Novels of Character and Environment: Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), Far from the Maddening Crowd (1874), The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), Jude the Obscure (1896).
Romances and Fantasies: A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), The Trumpet Major (1880), Two on a Tower (1882), The Well-Beloved (published serially 1892, revised and reissued 1897).
Novels of Ingenuity: Desperate Remedies (1891), The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), A Laodicean (1881).
Hardy published eight volumes of poetry: Wessex Poems (1898), Poems of the Past and Present (1902), Time’s Laughing Stocks (1909), Satires of Circumstance (1914),
Moments of Vision (1917), Late Lyrics and Earlier (1922), Human Shows (1925), Winter Words (1928), The Collection Poems (1930), published posthumously, contain over 900 poems of great variety and individuality, yet consistent over more than 60 years in their attitudes to life and fate. Probably the most remarkable are in the group of poems written in recollection of his first wife. Hardy followed Wordsworth and Robert Browning in his endeavor to write in a language close to that of speech. He experienced constantly with rhythms and stresses and verse forms, disliking and avoiding any facile flow.
He published over 40 short stories, most of which were collected in Wessex Tales (1888), A Group of Noble Dames (1891), Life’s Little Ironies (1894), and A Changed Man (1913).
Hardy wrote two dramas: The Dynasts (3 volumes, 1904-8) in blank verse and prose, and The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall.
2. Thomas Hardy’s Major Works
Under the Greenwood Tree: this is a gentle, humorous novel, skillfully interweaving the love story of Dick Dewy and Fancy Day with the fortunes and misfortunes of a group of villages, many of whom are musicians and singers in Mellstock church. The novels marks the first appearance of Hardy’s village rustics, who drew much critical comment, both favorable and unfavorable, and who were to reappear frequently in later novels.
Far from the Maddening Crowd: the shepherd Gabriel Oak serves the young and spirited Bathsheba Everdene, owner if the farm, with unselfish devotion. The dashing Sergeant Troy loves one of Bathsheba’s servants, Fanny Robin, but after a fatal misunderstanding deserts her and she eventually dies in childbirth in the workhouse.
Troy has meanwhile married Bathsheba, but soon begins to ill-treat her. When he hears of Fanny’s death, he disappears and is deemed to have been drowned. Farmer Boldwood, now obsessed with Bathsheba, gives a party at which he pledges Bathsheba to marry him some time in the future. Troy reappears at the party and Boldwood shoots him. Boldwood is tried and pronounced insane. Gabriel and Bathsheba ate at last married.
The Return of the Native: the scene is the somber Eydon Heath, powerfully and symbolically present throughout the novel. Damon Wildeve, engineer turned publican, dallies between the two women by whom he is loved the gentle Thomasin Yeobright and
The wild, capricious Eustacia Vye. Thomasin rejects her humble suitor Diggory Veen,
A reddleman, and is eventually married to Wildeve. Thomasin’s cousin Clym Yeobright, a diamond merchant in Paris, returns to Edgon, intending to become a schoolmaster.
He falls in live with Eustacia, and she marries him, hoping to induce him to return to Paris. But to her despair he will not return; his sight fails and he becomes a furze-cutter on the heath. She becomes the cause of estrangement between Clym and his beloved mother, and unintentionally causes the mother’s death. This, together with the discovery that Eustacia’s relationship with Wildeve has not ceased, leads to violent scene between Clym and his wife, and ultimately to Eustacia’s flight, in the course of which both she and Wildeve are drowned. Clym, blaming himself for the death of his mother and his wife, becomes an itinerant preacher, and the widowed Thomasin marries Diggory Venn.
The Mayor of Casterbridge: Michael Henchard, a hay-trusser, gets drunk at a fair and sells his wife and child for five guineas to sailor, Newson, when sober again he takes a solemn vow not to touch alcohol for 20 years. By his energy and acumen he becomes rich, respected, and eventually the mayor of Casterbridge. After 18nyears his wife returns, supposing Newson dead, and reunited with her husband. She brings with her her daughter Elizabeth-Jane, and Henchard believes she id his child, whereas she id in face Newson’s. Through a combination of unhappy circumstances, troubles accumulate, Henchard quarrels with his capable young assistant Donald Farfrae; Mrs. Henchard die and Henchard learns the truth about the girl; Farfrae marries Lucetta, whom Henchard had hoped to win. Soon Henchard’s business is ruined, the story of the sale of his wife is revealed, and he takes again to heavy drinking. Farfrae now
has Henchard’s business, his house and Lucetta, while Henchard works as a laborer in his yard. Eventually Farfrae becomes mayor. Henchard’s stepdaughter is his only comfort, then Newson returns and claims her and after Lucetta’s death Farfrae marries her. Henchard becomes lonelier and more desolate, and dies wretchedly in a hut on Edgon Heath.
