chance governs man's life more than man
wishes to admit. To illustrate this theory, Johnny encounters Venn by chance and tells him of
accidentally overhearing the conversation between Eustacia and Wildeve.
An example of this is when Captain Vye happens to meet Diggory Venn and he
reveals that he is carrying a woman in his van. The Captains denunciation that it is "That girl
of Blooms-End" prompts him to relay this gossip to Eustasia, which sets in motion a chain of
events which shape the rest of the plot. Another such instance is when Eustasia happens to
pass Susan Nonsuch's cottage whilst Johnny is ill, just as he exclaims "mother I do feel so
bad" Susan at that moment looks up and sees Eustasia, causing her superstitious mind to
assume she is responsible. However, Hardy implies that some of the events put down to
coincidence are actually deliberate. Diggory Venns frequent appearances throughout the
novel always seem to coincide with moments when Thomasin Yeobright is in trouble. As is
later revealed Venn is a rejected suitor of hers, yet far from being discouraged he has vowed
to ensure her happiness, even if it does not involve his own, and as such interferes when ever
he thinks it is at stake.
Coincidence is closely related to the theme of fate, which runs throughout the book.
When Eustasia, Wildeve and Clym are in the water, the two former, past lovers drown
in their pursuit of each other, yet Clym survives, to begin a new life as a preacher. This could
be interpreted as fate, as could Susan Nonsuch's burning of the effigy of Eustasia, shortly
before she drowns. Venn continually attempts to alter fate by his interference in Thomasin's
life, is an attempt to ensure her happiness. The death of Mrs Yeobright too is perhaps the
result of a twist of fate. If Eustasia had not presumed Clym had opened the door to her she
would not have been out on the heath in such an emotionally drained state in order to get
bitten by the adder, something which in it's self is an unusual occurrence, even the native
heath folk have "only once seen such a bite".
The naive heath folk themselves are very superstitious, and there are countless
examples of this throughout the novel, such as Christian Cantle's vision of the "Red ghost”
(Diggory Venn) and Susan Nonsuch stabbing Eustasia because she thought she was
bewitching her son. This superstition causes them to attribute certain events to supernatural
forces which they believe are responsible for any trouble. Eustasia's mysterious beauty and
odd behaviour for example, leads her to be accused of witchcraft. They hold unshakeable
beliefs that elements such as witchcraft exist. This naivity is often the cause of much trouble,
which Hardy is quick to point out. What they don't understand they fear, something that to a
lesser degree still applies today: people still believe in ghosts and witches, and prejudice
against people different from themselves.
Destiny shows its power in more glaring form, namely in the form of accidents
and coincidences. The most crucial coincidence or accident in the novel is Mrs. Yeobright’s
arrival at Clym’s house precisely at the time when Wildeve and Eustacia are engaged in an
intimate conversation inside the house.
Mrs. Yeobrights death is the outcome of a series of chronic accidents and
coincidences. Mrs. Yeobright's decides to send a gift of guineas. Her son, Clym, is marrying
Eustacia against her wishes, and she hopes that, by offering this gift, she and her son can
repair their relationship. The other half of the money is to go to her niece, Thomasin, who has
recently married Damon Wildeve, Eustacia's former lover. Unfortunately, Mrs. Yeobright
selects as her messenger the inept Christian Cantle, the village simpleton. This ill-considered
decision has major ramifications, and ultimately deepens the rift between herself and her son
instead of bridging it. Instead of hurrying to the wedding party, Christian attends a raffle with
his fellow heath men and happens to win. To the simple man, this occurrence is evidence of
newly discovered, infallible luck.
After Christian has sorrowfully left, Diggory Venn, a former suitor of Thomasin and
Damon Wildeve's rival, reveals that he has been observing the dice game from a nearby
hiding place. He has overhead the gamblers, and had watched the drama unfold. He
challenges Wildeve to extend his winning streak, and the two men play. At first, "The game
fluctuated, now in favour of one, now in the favour of the other, without any great advantage
on either side" (Hardy 182). However, Lady Luck soon deserts Wildeve. He eventually loses
all the coins to Diggory Venn. Venn is unaware that they were to be divided between Clym
and Thomasin, and so presents all the guineas to Thomasin. As she did not know the amount
of the gift, she does not think to question the precise number of guineas. Through this
convoluted chain of events.
Mrs. Yeobright's hopes for reconciliation are dashed. This situation drives mother and
son apart as she believes Clym received the gift but made no gesture of thanks. Eventually,
Mrs. Yeobright decides once more to attempt reconciliation with her son and his new wife,
and again Hardy's philosophy of how change and chance conspire to cause human suffering
comes into play. But the day Mrs. Yeobright chooses to make her journey is unseasonably
warm, resulting in a difficult expedition.
Through a misunderstanding, no one answers the door when she knocks, even though
she knows that Clym, Eustacia, and another man are inside. Feeling cast off by her son, Mrs.
Yeobright heads back home in the sweltering heat, growing extremely exhausted and weary
from the length of the walk and heat. When Clym finds his mother, she is exhausted and her
weak heart is suffering, and she dies with Clym present. Her last words are that she is a,
"broken-hearted woman cast-off by her son." All these events are guided by fate. If Mrs.
Yeobright were not as elderly--if Clym had not fallen into such a deep sleep-if Wildeve had
not come to the house--then the tragedy could have been avoided.
It is through misunderstanding and unfortunate coincidence that events drive Eustacia
to her death and Wildeve to follow her. When Clym discovers the part Eustacia played in his
mother's demise, Clym has a fierce quarrel with Eustacia and Eustacia is compelled to leave
him. Disillusionment, conflict with her mother-in –law, and a violent quarrel with her
husband lead her to attempt a desperate flight with former lover Damon Wildeve. On her way
to meet him she gets drowned. Hardy never tells us whether Eustacia’s drowning is an
accident or a suicide. But suicide is the inevitable explanation, since she considers herself
trapped between the intolerable alternation of staying on Edgon Heath or living with a lover
who is inferior to herself. She is a victim of perverse dispensation of things. Circumstances
have put her in wrong place. She cries in frenzy, “How I have tried to be a splendid woman,
and how destiny has been against me! I do not deserve my lot!” Fate is her enemy and it
effectively frustrates her desire to taste the joys and the life of Paris driving her
ultimately to commit suicide.
Fate in the novel
Hardy says of man's world in relation to the universe: "Amid the soft juicy vegetation
of the hollow in which [Wildeve and Venn] sat, the motionless and the uninhabited solitude,
intruded the chink of guineas, the rattle of dice, the exclamations of the reckless players." In
short, the actions of men scarcely ruffle the surface of the great world around them. This idea
is consonant with the several times Hardy shows Clym aware of his insignificance in the
universe.
Fate is the antagonist of the characters. Throughout the entire novel characters
are struggling to overcome this; but they cannot and Eustacia understands this: "I was
capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond
my control!" (V: vii)
However, fate does not take place on its own. There is always the influence of another
element. For example it is the combination of fate, Eustacia's character and scheming that
brought Eustacia and Clym together. Eustacia hears from Charley that the Christmas
mummers are performing at the Yeobright's and she schemes to meet Clym by becoming a
mummer.
Characters' personality is the main influence in their actions and because their fate
relies largely on their actions; characters have the chance to change their fate if they change
their character. Characters who are unchangeful like Eustacia will never escape her fate. For
example it is fate that Wildeve and Mrs. Yeobright visit Eustacia at the same time and it is
fate that Clym is asleep. Mrs. Yeobright assumes that Eustacia is entertaining another visitor
and that Clym has cast her off. It is in Eustacia's character to fear that Clym will awaken and
let his mother in. This is a clear display of how a character's action, which is driven by their
character, can have an effect on another person's fate. As a result of Eustacia closing the door,
Mrs. Yeobright becomes a "broken-hearted woman cast off by her son" and dies. However, if
we view Return of the Native from the context in which it was written in, Mrs. Yeobright's
death could have been purely for thematic reasons.
Other characters who cannot escape their malign fate due to their character are: Mrs.
Yeobright, Damon Wildeve and Clym. Each possesses traits which drive them to their
misfortune. In Mrs. Yeobright's case it is her stubbornness and pride.
Following coincidences best present Fate in this novel :
1: By chance, Captain Vye and the reddleman, Diggory Venn, walk on the same road.
Captain Vye suspects that Thomasin Yeobright is in Venn’s wagon, and unmarried. He will
later tell his granddaughter, Eustacia, that Thomasin and Wildeve are not married.
2: It is a combination of fate and scheming that brings Eustacia and Clym together. Eustacia
hears from Charley that the Christmas mummers will be performing at the Yeobrights’, and
she schemes to meet Clym by performing as a mummer.
3: Clym also takes advantage of fate to meet Eustacia. He learns from Sam that Captain
Vye’s bucket has fallen and that the heath-men are convening to fetch his bucket. Clym joins
the rescue team so that he might meet Eustacia.
4: By chance, Venn is at the inn when Christian tells Wildeve and the other heath-men that
he has Thomasin’s and Clym’s money. Venn will later win the money back from Wildeve
after Wildeve ruthlessly gambles against the naïve heath-boy.
5: Venn sees Wildeve and Eustacia together. When he asks Thomasin where her husband is,
she answers that he’s left to buy a horse. Venn tells Thomasin that he saw her husband
leading a beauty, but he means he saw Wildeve with Eustacia. Venn suspects that Wildeve
might be seeing Eustacia.
6: It is fate that both Wildeve and Mrs. Yeobright call on Clym and Eustacia at the same
time, and it is fate that Clym is asleep when the visitors call. Mrs. Yeobright believes that
Eustacia ignores her for her other visitor, Mrs. Yeobright believes that her son has cast her
off, and Eustacia believes that Clym will awaken and let his mother in.
7: Clym dreams that his mother is crying for him to help her inside her house, but in the
dream, she cannot allow him in her house. His dream makes him resolve to reconcile with his
mother, but it also symbolizes the trouble and turmoil his mother really is in. Clym’s dream
comes too late, for he never gets the chance to reconcile with her before she dies.
8: Charley lights a bonfire for Eustacia on the 5th of November as a surprise. Wildeve comes
to call on her, thinking that he was summoned. Eustacia explains that she did not want him to
come, but she easily falls into conversation with Wildeve and they scheme to flee the heath.
9: Clym writes Eustacia a letter begging her to return to him – but he sends the letter too late.
Eustacia does not see the letter before she leaves to flee with Wildeve. If she had, she might
have stayed on the heath to be with Clym.
10: Captain Vye places Clym’s letter in the parlour, assuming that Eustacia will read it in the
morning. He believes that Eustacia is asleep when he checks on her closed bedroom door, but
when he sees the light flashing on the flagpole; he knows that she must be awake. He calls to
her that she has a letter, but finds that she has already left.
11: Eustacia bemoans her desperate life and pleads with the heavens to change her life. She
exclaims that she has done nothing to deserve her miserable fate – lonely, isolated, out of
place, with nowhere to go and no one to turn to. She asks why fate is so miserable to her.
12: Thomasin stumbles upon Diggory Venn’s wagon by chance when she is blown off
course. She asks Venn to take her where Clym and Wildeve are; Venn intimately knows the
heath and can head in any direction, undistracted by heavy rains or harsh winds. It is fate that
Thomasin finds Venn, for he pulls Clym, Wildeve, and Eustacia out of the water – and
manages to save Clym’s life.
13: Clym is devastated by the deaths of his wife and mother, believing that he drove them to
their deaths. He thinks that fate is cruel to him, for taking his life in this direction, but he
manages to calm himself by taking walks on the heath. Being on the heath comforts him, and
he is thankful that he is where he belongs.
14: Venn’s search for a missing glove arouses curiosity and jealousy in Thomasin. It is fate
that she catches him finding the missing glove and kissing it. Unbeknownst to Thomasin, it is
one of her gloves that was missing. That she sees Venn holding the glove affectionately
makes her wonder who Venn loves – and wish that she might be the one.
The Role of Fate in Thomas Hardy's ‘The Return of the Native.’
“Thomas Hardy expresses a fatalistic view of life in his tragic novel ‘The Return of
the Native.’ He depicts human actions as subject to the control of an impersonal forcedestiny or fate. Chance and coincidence drives the life and man has no right to change its
way.”
(Prinselaar L.E. ‘Hardy’s philosophy of chance and change’ Thesis pg.125.)
In this aspect we find that the vision of life that Hardy gives in Return of the Naïve is
essentially tragic and in characterization, Hardy is similar to the Greek tragedians .The
character in Hardy’s novel does not have control over their lives. Hardy believes that
characters are governed by fate.
Following incidents show how fate plays a crucial role in changing everything about his
characters.
Mrs. Yeobright vehemently opposes the plans of Clym to start a school. She wants
Clym to go back in Paris because there he has a respectable job. She had brought up her with
great care and devotion. She also strongly opposes not to marry Eustacia. She says, “Is it best
for you to injure your prospects for such a voluptuous, idle woman as that?” But nothing
could restrict her son from staying in the Heath or marrying Eustacia. She was shocked, for
example, by the sight off her son dressed as a furze cutter. She could not believe her eyes.
She had thought it was only a diversion or hobby for him. Again she resolves to reconcile
with her son. But she never gets the chance to reconcile with her son and she dies. That
means none of her effort can restrict her misfortune. Clym is devastated by the deaths of his
wife and mother, believing that he drove them to their deaths. He thinks that fate is cruel to
him, for taking his life in this direction.From the above discussion we can say that man is
thus posited to be the source of the cosmic but, the cosmic is considered to be too complex
for human understanding.
Man against Nature:
Hardy also tried to present role of nature as an agent of destiny responsible to
change human life.What man proposes, nature disposes.It has it’s own power of
controlling human life.Destiny acts in the form of nature. It can be best seen through
following events in this novel.
1: The setting of the novel, Egdon Heath, never changes–it is as forbidding and desolate as it
may be toward its inhabitants and its visitors. The heath never yields to anyone.
2: The reddleman notices the lone figure standing on top of Rainbarrow, watching for
something or someone. He also notices that the figure departs as soon as the turf- and furzecutters and gatherers make their ascent to the top of Rainbarrow. The reddleman sees that the
solitary figure does not want to talk to the heath-folk, and is therefore rebelling against the
customs and nature of the heath.
