Thomas Hardy and his place in Victorian Literature.

Hardy’s place in Victorian Literature:

Hardy as one of the great Victorian writer turned his words from novel writing to poetry, so he did not write any other novel after 1896, until his death in 1927. He refused to give his novels to critics who attacked his works as being overly pessimistic and people are characterized in his novels in immoral way. If we remark his novels it is very obvious, they had received a very violent responses from Victorian critics. Moreover, especially they attacked his last two novels Jude The Obscure and Tess of the d’Urbervilles very fiercely. Many libraries banned Jude from their shelves. One of the bishops declared that the book was so indecent that he had thrown it into fire. Hardy responded that the bishop probably burned the book because he could not burn its author. Like all Victorian writers he was dwindled of his religious faith, because he carefully read the writings of Charles DarwinCharles Darwin and was influences by his ideas. That's why some of his beliefs are included in his writings. The rule of Fate is very clear in his works that dominates his characters.

First let me talk about the use of symbolism and imagery that used by Hardy during Victorian Age. His narratives passages are rich and full of allusions. Multiple subjects are discussed in his writings that make him go beyond aspirations and passion of the physical nature of Wssesx. Hardy attempted to give his readers a meaning, religious ritual, and philosophical idea of life through symbols in his novels. He indirectly talks to his readers through symbolism, which makes his reader find difficulty in understanding the real sense of his ideas.

Then Hardy, like some other writers of the Age, expressed his idea about self-realization which was something new for westerns. For instance after spending long time away from Tess, Angel then become conscious that he is in need of Tess, and he realizes that he need to go back to Tess. But actually this subject was long expressed by Oriental writers. Like in the following quatrains Omar Khayyam (circa 1050-1122) expressed such idea.

Alas! The spring should vanish with the rose,

The youth’s sweet scented manuscript should close,

The nightingale who sang on the branch,

Ah, whence and whether again. But who knows.

So Hardy contributed to the subject not only in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but through The Mayor of Casterbridge too. Angel could reconcile but just it was too late to come back and re-start his life with Tess, because everything was over by the time he came back.

Hardy managed to save one important place in his writings which is Historical Wessex (the realm of the Western Saxons). At the time when he was publishing his novels, the readers called him the author of the Wessex novels.

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 county did not afford a canvas large enough for this purpose, and that there were objections to an invented name, I disinterred the old one.. . I believe I am correct in stating that, until the existence of this contemporaneous Wessex in place of the usual counties was announced... it had never been heard of in fiction and current speech.

[39, P. 1]

So Hardy was really aware of his role as a mediator not only between the rural people and the largely urban readership but also between the inherent traditional culture of the countryside and the intruding culture of the urban area. But though Hardy at first declared that Wessex is only imaginative world, but due to the enormous fame that his novels received. The readers were keen on tracing these places that is used as a setting in different novels and poems by Hardy. For example A Pair of Blue Eyes, took place in north Cornwall (Off Wessex), the district where he visited early in his career as an architect, and a romantic place when he first courted his wife. Then in a later novel, Jude the Obscure, the story needed a university setting, therefore he used Oxford (Christminster).

In one of his essays Hardy mentioned to his Victorian readers to deal with religious disbelief and sexuality more openly. Just the way he did in Tess of the D’Urbervilles. And he expressed his concerns toward Novelists being frank in their idea. As he said:

“The position of man and woman in nature, and the position of belief in the minds of man and woman-things which everybody is thinking but nobody is saying”

[6, P. 11]

Hardy like Dickens criticized the negative role of the industrial revolution in Victorian Age. Both writers show the importance of women in dairy works, and how does the misleading decision of parents affect their children. Dickens and Hardy use the same means for conveying their opinions and different social issues, they both use female characters to demonstrate hardships and difficulties that they go through. But still Hardy enjoyed himself being successful writer, though his writings expressed pessimism and social criticism. In eighteenth and nineteenth century novels, it was normal that in most of the cases marriage leaded to seclusion. The reason behind such seclusion between wives and husbands is the influence of class at that time. A man from high-class would not marry his servant or a woman that belong to middle or low class. Then social accommodation is hardly realized within the frame of nineteenth century novels. In fact Hardy’s character in Tess of the D’Urbervilles receive the same destruction and they are neither successful in making happy families, nor in getting accomplishing real passion toward each other.

