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Quotes by Thomas Hardy-The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.Source: Far From The Madding Crowd -It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirsSource: Far From The Madding Crowd -A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms.Source: The Hand of Ethelberta-Yet, though love is thus an end in itself, it must be believed to be the means to another end if it is to assume the rosy hues of an unalloyed pleasure.Source: Under the Greenwood Tree-Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity . . .Source: Tess of the DUrbervilles-A well proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity.Source: Return of the Native-Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons!Source: Jude the Obscure -It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession . . .Source: Far From The Madding Crowd .- . . the highest form of affection is based on full sincerity on both sides.Source: Jude the ObscureThomas HardyI. Brief Introduction to the Writer1. Life Story Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in a small town in Dorset in southwestern England. His father was a village builder, and his mother was a cook and a servant-maid. His parents though low on the social register, were well-educated, aspiring people. He attended church regularly with his family, and later taught in the local Sunday school. As a boy, he memorized all the services, and this knowledge lays a good foundation of the frequent references on religion in his works. In addition, Thomass father was a musician who played at church services, and the boy followed his fathers footsteps by learning to play the violin. This was the start of a lifelong interest in music which finds reflection in his books. From 1848-1854 Hardy was educated in the local schools. Although young Hardys education was not particularly good, there were books in his home and he read all he could. At the age of sixteen, he left school and was apprenticed to an architect. Although his formal studies stopped, he continued to educate himself. He could arise early in the morning and study for an hour or two before leaving for work. During his spare time, he studied widely: language, literature, history, philosophy and art, and he even won two prizes for essays on architectural subjects. But architecture was never his desired profession. In 1862, he left the architects office, well-trained as a draftsman and with a considerable amount of reading behind him. At the age of 22, he left Dorset for London.There in London, young Hardy came into contact for the first time with the advances of the modern world. It must be understood that life in the Dorset of the 1840s and 1850s had hardly changed in its broad outlines since the Middle Ages. It was nearly completely rural in character, and at that time was still isolated from the rest of the world for few of the industrial and mechanical aspects of modern civilization had come to it. Dorset provides the setting of most of Hardys novels and stories. Hardy, however, changed the name of Dorset to “Wessex” and he changed the names of all the towns he wrote of as well. His birth place later became the famous “Wessex” in many of his novels. Hardy himself was called “Wessexman.”In London, he worked as an architect. He also studied French, visited art galleries and the great London exposition and continued his course of reading. During these years, he wrote the first of his poems to make a living. In 1867 he returned to Dorset, his native countryside, he worked as an architect. At the same time he began to write novels and stories. His first attempt in novel writing did not meet with success. By 1868 he had completed his first novel The Poor Man and the Lady, which though it was rejected, convinced him that he should continue his efforts at novel-writing. In the same year he did his work as an architect and it was during this time he met the girl he was to marry. It was altogether a most crucial year for Hardy. All Hardys novels were written during the next 28 years.2. Literary CareerHardys first novel The Poor Man and the Lady was a fierce social satire. When it was rejected Hardy switched to writing romances, stories with complicated plots and much sensational action. He began with Desperate Remedies, Under Greenwood Tree, which marked the real success of Hardy and enables him to give up architecture for writing, and A Pair of Blue Eyes. These books are highly autobiographical, and they are reasonably well-received. Later he published the following novels Far from the Madding Crowd and The Return of the Native. Hardy was recognized to be one of Englands leading novelists after the publication of The Trumpet Major, A Loadicean and Two on a Tower. Before A Pair of Blue Eyes appeared as a book, it came out as a serial in a magazine, and this set a pattern- nearly all the rest of Hardys novels were first published in this form.Among Hardys early works, Under Greenwood Tree is the most cheerful and idyllic. In Far from the Madding Crowd, the world is still a balanced one, where a pretty woman of vanity and pride is finally humbled before the genuine worth of her shepherd-lover. However from The Return of the Native on the tragic sense becomes the keynote of his novels. The conflict between the traditional and the modern is brought to the center of the stage. In The Return of the Native, the hero, Clym Yeobright, a young man who, tired of the busy, commercialized urbane life, returns to his homeplace and intends to something good for his country people, is misunderstood by others, including his wife. Eventually he becomes blind and turns missionary. With the natural forces controlling