3: Eustacia hates everything connected to Egdon Heath–especially the turf and furzegatherers and cutters. She feels that any job or object connected to the heath is degrading and
miserable. Eustacia’s rejection of the heath shows her rebellion against nature.
4: Eustacia and Wildeve both share a deep disgust for the heath. They both yearn for
exciting, cosmopolitan cities where excitement and mystery attract them, rather than the
isolated, barren landscape of the heath.
5: Knowing how much Eustacia yearns to escape the heath, Venn offers Eustacia a job as a
paid companion to get her out–and away from Wildeve. Eustacia, however, has too much
pride to take a job, even if the job would get her out of Egdon. She declares that she would
rather live on the miserable heath than work.
6: Eustacia believes that Clym Yeobright is the answer to her prayers–if he marries her, she
will be able to escape the heath for Paris, where Clym is from. She is sure that Clym’s love
will elevate her from the drudgery of the heath and change her life forever.
7: Eustacia declares that she would be content being married to Clym and living with him on
the heath, if they are not able to return to Paris soon. She wants to believe love is worth more
than anything, even her desire to leave the heath. However, her words are untrue; her deep
hatred for the heath will reveal itself to Clym.
8: Clym and Eustacia argue about Clym’s new job as a furze-cutter. While Clym is content
with his job, Eustacia is bitterly shamed by it. She cannot fathom working at a job so
intimately connected with the heath. When Clym asks if she regrets marrying him, now that
he is a furze-cutter, Eustacia cannot deny her true feelings and admits that she still dreams of
leaving the heath for a better life.
9: Mrs. Yeobright dies after walking with a weak heart in the sweltering heat. Her death
shows the insignificance of the human world against the expansive, forbidding heath.
10: When Eustacia and Clym argue about his mother’s death, Clym suddenly realizes that
Eustacia has never been and will never be happy with him, as long as they continue to live on
the heath. He is hurt that his wife does not share his love for the heath; he had believed that
Eustacia had reconciled herself with the idea of living there.
11: Eustacia feels that her life is meaningless and worthless, now that she has left Clym and
is still on Egdon Heath. She knows that he will never return to Paris for her. Eustacia
contemplates killing herself, to escape the futility of her life.
12: Eustacia’s vision of the heath as repulsive and isolated now broadens to the whole world;
she feels that the world, not just the heath, is against her. Eustacia feels that she never can or
will belong to anyone or anything. She feels defeated and resigned to her fate; she knows she
can never win as long as the heath rejects her.
13: Eustacia feels that fate has been unjust. She asks the heavens what she has done to
deserve such a terrible fate, to be bound to the heath forever without any chance of escape, in
desperation and bitterness. The heavens and the heath are indifferent to Eustacia’s tragic life.
14: Venn pulls Eustacia’s cold, lifeless body out of the water. Whether she purposely fell in
or slipped, Eustacia has drowned. Because Eustacia could not accept the heath, the heath has
rejected her for all eternity.
Like many other novels of Hardy, Nature plays a vital role in his ‘The Return of
the Native.’ The co existence between men and Nature is actually the theme of the novel. In
this novel Hardy shows that everyone is entirely dependent on Nature. If one is good to
Nature then Nature will be good to him. Similarly if one does something harmful to it he will
count his miseries. From the beginning of the novel Hardy hints that Egdon Heath is not a
mere inanimate object here, it is Hardy’s representation of his views on Nature. It is
Omnipresent. It is the fate, the destiny, god to the local inhabitants of Egdon Heath.
Anyone who loves the heath the heath helps him in miseries but one who hates it will
certainly be destroyed. Therefore the reader begins to feel an eerie sensation from the
opening of the novel, but could understand that Egdon Heath is inevitable. As the title of the
novel suggests the story centres round the return of the native. Here the native is obviously
Clym, the hero of the novel who did his job in Paris but also had deep love emotion for his
Native place Egdon Heath. When Clym comes back from Paris and now the story gets a new
motion. Clym, the educated young man, is ready to sacrifice his prosperous life for the sake
of the village children when Eustacia, the heroine of the novel and Wildeve, another
important figure, are at once ready to leave the heath. The results of these events are known
to the readers. Clym is helped and rescued indirectly. When Clym is semi blind he is engaged
in cutting furze of the heath. But both Eustacia and Wildeve meet their tragic end as they try
to run away from the heath.
Hardy himself is a lover of Nature and rural life. He hates the fashionable life of city.
His love for Nature is evident from the smaller instances of the novel like the village folk,
their customs, bonfire, furze cutting etc; he has all his sympathies for Clym, simple village
girl Thomasin, and noble reddleman. He does not sympathise even with his beautiful heroine
Eustacia as she longs for city life and at last she is destroyed. Thus, the coexistence between
man and Nature is a crucial point of the novel of Hardy. In Egdon Heath, Thomas Hardy
creates an otherworld consisting of the elements earth, wind, fire, and water, populated by a
witch condemned by a pious woman's spell, a Christian ruled by pagan beliefs, an assortment
of other odd characters, and the native of the title whose return precipitates a series of tragic
events.
On the other hand, Hardy symbolises nature as fate. A direct confrontation with
Egdon causes tragedy. Eustacia, for example, has always hated Egdon and the end of the
novel nature kills her. Venn pulls Eustacia's cold, lifeless body out of the water. Whether she
purposely fell in or slipped, Eustacia has drowned. Because Eustacia could not accept the
heath, the heath has rejected her for all eternity. Characters in Hardy such as Clym, Eustacia,
Wildeve and Mrs. Yeobright are trapped in a series of bitterly ironic events. They are at the
mercy of their instincts and emotions. Besides this, the incongruity of the situation forms the
very basis of the tragedy in his novel; the incongruity between Clym and his mother, between
Eustascia and Mrs.Yeobright. All these persons have their own individual natures and
temperaments and the irreconcilability and incompatibility of their temperament bring their
tragedy. Hardy proves a dismal view of life in which coincidence and accident conspire to
produce the worst of circumstance due to the indifference of the Will.
Revelation of Man and Destiny through characters
We notice that Hardy reveals the concept of man and destiny through his
characters.For this, he makes use of their actions, thoughts, dialogues, manners, customs,
languages, superstitions, and mishaps…..etc.Hardy has presented different types of
characters. Main characters in his novels are the victims of destiny.They show how human
life is governed by destiny.Some traits in them make them as victims of destiny.Eustacia Vye
in this novel is one of them.Her figure also,shows Hardy’s revelation of man and destiny.
Eustacia Vye of Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native is a figure dominated by powerful
emotions. This inability to grasp her situation, and thus her impotence to change it, derives
from her nature as an outsider and as a "foreigner" to the heath. "Her presence bought
memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies, and tropical midnights; her moods recalled
lotus eaters and the march in 'Athalie;' her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the
viola." Such a nature can not coincide with her provincial position and this leads her to a
feeling of victimization. She blames Fate, God, or a hostile universe and her delusions of both
grandeur and destruction will eventually lead her to her doom.
The source of Eustacia's predicament is her "Italian" (in a literary sense) nature, her
presence as a resented outsider, a rebel, a nonconformist. She is a native of fashionable
Budmouth and had been forced to move to Egdon Heath; thus, in her brain was "juxtaposed
the strangest assortment of ideas from old time and from new. There is no middle distance in
her perspective: romantic recollections of sunny afternoons on an esplanade, with military
bands, officers, and gallants around stood like gilded letters upon the dark tablet of
surrounding Egdon." Her mind is "full of nothing but enchantments, quarrels, battles,
challenges, wounds, complaints, amours, torments and abundance of stuff and
impossibilities." She is bored with her existence and she is incompatible with her community.
Thus, from her very beginning, Eustacia feels like she has been wronged; she feels like she is
missing something.
Eustacia's one great desire is "to be loved to madness" and she uses this to
compensate for her lack of satisfaction. She takes up with Wildeve, the most romantic figure
that she can locate. Wildeve, however, is quickly abandoned with the arrival of the
mysterious Clym Yeobright (from Paris!) and Eustacia deludes herself into believing that he
will be some kind of shining knight. It never occurs to Eustacia to seek happiness with what
she has, or to find some way to improve her situation. She is content with grasping at the
straws that a malevolent fate maliciously tosses her. She rails against the universe, focusing
her anger at "Destiny, through whose interference she dimly fancied it arose that love
alighted only gliding youth - which any love she might win might sink simultaneously with
the sand in the glass." Clym represents that shining dream that Eustacia hopes to achieve, not
through her, but through the tumultuous and mysterious workings of an all-powerful fate.
This combination of fantasy as well as a resigned submission to the workings of the universe
will lead Eustacia to bitter disappointment.
The conflicting interests of Yeobright and Eustacia lead to the destruction of the
happiness each had planned for them. Yeobright's idealistic plan for a school in Egdon Heath
can not coexist with Eustacia's romantic dream of being swept away to Paris. Eustacia had
known of Clym's plan when she married him, but once again she had let her passion
overcome her reasoning. When even Clym's plan is delayed by his eye injury, Eustacia rails
at fate while Clym (literally and figuratively) sings a song and accepts it. Eustacia says "God!
If I were a man in such a position I would curse rather than sing." To which Yeobright replies
"Now, don't you suppose, my inexperienced girl, that I cannot rebel, in high Promethean
fashion, against the gods and fate as well as you?" Clym accepts his reality while Eustacia
denies hers.
The chain of events that will lead to the catastrophe at the end of the novel will
directly result from Eustacia's refusal to accept her own free will (and thus her own reality
and her ability to change it). Her endless haranguing of Fate - as well as her capitulation to it
will proceed to its natural conclusion - that is, those who refuse to accept their own power to
control their own destiny will ultimately be destroyed by their ineptitude. The breach between
Clym's mother, Mrs. Yeobright, and Eustacia had resulted from the chaos caused by the
misplacement of coins by Diggory Venn (who won them from Wildeve, who won them from
Christian, and so on in a series of coincidences that lead to trouble). Mrs. Yeobright decides
to heal this breach and proceeds to Yeobright and Eustacia's house. Unbeknownst to her,
however, Eustacia is with Wildeve, the two of them bemoaning the misfortunes of the
unhappy Mrs. Clym Yeobright (none of whose misfortunes are her own fault, of course, but
the result of bad luck and a hostile or indifferent world that is destiny).
Hardy has a very pessimistic philosophy of life as his characters seem to have little
control over their own lives. Hardy saw external circumstances and uncontrollable internal
urges as controlling human actions. In this aspect we find that the vision of life that Hardy
presented in The Return of the Native is essentially tragic .The Return of the Native shows
man as the helpless plaything of invisible powers, ruthless and indifferent. In this novel
Hardy embodies the idea that man lives in an indifference of universe. Critics usually refer to
Hardy’s themes as expressing a fatalistic view of life, that is to say a view of life which
depicts human actions as subject to the control of an impersonal force perhaps called destiny
or fate which is independent of both man and man’s god.
The characters in Hardy’s novel do not have control over their lives. First of all,
Hardy believes that characters are governed by fate. In The Return of the Native Hardy
symbolises this ‘fate’ by his presentation of chance and co-incidence.The Return of the
Native is the tragedy of Clym, Clym’s mother, Eustacia and Wildeve. Hardy as a rule
emphasizes the fact that even those characters whom would call wicked are so much the
creatures of circumstance that they are far more to be pitied than to be blamed.There is
nothing impractical or impossible or ignoble about Clym’s decision to start a school on
Egdon Heath. But, destiny intervenes to prevent him from succeeding in his purpose. He
disregards his mother’s opposition to marry Eustacia Vye. He becomes semi-blind which
forces him to become a humble furze-cutter. Again we find that Clym finds himself in a
difficult situation for which he is no way deliberately responsible. Hardy thus describes
Clym’s situation “three antagonistic growth had to be kept alive, his mother’s trust in him, his
plan for becoming a teacher and Eustacia’s happiness.”
Fate or providence or circumstance has put Eustacia Vye, the tragic heroine in the
wrong place. She marries Clym Yeobright as an escape rejecting her former lover, Damon
Wildeve. But nothing can provide her a happy and worthy existence. Eustacia finds herself in
a difficult situation. Clym's promising life has completely changed direction at the conclusion
of the text so she suffers more.Damon Wildeve, spitefully marries Clym's cousin Thomasin in
revenge for Eustacia's rejections of his charms. But he is also not happy because the
reminiscence of his X beloved always haunts him. Even he names his daughter name by the
name of Eustacia.
Love is important in the novel, because it shapes the actions of most of the main
characters. Eustasia's greatest wish is to be loved to madness something which she will go to
almost any lengths to achieve. She is even prepared to jeopardise the future of an innocent
woman (Thomasin) in order to keep Wildeve whom she believes she loves. Yet Eustasia's
love is fickle, as her marriage to Clym reveals, her real interest was in escaping the heath and
going to Paris, which she saw was possible through Clym. Once all hopes of this have been
dashed, and a coincidence puts Wildeve back on the scene, she is quick to take advantage.
Wildeve too loses his appeal once she realises she is no longer competing for his affection.
Perhaps, Hardy is commenting on the fickleness of human nature. Marriage is
usually associated with love in the twenty first century, but as Thomasin and Wildeve's union
shows, this was not always the case. Although it is implied that Thomasin did love Wildeve
at some point, in the end she marries him to preserve her family's good name. Wildeve seems
to be more concerned with getting his hands on Thomasin's inheritance money, his real love
is for Eustasia, as is shown by the way he goes running to her at the slightest opportunity,
leaving his wife alone, and the way in which he rashly jumps in to the weir to save her when
she falls in. Although Clym and Eustasia originally marry for love, Clym is quick to doubt
Eustasia's integrity when the events surrounding his mother’s death come to light, and she in
turn is quick to desert him and run off with Wildeve. Both Wildeve and Eustasia desert their
partners in their hour of need. When Mrs Yeobright is dying they both witness it, but as both
are in some way responsible neither comfort their grieving spouse. Clym chooses his mother.
The Sense of Disillusionment in Return of the Native is seen through the characters.It
reveals that destiny governs human life.
