Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

LIFE

FAMILY

He was born in 1940 in Dorset. He grew up as a solitary boy and inclined to meditation.

His father trasmitted the interest for architecture and the love for music, ballad and folk to his son; while his mother influenced his love for reading, for the classics and for literature in general.

MARRIAGE

Emma Gifford she had a very different character from him. She died 1912.

Florence Dugdale (1912): she was a more congenial wife for him. She was a writer of children's books and became his biographer after his death.

Both marriage were childless.

PERIODS

first literary period (1871-1897):

he wrote 15 novels;

at first the predominant element was irony, then tragic element became more insistent.

second period (1897-1909):

he stopped writing novels;

he wrote a verse drama on the Napoleonic Wars, 'The Dynasts'.

third period (1909-1928 his death):

he was devoted to poetry.

WORKS

Hard's literary production can be divited into 3 periods:

Novels of Character and Environment;

They are also know as Wessex Novels.

In Britain Wessex was one of the 7 kingdoms, which covers the southwestern part of the country. Hardy exhumed the old name of his country, that became the imaginary setting of his works. Wessex represents an unifying element and a link between past and present.

The most famous novel is 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'.

the plot

Tess is a 16 years old girl, daughter of a poor Wessex peddlar; she finds out that she is the descendant of an ancient family, the D'Ubervilles. When their horse dies, she goes for help to Alec D'Uberville, who seduces her; Alec represents the rich whom the law will not punish for seducing a peasant girl. They have a child, who dies after few months.

Some years later, while Tess was working in a farm, she falls in love with Angel Clare and thet married; Angel represents the well-meaning young man of progressive views, who is still attached to sexual prejudice and hypocrisy.

When Tess confesses her past to Angel, he abandons her and goes to Brazil.

As Alec returns, Tess becomes his mistress.

Angel understands the depth of Tess' love, because he realises that true love is not related to social and moral code. So Angel returns and Tess murders Alec.

Angel and Tess spend together only few happy days, than she is arrested. The arrest takes place at Stonehenge.

features

Tess is presented as a pure woman, also if she has broke the moral conventions of the time.

the conclusion is tragic and melodramatic, and semms to be anticipated by premonitory incidents.

Stonehenge has a symbolic meaning: it was the place where sacrifices were made in prehistoric times. Tess, who slepps on a stone, is like a victim on the sacrificial stone, while the policemen are like the priests attached to the sacrifice. This means that human justice punishes her for a crime that she has done for a series of unfortunated circumstances.

the author has a pessimistic outlook on life: he doesn't believe in a loving God, because men are subjected to endless sufferings.

Romances and Fantasies;

Novels of ingenuity.

FEATURES

NATURE

Hardy is one of the gratest writers about rural life in English. The presence of nature is an essential part of the story: at first nature is friendly, than turns into a hostile power.

LOVE

Love often ends in disillusion and is destroyed by marriage, or society, or by Fate.

PESSIMISM

He thinks that universe is indifferent to man, who is tormented by a malicious force.

FATALISM AND DETERMINISM

In his works man is often victim of an obscure fate, because of a predestination to failure and to unhappiness.

CHARACTERS

Hardy is interested to suffering people.

TECHNIQUE

As an architect he knows how to give unity to his novels, and he is 'cinematic' because of his abilty in descriptions of objects and scenes.