Thomas Hardy 4a1c6h

Tess of the D'Urbervilles: Hardy as a Pessimist The fact that Hardy resented being called a pessimist is no reason why he should not be thus described. Hardy was the painter of darker side of life as it was no wonder if people charged him of “pessimist”. The opinion is both right and wrong in this context. Infact, there are some factors that compels us to believe him a pessimist. He was hypersensitive; his own life was tragic and gloomy. For a speculative soul, this world is a thorny field. The gloomy effect of his age plays an important role in his writings. Doubts, despair, disbelief, frustration, industrial revolution, disintegration of old social and economic structure, Darwin’s theory of evolution were the chief characteristics of that age. All these factors probe deep into his writings and heighten its somber, melancholic and tragic vision. His pessimism is also the outcome of the impressions that he receives from villager’s life. They were plenty of tragedies in the life of the poverty stricken Wessex folk. Hardy’s philosophy of the human condition is determined by his natural temper and disposition. He says: “A man’s philosophy of life is an instinctive, temperamental matter.” Hardy, practically, excludes from his writings the sense of splendor and beauty of human life completely. Tess’ life is totally devoid of even a single moment of happiness. He is of the opinion: “Happiness is but an occasional episode in a general drama of pain.” Hardy’s conception of life is essentially tragic. He is one of those who believe that life is boom. His novels concentrate on human sufferings and show that there is no escape for human beings. Tess is worst fated to the sufferings of life. She tries her best to come out of her fated circle of misfortunes but remains fail. Throughout the novel she keeps on revolving around the predetermined circles of her cruel fate. Being the eldest child she has to go to D’Urbervilles for earning. Her seduction plays a vital role in her destruction. She is rejected by society on becoming pregnant. She goes to earn for her family to Talbothays. Her love affair, her marriage and then sudden rejection by Angle Clare, all this make her a victim of conventional social attitude. Her sufferings in winter season of Talbothays after the departure of Angel Clare and in the courtship with Alec are untold. Her murder of Alec in order to re Angel and her hanging soon afterwards also show a long series of sufferings but she faces them boldly. All this shows that Hardy’s attitude towards life is highly melancholic and depressive. He loves people but he hates life intensely. He perceives it in the hands of cruel, blind and oppressive ‘Unknown Will’. As flies to wanton boys, Are we to the gods,

They kill us for their sport. Hardy’s universe is neither ruled by God, the Father, not informal by divine spirit. Men are part of great network of cause and effect which make them, almost always, a prey to the chance over which they have no control. The creator of this hostile universe is called the “Immanent Will”, the spinner of Years, Fate, Doom and sometimes God. Being a fatalist, chance and coincidence play a key role in his novels. In real life chance may lead to success or sometimes to failure but in Hardy’s case chance always proves mishap. We can see Tess in the light of author’s fatalistic outlook on life. The death of his father, death of “Prince”, role of nature, her birth in a shiftless family, Tess’ attempts to confess to Angel, slipping of letter under the carpet, overheard conversation, too late arrival of Angel, meeting again with Alec, are the examples of fateful incidents. It sees that as they are preplanned. Time, also, is used as a motif of fate. The time of joy with Angel is transitory and time of miseries is very prolonged. Love, a source of happiness is also badly fated in Tess’ case. Her love with Angle roves futile. Tess becomes an agent of her own destiny / fate. She is a manifestation of irony of fate. “She is alone in desert island, would she have been wretched at what had happened to her?” Fate is also revealed by means of many omens and signs. Hardy’s tragic vision has a tinge of Greek tragedy in which character is helpless in the hands of fate. Shakespeare, on the other hand, holds character fully responsible for mishap. Tess and Jude are helpless in front of fate or destiny. But in some novels, Hardy makes characters responsible too, as in “The Mayor of Casterbridge” Henchard is somewhat responsible for his tragic life. But Tess is shown thoroughly a toy in hands of fate. In the end of the novel he says: “Justice was done and the President of the Immortals, by Aeschelylian Phrase, had ended his sport with Tess” This sentence represents the acme of pessimistic thinking and clinches the argument. But Hardy is not a thorough going pessimist. His pessimism is not oppressive. Bonamy Dobree observes: “Hardy’s pessimism is not oppressive, it is not the outcome of a soul which rebelled against life. Rebellion against life itself …” He is not a pessimist – a misanthrope like Hobbes. He is a pessimist like the classical writers who consider Man merely a puppet in hands of mighty fate. Simply he is gloomier than they are. His pessimism is redeemed by two other ingredients in his work – his lofty view of human nature and his capability to make us laugh at comic side of things. Hardy is not a cynic by any means and his comic gift relives the atmosphere of gloom and despondency in his novels:

“To cal Hardy a thoroughgoing pessimist is to forget his conception of human nature male and female.” Hardy himself says: “My pessimism, if pessimism it be, does not involve the assumption that the world is going to the dogs … On the contrary my practical philosophy is distinctly Melioristic.” Now it is crystal clear that Hardy is a meliorist rather than a pessimist. R. A. Scott James observes: “Hardy did not set out to give us a pessimistic philosophy … Hardy is pessimistic about the governance of the Universe, but not about human beings.”