Thomas Hardy has a very pessimistic philosophy of life and his characters also suffer
from disillusionment of their lives. He shows man lives in an indifferent world. Return of the
Native is based on the assumption that man is destined by God to suffer the overwhelming
pain and suffering which exits in the world. All the main characters of Return of the Native
namely- Clym, Eustacis, Wildeve, and Mrs Yeoright have their own aim ambition. But all
their plans turn into vain. All of their lives are full of aim. But they are trapped in a series of
bitterly ironic events. They are faced with an incomprehensible universe.
The protagonist of the novel, Clym at an early age have been sent to Budmouth and
from where he had gone to Paris. In Paris he had placed in trade and he had rise to the
position of a manager of a diamond-merchant’s establishment. He is a boy of whom
something is always expected. He feels that he has to use his services for the people in Egdon
Heath. In order to be of some service to the people, he wants to start a school. His misfortune,
semi blindness disables him from executing the educational project. In his love affair also he
was not successful. Clym is very much attracted by the charm and beauty of Eustacia.
Ignoring his mother’s strong opposition he takes a cottage at Alderworth, several miles away
from Blooms-End. But the utter incompatibility of temperaments had foredoomed their
marriage.
Mrs Yeobright, the mother of Clym, is a woman of middle age with well-formed
feature. She vehemently opposes the plans of Clym to start a school. She wants Clym to go
back in Paris because there he has a respectable job. She had brought up her with great care
and devotion. She also strongly opposes not to marry Eustacia. She says, “Is it best for you to
injure your prospects for such a voluptuous, idle woman as that?” But nothing could restrict
her son from staying in the Heath or marrying Eustacia. She was shocked, for example, by
the sight off her son dressed as a furze cutter. She could not believe her eyes. She had thought
it was only a diversion or hobby for him. Again she resolves to reconcile with her son. But
she never gets the chance to reconcile with her son and she dies.
Though Wildeve is depicted as a demon here but still he is also the portrayal of
disillusionment. In the beginning of the novel, Wildeve responses quickly to Eustacia’s signal
fire. It is true that he wishes to marry her. But he could not. And in the later part of the novel
he unhesitatingly leaps into the stream with all his clothes on to try to rescue Eustacia. But in
this time also he fails and dies. After analyzing all the above discussed characters we can say
that man is thus posited to be the source of the cosmic but the cosmic is considered to be too
complex for human understanding.
Thomas Hardy's characters in The Return of the Native live in a world governed
by a harsh and indifferent ironic God. Hardy sees the reigning power of the universe as
being essentially unjust and morally blind. In Hardy's fiction, destiny is set against man's
power. Hardy's characters live in a world governed by the twin powers- change and chance
whose influence all too often is for evil, not for good.
Throughout The Return of the Native bad things happen to good people. Eustacia,
the tragic heroine, is stifled by her environment in the heath and marries Clym Yeobright as
an escape, despite his mother's disapproval. Her former lover, Damon Wildeve, spitefully
marries Clym's cousin Thomasin in revenge for Eustacia's rejections of his charms. None of
these characters is evil, but much misfortune befalls them before the book concludes. There
seems to be no justice for the good or mercy for the mistaken. He wrote novels whose plots
were heavily influenced by factors of chance and change, often leading to a negative
conclusion. Hardy did not enjoy witnessing the suffering in the world around him, and felt
sympathy for almost all of his characters .To him all of humanity is guided by an outside
agency and so have little responsibility for the painful outcomes that occur.
All these events are guided by chance and chance to the worst possible outcome-death
and no reconciliation whether by suicide or accident.
Hardy would insist that his vision is true to life because the higher power does indeed
influence humanity's life for the worse, using its agents of chance, change and coincidence.
Unlike many other novels, ‘The Return of the Native’ shows the workings of higher deity
but does not offer the "assurance of a continuing restored stability or an explanation of why
things are as they are" Other Victorian authors often preferred to end their novels with a
happy coincidence, restoring right to the world and humanity's faith in providential justice.
Hardy did not see that justice in the world around him, and so it is absent in this text. The
ironic contradiction between what is and what ought to be reverberates The Return of the
Native, marbling the characters' lives with 'if only's'. Various instruments of fate influence
his characters lives as he believed influenced all of humanity's, and this tragic novel lends
great insight into Hardy's philosophy of the workings of our own world.
Analysis of Book 1 chapter 3 presents rural, superstitious life.It also reveals this
concept.
The occasion of the bonfire also gives Hardy the opportunity to show the heath
dwellers as traditional, superstitious, and likely to believe in folk wisdom. They all seem to
believe the saying "No moon, no man" as it applies in general as well as in particular to the
case of Christian Cantle. They all appear to believe, also, that ghosts do exist (the one
mentioned is said to be red) and that they appear only to "single sleepers," like Christian. Not
even Fairway, who is looked up to by the others, questions any of these beliefs.
The raffle at the inn is an annual local event staged by a "packman" or peddler.
Christian, the epitome of superstition among the heath folk, wins the "gown-piece," though as
he says earlier no woman will have him. At first, he thinks the event is the devil's own work;
but having won, Christian is fascinated by the power of the dice, so fascinated that he thinks
he is lucky. He is then willing to forget his fears and gamble with Wildeve later on. As
elsewhere, Christian is shown to be not different from the other heath dwellers but only an
exaggerated version of them.
The heath folk's superstitious beliefs are dramatized in a scene where Susan Nunsuch,
long suspicious that Eustacia is a witch and is working evil on her son Johnny, makes a wax
doll of Eustacia, pierces it many times with pins, and burns it in the fire. The Lord's Prayer
said backward is an incantation which, as Hardy remarks, is "usual in proceedings for
obtaining unhallowed assistance against an enemy." Sticking an image full of pins is common
in voodoo, too.
3. Mayor of the Casterbridge: (1886)
Thomas Hardy has written story of this novel in fourty five chapters.All of them are
untitled.But, we can notice a perfect link in between them. It shows that man can be master
of his fate in limited sense but at the end destiny overpowers man.
The Mayor of the Casterbridge was published serially in the ‘Graphic’ from January
to May 1886 inthe same year, it was published. Disccussion about sources of this novel is
useful in assessing Hardy both as a novelist and a man. Hardy moved from place to place for
many years. To return to the region of his childhood suggested the best scenes of this story.
Hardy travelled between city and country. So, we notice that one of the themes of this novel
is to present contrast between the city life and it’ s sophistication and
the country life of
innocence. There are 45 chapters in the novel. Ups and downs in the life of Henchard are
presented. This novel was subtitled as “the life and death of a man of character.” Emergence
of new industrialists, decline in the traditional business, symptom of change in the rural
economic pattern- these events are reflected in the novel. It presents commercial atmosphere
with much emphasis on buying and selling. Three main aspects of 19th century, – power,
money and politics are presented.
SUMMARY
At a country fair near Casterbridge, Wessex, a young hay–trusser named Michael
Henchard overindulges in rum–laced furmity and quarrels with his wife, Susan. Spurred by
alcohol, he decides to auction off his wife and baby daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, to a sailor, Mr.
Newson, for five guineas. Once sober the next day, he is too late to recover his family,
particularly since his reluctance to reveal his own bad conduct keeps him from conducting an
effective search. When he realizes that his wife and daughter are gone, probably for good, he
swears not to touch liquor again for as many years as he has lived so far (twenty–one).
Nineteen years later, Henchard, now a successful grain merchant, is the eponymous
Mayor of Casterbridge, known for his staunch sobriety. He is well respected for his financial
acumen and his work ethic, but he is not well liked. Impulsive, selfish behavior and a violent
temper are still part of his character, as is dishonesty and secretive activity.
All these years, Henchard has kept the details surrounding the "loss" of his wife a
secret. The people in Casterbridge believe he is a widower, although he never explicitly says
that his first wife died. He lies by omission instead, allowing other people to believe
something false. Over time he finds it convenient to believe Susan probably is dead. While
traveling to the island of Jersey on business, Henchard falls in love with a young woman
named Lucette de Sueur, who nurses him back to health after an illness. The book implies
that Lucette (Lucetta, in English) and Henchard have a sexual relationship, and Lucetta's
reputation is ruined by her association with Henchard. When Henchard returns to
Casterbridge he leaves Lucetta to face the social consequences of their fling. In order to
rejoin polite society she must marry him, but there is a problem: Henchard is already
technically married. Although Henchard never told Lucetta exactly how he "lost" his wife to
begin with, he does tell her he has a wife who "is probably dead, but who may return".
Besotted, Lucetta develops a relationship with him despite the risk. Yet just as Henchard is
about to send for Lucetta, Susan unexpectedly appears in Casterbridge with her daughter,
Elizabeth-Jane, who is now fully grown. Susan and Elizabeth-Jane are both very poor.
Newson appears to have been lost at sea, and without means to earn an income Susan is
looking for Henchard again. Susan, who is not a very intelligent woman, believed for a long
time that her "marriage" to Newson was perfectly legitimate. Only recently, just before
Newson's disappearance, had Susan begun to question whether or not she was still legally
married to Henchard.
Just as Susan and Elizabeth-Jane arrive in town, a tidy Scotsman, Donald Farfrae, is
passing through on his way to America. The energetic, amiable Farfrae happens to be in
Henchard's line of work. He has experience as a grain and corn merchant, and is on the
cutting edge of agricultural science. He befriends Henchard and helps him out of a bad
financial situation by giving him some timely advice. Henchard persuades him to stay and
offers him a job as his corn factor, rudely dismissing a man named Jopp to whom he had
already offered the job. Hiring Farfrae is a stroke of business genius for Henchard, who
although hard-working is not well educated. Henchard also makes Farfrae a close friend and
confides in him about his past history and personal life.
Henchard is also reunited with Susan and the fully grown Elizabeth-Jane. To preserve
appearances, Henchard sets Susan and Elizabeth-Jane up in a nearby house. He pretends to
court Susan, and marries her. Both Henchard and Elizabeth-Jane's mother keep their past
history from their daughter. Henchard also keeps Lucetta a secret. He writes to her, informing
her that their marriage is off. Lucetta is devastated and asks for the return of her letters.
Henchard attempts to return them, but Lucetta misses the appointment due to a family
emergency that is not explained until later in the book.The return of his wife and daughter
sets in motion a decline in Henchard's fortunes. Yet Susan and Elizabeth-Jane are not the root
cause of Henchard's fall. Henchard alone makes the decisions that bring him down, and much
of his bad luck is the delayed and cumulative consequence of how Henchard treats other
people. His relationship with Farfrae deteriorates gradually as Farfrae becomes more popular
than Henchard. In addition to being more friendly and amiable, Farfrae is better informed,
better educated, and in short everything Henchard himself wants to be. Henchard feels
threatened by Farfrae, particularly when Elizabeth-Jane starts to fall in love with him.
The competition between Donald Farfrae and Henchard grows. Eventually they part
company and Farfrae sets himself up as an independent hay and corn merchant. The rivalry
and resentment for the most part is one-sided, and Farfrae conducts himself with scrupulous
honesty and fair dealing. Henchard meanwhile makes increasingly aggressive, risky business
decisions that put him in financial danger. The business rivalry leads to Henchard standing in
the way of a marriage between Donald and Elizabeth-Jane, until after Susan's death at which
point Henchard learns he is not Elizabeth-Jane's father, and realizes that if she marries
Farfrae, he will be rid of her. This Elizabeth-Jane is Newson's daughter. He learns this secret,
however, after Susan's death when he reads a letter which Susan, on her deathbed, marked to
be opened only after Elizabeth-Jane's marriage. Feeling ashamed and hard done by, Henchard
conceals the secret from Elizabeth-Jane, but grows cold and cruel towards her.
In the meantime, Henchard's former mistress, Lucetta, arrives from Jersey and
purchases a house in Casterbridge. She has inheritied money from a wealthy relative who
died: in fact it was this relative's death that kept her from picking up her letters from
Henchard. Initially she wants to pick up her relationship with him where it left off, but
propriety requires that they wait a while. She takes Elizabeth-Jane into her household as a
companion thinking it will give Henchard an excuse to come visit, but the plan backfires
because of Henchard's hatred of Elizabeth-Jane. She also learns a little bit more about
Henchard. Specifically, the details of how he sold his first wife become public knowledge
when the furmity-vendor who witnessed the sale makes the story public. Henchard does not
deny the story, but when Lucetta hears a little bit more about what kind of man Henchard
really is she stops rationalizing his conduct in terms of what she wants to believe. For the first
time, she starts to see him more clearly, and she no longer particularly likes what she sees.
Donald Farfrae, who visits Lucetta's house to see Elizabeth-Jane and who becomes
completely distracted by Lucetta, has no idea that Lucetta is the mysterious woman who was
informally engaged to Henchard. Since, Henchard is such a reluctant and secretive suitor who
in no way reveals his attachment to Lucetta to anybody, Lucetta starts to question whether her
engagement to Henchard is valid. She too is lying about her past: she claims to be from Bath,
not Jersey, and she has taken the surname of her wealthy relative. Yet she came to
Casterbridge seeking Henchard, and sent him letters after Susan's death indicating that she
wanted to resume and legitimize the relationship. Although he was initially reluctant he
gradually realizes that he wants to marry Lucetta, particularly since he's having financial
trouble due to some speculations having gone bad. Lenders are unwilling to extend credit to
him, and he believes that they would extend credit if they at least believed he was about to be
married to a wealthy woman. Frustrated by her stalling, Henchard bullies Lucetta into
agreeing to marry him. But by this point she is in love with Farfrae. The two run away one
weekend and get married, and Lucetta doesn't have the nerve to tell Henchard until well after
the fact. Henchard's credit collapses, he becomes bankrupt, and he sells all his personal
possessions to pay creditors.
As Henchard's fortunes decline, Farfrae's rise. He buys Henchard's old business and
employs Henchard as a journeyman day-laborer. Farfrae is always trying to help the man who
helped him get started, whom he still regards as a friend and a former mentor. He does not
realize Henchard is his enemy even though the town council and Elizabeth-Jane both warn
him.Lucetta, feeling safe and comfortable in her marriage with Farfrae, keeps her former
relationship with Henchard a secret. This secret is revealed when Henchard foolishly lets his
enemy Jopp delivers Lucetta's old love letters. Jopp makes the secret public and the
townspeople publicly shame Henchard and Lucetta. Lucetta, who by this point is pregnant,
dies of an epileptic seizure.