Jude the Obscure: it’s a story of a deadly war between flesh and spirit. Jude Fawley, a young Wessex villager of exceptional intellectual promise, is encouraged by the schoolmaster Phillotson. He is trapped into marriage by the barmaid Arabella Donn, who shortly afterwards deserts him. He moves to Christminster (which represents Oxford), hoping one day to be admitted to the university. He meets his cousin, Sue Bridehead, an unconventional young woman who works in a shop selling ecclesiastical ornaments: they fall in love. Sue, in what appears to be a fit of desperate masochism, suddenly marries Phillotson. She is driven from him by physical revulsion and flies to Jude; they live together but do not consummate their love until Arabella reappears on the scene. Jude, who had been planning to enter the priesthood as licentiate, as a substitute for his thwarted intellectual ambitions,
Is now doubly defeated. He and Sue become free to marry, but Sue shrinks from the step. Under the pressure of poverty and social disapproval their relationship deteriorates, and tragedy overtakes them in the death of their children: the eldest, Old Father Time, son of Jude and Arabella, hangs the two babies and himself, leaving a note saying “Done because we are too menny”. In an agony of remorse and self-abasement, Sue returns to Phillotson and the church, and Jude, deeply shocked by her abandoning of her free-thinking principles, begins drinking heavily and is trapped back by Arabella. He dies wretchedly.
3. My ideas on Tess of the D’Urbervilles
When I was watching the DVD Tess of the D’Urbervilles with my classmates, I found my ideas were different from theirs. Many of them thought Tess was silly and Clare was cruel, but I don’t think so. So I want show my opinions.
Of all Thomas Hardy’s novels, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is the most famous one and I like this one best. The protagonist Tess Durbeyfield is the daughter of a poor villager of Blackmoor Vale. When her father John Durbeyfield is told that he is descended from the ancient family of D’Urberville, in order to get some economic help, he and his wife asks Tess to a family bearing the name of D’Urberville to claim kinship. There, Tess is cunningly seduced by Alec, the son of that family. Tess goes back home and gives birth to a child, which dies. Several years later, whiling working as dairymaid, she becomes blissfully engaged to Angel Clare, a clergyman’s son. Many times Tess wants to tell her beloved Angel her seduction by Alec, but fails. Before they marry, Tess writes a letter to Angel and tucks it into Angel’s room, but unfortunately under the carpet. On their wedding night, she confessed to him, and Angel hypercritically abandons her and goes to Brazil. Misfortunes come upon Tess and her family, and accident throws her once more in the path of Alec. He has become an itinerant preacher, but his temporary religious conversation does not prevent him from persistently pursuing her. At this time, Tess’s father dies and her husband remains unanswered, she is driven to become the mistress of Alec for the sake of her mother and her brothers and sisters. Angel returns from Brazil, finds Tess, and repents of his harshness. Thinking that it is Alec whom has made her lose Angel for the second time, Tess stabs and kills him to liberate herself. After a brief but satisfying period of concealment with angel in the New Forest, Tess is arrested at stone hedge, tried, and hanged. “ Justice was done. And the President of the immortals, in Eschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.” (The first sentence of the last paragraph in Tess of the D’Urbervilles)
Tess typically shows Thomas Hardy’s pessimistic fatalism. Just like Oedipw, unable to change his destiny, he kills his father and marries his mother. At last he pricks himself blind and dies in wandering. Hardy is familiar with the Greek mythology that Tess, also, cannot change her fate--going on a no-ending road. Different from these Greek writers, who depend on a series of accidents to develop their stories, Thomas Hardy’s story is the basis of people’s character, sensibly and reasonably. His novels are convincing and affecting.