Tess of the D'Urbervilles: Fate and Chance Chance and coincidence play a vital role in all the novels of Hardy. While character is certainly responsible to a large extent for the undoing of human lives in Hardy’s fiction, chance and coincidence often operate as the deciding factors. Hardy felt that an evil power ruled the universe, defeating every endeavour of man to better his fortune or to find happiness. He could not believe in a benevolent Providence; events were too plainly ironical, so they must have been contrived by a supernatural power. He believed that fate or destiny was sometimes indifferent, but most often hostile, to human happiness. One manifestation of the hostility of fate is to be found in the irony of circumstances that we meet with in Hardy’s novels. In other words, when human beings are not themselves responsible for the frustration of their hopes, or when their own temperaments and mutual conflict do not wreck their happiness, fate intervenes in the shape of chance or accident or coincidence to contribute to, or to complete, their ruin. 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 a profound influence on the life of Tess. The family business having become suddenly disorganized 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 disastrous. Alec’s seduction of Tess is a direct, though not immediate, result of the death of Prince. A sheer accident is responsible for this seduction which eventually 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 and conscientious 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 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. After separating from Tess, Angle goes to Wellbridge to wind up certain affairs, he kneels by the bedside and says: “Oh, Tess! If you had only told me sooner, I would have forgiven you.” A minor mischance thus has grave consequences. 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 tow 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 tow 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 hoots 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, he subsequent life would have changed of the better because, as Hardy tells us: “Her present condition was precisely one which would have enlisted the sympathies of old Mr. and Mrs. Clare.” 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 reunited 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 circumstance now occurs to aggravate the. 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 conspire 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. The excessive use of chance and coincidence by Hardy makes his stories somewhat implausible. It is true that chance and coincidence do play a certain role in every man’s life, but this role is a limited one. There are in real life happy accidents as well as sad ones. What exposes Hardy’s stories to adverse criticism is firstly that chance plays too frequent a part in human life and secondly that this part is always hostile to the characters. In short, Hardy spoils his case by overstatement and exaggeration. He seems to manipulate fate against his characters by showing chance and coincidence at work again and again. However, in “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”, the logic of cause and effect plays a greater role in the tragedy than chance and coincidence. The realism of this story is therefore not weakened by the use of this device to a large extent.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles: Nature Nature as a subject has been treated by different poets, novelists and dramatists. Everyone analyses this subject according to his own mind. Shelley got the lesson of optimism from nature. He says: “If Winter comes can Spring be far behind” Keats talks about mellowing season, flowers, new trees and beauty of nature. Wordsworth’s treatment of nature made him a prophet and he calls nature a ‘mother’or a ‘friend’. Hardy was deeply interested in nature. He has a sensitive temperament about nature. An average intelligent observer notes small things and forgets the drawback of nature. Hardy, what he talks about the nature, results from the direct impressions of nature which he receives after observing it very deeply and carefully. Hardy’s concept is more realistic than romantic. Nature is the important element in Hardy’s novels and especially in “Tess” nature serves as a living character and not for the background of the novel. Nature is not more friendly, almost al in his novels, rather cruel and crashing. Hardy confines himself only to the dark aspects of nature. It is mainly because of his temperament that he does not turn to other aspects. He got the lesson of pessimism from nature. In his opinion: “Happiness