When Newson, Elizabeth-Jane's biological father, returns, Henchard is afraid of
losing her companionship and tells Newson she is dead. Henchard is once again
impoverished, and, as soon as the twenty-first year of his oath is up, he starts drinking again.
By the time Elizabeth-Jane, who months later is married to Donald Farfrae and reunited with
Newson, goes looking for Henchard to forgive him, he has died and left a will requesting no
funeral or fanfare:"That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on
account of me. "and that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground.”and that no sexton is asked to
toll the bell. "and that nobody is wished to see my dead body.”and that no murners walk
behind me at my funeral.” that no flours be planted on my grave, "and that no man remember
me.”To this I put my name.
Revelation of man and destiny in the novel:
Destiny can be seen here as uncanny natural force working calmly and unconsciously.
Whimsicality of divine power can be seen through plot of this novel. Pervasive beauty of the
rural setting is attractive. The spiritual issues in the novel are derived from clash and contrast
between two groups of people – urban and simple (rural). It presents recognizable details of
Dorchester’s history. It clearly presents Hardy’s philosophy of life, “Man is an insignificant
insect in the universe quite different to him. Man is a puppet in the hands of a malicious
force – Immanent will, which blindly rules universe and human destiny. Man is a
powerless victim of an obscure fate.” Depiction of darker side of modern life is central.
Changes in the field of politics, art, religion, industrialization, education are presented. The
conflicts of traditionalists and modernists are depicted through characters of Henchard and
Farfrae. We notice transformation of England from rural, agricultural nation into an industrial
and urban nation. Through Henchard’s rise and fall Hardy conveys that character indeed is
fate.
(Analysis of chapter 1presents theme of the novel)
Hardy wrote a number of novels set in the fictional shire of England known as
"Wessex." Readers followed the novels that Hardy set in this region because of Hardy's skill
in bringing life to the Wessex natives. Hardy also tries to explore how one character touches
others--another theme that one should trace through the story. . The tension between
Michael's good and bad qualities will be one major theme of the book that concerns
itself with "a man of character." Through his use of metaphorical place names, Hardy
shows that his characters are motivated by a power stronger than their free will. Relying first
upon the Bible, Hardy sends Michael away from the King's Arms Hotel. The "King's Arms"
could represent the control exerted by God's force (the weapons that the King of Heaven uses
to guide men). The Henchards are drawn to the Three Mariners in because they act as three
mariners, adrift on the tumultuous sea of Chance. Indeed, chance dominates this chapter. By
chance the Scotsman hears the conversation about the corn and happens to have the solution.
By chance Elizabeth-Jane notices the young man, and by chance all three stay at the Three
Mariners. Michael just misses his family on the way to find the man. Coincidence plays a
major role in Hardy's novels. The coincidences in this chapter are just a few examples
of the work of a greater power ‘Destiny’ that seems to constantly work against
mankind-at least in Hardy's view.
The Role of Chance and Fate in the Novel
Although
Thomas
Hardy's
novel,
The
Mayor
of
Casterbridge
presents
predetermination as a major role in the characters lives, the novel should also be seen as a
platform for free will. If not for free will Michael Henchard would not have been able to
make choices such as selling his wife, that lead to his demise. Chance controls all outcome
and not all actions set us on a predetermined path. In ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’, despite
the workings of blind fate, the occurrences of chance, and the vagaries of a hostile natural
environment, Michael Henchard is still responsible for his on fate. This probability threw
Henchard into a defensive attitude, and instead of considering how best to right the wrong,
and acquaint Elizabeth’s father with the truth at once, he bethought himself of ways to keep
the position he had accidentally won. (222 ch. 12) Accidents like this one and many more
included in this novel show not fate and chance are the dominating forces in Henchard’s life.
(Analysis of chapters 8, 11, 13 presents use of Chance in the novel)
Chance appears to play another vital role in chapter 8. Farfrae just happens to be
able to entertain the guests with his songs, and the villagers happen to be in the mood for his
sad, sweet songs. Elizabeth-Jane, who has been eyeing the young man all evening, passes him
on the staircase, and seems to have won his heart. Is it all really based upon chance, though?
First, the townspeople take to Farfrae not because they were manipulated, but because
the young man has charm. He willingly answers their questions, shows kindness, and sings
like an angel. In addition, the fact that he has other talents apart from business and work
appeals to the townspeople, who have no time to waste upon creative exploits. Finally, the
townspeople love Farfrae's sad songs because they reflect their own lost ideals--love of
country, a longing for freedom and home. The townspeople, who have a sour and illtempered tone through the chapter, find a symbol of hope and longing simultaneously in
Farfrae, just as Michael does. As for Elizabeth-Jane, she is obviously attracted to the sober
and idealistic Farfrae as well. While their meeting on the staircase was an accident, his song
to her was teasing. Thus Hardy introduces foreshadowing to the plot. Elizabeth-Jane
misinterprets both Donald's song (as a sign of affection) and her mother's "he" (as referring to
Donald). These mistakes foreshadow the larger, more damaging miscommunications that will
occur later in the story.
Hardy describes the Ring in gruesome detail at the beginning of the chapter11. It is a
marvelous example of Hardy using his life experience. The description of the Ring's shape
and dimensions reflects his many years as an architect, and his comparison of the Ring to the
Coliseum as well as noting the other Roman features shows his lifelong interest in the
classical world. The whole novel carries a tone of ill will and melancholy that is revealed in
the natural world and within the townspeople of Casterbridge. Hardy uses pathetic fallacy-the act of having nature reflect the feelings the characters.
(Analysis of chapters 16, 17, 18,24,31,37 show role of fate in the novel.)
Although Hardy adopts the omniscient narrator's voice through the novel, he
manipulates the viewpoint throughout the novel to get inside a character's head. It is a way of
understanding the character's motivations and a means of creating sympathy for the
characters. In this chapter, Hardy writes so we see the events unfolding from Michael's view.
Even nature sides with Farfrae. The rain that ruined Michael's entertainment magically
disappears in the evening, when Farfrae's dance is about to begin. The natural world appears
to work for the success of the dance: the trees provide convenient, living poles for the tent
cloths. Of course, Farfrae is the one who had the idea to use this spot in the first place. Like
the townspeople, he is able to understand and adapt to nature. Perhaps the fate that is working
against the business-oriented Michael works so well for the nature-loving Farfrae. "Character
is Fate, said Novelist." This is one of the most debated comments in Hardy's novels. At first it
seems to run against all of Hardy's insistence that man is ruined by an impersonal fate. Is
Michael's fate determined by the gods, his own flaws, or a combination of the two? A case
can be made for each response, since the novel seems to change opinions in several places.
As usual, Hardy introduces more elements of suspense as he furthers the plot. Susan
dies, but not before writing a cryptic letter that cannot be opened until a certain time. To
replace Susan's role in more ways than one, Lucetta appears once more through her letters,
though she does not appear when she is expected. Susan leaves the novel with no real change
in her outlook on life. Fate continued to treat her cruelly until the very end. As she says,
"Nothing is as you wish it." In a sense nothing in her life has been as she wished it. Her
"first" marriage ended horribly both times, and her "second" marriage was loving but
eventually unlawful in her eyes. Her plan to bring Farfrae and Elizabeth-Jane together failed
miserably.Analysis:24.
The theme of being plagued by a blind fate has already become clear to Susan and
Michael. Now the same fate is working against Elizabeth-Jane, in the form of a relationship
between Farfrae and Lucetta. It is obvious that Farfrae and Elizabeth-Jane are better suited:
Elizabeth-Jane shares his love of change, and they both understand the Scriptures (when
Lucetta has a "somewhat limited" knowledge of them). However, she learns of their growing
infatuation by means of a scene that parallels the meeting of Farfrae and Elizabeth-Jane. As
he did when he met Elizabeth-Jane, he hums a tune that blatantly refers to Lucetta. Despite
her disappointment and confusion, Elizabeth-Jane remains stoic and quiet, increasing our
respect for her. The dark fate again haunts Henchard. Despite his noble act of confession, the
townspeople instantly think his act is scandalous--implying the hurtful nature of public
opinion once more. Ironically, Michael could have stopped the damage if he had been honest
from the beginning. Hardy notes that the damage would not have been as great if the news
had been older. Regardless, his debtors fail and all his property is taken. On the other end of
the scale, Farfrae has gained the business that Michael has lost due to the same fate.
The punishment that Michael deems fitting for himself is self-destruction. We can see
this in his refusal to take the comfort of Elizabeth-Jane and his moving in with his enemy
Jopp. Jopp and Michael have a strange, parasitic relationship: Michael stays with Jopp
because the man continues to taunt him with his signs of failure. Michael also returns to the
depressing and barren side of town, giving Nature a hand in his depression. Chapter31 also
contains a hint of Hardy's intent to connect the series of Wessex novels. One of the men at the
bankruptcy proceedings is "a reserved young man named Boldwood." Boldwood appeared in
an earlier Wessex novel, Far from the Madding Crowd. This is Hardy's attempt to fashion a
reality for his characters and his world. As usual, Michael refuses to accept his fate. Instead
of meeting the visitor as the lower classes will in a large crowd, he must join the council to
assert his individuality and his place as a gentleman. His attempt to greet the royal visitor is
not really as dangerous or as shocking as the villagers see it: it is merely an attempt to regain
some of the dignity that fate has stolen. Of course, Farfrae acts out of a sense of duty and
concern for the visitor's safety in pushing Michael back. Yet that has only helped in spurring
Michael's anger.
(Analysis of chapter 26 presents Hardy’s views about man and nature.)
We must remember that Jopp is the villain. He lives in the slums of town, reflecting
his true nature. His events and knowledge will inevitably lead to ruin. The description of the
farmer's connection to the weather is in keeping with the villagers' beliefs earlier in the novel.
As stated before, the people derive their strength from the nature and from the pagan beliefs,
even as they progress and use the latest technology. The danger is in believing in the old
ways too much, as Michael does in his visit to the weather forecaster. Michael believes that
this man can accurately predict the weather, which is simply foolish. The man's nickname
gives a clue: "Wide-oh" could easily mean "wide off." Farfrae relies on sound business
planning and that certain instinct that true people of nature have, and as a result he is a
success. Mr. Fall's name is certainly an allegory. He stands for the season of autumn, or fall-we can tell by his own reliance on "the sun, moon, and stars." His name is also a warning to
Michael. Soon Michael will come to a "fall" in status because of his foolishness.
(Analysis of chapter 32) It shows Revelation of man and destiny, making differences
between upper and lower classes. V.Madgulkar also, through his ‘Pudhach
Paul’presents same view like that of Hardy.
The bridges of the town are made of brick and stone. They act as metaphors for the
differences in lifestyle between the lower classes and the upper classes. The brick bridge
symbolizes progress and hope (as brick is the man-made material). The lower classes often
come here to think of their misfortunes, but they do not brood on them: "they said they were
down on their luck." The misfortunes of the poor are temporary and based upon the whim of
fate. The upper classes, however, go to the farther bridge that is made of the more natural
stone. The upper classes, like Michael, go there to "muse" on their fate, rather than dismissing
it. The stone bridge is farther from town to hide the aristocrats from prying eyes. The stone,
the older material, also implies that the aristocrats are rooted in the past.
Farfrae continues his ironic climb to power. He now acquires Michael's house and
furniture, making his victory almost complete. Yet he remains kind to Michael, offering him
a home and furniture. Elizabeth-Jane also continues to be kind despite all of Michael's
rejections, giving him tenderness and someone who cares about him.
Michael is in the same situation as he was twenty-one years before. Again he is a haytrusser who is down on his luck. He has seen another man take his woman away once more. It
is natural that such a dire repetition of events should lead Michael to drink once again.
4. Tess O’ the de Urbervillies (1891):
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully presented also known as Tess of
the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman or just Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a novel byThomas
Hardy, first published in 1891.
There are seven phases .They show tragic faith of Tess.
Phase the First: The Maiden (1–11)
The novel is set in impoverished rural Wessex during the Long depression . Tess is
the eldest child of John and Joan Durbeyfield, uneducated rural peasants. One day, Parson
Tringham informs John that he has noble blood. Tringham, an amateur genealogist, has
discovered that "Durbeyfield" is a corruption of "D'Urberville", the surname of a noble
Norman family, now extinct. Although the parson means no harm, the news immediately
goes to John's head.
That same day, Tess participates in the village May Dance, where she briefly meets
Angel Clare, the youngest son of Reverend James Clare, who is on a walking tour with his
two brothers. He stops to join the dance, and finds partners in several other girls. Though
Angel takes note of Tess's beauty, he does not dance with her, leaving her feeling slighted.
Tess's father, overjoyed with learning of his noble lineage, gets too drunk to drive to
market that night, so Tess undertakes the journey herself. However, she falls asleep at the
reins and the family’s only horse wanders into the path of another vehicle and is killed. Tess
feels so guilty over the horse's death that she agrees to visit Mrs. d'Urberville, a wealthy
widow who lives in the nearby town of Trantridge, and "claim kin." She is unaware that in
reality, Mrs. d'Urberville is not related to the Durbeyfields or to the ancient d'Urberville
family. Instead, her husband, Simon Stoke, purchased the baronial title and adopted the new
surname.
Tess does not succeed in meeting Mrs. d'Urberville, but her libertine son Alec takes a
fancy to Tess and secures her a position as poultry keeper on the d'Urberville estate. He
immediately begins making advances, but Tess, though somewhat flattered by the attention,
resists. Late one night while walking home from town with some other Trantridge villagers,
Tess inadvertently antagonises Car Darch, Alec's most recently discarded favourite, and finds
herself about to come to blows. When Alec rides up and offers to "rescue" her from the
situation, she accepts. He does not take her home, however, but rides at random through the
fog until they reach an ancient grove called "The Chase". Here, Alec informs her that he is
lost and leaves on foot to look for help as Tess falls asleep beneath the coat he lent her. After
Alec returns, alone, it is left to the reader to decide whether he rapes or seduces her. This
deliberate ambiguity makes Tess more than just a "poster girl for simple victimhood."
