Hardy shows the inevitability and irony of fate throughout Your Last Drive. The very title is ominous, with its sense of finality, yet ironically it describes something normal - a simple journey. The ABAB ballad form that opens the stanzas reinforce this idea of normality while the rhyming couplet that concludes each verse adds to the irrevocability of the poem’s outcome. The shock of the death appears initially in the third line of the poem; although the opening gives an ominous atmosphere, the reference to ‘the face of the dead’ brings the poem into perspective. The ‘flickering sheen’ in the third stanza conveys Hardy’s belief in the fragility of life and the ease with which life can end. Yet although he recognizes how delicate life is, he despairs over the fact that he only realised its delicacy through the death of someone he loved - another example of irony in the poem. The greatest irony in the poem is that Hardy finds himself closer to his wife now she is dead than he did during her life when the marriage had grown stale and cold.
The Mayor of Casterbridge can be compared to the Grecian tragedies where a great character meets his downfall due to his overwhelming pride. The Grecian element is reinforced by the use of Casterbridge’s inhabitants as a chorus, commenting on Henchard’s actions. Henchard’s hubris is expressed in his stubbornness and it is this that leads to his fall from grace. Henchard is not the only character of Hardy’s to succumb to hubris; the poem A Tramp-Woman’s Tragedy5also contains similar ideas. The poem is a ballad in which the woman describes her decline from leading a happy life to one of despair. A Tramp-Woman’s Tragedy opens anacreontically as the woman and her friends “jaunted on” and the colloquial language – “My fancy-man” adds to the impression of light-heartedness but as she playfully teases her lover the poem begins to speak of a “deadly day” in which her faults lead to the poems catastrophe. There is irony even in Hardy’s use of Grecian techniques; the Greeks wrote of Kings and princes whose fall was due to defying the gods while Hardy writes of normal ordinary people.
“Life is, he [Hardy] suggests, essentially ironic”6 this view is nowhere more apparent than in the irony of Casterbridge where Henchard, after initially believing Elizabeth-Jane to be an impostor, is convinced of her being his daughter - but after telling her this finds she is in fact truly Newson’s child. Even though Henchard accepts that the revelation about Elizabeth-Jane “was what he had deserved” it does not stop him treating her badly afterwards and possibly if Henchard had not discovered the letter then events would not have taken such a tragic turn. Had Henchard treated Elizabeth-Jane better she would not have left to live with Lucetta, thus Lucetta and Farfrae may never have met and events in Casterbridge would have continued more peacefully – such is the irony of life that Hardy deals with. The previously mentioned poem Hap deals with this concept of a “vengeful god” twisting fate in order to create disillusionment in life. The idea of life being a “pilgrimage” echoes the novel Pilgrims Progress7 which charts a struggle through life in order to attain salvation. Hardy though, does not write of a following salvation: his view is ultimately pessimistic. The Eumenides of Grecian plays who sought to punish the guilty may have inspired the “Doomsters” that Hardy speaks of. Although it has been written that the “tampering with the probabilities”8 in Casterbridge detracts from the novel, it seems that Hardy wrote as he perceived reality to be and himself claimed that “it is not improbabilities of incident that matter”9.
The Harbour Bridge10 questions how real life can lack the pathetic fallacy featured in literature. He appears to find it impossible for the macrocosm not to reflect the microcosm. The irony here is that although the characters in the poem are overflowing with emotion it has no effect on others people’s lives. The “white stars” continue to shine and they “care not for men’s wives”, being indifferent to the events they have witnessed. This idea is also conveyed in Casterbridge where the inhabitants of the town continue as if nothing had happened: as if the mayor had not been disgraced and as if Lucetta had not died.
‘Well, well – never mind – it is all over and past,’ said Newson good-naturedly. ‘Now, about this wedding again.’