and destroying mans destiny, the novel is predominated by a depressively gloomy atmosphere.The publication of The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d Urbervilles and Jude the obscure has ensured him lasting fame. The Mayor of Casterbridge, as a novel of nemesis, reveals the conflict in a deeper and fuller sense. Henchard in the novel is a self-sufficient man, who, by nature, belongs to the old rural culture. He does business and carries out his mayors duty in an old-fashioned way. He can be regarded as the representative of the vulnerable rural life. While his rival Farfrae, who represents industrialization, is a decent and shrewd merchant, a modern man in every sense. Finally Henchard is defeated by Farfrae just as the vulnerable rural life-style is defeated by the industrialization. The conflict between the old and the modern becomes more intense in the other two novels. Tess of the d Urbervilles tells people the heroine Tesss tragic story. As a simple, innocent and faithful country girl, Tess was brought up with the traditional idea of womanly virtues. She is abused and destroyed by both Alec and Angel, agents of the destructive force of the society. The misery, the poverty and the hateful pain she suffers and her final tragedy give rise to a most bitter cry of protest and denunciation of the society. Jude the obscure as a sister work to Tess of the d Urbervilles tells of the struggle of the hero and the heroine for personal happiness. In the novel although Jude and Sue loved each other and finally free from their former marriages, cornered by the traditional social morality, they have to kill their own will and passion and return to their former destructive way of life. The tragic sense turns into despair. The central figures in both novels, Tess and Jude, not only come from the laboring people but are themselves laborers, and both are crushed eventually by the society in which they live. Though the tragic story of the principle character in either novel seems to depend upon the heros or heroines love and marriage, yet what Hardy attacks in the two novels goes much beyond the system of marriage in the hypocritical bourgeois society to include all the legal, moral, educational and religious phenomena of the world of capitalist relations. Hardys defiance against the status quo of Victorian England is both fierce and consistently and that is why both the last two novels met with terrific accusations from the bourgeois authorities and their loyal critics.What it is written in Hardys novels arouse criticisms of his novels. In 1896 he was tired of all those hostile criticisms against his last novels. After Jude the obscure Hardy returned to his first love and mainly wrote poetry. It could be remembered that he started out as a poet and had been composing poetry throughout the time he was writing novels. His poetry is as famous as his fictions. His best verse was mainly written after he had given up novel writing. Hw produced four collections of lyrical poetry and then an epic drama in verse, The Dynasts (1904-1908). In his poetry creation, Hardy concerned about the same problems as those presented in his novels. Hardys novels are all Victorian in date. His principle works are the Wessex Novels, in which Wessex is the fictional primitive and crude rural region where all the events in his novels happened, which is really his birthplace. He himself divided his novels into three groups: Novels of Romances and Fantasies, Novels of Ingenuity, and novels of Characters and Environment, among which the last group is the most outstanding. In the novels he truthfully depicts the impoverishment and decay of small farmers who became hired fieldhands and roamed the country in search of seasonal jobs. These labourers, who lived in an agricultural environment menaced by the forces of invading capitalism, were mercilessly exploited by the rich landowners. The author was pained to see the deterioration of the patriarchal mode of life in rural England. This can best explain why there was the growing pessimistic vein through his novels. Novels such as The Return of the Native, The Trumpet Major, The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders, Tess of the DUrbervilles and Jude the Obscure all belong to this group. People also call novels as such “novels of character and environment”, which show Hardy is both a naturalistic and critical realist writer. 3. Features of his Novels3.1 Influenced by Both the Past and the ModernAs a transitional writer, Hardy is both influenced by both the past and the modern as a result he is known as intellectually advanced and emotional traditional. In his novels on the one hand he shows an apparent nostalgic feeling in his description of the simple and beautiful though primitive rural life, which was gradually declining and disappearing as England marched into an industrial country. The characters that succeed, are generally the happiest, are the ones that remain in harmony with their surroundings. The most interesting characterization, however is the most collective use of the rustics. They manage to retain their individuality, but they seem to have a communal personality. They view the action of their social “betters” and comment on it in exactly the same opinion. In addition they help the action to progress. He shows sympathy to those traditional silliest characters, and never laughs at them. On the other hand, the immense impact of scientific discoveries and modern philosophic thoughts upon man is quite obvious too. The wide use of allusion in the novel creation is another outstanding features in his writing. The unusual number of references, both classical and Biblical, is astonishing. The most effective