Phase the Second: Maiden No More (12–15)
After a few weeks of confused dalliance with Alec, Tess begins to despise him.
Against his wishes, she goes home to her father's cottage, where she keeps almost entirely to
her room. The next summer, she gives birth to a sickly boy who lives only a week. On his last
night alive, Tess baptises him herself, after her father locked the doors to keep the parson
away. The child is given the name 'Sorrow'. Tess buries Sorrow in unconsecrated ground,
makes a homemade cross and lays flowers on his grave in an empty marmalade jar.
Phase the Third: The Rally (16–24)
More than two years after the Trantridge debacle, Tess, now twenty, is ready to make
a new start. She seeks employment outside the village, where her past is not known, and
secures a job as a milkmaid at Talbothays Dairy, working for Mr. and Mrs. Crick. There, she
befriends three of her fellow milkmaids, Izz, Retty, and Marian, and re-encounters Angel
Clare, who is now an apprentice farmer and has come to Talbothays to learn dairy
management. Although the other milkmaids are sick with love for him, Angel soon singles
out Tess, and the two gradually fall in love.
Phase the Fourth: The Consequence (25–34)
Angel spends a few days away from the dairy visiting his family at Emminster. His
brothers Felix and Cuthbert, who are both ordained ministers, note Angel's coarsened
manners, while Angel considers his brothers staid and narrow-minded. Following evening
prayers, Angel discusses his marriage prospects with his father. The Clares have long hoped
that Angel will marry Mercy Chant, a pious schoolmistress, but Angel argues that a wife who
understands farm life would be a more practical choice. He tells his parents about Tess, and
they agree to meet her. His father, the Reverend James Clare, tells Angel about his efforts to
convert the local populace, and mentions his failure to tame a young miscreant named Alec
d'Urberville.
Angel returns to Talbothays Dairy and asks Tess to marry him. This puts Tess in a
painful dilemma. Angel obviously thinks she is a virgin and, although she does not want to
deceive him, she shrinks from confessing lest she lose his love and admiration. Such is her
passion for him that she finally agrees to the marriage, explaining that she hesitated because
she had heard he hated old families and thought he would not approve of her d'Urberville
ancestry. However, he is pleased by this news, because he thinks it will make their match
more suitable in the eyes of his family.
As the marriage approaches, Tess grows increasingly troubled. She writes to her
mother for advice; Joan tells her to keep silent about her past. Her anxiety increases when a
man from Trantridge, named Groby, recognises her while she is out shopping with Angel and
crudely alludes to her sexual history. Angel overhears and flies into an uncharacteristic rage.
Tess resolves to deceive Angel no more, and writes a letter describing her dealings with
d'Urberville and slips it under his door. After Angel greets her with the usual affection the
next morning, she discovers the letter under his carpet and realises that he has not seen it. She
destroys it.
The wedding goes smoothly although a bad omen of a cock crowing in the afternoon
is noticed by Tess. Tess and Angel spend their wedding night at an old d'Urberville family
mansion, where Angel presents his bride with some beautiful diamonds that belonged to his
godmother and confesses that he once had a brief affair with an older woman in London.
When she hears this story, Tess feels sure that Angel will forgive her own indiscretion, and
finally tells him about her relationship with Alec.
Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays (35–44)
Angel, however, is appalled by Tess's confession, and he spends the wedding night
sleeping on a sofa. Tess, although devastated, accepts the sudden estrangement as something
she deserves. After a few awkward, awful days, she suggests that they separate, telling her
husband that she will return to her parents. Angel gives her some money and promises to try
to reconcile him to her past, but warns her not to try to join him until he sends for her. After a
quick visit to his parents, Angel takes ship for Brazil to start a new life. Before he leaves, he
encounters Izz Huett on the road and impulsively asks her to come to Brazil with him, as his
mistress. She accepts, but when he asks her how much she loves him, she admits "Nobody
could love 'ee more than Tess did! She would have laid down her life for 'ee. I could do no
more!" Hearing this, he abandons the whim, and Izz goes home weeping bitterly.
A very bleak period in Tess's life begins. She returns home for a time but, finding this
unbearable, decides to join Marian and Izz at a starve-acre farm called Flintcombe-Ash. On
the road, she is recognised and insulted by a farmer named Groby (the same man who
slighted her in front of Angel); this man proves to be her new employer. At the farm, the
three former milkmaids perform very hard physical labour.
One day, Tess attempts to visit Angel's family at the parsonage in Emminster. As she
nears her destination, she encounters Angel's priggish older brothers and the woman his
parents once hoped he would marry, Mercy Chant. They do not recognise her, but she
overhears them discussing Angel's unwise marriage. Shamed, she turns back. On the way, she
overhears a wandering preacher and is shocked to discover that he is Alec d'Urberville, who
has been converted to Christianity under the Reverend James Clare's influence.
Phase the Sixth: The Convert (45–52)
Alec and Tess are each shaken by their encounter, and Alec begs Tess never to tempt
him again as they stand beside an ill-omened stone monument called the Cross-in-Hand.
However, Alec soon comes to Flintcomb-Ash to ask Tess to marry him. She tells him she is
already married. He returns at Candlemas and again in early spring, when Tess is hard at
work feeding a threshing machine. He tells her he is no longer a preacher and wants her to be
with him. She slaps him when he insults Angel, drawing blood. Tess then learns from her
sister, Liza-Lu, that her father, John, is ill and her mother dying. Tess rushes home to look
after them. Her mother soon recovers, but her father unexpectedly dies.The family is now
evicted from their home, as Durbeyfield held only a life lease on their cottage. Alec tells Tess
that her husband is never coming back and offers to house the Durbeyfields on his estate.
Tess refuses his assistance. She had earlier written Angel a psalm like letter, full of love, selfabasement, and pleas for mercy; now, however, she finally admits to herself that Angel has
wronged her and scribbles a hasty note saying that she will do all she can to forget him, since
he has treated her so unjustly.
The Durbeyfields plan to rent some rooms in the town of Kingsbere, ancestral home
of the d'Urbervilles, but they arrive there to find that the rooms have already been rented to
another family. All but destitute, they are forced to take shelter in the churchyard, under the
D'Urberville window. Tess enters the church and in the d'Urberville Aisle, Alec reappears
and importunes Tess again. In despair, she looks at the entrance to the d'Urberville vault and
wonders aloud "Why am I on the wrong side of this door?"
In the meantime, Angel has been very ill in Brazil and, his farming venture having
failed, he heads home to England. On the way, he confides his troubles to a stranger, who
tells him that he was wrong to leave his wife; what she was in the past should matter less than
what she might become. Angel begins to repent his treatment of Tess.
Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment (53–59)
Upon his return to his family home, Angel has two letters waiting for him: Tess's
angry note and a few cryptic lines from "two well-wishers" (Izz and Marian), warning him to
protect his wife from "an enemy in the shape of a friend." He sets out to find Tess and
eventually locates Joan, now well-dressed and living in a pleasant cottage. After responding
evasively to his inquiries, she finally tells him her daughter has gone to live in Sandbourne, a
fashionable seaside resort. There, he finds Tess living in an expensive boarding house under
the name "Mrs. d'Urberville." When he asks for her, she appears in startlingly elegant attire
and stands aloof. He tenderly asks her forgiveness, but Tess, in anguish, tells him he has
come too late: thinking he would never return, she yielded at last to Alec d'Urberville's
persuasion and has become his mistress. She gently asks Angel to leave and never come
back. He departs, and Tess returns to her bedroom, where she falls to her knees and begins a
lamentation. She blames Alec for causing her to lose Angel's love a second time, accusing
Alec of having lied when he said that Angel would never return to her.
The landlady, Mrs. Brooks, tries to listen in at the keyhole, but withdraws hastily
when the argument becomes heated. She later sees Tess leave the house, then notices a
spreading red spot—a bloodstain—on the ceiling. She summons help, and Alec is found
stabbed to death in his bed. Angel, totally disheartened, has left Sandbourne; Tess hurries
after him and tells him that she has killed Alec, saying that she hopes she has won his
forgiveness by murdering the man who spoiled both their lives. Angel doesn't believe her at
first but grants his forgiveness—as she is in such a fevered state—and tells her that he loves
her. Rather than head for the coast, they walk inland, vaguely planning to hide somewhere
until the search for Tess is ended and they can escape abroad from a port. They find an empty
mansion and stay there for five days in blissful happiness, until their presence is
discovered one day by the cleaning woman.
They continue walking and, in the middle of the night, stumble upon Stonehenge
giving the illusion of Tess as a sacrificial victim to a society that shunned her. Tess lies down
to rest on an ancient altar. Before she falls asleep, she asks Angel to look after her younger
sister, Liza-Lu, saying that she hopes Angel will marry her after she is dead although this, at
the time, would have been illegal and seen as a form of incest. At dawn, Angel sees that they
are surrounded by policemen. He finally realises that Tess really has committed murder and
asks the men in a whisper to let her awaken naturally before they arrest her. When she opens
her eyes and sees the police, she tells Angel she is "almost glad" because "now I shall not live
for you to despise me". She is allowed a dignified death through the fact that Angel listens to
her (he hasn't throughout the rest of the novel) and through her parting words of "I am ready".
Tess is escorted to Wintoncester (Winchester) prison. The novel closes with Angel
and Liza-Lu watching from a nearby hill as the black flag signalling Tess's execution is raised
over the prison. Angel and Liza-Lu then join hands and go on their way.
Revelation of Man and Destiny in the novel
Tragic vision of Hardy is presented through this novel. Confrontation of gender and
sexuality issues are central here. This novel vividly portrays the plight of many women at a
time. It dramatized many contemporary issues. Main themes of this novel are- sexuality and
morality, rural poverty, sexual double standards, ache of modernism…etc. Following
important features of the 19th century are presented through it- politics, power and economy,
traditional versus modern, women and marriages, education, superstitions…etc. Depiction of
contemporary society is the main objective. It’s inner structure is based on following conflicts
– prejudice Vs feeling, culture Vs ignorance, individual Vs community, human will Vs
destiny….etc. Man is the victim of decisions forced on him by a kind of predestination.
Tess’s purity and innocence symbolized an idealized country life. It is corrupted by male
dominated society. In the same way, nature is destroyed by industrialization. Plot is full of
fatalism and pessimism. It presents filtering of innovations slowly into rural England. It is
the novel of sociological interest. Hardy’s novels have moods and motivations of its own, to
be able to express joy and despair, to express the shadow of fate and destiny, and mark and
echo the events of birth, death, love and separation. Tess, rich in landscape and natural
description presents all this.
In Thomas Hardy's ‘Tess of the D'Urbervilles’, Tess is presented as a young girl who
becomes a fallen woman at the end. She is the victim of her destiny and also she makes
wrong decisions. Her destiny takes her to the way due to which she suffers a lot. She makes
her own fate and so she becomes a
fallen woman in the society. Through the conflict
between fate and destiny, Hardy wants to reveal the inevitable misery of the human beings. It
can be said that unification between fate and destiny affected Tess' life. "The difference
between destiny and fate is that is up to individual to make decisions on the path of the life,
whereas with destiny a path has already been decided."
In this novel, Tess’s passivity, suggests her symbolic role. As a victim, she is a good
example of Hardy’s dark philosophy and his attitude toward the human nature as opposed to
Destiny. Circumstances prevent Tess from finding happiness and finds rest in death. She
accepts her destiny without a blink. When she is rebelling against fate, she ends badly. She is
punished for her disobedience. Tess rebels not only once- she rebels against Alec and leaves
him, she rebels against her poverty and goes to work on a farm, she rebels against her own
sin and finally, she makes her greatest mistake: she breaks the pattern, she kills the man who
destroyed her life. The idea of a Universe governed by a blind wheel which man cannot
understand is revealed throughout the novel.
Hardy personifies "fate" at the end of the novel, as the president of the immortals,
reveals itself in two forms - "Nature and "chance and coincidence"- Nature plays a key role in
the novel, it is always indifferent and hostile, and never a source of comfort and pleasure.
When "Tess" was seduced, nature was indifferent, when "Tess" was in miserable condition,
nature was more hostile by the rigours of winter at Flintcomb-Ash, "a starve-acre place".
Fate in Tess revealed through chance and coincidences
The plot of Tess of the d’Urbervilles turns on a succession of accidents and
coincidences. Again and again, Tess’s tragic fate depends on some disastrous mischance, a
real “drama of pain”. One or two of these may seem possible, after all is full of mischance,
but on top of each other they produce a final effect of gross improbability.
Hardy hovered between the view of man as a mere plaything of an impersonal
and malign Fate and man as a being possessing freewill, in whom character is fate. The
heroine’s passivity, which suggests her symbolic role, that of a victim, is a good example of
Hardy’sdark philosophy and his attitude toward the human nature as opposed to Fate/Destiny
is known to have been one dictated by fatalism and determinismin this particular case; fateful
circumstances (blind fate) prevent Tess from finding happiness and the heroine can only find
rest in death, she accept her destiny without a blink. When she is rebelling against fate, she
ends badly; she is punished for her disobedience. Tess rebels not only once- she rebels
against Alec and leaves him, rebels against her poverty and goes to work on a farm, rebels
against her own sin and finally, she makes her greatest mistake: she breaks the pattern, she
kills the man who destroyed her life. The idea of a Universe governed by a blind wheel which
man cannot understand is revealed throughout the novel. Luck does not always indicate a
good occurrence. In Thomas Hardy’s novel, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, luck frequently takes
the meaning of a bad event. Such events occur throughout Tess’ life because of her
characteristics, but also due to luck.
Early in the story, Prince, the horse of the Durbeyfield Family is killed in an accident.
Tess’ father being in no condition to undertake an important journey, Tess offers to take his
place. As she is driving the wagon carrying a load of beehives to be delivered in a distant
market, the mail van coming from the opposite side collides against Tess’ wagon and Prince
is fatally wounded. This accident has influenced life of Tess. The family business having
become suddenly affected by the death of the horse, it becomes necessary for Tess to contract
the D’Urbervilles living at “The Slopes” for help, and the meeting between her and Alec
which follows leads to consequences which are tragic and disastrous. Alec’s seduction of
Tess is the result of the death of Prince It proves the undoing of her marriage with Angel
Clare.