Hardy’s disillusionment is comparable to that of modern writers such as Dylan Thomas; it is almost possible to describe Hardy as a modern writer. Within his work there are instances where he rebels against convention by deliberately commenting on how ‘un-book-like’ life can actually be. Some critics have described Hardy as being modern and his poetry has been said to “represent a twentieth century outlook”11. Hardy rejected the popular idea of aestheticism in favour of a darker portrait of reality.
The divergence between appearance and reality is a constant theme in literature and Hardy’s writings are no exception to this. There is irony in the description of Henchard at the opening of the novel as being “of fine figure” and irony in the poem Had You Wept that the “strong woman is weakest” – Hardy’s wife, too strong and stubborn to weep having quietly died without a struggle. Irony is used to develop the character of Henchard; it shows how a man who behaves so appallingly can also be so honest and hard working. Is Henchard evil or is he or just a man who makes a mistake that haunts him? In essence Henchard is probably the “fine figure” he is described as but is often seen in light of his substantial deficiencies. In Had You Wept a similar irony is present; if Hardy’s wife had expressed emotion, then things might have been different with the “deep division” reconciled.
Hardy recognised the importance of irony in his work. In the preface to Tess of the d’Urbervilles he quotes Shakespeare’s King Lear:
‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport.’
Hardy uses irony to express how he feels fate mocks mankind by treating cruelly people who deserve sympathy such as Elizabeth-Jane in Casterbridge. In Hap he expresses a wish that he could be sure there was some greater power, manipulating destiny so malignly, rather than fate being a series of “crass” ironic coincidences. However, Hardy has been accused of “being unsubtle, of making his point too forcibly”12 suggesting that irony is sometimes over-used. Also, assuming that Hardy uses irony to express opinions about fate rather than using fate as an excuse to include irony in his work, one must ask whether the irony is important or if it is merely used as a technique for Hardy to discuss fate.
Is it fate or irony that lead Susan and Elizabeth-Jane to seek Henchard? While it is ironic that they search for Henchard only because they believe Newson dead, it is fate that leads them to believe Newson has died when he is actually alive. Fate and irony are intertwined - there is irony in their fate and it is this irony that makes their fate so much more vindictive. Again, the poem Hap can be referred to, fate’s malice being demonstrated as it calls out that “thy sorrow is my [fate’s] ecstasy”. In Hap Hardy deals with what could be the biggest irony of all – the idea that ironic outcomes are not directed by a “vengeful god” but occur naturally. The tightly structured stanzas and conventional rhyming pattern may represent fate being unavoidable and inevitable. Hardy’s refusal to fight conventional poetic forms symbolises a refusal to fight fate because he believes such a battle would be futile.
One problem encountered when discussing irony’s importance in Hardy’s work is that, in the words of David Wright, “it is hard to feel that he [Hardy] took the novel seriously”13. Hardy saw novels as a way of earning money, but his heart was in his poetry, which he felt to be more important and artistic. Assuming Wright is correct, then it can be inferred that Hardy was more willing to play games with his novels and exaggerate irony in them, but, although, Hardy’s claim that the “improbabilities of incident”14 did not matter, shows his belief that the irony of the incidents did not detract from his novels’ realism.
Hardy undoubtedly felt that irony was fundamentally important to his work; the importance of irony is obvious through its constant use in both his poetry and in not only Casterbridge but in all his novels. Irony is not used for its own sake; it is combined with a sense of the supremacy of fate to give life’s irony meaning. Hardy seems to believe that there is no freedom from fate but in fact freedom within fate and irony occurs through this.
Freedom, Hardy seems to be saying, is not opposed to nature nor independent of it. Freedom is within nature.15
Fate is natural and irony is a part of fate; without irony then the fate in Hardy’s novels and poetry would be left empty of meaning and also of interest. Irony and fate are tangled together in a complex web where they mutually rely on each other and would disintegrate without the other for support. Irony’s importance is no greater and no less than the importance of fate in Hardy’s novels and it is irony and fate together that make Hardy’s work compelling to read and study.