Let’s try to analyze the main behaviors of the protagonists. In the Ⅲ passage of the First Chapter “The Maiden”, when Tess’s parents ask her to the rich D’Ubervilles’, the pure Tess is unwilling to go, she hates to curry favor with the rich and powerful. But a small accident happens on her and her brother’s way to send honey to the town that their horse dies. So Tess feels that she is responsible to help her parents to get out of trouble and decides to go which causes her seduction
by Alec. Superficially, it is because Tess’s parents’ ideas to be followers of the rich and powerful create an opportunity for Alec. In fact, the most important thing is Tess’s responsibility in her personality. If Tess is not filial to her parents, if Tess does not feel guilty of the fix of her family after the death of the horse, she won’t go to the D’Ubervilles and meet Alec. As to sending honey to the town in a night, it should be her father’s business. Because her father gets drunk, afraid of that her father will have some accidents, Tess offers to take the place of her father to go with her younger brother. The responsibility of Tess, a kind and filial girl, Leads her to do these two thing, leads her to Alec, leads her to suffer from the most miserable and crushing blow of a maiden.
When Tess leaves home the second time, Tess meets Clare at Talbothays Dairy and later they decide to get married after a sweet period. They may lead a happy life if Tess forgets her past, but Tess confesses to Clare her seduction by Alec. To her surprise, her sacred Clare does not forgive her and abandons her. She has to suffer the new tortures, mentally and psychologically. It’s obvious that it is because of Tess’s strong responsibility that causes the sadness—she thinks she has responsibility to confess all that about her to her love, or it’s unfair to him. Apart from Clare, Tess suffers new torments. Unfortunately, she comes to Alec’s control again. What causes this? On one hand, it’s because of Alec’s evil nature, on the other hand, it’s because of Tess’s responsibility, which reduced her to living with her “enemy” when her family comes into trouble after her father dies. We also can say, the reason why Tess, unable to control herself, killing Alec, is also due to her responsibility. Just look at these paragraphs:
……Clare stopped and looked at her inquiringly.
“Angel,” she said, as if waiting for this, “ do you know that I have been running after you for? To tell you that I have killed him!” A pitiful white smile lit her face as she spoke.
“What!” said he, thinking from the strangeness of her manner that she was in some deliriums.
“I have done it. I don’t know how,” she continued,” Still, I owed it to you, and to myself, Angel……”
Chapter “Fulfillment” LV II
Obviously, Tess regards killing Alec as her essential task, as her responsibility—for herself, for her husband, for the girls like her! As she finishes her task, she is anxious to tell her husband with a smile.
Maybe people will say, it’s true Tess’s strong responsibility affects her action, however, why the male protagonist Clare is so inhumane? He himself once has an absurd relationship with a woman, why he does not show sympathy for Tess? Why he abandons Tess cruelly when Tess confesses to him her past?
Actually, Clare’s behavior counts on his character, too. From the beginning of the novel, we can see there’s anti-tradition in his character. Owing to his open mind, he refuses to marry Miss Mercy Chant, refuses to work as a clergyman, like his two brothers. Due to his anti-tradition, he sincerely loves Tess, a dairy girl. That is, Clare’s love to Tess is real and pure. What he thinks is what he sees and what he sees is what he thinks. Therefore, immersed I his sweet love affair, Clare cannot accept the bolt from the blue that Tess is seduced. When Tess confesses, he can hardly believe that Tess is saying some mad words:
“Tess”
“Yes, dearest!”
“Am I to believe this? From your manner I am to take it as true. Oh you cannot be out of your mind! You ought to be! Yet you are not …… My wife, my Tess—nothing in your warrants such a supposition as that?”
Chapter “The Woman Pays” XXXV
At that time, Angel Clare thinks nothing of Tess’s suffering. He even doesn’t think about comparing Tess’s tortures with his absurd thing. He only believes that there will be no such perfect Tess in the world. He feels Tess’s past ruins his life and the whole world. “She remained mute, not knowing that he was smothering his affection for her. She hardly observed that a teat descended slowly upon his cheek, a tear so large that it magnified the pores of the skin over which it rolled, like the object lens of a microscope.”(XXXV) Evidently, Clare is experiencing great frustration and sorrow. Thus, we should not criticize Clare for his reaction to Tess’s confession, thinking that a man neglects his own fault while blames others with a high standard. No, we should not do so. On the contrary, we should understand what Hardy has written: “The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great after enlightment, and is mighty in Clare now. “ (XXXV) That is to say, Clare not only feels hurt but also feels he s fooled by fate. So he, unable to control himself, treats harshly on Tess, abandoning her and leading her to Alec’s side. After long time of introspection, he at last changes his attitude and restores his love to Tess.
The protagonists’characters force them to the inevitable reaction in certain circumstance, which pushes them into trouble and have tragic ends.
顾蓓蓓
英语012 2号