Another notable mischance that deeply affects Tess’ life is her written confession,
pushed by her under Angel’s door, going under the carpet and not reaching Angle at all.
Being an honest girl, Tess tries her utmost to acquaint Angel with her past history, but all her
efforts prove futile for one reason or another. Finally, when a chance meeting with a
Trantridge man at a town inn leads to an unpleasant situation, Tess decides to take no risk and
writes down an account of her experience with Alec in order to tell Angel of the secret of her
life. If Angel had received this statement of the facts in time, he would have either forgiven
her or would have been averted. Since he learns the secret after the marriage, Angel adopts a
stiffer and more rigid attitude that he might have done if he had learnt it before the marriage.
A minor mischance thus proves fatal. Chance and coincidence play yet another impish
trick in the novel. Tess, in her misery, decides to visit Angle’s parents at Emminster. After
walking a distance of fifteen miles when she arrives at the Vicarage, it so happens that Mr.
and Mrs. Clare are not at home. She turns away deciding to come back after a while, but it so
happens that she overhears the two brothers of Angel talking about Angle’s wife in a most
disparaging manner. She feels much hurt by this conversation, but another chance now
occurs. The two brothers meet Miss Mercy Chant and all three of them comment adversely
on a pair of boots which they discover behind a bush. The boots belong to Tess, and the
comment hurts her still more. Tess had hidden her thick boots behind the bush and put on thin
ones of patent leather in order to look pretty to her parents-in-law. But Angel’s brothers and
Mercy Chant take these boots to be a beggar’s. Tess’ feelings are now so wounded that she
changes her mind and decides to return to Flintcomb Ash without meeting Angel’s parents. If
she had been able to meet Angel’s parents, his subsequent life would have changed of the
better.
Another mischance that brings disaster into Tess’ life is her unexpected meeting with
Alec. For three or four years the two have never happened to meet on any occasion, and now,
when Tess’ salvation lay only in continuing to keep out of his way, she runs into him. The
meeting awakens Alec’s dormant lust once again; he renounces his missionary’s role and
pursues Tess with a doggedness that surprises her. If this chance meeting had not occurred all
would yet have been well with Tess. Clare was coming to claim her and she would at least
have been re-united with him to spend the rest of her life blissfully in his arms. But a chance
meeting with Alec becomes fate’s device for wrecking her chances of happiness.
Another incidence happens. Tess’ mother falls seriously ill and her father becomes
unwell too. Tess gives up her job and rushes home. As chance would have it, her father dies
while her mother recovers – contrary to expectations. The death of her father means the
eviction of the family from their cottage of Marlott and their becoming homeless. The house-
owner at Kingsbere, by another mischance, hands over the possession of his house to another
tenant, after having promised it to Tess’ mother. This misfortune is an ideal opportunity for
Alec to put further pressure upon Tess who sees no way out of the predicament but to yield.
Thus a number of chance happenings seem to work against any possibility of Tess’ achieving
happiness in life. Her surrender to Alec, which completes her ruin, thus comes about as a
result of coincidences.
Chance and coincidence also played a crucial role in the life of "Tess" and made it
miserable. "Tess" seeks employment at the D'Urberville house by chance. Also, chance was
responsible for her seduction by Alec, her letter of confession lips under the rug and does not
reach Angel, by chance; she confronted Alec once again in life by chance and so on.
Therefore "fate" both in the form of "nature" and "chance and coincidence" plays a crucial
role in the life of "Tess" and contributed to the tragedy of the novel. Fateful incidents,
overheard conversations and undelivered letters work against her ability to control the path
her life takes. Tess's future seems locked up from the beginning of the novel.
Cross in his ‘The Development of the English Novel’ has emphasised the role of chance
in Tess of the D’urbervilles in the following words, “At the very threshold of her life, Tess
meets the wrong man. Few days before she marries Clare, she pushes under the door of his
bedroon a written confession, which slips out of sight under the carpet and remains concealed
until found by Tess on the wedding morning. On a Sunday Tess tramps fifteen miles to the
parsonage of the elder Clare to seek protection but there is no answer to her ring at the door,
for the family is at Church at just the wrong time she stumbles upon Alec once more. A letter
she despatches to Angel in Brazil is delayed; and he reaches home a few days too late”.
The use of chance and coincidence is given mostly a negative effect in Tess.
Throughout the novel it is often realized that coincidences could have taken place but did not.
Meetings which might have saved many lives are missed by a few moments. A good example
of this can be found in the beginning pages of Tess. Angel Clare and his two brothers, passes
through Tess's village and sees her and her companions dancing on the green. He looks on for
a while and then chooses a partner. He "took almost the first that came to hand", but he didn't
take Tess. After dancing a short time he left, not having noticed her at all.
Hardy presents the character of Tess as having a variety of forces working against
her efforts to control her destiny. Fate approaches Tess in a great variety of forms. Fate is
present through chance and coincidence, and the manisfestations of nature, time, and woman.
He believed that Fate maintains a disinterested attitude toward man. Hardy incorporates these
feelings into the novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Fateful incidents, overheard conversations,
and undelivered letters symbolize the forces of Fate working against man's destiny
In Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles which was written in 1891, we see a
young girl who becomes a fallen woman at the end. Tess is the victim of her destiny and also
she makes wrong decisions. Her destiny takes her to the way which she suffers a lot. She
makes her own fate and both of them make her a fallen woman in the society. Through the
conflict between fate and destiny, Hardy wants to reveal the inevitable misery of the human
beings. By using the elements of New Criticism, it can be said that there is
unification
between fate and destiny which affect Tess' life. "The difference between destiny and fate is
that is up to individual to make decisions on the path of the life, whereas with destiny a path
has already been decided". In that part, we will have a look at the affects of her destiny to
her life. For understanding the novel, we have to make a deep analysis of Tess' character. She
is the protogonist of the novel.The young daughter of a rural working class family at the start
of the novel, Tess Durbeyfield is sent to claim kinship with the wealthier side of her family,
the d'Urbervilles, when her family faces imminent poverty.
Tess Durbeyfield comes from a lower class background, but she can effect a higher
position because of her education. This fluidity of her class background will prove significant
throughout the novel, for she can move from the upper to the lower classes. She is introduced
as an innocent, malleable and pure. As a member of the May Day procession, adorned in
white, she symbolizes purity and virginity, while her physical characteristics equally suggest
her innocence. Alec is the son of the Mrs.Stoke D'Urberville. Tess meets him when she goes
to find their relatives and ask for a job. After being seduced by Alec d'Urberville, she bears
his child, which dies in infancy, and must leave her home to start a new life elsewhere. She
goes to work in a diary and there she meets Angel who is the son of a parson. Angel is the
man whom Tess feels in love with and then they get married. Although Tess is dutiful and
obedient as the novel begins, she gains great strength and fortitude through her suffering, but
remains unwavering in her love for Angel Clare and is prepared to do anything that Angel
might wish.
Her family is also important in her fall. Being the victim of her destiny begins with
the death of their horse. They are not a rich family and they need the horse. Her family forces
her to go and find the D'Urbervilles who are said to be their kins. Her family makes her
believe that only Tess can help them and make her go and find their kins.So Tess goes and
finds the D' Urbervilles.
"Tess seems not really to be her parents's child. Despite a
perfunctory attempt to establish traits which she shares especially with her mother, Hardy
does not convince us that the sensitive, introspective, flower-like maiden owes very much to
her biological connection with Joan and Jack Durbeyfield". Tess is very different from her
parents. The mother Joan looks after the children.They have lived monotonous life. Hunting
her husband at the inn is the only enjoyment for her. Her mother's intelligence is that of a
happy child. She is not like a mother. Sometimes Tess feels that she is the mother of the
house. The mother's only aim is to find Tess a rich husband.
Alec D'Urberville is very important in Tess' fall. He is the sophisticated son of
Mrs. Stoke-d'Urberville, Alec is rapacious and possessive, believing that his status in society
and his financial situation gives him power to possess and control Tess after he gives her a
job caring for his mother's chickens. After seducing Tess, Alec reforms his hedonistic ways
to become a fundamentalist preacher, but soon deviates from his newfound spirituality once
he sees Tess again. Tess is so innocent and unexperienced that she cannot understand Alec's
sexual feelings to her. The destiny makes her meet with Alec again after Angel goes away.
Angel Clare is the son of a parson and the youngest of three brothers, Angel did not
enter college as his brothers, despite his superior intellect, but rather diverged from the career
path his father intended for him, the ministry, to study agriculture so that he might become a
farmer.His family is conservative that is why he leaves Tess after learning her past. Angel
could be a different man but he is the son of a parson and he cannot accept a wife like Tess.
Tess meets Angel while working with Dairyman Crick but this is not their first meeting.The
meeting of these two characters seems to be the work of destiny, for they had a chance
meeting in the opening chapters of the novel. Angel is an equal symbol of purity and
goodness, as shown by his name and his demeanor.In the Mayday dance they see each other
for the first time. Angel does not dance with Tess Durbeyfield.
Forshadowing of Destiny as revealed through Nature, place and time.
The shadow of Stonehenge presented paganism, fate and redemption in Thomas
Hardy’s ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles.Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles is a powerful
story of ineluctable destiny, in which human actors are seemingly powerless in the hands of
the forces of heredity and historical fate. Woven into the threads of the narrative is a dark
thread of paganism, which reaches its climax in the dramatic scene of Tess’s flight to
Stonehenge and her arrest at daybreak as she lies upon the altar stone of the monument. This
pagan presence in the novel is not merely a superficial element but is deeply interwoven with
the story’s themes of destiny, fate, and the struggles of the forces of nature against the
constraining influences of society. Stonehenge plays a crucial role in drawing these threads
together and dramatizing them at the climactic, and in many ways most tragic, point of the
story. Tess herself is almost an emblematic figure representing the vast forces that contend
for mastery in the human soul: love, fear, heredity, Destiny. The ideas about of Stonehenge
represent both the unyielding nature of the fate that, for Hardy, determines human destinies,
but also the redemption through sacrifice that offers the potential for meaning in a universe.
It shows that some important places like Stonhenge also, act as agents of destiny that
controlled human actions,motives and overpowered human life.Hardy tries to present
Stonhenge as a factor that governs Tess’s life and brings about the tragedy.
Hardy was fascinated by archaeology and the societies and cultures of past ages, and
particularly with their religious and mystical aspects. Stonehenge, situated in the heart of
Wessex, constituted an extremely potent source of symbolism for Hardy, as well as providing
a setting of unique drama for the climactic scene of ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’. The
monument can thus be said to have constituted a place of memory, a location where the
shared memory of a community could be created and recreated and upon which cultural ideas
could be projected; and Hardy uses it as a symbol of great power around which he can weave
the life, character, and fate of his heroine, and express her place in the wider universal order
of things.
Fundamentally, Stonehenge for Hardy stands for ‘the natural’, and – as Hardy himself
made clear – Tess Durbeyfield, described in the subtitle of Tess as ‘a pure woman’, is pure in
the sense of being natural, in her femininity, her beauty, and her motivations. It is therefore
fitting that it is at Stonehenge that the climax of the story, the arrest of Tess, takes place.
Repeatedly, Hardy emphasizes the oneness of Tess with nature, and relates that oneness
directly to her gender. At times he seems almost to absorb Tess into the natural world,
breaking down the barriers between the woman and the realm of animals, plants, and the
earth. When she goes into the fields to work at the harvest after having Alec’s child, she is
described in a way that makes the link between womanhood, fertility, the earth and the cycles
of nature.
Hardy writes, ‘A ‘field-man’ is a personality; a field-woman is a portion of the field;
she had somehow lost her own margin, imbibed the essence of her surrounding, and
assimilated herself with it’. After falling prey to Alec’s desires, Tess feels guilt and shame,
and sees herself as a corrupt presence in an otherwise harmonious world, but Hardy in his
narrative voice claims that: she was making a distinction where there was no difference.
Feeling herself in antagonism she was quite in accord. She had been made to break an
accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such
an anomaly. This tendency to position women characters, and particularly young, fertile,
sexually alive women characters, as ‘forces of nature’ reflects a movement in nineteenthcentury literature in which, young female characters who know too much are often placed
literally in, and associated symbolically with, nature … To possess knowledge of nature,
whether of her own desires, her physical body, the bodies of males, or of the creatures of the
natural realm, indicated that a woman had ventured out into forbidden territory where the
sexual and animal lurked.
The closeness of Tess to nature is thus not only a signifier of her potency as a
physical, instinctual being but also of the dangers of her state, for herself and others. The
implication is that she bears some responsibility for what happens to her; although how far
her fate is the product of her own decision.He shows that human beings are fundamentally at
the mercy of the forces of the natural world, supernatural agencies, and destiny itself, and it is
particularly noticeable that the female characters in Tess. Hardy’s novels have moods and
motivations of its own, to be able to express joy and despair, to express the shadow of fate
and destiny, and mark and echo the events of birth, death, love and separation. Tess, rich in
landscape and natural description presents all this.
Another, highly significant, example of this foreshadowing of fate is the stone pillar at
the spot called ‘Cross-in-Hand’, a ‘strange rude monolith, from a stratum unknown in any
local quarry, on which was roughly carved a human hand’. Convinced by Alec D’Urberville,
now a preacher, that it was once a Holy Cross, Tess is pressured by him to swear upon it that
she will never ‘tempt’ him, by her ‘charms or ways’. When Tess asks a shepherd the meaning
of the edifice on which she has sworn her oath, he tells her that it has a far darker
significance: ‘What is the meaning of that old stone I have passed?’ she asked of him. ‘Was it
ever
a
Holy
Cross?’
‘Cross – no; ’twer not a cross! ’Tis a thing of ill-omen, Miss. It was put up in old times by the
relations of a malefactor who was tortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards
hung. The bones lie underneath. They say he sold his soul to the devil, and that he walks at
times.’ She left the solitary man behind her. This incident prefigures Tess’s own fate, of death
by hanging; the public torture of the man echoes her own public shame; and the stone of the
monument foreshadows the stones of Stonehenge, among which her journeying and her
tragedy will come to an end. This pillar of stone, like the great slabs of Stonehenge, is made
from a foreign type of stone from beyond the local area (the great stones of Stonehenge
originate in South Wales, 200 miles from their final resting-place in Wiltshire), emphasizing
its significance as a messenger from beyond the boundaries of Tess’s ordinary life.