is but an occasional episode in a general drama of pain.” He seems to believe that all is not right with the world. He studies nature in its all aspects; ordinary, grand, sad and happy. Nature does not have all the time a holy plan. In this novel, we find different shades of nature as we see it a holy, guileful, relentless and even romantic sometimes. In “Tess”, Hardy calls nature a villain character. Tess would nave definitely escaped from the painful act if nature had not covered the place with darkness and coldness. Nature has nothing good to offer to Tess but only destruction and suffering. Hardy paints the bitter picture of life. He regards human beings as puppets in the hands of nature. All the misery and sorrows that we see in the world are there because of some external power called fate or nature. Tess did her best to avoid the sufferings and went for some positive work but it was the nature that left her alone with no destination. She was caught up by cruel clutches of nature that comes into the shape of Alec. Tess becomes a victim in the Alec’s lustful and wanton nature. In the seduction scene, we see the major influence of nature. Nature welcomes its friend in the appointed place that is covered with romantic atmosphere. Darkness and quietness is prevailed everywhere. Seduction is a sort of intoxication. No one is willfully seduced. As Tess fell a victim to seduction, anyone would have been seduced under such romantic circumstances. So, all the elements of nature contribute to make her seduced. Hardy discloses the rude aspects of life. He says where the guardian angels were when Tess was being raped. Nature is jut like a director and she handles her victim without knowing their will. It seems that Hardy’s concept of nature is like that: As flies to wanton boys, Are we to the gods,

They kill us for their sport. Once again Hardy rejects the idea of Wordsworth who says that birth of a child is the beautiful scheme of nature, but Hardy ironically says that what kind of beautiful scheme is that a poor family has been awarded through a lot of children, which became the cause of Tess’ sufferings. Due to a lot of family she faces so many sufferings. A critic says: “The elementary, grand and sad aspects of nature are the land which appears to him most is that which is freest from human beings.” In Tolbathays, nature seems very friendly. The Angel-Tess affair wouldn’t have been so beautiful, but for its being among nature. The atmosphere of Tolbathays is very pleasant. Angel proposes Tess in that romantic atmosphere. Sometimes nature seems to share in reality. It is her reflection of human moods, feelings and ions which are the percipient human mind observes in nature. In fact Hardy is himself not satisfied by nature. He thinks that nature is always struggling against mankind in which physical comfort is nothing as compared to the mental anguish. Nature has the malaise treatment with human beings. She takes the cares to Tess’ sufferings in its bosom and places it one by one. It was a pre-planned work. All the elements of nature like fate, chance and incidents to hand to hand on Tess’ tragedy, It looks that God is looking us just to feel pleasure. We have no guardian angels, no backing force on our difficulties. Hardy did not see anywhere ‘nature’s holy plan’on the earth. So hardy seems unique who always sees the dark side of the picture and negates the bright one. Actually Hardy born on the lap of nature and what dark effects he extracts from nature, he employs all it in his novel “Tess”which darkens the life of all characters. Nature is just like ever awaking phenomenon of man’s life.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles: The Peasent World It cannot be denied that “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” is a social document showing the final tragic stage of the disintegration of the English peasantry but to over-emphasize this aspect and to reduce the importance of the novel as a personal tragedy does not seem to be the correct approach. It is true that Tess is a peasant girl and that her struggles and misfortunes, to some extent, do represent the sufferings of the peasantry. The accident in which the family horse is killed symbolizes the struggles of the peasantry. Tess’ sense of guilt over this accident forces her to seek the help of the prosperous D'Urbervilles of Trantridge. Her sacrifice to Alec D’Urberville is symbolic of the historical process at work. Tess, as a worker, is handed over by her mother under economic stresses, to the life and the mercies of the ruling class. Tess’ seduction by Alec, makes her story a hopeless struggle, against strong odds, to maintain her self-respect. After the death of her