allusions are the Biblical ones, since they seem to echo the rugged strength of the pastoral setting.3.2 As a Naturalistic WriterInfluenced by Darwins The Origin of Species and Spencers The First Principle, he accepted the idea of survival the fittest and believed that mans fate is predeterminedly tragic, driven by a combined force of “nature” both inside and outside. In his works, man is shown inevitably bound by his own inherent nature and hereditary traits which prompt him to go and search for some specific happiness or success and set him in conflict with the environment. The natural environment is shown as some mysterious supernatural force, which is very powerful, but half-blind, impulsive and uncaring to the individuals will, hope, passion or suffering, and which likes to play practical jokes upon human beings by producing a series of mistimed actions and unfortunate coincidences. Under Hardys brush, man, though tries hard, proves impotent before Fate, and he seldom escapes his ordinary destiny. In most of Hardys later works, it is his pessimistic view that makes him famous as a naturalistic writer.3.3 As a Fighter against Social Convention In his novels Hardy bitterly and sharply criticizes and even openly challenge the irrational, hypocritical and unfair Victorian institutions, convention and morals which strangle the individual will and destroy natural human emotions and relationships. The conflicts between the traditional and the modern, between the old rural value of respectability and honesty and the new utilitarian commercialism, between the old, false social moral and the natural human passion, etc. are all closely set in a realistic background true to the very time and the very place. II. Brief Introduction to the Selected Literary WorkTess of the DUrbervilles1. Brief Summary of the StoryThe poor peddler John Durbeyfield is very happy to learn that he is the descendent of an ancient noble family, the dUrbervilles. So Mr. Durbeyfield and his wife decide to send Tess to the dUrberville mansion, where they hope Mrs. dUrberville will make Tesss fortune. In reality, Mrs. dUrberville is no relation to Tess at all: her husband, the merchant Simon Stokes, simply changed his name to dUrberville after he retired. But Tess does not know this fact, and when the lascivious Alec dUrberville, Mrs. dUrbervilles son, procures Tess a job tending fowls on the dUrberville estate, Tess has no choice but to accept, since she blames herself for an accident involving the familys horse, its only means of income.Tess spends several months at this job, resisting Alecs attempts to seduce her. Finally, Alec takes advantage of her in the woods one night after a fair. Tess knows she does not love Alec. She returns home to her family to give birth to Alecs child, whom she christens Sorrow. Sorrow dies soon after he is born, and Tess spends a miserable year at home before deciding to seek work elsewhere. She finally accepts a job as a milkmaid at the Talbothays Dairy.At Talbothays, Tess enjoys a period of contentment and happiness. She befriends three of her fellow milkmaids and meets a man named Angel Clare, who turns out to be the man from the May Day dance at the beginning of the novel. Tess and Angel slowly fall in love. They grow closer throughout Tesss time at Talbothays, and she eventually accepts his proposal of marriage. Still, she is troubled by pangs of conscience and feels she should tell Angel about her past. She writes him a confessional note and slips it under his door, but it slides under the carpet and Angel never sees it.After their wedding, Angel and Tess both confess indiscretions: Angel tells Tess about an affair he had with an older woman in London, and Tess tells Angel about her history with Alec. Tess forgives Angel, but Angel cannot forgive Tess. He gives her some money and boards a ship bound for Brazil, where he thinks he might establish a farm. He tells Tess he will try to accept her past but warns her not to try to join him until he comes for her.Tess struggles. She has a difficult time finding work and is forced to take a job at an unpleasant and unprosperous farm. She tries to visit Angels family but overhears his brothers discussing Angels poor marriage, so she leaves. Once she hears a wandering preacher speak and is stunned to discover that the precher is Alec dUrberville, who has been converted to Christianity by Angels father, the Reverend Clare. Alec and Tess are each shaken by their encounter, and Alec appallingly begs Tess never to tempt him again. Soon after, however, he again begs Tess to marry him, having turned his back on his -religious ways.Tess learns from her sister that her mother is near death, and Tess is forced to return home to take care of her. Her mother recovers, but her father unexpectedly dies soon after. When the family is evicted from their home, Alec offers help. But Tess refuses to accept, knowing he only wants to obligate her to him again.At last, Angel decides to forgive his wife. He leaves Brazil, desperate to find her. Instead, he finds her mother, who tells him Tess has gone to a village called Sandbourne. There, he finds Tess in an expensive boardinghouse, where he tells her he has forgiven her and begs her to take him back. Tess tells him he has come too late. She was unable to resist and went back to Alec dUrberville. Angel leaves in a daze, and, heartbroken to the point of madness, Tess goes upstairs and stabs Alec to death. When the landlady finds Alecs body, she raises an alarm, but Tess has already fled to find Angel.Angel agrees to help Tess, though he cannot quite believe that she has actually murdered Alec. They hide out in an empty mansion for a few days, then travel farther. When they come to Stoneh