The final scene of the novel takes place in Wintoncester, where Tess is hanged in the
prison after her trial for murder. The hanging is not described directly, but through the eyes
and actions of Angel Clare and ’Liza-Lu, Tess’s younger sister to whom Tess had asked
Angel to marry and look after. The two make their way to a vantage point so that they can see
the tower of the prison; they climb the hill ‘impelled by an irresistible force’ and take their
stand, significantly, beside another stone monument: a milestone. When the black flag is
raised at the prison, signifying that the execution has taken place, the two react with the a
gesture that could be understood within the standards of Christian worship, but which also
has pagan overtones of bowing down to connect themselves with the earth itself: ‘The two
speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long
time, absolutely motionless’. The story thus ends as it began, with a blending of the ancient
and modern through a form of religious observance.
This closing detail emblematic of the weaving of the themes of nature, fate and the
forces of primitive feeling and instinct that characterizes the whole of Tess of the
D’Urbervilles and emphasizes the vital symbolic role played by Stonehenge in this novel. All
Tess’s wanderings come to an end at Stoneheng, as if it has acted as an unseen magnet
throughout all the events of her short life.
Implacable Universe and Fatal Destiny in Hardy’s ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles – A pure
woman’.
Hardy in this novel can be seen as a world master in handling the theme of man’s
confrontation with fate. He depicted the view- Man versus the God, because he believes the
ancient, mythological outlook survives in modern times, maintaining some of the aspects of
determinism, emphasizing the same of early guilt or sin and their consequence, resuming the
opposition or conflict Man-Divinity. Hardy’s village is not at all idyllic.It is rather the cradle
of burning passions, of complex psychologies, of fatal conflicts. . The characters in
Hardy’s novel of seduction, abandonment and murder appear to be under the control of
a force greater than they that is destiny. The plot of Tess of the d’Urbervilles turns on a
succession of accidents and coincidences. Again and again, Tess’s tragic fate depends on
some disastrous mischance, a real “drama of pain”. One or two of these may seem possible,
after all is full of mischance, but on top of each other they produce a final effect of gross
improbability.
Hardy hovered between the view of man as a mere plaything of an impersonal
and malign Fate and man as a being possessing freewill, in whom character is fate. It is
presented through Tess’s Character The main character of Hardy’s novel, Tess Durbeyfield,
comes to us as a real victim of fate. It is she who makes such a profound impression in the
novel, and because of whom Tess of the d’Urbervilles is Hardy’s most popular work. Tess, “a
pure woman”, having once made a mistake, is helpless and cannot restore herself before
conventions of society. Her life is one huge suffering and struggling, but she suffers unjustly.
Tess endures her life mischances stoically and does not even attempt to fight, but in this her
tragedy lies. The belief that the order of things is already decided and that people's lives
are determined by this "greater power" is called fate. Many people, called fatalists,
believe in this and that they have no power in determining their futures.
5. Jude the Obscure – (1895)
This novel was first published under the title “The Simpleton’s” in 1895.Jude comes
from an obscure home and supposes himself as part of such society. Education was denied to
him because remained mute and inglorious. He symbolizes specific class of people whose
potentialities remained unrecognized and unfulfilled. Hardy himself in the preface called it as
‘a tragedy of unfulfilled aims.’ This novel was heavily criticised for it’s attack on the
institution of marriage through presentation of erotolepsy. Details of life of Jude are
presented through unhappy marriages, thwarted academic ambition, unhealthy, disastrous life
of a stone mason, child suicide, infanticide and miscarriage.
There are six sections having following part titles. Each part title can be identified by
following remarks. In all total there are 53 chapters.
Part First — At Marygreen
Chapters 11.
Part Second — At Christminster
Chapters 7.
Part Third — At Melchester
Chapters 10.
Part Fourth — At Shaston
Chapters 6.
Part Fifth — At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere
Chapters 8.
Part Sixth — At Christminster Again
Chapters 11.
SUMMARY
Jude Fawley is orphaned and is unwanted by his great-aunt Drusilla in Marygreen,
who takes him in. He is inspired by Mr. Richard Phillotson to become a classics scholar and
studies Greek and Latin on his own intensively. He tries to get books from the quack
physician Vilbert. He learns to be a stone-mason by 19. One day, he passes Arabella Donn,
daughter of a pig-breeder, and she throws a pig pizzle at him. Arabella feigns a pregnancy
and induces Jude to marry her. They take a cottage and raise a pig. She has formerly been a
barmaid. She confesses she made a mistake about the pregnancy. She takes over the
slaughtering of the pig. She tires of him and runs away with her parents to Australia.
Heauctions his furnishings and heads for Charistminster.
There, he looks up his attractive cousin Sue (Susanna Florence Mary) Bridehead. He
is enamored of the learned tradition at Christminster and of Sue. She works in religious
artifacts. He is disappointed to learn that Phillotson has not lived up to his ambitions to
become a scholar and is now a teacher. He takes on Sue at Jude's suggestion as an apprentice
teacher; he is 20 years older than him. Jude's efforts to gain admission to Bristoll college end
in nothing. He resolves to study for the clergy...
In Melchester, Jude lives and works and Sue attends Melchester Normal School. Sue
comes to him and informs Jude she has made plans to marry Phillotson in two years. Her
spending the night with him causes a scandal at the school, and eventually she learns they
will not allow her to return. She tells him of a former beloved, who has died (she is still
chaste). She is modern, unconventional, has cut up the Bible to suit herself. She wrestles with
whether she will allow Jude to love her. She resolves to marry Phillotson, whom she does not
love. Jude assures Phillotson that they have not consummated relations. Jude confesses to Sue
about his previous marriage. Sue will not marry him, and recalls the prophecy made that their
family members should not marry, since it would end badly. Jude soon learns they plan to
marry promptly to relieve her awkward situation, and she asks him to give her away.
His old aunt is ill, and he travels to Marygreen to see her. He encounters Arabella in a
bar, and she informs him she has left her 2nd husband in Australia and has worked there since
her return from Sydney. Because of Arabella, Jude misses seeing Sue. He and Arabella stay
in a hotel in Aldbrickham and try to decide what to do next. He finally runs into Sue, who
appears distressed with her married life, though married only a month. She frets that she
should not have married him. Arabella informs him subsequently that her Australian husband
wants to make up with her and join up to establish a tavern in Lambeth.
Jude absorbs himself in the study for the clergy. Sue vacillates whether he should see
her. He goes to see her in Shaston, where she and her husband now live and teach. She seems
to be a flirt. Aunt Drusilla dies. He goes and Sue also arrives. She asks him again about her
unhappiness in her marriage. She is repelled by her husband. She kisses him on the head and
later they have a full embrace and kiss before she departs. He no longer can maintain his
pretense of studying for the clergy and buries his books. Sue tells her husband of holding
Jude's hand but neglects to mention the passionate kiss. She resolves to ask her husband to
allow her to leave him and live away. She feels it is adultery for her to live with him yet not
love him. She wants to live with Jude. He is bitter but allows her to follow this
unconventional course. First they live apart in their house. Phillotson consults with his friend
Mr. Gillingham about his wife and comments about the profound affinity she and Jude have.
She dreads P. so that she almost jumped out the window when he entered her room. He
resolves to let her go, and asks that they not communicate so he will not know what she is
doing.
She meets up with Jude, who does not want to live with her in Melchester, and agrees
to obtain lodgings in Aldbrickham, though in separate quarters separated by a landing.
Arabella has asked him for a formal divorce. At the hotel, the maid informs Sue she has seen
Jude previously with Arabella there. Sue chastises Jude for seeing his wife in this manner,
even though Sue at that time only wanted to be his friend, not his lover. He informs her A.
has remarried though never divorced.
Sue's behavior gets Phillotson in trouble and he is discharged from his teaching post.
He becomes ill and his friend suggests contacting Sue to let her know. Sue arrives. He wants
to know if she wants to make up, but she informs him that Jude had been married and is
divorcing. She neglects to tell him she has not consummated relations yet with Jude. He
resolves to divorce her to liberate her.
Some months later, a legal decree nisi grants her divorce from Phillotson and Jude
also wins his freedom from A. Sue worries that they are living under false pretenses (still
unconsummated). Jude wants a straightforward engagement but Sue dreads the iron contract
of marriage and the deterioration she assumes will follow a legal marriage. Jude feels natural
passion to marry.Arabella comes to Jude to tell him she has a problem, but does not say what.
Sue is goaded by his seeing A. and agrees at last to marry him. Arabella's husband Cartlett
has
agreed
to
remarry
her
here
in
England.
The next day they go to the parish-clerk to arrange the banns for their engagement,
but Sue gets cold feet and they return without any action. Jude receives a letter from Arabella
telling of her son by him born in Australia, asking him to take him now that her parents have
sent him--Cartlett will not wish to care for him and she does not tell him that the son has
come to England (he thinks it is still in Australia). They decide to adopt the boy and again
resolve to marry. He is called Little Father Time and has never been christened. They go to
sign forms for their upcoming marriage at a Registrar's, wishing to avoid a church wedding.
Widow Edlin, former friend to Jude's aunt, comes to visit, and she talks again of the problems
previous Fawleys had with marriage. Father Time suggests Sue not marry Jude. The next day,
when they go to marry, Sue again gets anxiety and cold feet and asks to postpone the
ceremony. She does not want to kill their dreams. They agree to postpone it, but not to tell the
boy they have done so.
Arabella is with her husband at an agricultural show and spots Jude and Sue. She buys
a love-philtre from Vilbert. Father Time declines flowers, morosely reflecting that they will
wither. The community begins to talk about Sue and Jude. The couple had gone off to
London and returned claiming to be married, and Sue now calls herself Mrs. Fawley. Their
alleged marriage was not believed and Jude found his business falling off. He is lettering the
Ten Commandments in a church, but the contractor embarassedly asks him and Sue to cease
working on it. They auction off their belongings and leave Aldbrickham, taking on an almost
nomadic life.
At a spring fair in Kennetbridge, 3 years after Arabella saw them at the agricultural
show, Arabella buys "Christminster cakes" from the poor Sue and Juey (Father Time). A. has
been widowed for 6 weeks, claiming to be none too well off. They now have two other
children and another coming soon. Jude has been ill. A. has found religion and is living at
Alfredston.
Arabella later tells her friend Anny that she has seen Jude's wife and wishes she had
him back. She encounters Phillotson, she informs him that Sue was innocent of adultery when
Philloston obtained his divorce [?]...
Jude and Sue resolve to return to Christminster. Jude reflects on the futile effort he
made to become an academic. Sue spots Richard. They encounter trouble getting a room, as a
result of the children, and one landlady questions their married status. Juey laments that he
should not have been born. They finally find a room but Jude must sleep elsewhere. Juey is
despondent, and suggests it would be better to be out of the world, to which Sue almost
agrees. He blames their predicament on the children and wishes he had not been born. He is
distraught to learn there will be another baby and Sue innocently agrees it appears she almost
did this on purpose. Sue goes out to meet her husband for a brief meal. On returning, they
find the three children hung and dead at the hands of Father Time: "Done because we are too
menny". She is distraught at the role she played in his thought processes, but Jude is fatalistic.
Sue goes and stands in the grave, beside her with grief. Her unborn child is born prematurely
and dies.
Jude works and obtains lodgings in Beersheba. Jude feels it is time for them to make
the marriage legal, but Sue in her feelings of guilt has resolved that she is still Richard's wife.
She thinks they should mortify their flesh. Arabella returns, discusses her boy, and Sue
informs her she is not his wife. A. is living with her father, who has returned from Australia.
Sue is regularly going to a church. She has made up her mind she can no longer love Jude and
must return to Richard. She asks that they live separately, wondering "who were we, to think
we could act as pioneers?" Jude laments that she has never loved him as he has her. He begs
her to stay with him, but she leaves him.
Arabella meets with Phillotson, now living in Marygreen, and informs him that Sue
has never married Jude and no longer lives with him. He writes Sue and they arrange to
remarry. She tells Jude he should take back Arabella. Sue believes her children were
sacrificed as a result of her sins. Mrs. Edlin chastises her view of God as so punishing and
observes she should not marry Phillotson, whom she knows Sue does not love. She tells
Phillotson of her objections, but he thinks it is for their good socially to proceed.
Arabella comes to Jude and tells him of Sue's marriage. She conspires with her father
to take Jude in, get him drunk, and make him feel he has compromised her and promised to
marry her. He agrees reluctantly again out of honor. But he remains an invalid. He also tells
her he loves Sue, and as he gets sicker, he asks that she consent to allow Sue to come (but she
fails to send his letter to her). He travels in the rain to Marygreen and meets up with Sue. She
tells him the marriage is again only in name only. He wants to again run away with her, but
she refuses. They exchange angry words and also a kiss.
Arabella is angry with him on his return. Sue wonders if Richard is dead, wishing she
could go to Jude. She confesses to him she met with Jude and kissed him. She begs Richard
to let her in to consummate their marriage, out of a sense of guilty duty.
Arabella regrets marrying her sick husband and says he can return to Sue if he wishes,
but he does not wish to see her again and has a fit of coughing. Dr. Vilbert arrives to see
Jude, and Arabella seems to be flirting with him to prepare for her future. In the summer,
Jude dies at 30. Vilbert is coming on to Arabella. Mrs. Edlin wonders to Arabella if Sue will
come, but A. is sure she will not, says she is quite worn now, and will never have peace until
she dies.
Revelation of Man and Destiny in the novel
Hardy's last and by most accounts bleakest novel, Jude the Obscure details the failed
life and ignoble death of Jude Fawley, a bright and ambitious, but ultimately inconsequential,
man. The central theme of the work is the inability of individuals to surmount the social and
psychological forces that determine their lives which likewise dramatize his belief that
individuals are powerless to affect their own lives in an attempt to achieve happiness. In
‘Jude the Obscure’ Hardy further explores this theme in relation to the constricting forces he
observed around him in Victorian society: class, religion, and sexuality. Thus, the novel
recounts Jude's unrealized dream to enter the university at Christminster, and his
powerlessness to remain happily with the woman he loves, Sue Bridehead, outside of the
socially accepted institution of marriage.