child she becomes a milk-maid at Talbothays. Here she falls in love with Angel, marries him, and is soon discarded by him. Angel personifies social convention even though he pretends not to believe in it. At the time of his desertion of Tess, Angel symbolizes the rigid, orthodox code of morality with a double standard – one for men and another for women. Hardy was intensely aware of the changes in the countryside and the effects of economic change on society. Tess is an example of the social mobility of industrialism. But social mobility went two ways. Because of enclosures and industrialism, the traditional shape of the English farm village was changing. Workers were forced off their land and turned into proletarians, either industrial or agricultural. One of the memorable scenes in the novel is the threshing at Flintcomb-Ash farm, where Tess with other women serves that “red tyrant”. The machine is importunate, inhuman, insatiable. The old workmen sadly recall the threshing work they used to do with their hands. The engineer operating the machine is described as being “in the agricultural world, not of it”. He and his machine are like Alec who is equally importunate, inhuman, and insatiable. The machine is as repetitious and as powerful as Alec. The threshing scene symbolizes the dehumanized relationships of the new capitalist farms. The final blow to Tess’ self-respect comes with the death of her father and the consequent expulsion of the family from their cottage. Cottagers who were not directly employed on the land were looked upon with disfavour. It is the need to her family that finally forces Tess back to Alec. Certainly Tess of the D’Urbervilles depicts the disintegration of the English peasantry and is certainly a social and industrial tragedy. However, a balance should be maintained between this approach to the novel and the personal tragedy. Hardy’s main emphasis is on Tess, not as a typical peasant girl but as an individual. Hardy deals with the theme of the decline and destruction of the English peasantry by Tess; but it is not the dominant theme. The English peasantry does arouse our sympathy but we think of Tess not as an agent of the peasantry but as an individual girl, for if Tess is typical, she is also unique. In several ways Tess stands above her peasantry class. In the first place, she has a delicate

conscience which disturbs her peace of mind after her seduction. She suffers from a constant sense of guilt because of her past when she has fallen in love with Angel. Secondly, she is a hypersensitive girl. Not every peasant girl thinks that mankind lives on a “blighted” planet and suffers from the “ache of modernism”. This sensitivity makes her, after Angel’s desertion, suffer a mental torture. The difference between Tess as an individual and as a peasant becomes clear when she thinks of her mother’s reactions towards her. Her mother accepts the seduction stoically and urges her not to reveal her past to her husband. The mother is quite thick-skinned. The true representative of the peasantry is the mother, not Tess. Tess has surely sprung from the peasantry but her thoughts and her feelings lift her far above the peasantry. We think of Tess betrayed by her seducer, betrayed by her husband, betrayed by circumstances; we think of an innocent victim of the dishonesty and traditionalism respectively of two men, and an innocent victim of the hostility of fate. The theme of the disintegration of the peasantry is secondary to the tragedy of an individual woman.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles: Tess - A Pure Woman Tess was a simple, innocent, guideless and hypersensitive girl, trapped in a traditionally bound society. She went to the D’Urbervilles to seek help for her starved family. There she met Alec who seduced her, ruining her life. She came back and narrated the whole story to her mother truly that both Alec and she were seduced. When her mother asked her to make the best of this, she refused. Later, she met Angel who jilted her on learning her of being unchaste. However, later, realizing his own mistake, he came back to her, but, she had started living with Alec as her mistress. The last important incident was Alec’s murder at the hand of Tess. The critics accuse Tess of impurity on two s. Firstly, the seduction scene presupposes Tess’ implied consent. She never showed any sign of disapproval as she did when Alec first tried to kiss her. Secondly, being the wife of Angel and Alec’s being an improper person, Tess-like girl would never have surrendered to Alec, only to provide the family a living. On the Victorian standard of purity, i.e. the loss of chastity is the loss of purity, Tess would certainly appear