Thomas Hardy(Barry) Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928) was an English novelist and poet during the Victorian era that included such gifted writers as Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Elliot, Rudyard Kipling and Anthony Trollope to mention just a few. Of the long list of writers from that period, Thomas Hardy is my favorite.

Hardy, the eldest of four children, grew up in an isolated cottage on the edge of open heathland. Though he was often ill as a child, his early experience of rural life, with its seasonal rhythms and oral culture, was fundamental to much of his later writing. Though the young Hardy was able to find work in, which brought him both social and economic advancement, by the mid-1860s lack of funds and declining religious faith forced him to abandon his early ambitions of a university education and eventual ordination as an Anglican priest. His habits of intensive private study were then redirected toward the reading of poetry and the systematic development of his own poetic skills.

“Hardy’s break with the building trades occurred in the summer of 1872, when he undertook to supply Tinsley’s Magazine with the 11 monthly installments of A Pair of Blue Eyes—an initially risky commitment to a literary career that was soon validated by an invitation to contribute a serial to the far more prestigious Cornhill Magazine. The resulting novel, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), introduced Wessex for the first time and made Hardy famous by its agricultural settings and its distinctive blend of humorous, melodramatic, pastoral, and tragic elements. The book is a vigorous portrayal of the beautiful and impulsive Bathsheba Everdene and her marital choices among Sergeant Troy, the dashing but irresponsible soldier, William Boldwood, the deeply obsessive farmer; and Gabriel Oak, her loyal and resourceful shepherd.” (1) Encyl Brit.

Numerous full-length novels followed. The closing phase of Hardy’s career in fiction was marked by the publication of Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895), which are generally considered his finest novels. Though Tess is the most richly “poetic” of Hardy’s novels, and Jude the most bleakly written, both books offer deeply sympathetic representations of working-class figures: Tess Durbeyfield, the erring milkmaid, and Jude Fawley, the studious stonemason. In powerful, implicitly moralized narratives, Hardy traces these characters’ initially hopeful, momentarily ecstatic, but persistently troubled journeys toward eventual deprivation and death.

“Though technically belonging to the 19th century, these novels anticipate the 20th century in regard to the nature and treatment of their subject matter. Tess profoundly questions society’s sexual mores by its compassionate portrayal and even advocacy of a heroine who is seduced, and perhaps raped, by the son of her employer. She has an illegitimate child, suffers rejection by the man she loves and marries, and is finally hanged for murdering her original seducer. In Jude the Obscure the class-ridden educational system of the day is challenged by the defeat of Jude’s earnest aspirations to knowledge, while conventional morality is affronted by the way in which the sympathetically presented Jude and Sue change partners, live together, and have children with little regard for the institution of marriage. Both books encountered some brutally hostile reviews, and Hardy’s sensitivity to such attacks partly precipitated his long-contemplated transition from fiction to poetry.” (2) Brintannica.com

On a more personal note, I was particularly intrigued with Hardy’s portrayal of Tess’ parents, two of the most hideous creatures that ever walked the face of the earth. Because neither could be called ‘parent’ in even the most nominal sense, the reader realized almost from the outset that Tess will fall victim to their collective thoughtlessness and stupidity. Tess of the D’Urbervilles at times reads like a Greek Tragedy and is in all probability the most distressing books of Hardy’s many novels. But it is also a thing of beauty and amazingly scripted prose.

What follows is a random collection of Hardy’s writing over the years.

“Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"
"Yes."
"All like ours?"
"I don't know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like
the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and
sound - a few blighted." "Which do we live on - a splendid one
or a blighted one?"
"A blighted one.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language
which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama
of pain.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge

“Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles


“Why didn’t you tell me there was danger? Why didn’t you
warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they
read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the
chance of discovering in that way; and you did not help me!”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first
knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly
flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some
women's morals almost more than unbridled passion--the
craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may
do the man--was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I
was frightened. And then--I don't know how it was-- I couldn't
bear to let you go--possibly to Arabella again--and so I got to
love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began
in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me
without letting mine ache for you.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“People go on marrying because they can't resist natural
forces, although many of them may know perfectly well
that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a
life's discomfort.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“I shall do one thing in this life - one thing certain - that is,
love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man
cannot see close?”
― Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native

“The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its
achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history
lay, not among things done, but among things willed.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“If an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the
offense come than that the truth be concealed.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a
wedding, if I could be one without having a husband.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.”
― Thomas hardy

“You have never loved me as I love you--never--never! Yours
is not a passionate heart--your heart does not burn in a flame!
You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-- not a woman!”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“You overrate my capacity of love. I don't possess half the
warmth of nature you believe me to have. An unprotected
childhood in a cold world has beaten gentleness out of me.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the
sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur
underlying the sorriest things.”
Thomas Hardy

In closing I would like to cite the Encyclopedia Britannica’s biographical notes regarding the author one last time: “The continuing popularity of Hardy’s novels owes much to their richly varied yet always accessible style and their combination of romantic plots with convincingly presented characters. Equally important—particularly in terms of their suitability to film and television adaptation—is their nostalgic evocation of a vanished rural world through the creation of highly particularized regional settings. Hardy’s verse has been slower to win full acceptance, but his unique status as a major 20th-century poet as well as a major 19th-century novelist is now universally recognized.”

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