Hardy called his final novel "a tragedy of unfulfilled aims," and critics have since
interpreted Jude the Obscure as his most thoroughly pessimistic statement on the inability of
human beings to escape the deterministic forces of nature, society, and internal compulsion.
For Jude such an escape lay in his dream of attaining a degree from the university at
Christminster, yet the reality of Christminster proves wholly unlike Jude's fantasy. Because
Jude is unable to enter the university, it becomes a source of bitterness and a symbol of
defeat. Likewise, Jude's relationship with Sue Bridehead ultimately yields only futility and
leads to another of the crucial conflicts critics perceive in the novel, that between the flesh
and the spirit. Unable to give herself physically to Jude, Sue is trapped both by Victorian
conventions of marriage and by her deeply held fear of sexuality and desire. Ironically, critics
observe, Jude's love for Sue forces him to forsake the spiritual path he had set out for himself
at Melchester, as he thinks himself unfit for the Church because of his physical longings for
her longings that she avoids for most of the novel. The result is to reinforce Hardy's overall
theme of human inconsequentiality in the face of an insurmountable fate.
The first complete appearance of ‘Jude the Obscure’ in 1895 provoked a considerable
uproar among Hardy's contemporaries. Most negative assessments objected to its frank
portrayal of a man and woman living together out of wedlock, taking this to be a critique of
the institution of marriage and the religious foundations upon which it is based. Hardy
objected, contending that his novel was moral, but soon capitulated. He wrote in his
postscript to the 1912 edition of Jude the Obscure that these reactions had the effect of
"completely curing me of further interest in novel-writing," causing him to devote his literary
attentions from that point forward solely to poetic and dramatic works. Still, many during
Hardy's lifetime disagreed with this narrow interpretation and hailed the novel as a masterful
work of art. Later criticism has generally shared this conclusion. With certain reservations,
such as Hardy's occasional lapses into melodrama, critics have acknowledged Jude the
Obscure as one of the masterpieces of late Victorian literature and a story that offers a
glimpse of the ensuing modern era, an age forced to reckon with the crumbling certainties of
the past.
The novel relates in bleak detail the life of Jude. Unhappy marriages, academic
ambition thwarted a disastrously unhealthy life as a stone mason, child suicide, infanticide
and miscarriage. I hadn’t read the book before but I was expecting all of those things, and I
had a vague mental image of the Job of biblical fame. As a boy Jude rails against a natural
order of things which offends his sense of morality. The grown Jude sets his sights on man-
made injustices, a lesser ambition, but still beyond his power to redress. The first social
injustice to thwart Jude is class stratification. Jude as a youngster is motivated and intelligent,
but despite perseverance, application and ability he can not cross the class divide and is
denied entrance to university. In a downward spiral emphasised by Jude’s frenetic
circumambulations through the counties of Wessex his ambitions are reduced in scope with
each set-back.The advent of women into Jude’s life has no happier outcome, and this is
Hardy’s second theme. Hardy paints marriage as an unhappy and incompatible conjunction of
sacrament, contract, social tool and access to legitimate sex.
It is not easy to describe Hardy’s brilliance in working out his themes. Lively set
pieces earn their place twice over: the teacher’s problematic disposal of his cumbersome
piano, for which his initial enthusiasm has waned; Jude’s beating at the hands of an irate
farmer, a helpless victim to an irresistible centrifugal force as the blows fall; the flinging of
‘the characteristic part of a pig’ by Jude’s future wife. Each is competently worked, and each
is a commentary on Hardy’s themes. Hardy’s writing is consistently taut in this way and
nothing goes to waste. And the attention to detail is remarkable. The stone that Jude chips
away at as stone mason is the same stone that forms the bastions of the establishments of
academic excellence; dividing Jude from the formal education he craves. Jude is unlike other
Hardy novels I have read in several ways. Downplaying the pastoral, Jude frequents the
towns and cities of Wessex, eschewing nature for the constructs of man (emphasising again
that Jude is going not against nature but human contrivance.) His preferred method of travel
is the train, cruelly delineating Jude’s marked path in life.
It is amusing that coincidence plays no part in this novel. I have always been quick to
accuse Hardy of incorporating the convenient coincidence, and perhaps, historically, I have
not been alone in this. There is a rationalisation of each instance of suspect happenstance,
which initially struck me as defensive. But, of course, it also fits with a narrative which is
tightly driven by character and circumstance.
In the character of Christian, Jude falls by the wayside, led astray by women. In a
paradox that would bear further consideration, it is never Jude’s intention to follow the
straight and narrow, the path mapped out for him.Jude finally curses his life in the words of
Job, with whom he has shared similar afflictions. Mapping Jude onto Job continues to
exercise my imagination. I can speculate that Jude’s God is rationality and his temptation is
social convention… but it’s going to need some work. Every aspect of Jude interests reader
immensely, but the burning theme is marriage and sex. In addition to Jude and his occasional,
opportunistic wife, Arabella, there is the ethereal and sexually unawakened Sue, and the
unfortunate school master, Phillotson. Each of these characters has something individual to
say about the relations between men and women, but Phillotson personifies the view of
irreversible marriage which is espoused throughout the novel. Expectations, disappointments,
frustrations, cruelty - all play crucial role in the novel. Phillotson begins by claiming
sympathy and ends in evoking distaste. Hardy lays on the whole ‘failing relationship’
experience. From a modern point of view a novel that encourages divorce and dissolution is
not really on message, but in context it makes perfect sense. The modern reader might even
infer, from this tale of woe, that it is the existence of the escape clause that can render the
loop-hole unnecessary.
Delusions of difficulty and depression have left Jude ostracised on my bookshelf for
the better part of twenty years. Jude is not difficult to read. Light on scenic description and
heavy on action, the novel is about being set on a track, and this onward pull is apparent in
the novel both in terms of metaphorical passage, and Jude’s unceasing travels. Depressing?
That is a more difficult question. Despite several direct references to fate this is not a novel
about the cruel whimsicality of a fate written in the stars. This is a novel melancholically
following a destiny defined by circumstance and disposition.
As such there is inevitability and specificity which visit each new disaster on Jude in a
spirit of resignation (with the exception of one harrowing scene which I am unwilling to
rationalise in any way whatsoever.) The novel is in the tragic mould, but it is not depressing.
This, Hardy’s last novel, reportedly outraged Victorian society, with the result that Hardy
wrote no more novels. I’m not terribly surprised that the Victorians were upset. Hardy gives
them a standard ending in which the woman who plays the game, who marries, observes the
proprieties (at least in appearance), continually falls on her feet. Those who question and
refuse to conform end unhappily. On the surface this is correct and moral, but the morality
actually resides in those who are conventionally beyond the pale, casting an unflattering light
on the integrity of Victorian values. The tribulations of Jude, although distressing, are not as
devastating as the bitterness expressed in this way by Hardy.
Hardy's ‘Jude the Obscure’ (1895) aroused controversy. The story presented the
conflict between carnal and spiritual life. It is perfectly symmetrical. Earlier insignificant
incidents became significant later on. Through Gabriel Oak’s figure, Hardy presented that
characters that succeed are generally happy. Harshness of nature can be seen in this novel.
Here, nature is presented as hard, unrelenting force. For development of plot, descriptions of
nature have become integral parts. This novel shows Hardy’s accurate perception of nature.
Presentation of rural England at it’s best can be seen here. Glimpses of both Victorian and
modern society can be seen here. This novel exposes Hardy’s best balanced philosophy.
Through female figures e.g. Bathsheba, Hardy presented conflict between the desire for
marriage and that for individuality and independence. In this novel fate reveals its working
mainly through Fathertime. Birth of such an abnormal, morbid child shows working of
supernatural power inimical to human happiness. Here, destiny works to end the very human
desire to live. Hardy believed in hostile destiny. To him, destiny keeps man away from their
expected or desired happiness. This hostility of destiny can be seen in the form of unforeseen
happenings i.e. in the form of chances, accidents and coincidences.
Hardy’s method of characterization is somewhat unusual for Victorian novelists.
Rather than telling us explicitly what a character is like, Hardy implies this information
through seemingly insignificant observations. Women are portrayed somewhat negatively.
Hardy’s symbols are drawn from the natural world. .
(Analysis at Melchester: Chapters 6-10 of ‘Jude the Obscure’ foreshows Jude’s Fate.)
In this section, Jude attempts to reconcile himself to Sue’s marriage to Mr. Phillotson.
However, indecision - a central motif in these chapters - prevents him from doing so. Jude is
unable to commit to a career; although he likes the idea of becoming a licentiate, he cannot
bring himself to give up his dream of becoming an academic. His inability to achieve a
fulfilling career only exacerbates his obsession with Sue since she is his only intellectual
outlet.Sue suffers from some problems with indecision herself. She poignantly hesitates when
it’s time to go away with Mr. Phillotson after her marriage, and her fickleness about whether
to cut off contact with Jude torments him. The characters’ indecision serves several functions.
As a shared personality trait, it furthers the sense that Sue and Jude are a good match for one
another. However, the stagnancy that their relationship experiences in this section also hints
that indecision could poison any potential romance.
Although the novel’s two protagonists are indecisive, Mr. Phillotson comes into his
own as a foil for Jude and Sue in these chapters. Not only is Mr. Phillotson old, he also has
modest expectations in life - unlike Jude, he has given up higher education and dedicated
himself fully to a career as a schoolmaster. Most importantly, Phillotson actively pursues the
things he wants; while Jude agonizes and analyzes each letter from Sue for days, Phillotson
goes to visit her when he feels she hasn’t been writing enough. Although this section focuses
most closely on Jude’s romantic woes, Hardy periodically returns to the subplot about Jude’s
academic aspirations. This subplot can illuminate Jude’s interlude at Kennetbridge, which
might initially seem unrelated to the events that happen before and after. By introducing the
composer, Hardy shows that Jude’s exclusion from the academy was inevitable. Like Jude,
the composer tried to pursue a path in the humanities, and despite being raised in
Christminster and educated in music, he is unable to live off his earnings. The composer’s
personality also foreshadows Jude’s fate. Because he is so poor, the composer fixates on
making money by selling wine, going so far as to solicit Jude, who has come by for a friendly
talk. Jude will also be altered by financial woes before the end of the novel. Indeed, the
pressure to earn money destroys his relationship with Sue and causes him to comment to his
children that they are ‘too many’, leading to the murder-suicide byLittle Father Time.
(Analysis at Shaston: Chapters 1-6 present how predestined qualities of a character can
make them to struggle i.e. Destiny in Jude.)
Although relatively little of the story takes place at Shaston, Hardy uses a fair amount
of space to describe the city’s physical layout. This further develops the richly detailed
geography of Wessex that Hardy creates in this and his other novels. It also hints at the
predestined quality of the Phillotsons’ separation - their marriage is literally founded on
rocky, difficult, terrain. The numerous images of characters struggling to walk uphill evokes
the futility of forcing an unwanted romantic relationship.
(Analysis at Aldbrickham and Elsewhere: Chapters 1-4show how the imbalance of
responsibility in the family will contribute to its downfall.)
The fact that both Jude and Arabella suffered equally in their marriage reinforces
Hardy’s point that marriage is a morally bankrupt institution that harms both men and
women. This novel also introduces Little Father Time, who will become the crux of Jude the
Obscure’s central tragedy. Children who behave like adults were a somewhat common trope
in Victorian literature - Eliot’s Adam Bede and Brontë’s Jane Eyre both feature similar
characters. In this novel, Hardy juxtaposes Little Father Time’s premature grimness and
surety with Sue and Jude’s inability to make decisions. The fact that Time must walk to the
house on Spring Street by himself suggests that despite Jude and Sue’s good intentions, the
imbalance of responsibility in this family will contribute to its downfall.
Hardy’s presentation of rural life:
Country life is a very important theme in this novel, and in this section, Hardy
emphasizes the relationship between rustic life and superstition. Arabella buys a love potion
from Physician Vilbert, and Anny suggests that she put her hands on a lock of Cartlett’s hair
to help eliminate her feelings for Jude. However, even characters that are ostensibly
intelligent submit to the logic of superstition. For example, Jude and Sue are unsettled when
they hear Widow Edlin’s story about the Gibbet, even though they don’t know whether they
are actually related to the father in the story. The novel’s final chapters also continue the
book’s motif of superstition. Widow Edlin’s folk tale about devils disguising themselves as
husbands foreshadows the way Sue’s marriage to Phillotson will seem to drain the life from
her. Physician Vilbert’s fake medicines also play an important role here; the fact that
Arabella consults Physician Vilbert instead of a real doctor speaks both to her rustic naïveté
and to her lack of consideration for Jude.
References:
1.
Mc Dowall, Arthur, (1931),‘Thomas Hardy; A critical study’, London, Faber and
Faber.
2.
Weber C.J. (1940), ‘Hardy of Wessex; His life and literary career’. New York,
Columbia Univ. Press.
3.
Gould Thomas, (1970) ‘Translation of Oedipus Rex of Sophocles’, NewYork,
Paperback.
4.
Bentley Richard (1775) ‘Designs by R.Bentley for six poems by Thomas Gray’,
London, R.Dodsley.
5.
Bridgman Joan, (winter 2007), ‘Another look at Thomas Hardy’, Contemporary
review, vol.289.issue1687, 512.
6.
Prinselaar Laura E.,(2004), Thomas Hardy's Philosophy of Chance and Change in
‘The Return of the Native’, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, Kakehead Univ.thesis
pg.125.
7.
Margaret Drabble Discusses Fate, ‘Gloomy' Thomas Hardy. Interview by Hephzibah
Anderson - August 14, 2007 01:29 EDT.
8.
Harvey, Geoffrey (2003), ‘The complete critical guide to Thomas Hardy’, Routledge,
New York.
9.
Gatrell Simon (1993) ‘Thomas Hardy and proper study of mankind’, Macmillian,
London.