Finally let me talk about Hardy’s real place and his accomplishment in Victorian Literature. As we notice Hardy is not acceptable in Victorian Age; and some critics described Hardy to be anachronism. I think Hardy is one of the best Victorian writers who successfully presented the materials to his readers. He could frankly deal with the issues of social extremism not only through storytelling, but also through themes of the novels. Let’s take to consideration one of his best novel, Tess of the d’Urbervilles; his description of landscapes, characters and thematic issues are part of the plot itself. We are not supposed to deal with one element and abandon ourselves from the other, but rather understanding of the unity of all elements is needed. Some of such elements play as a symbol that can represent opinions related to the theme itself. So what I am trying to say here is that one need to read the whole novel to understand the theme. In Hardy’s world, we face dogmatic assertion that’s part of daily life; the desire and forces that lead human toward fatalism in search for gratifying such desires. In short Hardy’s novels are as good as any advocate. His idiosyncratic view of life is consistent and considerate to the extent that we can consider his novels as advisor that can be used not only didactically, but eve currently as social guidance passage. In the matter of the use of Metaphors, Hardy was special in Victorian Age, as Carol R. A. said:

We can notice that perspective in Hardy is a peculiar sense of the concurrence of past and present, in Tess rendered mostly in terms of metaphors of time. to say metaphors is to use the term very broadly, for it must eventually include not only the ordinary figures of speech, but plot elements as well.

[23, P. 202]

Hardy was keen on expressing himself by any means. Like he said the ideas which would provoke scorn if expressed in prose seemed to be tolerated if expressed in verse. “If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the Inquisition might have let him alone.” In the later decades of the twentieth century, Hardy was commonly ranked with Conrad as a crucial figure in the cultural transition from Victorianism to Modernism, that movement characterized by bold innovation in ideas and techniques. Hardy could even help students in schools and universities; his writings were used to serve students and be used as study materials. Then due to the new technology (Radio, television, Cinema) his writings were converted to TV and Radio shows that millions of audience could grasp the materials. Then again in paperback people could buy around the continent and world-wide. Thus his works became the center of technology and scholarly analysis. Even in his lifetime the Cinema guaranteed his influence and prosperity. The following are few of Hardy’s works that are being converted into different shows.

1. In 1913 and 1924 films included those of Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd. (directed respectively by J. Searle Dawley and Marshall Neilan)

2. In 1921 the film of The Mayor of Casterbridge was made.

3. In 1929 Under the Greenwood Tree was made.

4. In 1967 Far from the Madding Crowd.

5. In 1979 Roman PolanskiRoman Polanski's controversial Tess,

6. In 1937, 1948 and 1971. There were BBC radio productions of Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

7. The tale ‘The Distracted Preacher” was televised in 1969.

8. The Woodlanders was televised in 1970 (repeated 1971)

9. Jude the Obscure, with Robert Powell in the lead, appeared in 1971

10. A six-part series, `Wessex Tales', was shown in 1973 and repeated in 1975

11. A serial version of The Mayor of Casterbridge (dramatised by Dennis Potter) was shown in 1978 and repeated in 1979.

12. BBC Television produced Tess in 1952.

13. ITV Television produced Tess in 1960. An LWT production of Tess, directed by Ian Sharp, with Justine Waddell in the lead, appeared in March 1998, and became a video.

14. The Polanski Tess has been issued on video cassette and DVD.

15. Audio-cassette and audio-CD versions of Tess include abridgements read by Moira Shearer (Decca, E.M.I., 1979), by Martin Shaw with Lindsay Duncan (Orion, 1995), and by Peter Firth (Harper Collins, 2000).

16. A three-CD reading by Imogen Stubbs was issued by Naxos Audio books in 1997; another audio CD was released by Macmillan in 2005.

17. In 1894-5, Hardy adapted Tess for the stage, and several leading actresses solicited the title role.

18. Essays by John Fowles in 1977 and 1984 provided reminders of the profound influence of Hardy s poetry and prose on the author of that remarkable rediscovery of Wessex, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969).

19. The first authorized British production of Tess, in a new version by Hardy, was performed at Dorchester in 1924 by a local company, with Gertrude Bugler (who entranced Hardy) in the lead.

Hardy’s influence in relation to time and place cannot be proved in only one paper, probably it needs professional investigation. And what I have said is like to balance a pebble to a mountain. Hardy’s realism, plot and dramatic structure must be dealt with exclusively to find out his influence and place during Victorian age and up to now.