to be impious, because, firstly, she lost her chastity, and secondly, with her consent. But, to Hardy, it is the most faulty and narrow concept of morality. To him, chastity is of two types – chastity of the mind and of the body. Chastity of the body is related to virginity, whereas that of mind is the purity of the mind and soul. To Hardy, real chastity is the chastity of the mind and soul. One may be bodily unchaste; still he can be chaste, if he is chaste by his soul and mind. Those who have impure soul and mind are not ‘pure’ despite the chastity of their body. He, therefore, calls Tess pure for, in spite of losing bodily chastity she never lost purity of the soul. Tess stands as a symbol of unflinching and pure love. She loved for the sake of love only without any consideration. She went on loving Angel inspite of his being unfaithful. Tess had purity of dealings, and warm feelings for everyone without any personal gain. After losing her chastity, she never tried to deceive anyone. She told her mother and Angel truly about their seduction. She was a symbol of self-sacrifice and emotional self-control. She never behaved hypersentimentally and always kept her ions under control of her intellect. She never raised hue and cry and never shed tears before anyone to get sympathies. She went on sacrificing herself for the sake of Angel, her family or anyone she came across. She virtually proposed to Angle to marry Eza, Heely or Marian for she considered herself inferior to anyone of them. All this prove the purity of Tess’ soul and mind. Had she been impure, she could have narrated one-sided story to her mother that she was raped by Alec. She could have blamed her mother or her fate. Had she been impious, she could have killed ‘Sorrow’ at its birth to avoid disreputation, but she loved him and baptized him herself after the refusal of clergyman. Had she been immoral, she wouldn’t have resisted Angel’s love for a long time. But, she was a woman, having ion to be loved; so she yielded to Angel’s love, but she had throughout been trying to unveil her secret to Angel. She wrote him a letter, explaining the entire situation, but the letter was misplaced. She came to know this when their marriage had been solemnized. Due to his unchanged behaviour she was satisfied, that he has forgiven her. Yet she had no intention to deceive Angel. Had she been cheap minded and mean, she would have condemned Angel when he left for Brazil deserting her. But she accepted the

situation for she knew she was equally responsible. There are many incidents crying at the top of their voice that Tess was a pure woman. The charges leveled against Tess can be negated promptly. She didn’t have implied consent in the seduction, for seduction is a sort of intoxication. No one is willfully seduced. As Tess fell a victim to seduction, anyone would have been seduced under such romantic circumstances. She was too innocent to judge Alec’s intentions for it was her first with any man. Then Alec deliberately rode the horse so fast that throughout the way, she kept feeling the close and warm touches of Alec. When they reached the appointed place, she slept. The romantic atmosphere, darkness and the silence prevailing everywhere also contributed to make her seduced. So we can not blame her for having been seduced with her consent. The second charge looks, rather, valid and undeniable. Still, before blaming Tess, we must consider the inevitable and bitter conditions, leading Tess to accept such a slur on her fair name. Tess had been suffering throughout her life till the saturation point arrived. She tried her best to Angel, but failed; she aimed to get some job, but in vain. Her family was at the edge of starvation after her father’s death and the serious ailment of her mother. Then Alec assured her that Angel wouldn’t return. So she ventured to live with Alec as his mistress. She did it under dire necessity, not for lust or any personal end. But she never accepted Alec from her heart. Alec’s murder proves this fact. It may be an error; yet it alone can never prove her unchaste. Keeping this last incident aside, she is undeniably pure. So pure and honest she was that she didn’t conceal from Angel the fact of her living with Alec as his mistress. Tess was that perfectly a pure woman who accidentally lost her chastity and kept playing a toy in the hands of fate. Hardy remarks on the death of Tess that: "Justice was done and the President of the Immortals, by Aeschelylian Phrase, had ended his sport with Tess." This also reflects the innocence and purity of Tess, who, despite prodigious number of sufferings, never lost the purity of her mind and soul, and, therefore, was titled ‘A pure woman’ by Hardy.