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Volume : II, Issue : VII, August - 2012 “PESSIMISM IN THOMAS HARDY'S NOVELS” ARVIND VASANTRAO DESHMUKH DOI : 10.9780/22307850, Published By : Laxmi Book Publication Abstract : In the early 1860s, after the appearance Darwin's Origin of Species (1859),
Thomas Hardy bravely challenged many of the sexual and religious conventions of the
Victorian age, but he soon adopted the mechanical-determinist view of universe's
cruelty, reflected in the inevitably tragic and self-destructive fates of his characters. In
his poems Hardy depicted rural life without sentimentality ? his mood was often stoically
hopeless. Fate plays a major role in many of Hardy's novels; both Tess of the
D'Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge contain various instances where its effects
are readily apparent. Moreover, Hardy's novels reflect a pessimistic view where fate, or
chance, is responsible for a character's ruin. The center of his novels was the rather
desolate and history-freighted countryside around Dorchester. Hardy's writing novels of
“Wessex,” the historical, Anglo-Saxon name he gave in fiction to his native Dorset, from
this time until 1895. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, published in 1891, was immediately
popular with the reading public. But it also caused controversy: Victorian moralists and
ecclesiastics were scandalized by the author's contention that his heroine was, in the
words of the novel's subtitle, a morally pure woman. Some readers were outraged by the
book's pessimism, by the unrelieved picture of torment and misery Hardy presented.
Orthodox believers in God were scandalized by his suggestions that the beneficent warm
God of Christianity seemed absent from the world Hardy depicted. Keywords : Article : Cite This Article : ARVIND VASANTRAO DESHMUKH, (2012). “PESSIMISM IN THOMAS HARDY'S NOVELS”. Indian Streams Research Journal, Vol. II, Issue. VII, DOI : 10.9780/22307850, http://oldisrj.lbp.world/UploadedData/0003.pdf References : - Gibson, James. Thomas Hardy: A Literary Life. London: Macmillan, 1996.
- Vann, J. Don. Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985.
- Herman, William R. "Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles." Explicator 18, 3 (December 1959), item no. 16 Morgan, Rosemarie. "Passive Victim? Tess of the D'Urbervilles." Thomas Hardy Journal 5, 1 (January 1989): 31-54.
- Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (New York: Routledge, 1988).
- Webber, Carl J. "Editorial Epilogue." An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress by Thomas Hardy.
- Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1935.
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