THOMAS HARDY AND HIS PHILOSOPHY TO A LARGE PART WITH THE DISCOVERY OF TRUTH- THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE...

“There is a discord in nature of existence. Man is working to one end, Destiny to another. These
ends may coincide or they may not. Either way it is Destiny who decides what shall happen.”
“One thing is certain. I do love you- past all compass and description. I love you to
oppressiveness, I, who have never before felt more than a pleasant passing fancy for any woman
I have ever seen. Let me look right into your moonlit face and dwell on every line and curve in
it.”
Among the modern novelists the most common conflict that exists is between sympathy and
judgment, immoral and rational preferences and unconscious allegiance and conscious
commitment. Those we admire are at times disliked by us and those we condemn, we at times
are attracted towards them. Hardy exhibits the dual characteristics of a “moral antagonism” to
the aristocrat and at the same time a predilection d’artiste for the aristocrat. Hardy shows the
individual destroyed though he has sympathy for the individual against the community. He both
envied rebellion and non-conformity but at the same time he thought that he approved them.
He rather, advocated the docile and the unaggressive. It is because of Hardy’s secret identifying
sympathy for the outlaw that The Mayor of Casterbridge has attained such gentleness. Twilight
was approaching in Egdon Heath on a Saturday afternoon in November. Although the sky was
still bright, the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath was acquiring darkness
gradually. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have felt inclined to continue work; but
looking at Heath he would have decided to go home. The appearance of the Heath added half an
hour to the evening, just as it delayed dawn, saddened noon, anticipated storms and intensified
a moonless midnight . Precisely at this transitional point of its nightly crawl into darkness, the
glory of the Egdon Heath began. The Heath was indeed, a near relation of the night.
Of all the women characters of Hardy, Tess claims our attention first, then Sue, then Eustacia
and then others. Hardy has named Tess as a pure woman- and also as a ‘standard woman’. Tess
undoubtedly possesses purity of the spirit. Tess’s morals are of the mind as well as of the heart.
Henry Charles Duffin says about Tess, ‘She is moral as any prude, her behavior, her thoughts,
her desires on all perilous occasions- with Alec d’ Urberville, early and late, with Clare, with her
other admirers- are unimpeachable, considered from the most critical code appoint of view.
Moreover, her shame and remorse are infinite. She has conscience that is quite amazing in view
of the probability that conscience is almost entirely a matter of what one has been taught in very
early childhood. Mentally and morally she is stainless, with strong intent to keep so, and
probably continues so from first to last; even during the latter period of dissipation with Alec
d’ Urberville her mind is drugged and dead with weariness, pain and despair, and so guiltless.
But of, the body of Tess was so full of vitality and youthfulness that it was antagonistic to her
soul, because Hardy more than once speaks of the splendid animal nature of Tess. Hardy has
further suggested very clearly that Tess’s mind ‘the touch of yieldingness that was just
necessary to allow the touch of animalism in her flesh to respond to great external pressure.’
Hardy says about Tess that ‘there was something of the habitude of the wild animal in the
unreflecting instinct with which she wandered on from place to place’ but then, she had at the
same time most rare and delightful mental qualities. She was high-strung, impressionable and
poetic. Her soul travels into space at night; she is heroic in her self- chastisement and self-
suffering, particularly in her endurance of the agonies of isolation. She has splendid faith in

Clare, she never feels- guilty of having wronged any creature on earth. Tess will always remain
as one of the most lovable of Hardy’s heroines.
Clym followed Eustacia while she was on her way home and detained her asking whether his
guess of her being a woman was correct. Eustacia admitted her disguise and told him that she
had taken up the disguise in order to shake off her depression and to get some excitement. At
this hour, when everything was under the garb of sleep, the Heath slowly appeared to wake and
listen. It became a place full of a watchful intentness. Every night the Heath’s Titanic form
seemed to wait for one final crisis, as if it had been waiting for centuries for the final, massive
over-throw. The Heath presented a solemn and majestic sight of elemental grandeur.
Egdon Heath is all pervasive and it holds the action of the novel. It is an extended image of the
nature in which man is a part, in which he is caught, which conditions his very being, and which
cares nothing for him. The Heath, apart from other functions has a larger significance, as a
symbol of inhumanity. Hardy portrays the rustic people as human inhabitants. Only these
rustics remain unhurt at the end of Hardy’s novels since they have no ambitions and high
aspirations. The rustics are as much the part of Nature, and of the life of the Heath, as the toads
in March that make noises like very young ducks. These rustics provide some realistic effect to
the story. Hardy has given a vivid and imaginary description of the Heath. Hardy combines the
botanist’s microscope and the astronomer’s telescope. He has keenly observed even the smallest
movement in the Heath. He knows the breaths and pulses of the country-side. His approach to
the Heath was highly poetic. Egdon has a colossal human existence.”It was at present a place
perfectly accordant with man’s nature-neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace,
unmeaning, nor tame; but like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and
mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude
seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.”
Hardy’s attitude to Egdon Heath shows a rich complexity. One of the most important aspects of
Egdon Heath is that it dominates the lives of the human characters, infusing into them its
grandeur and its melancholy. The approach of the characters to the Heath is different. For
instance, Eustacia considered the Heath as her cross and shame and the potential cause of her
death.
Arabella is a unique character in Hardy’s novels in the sense that she is full of impudence,
coarseness and animal depravity. She can be contrasted with Sue who possesses fineness and
spirituality. Lady Constantine is weak and stupid. But of, Mrs. Yeobright is noble-hearted, she
has great strength of character and yet she is not admirable because of shrewdness and humour
than her husband. Miss Fancy Day is not a great woman like any of the women of the first group
we have analysed, and her character is quite interesting.
Eustacia is quite the extreme of Sue. In Sue the spirit governs the flesh while in Eustacia the
flesh governs the spirit. Eustacia is all flesh but glorious and exultant flesh, she is full of blood-
red passions, and that is why, she has been justly called an epicure in emotion. Elizabeth Jane
does not impress anybody at the first sight but on closer intimacy one can bind in her a sober
mien, a cold reasonableness, and a subtle soul. She has got a sense of humour to suffer all sorts
of buffets of fortune and this quality is not very common to the women characters in Hardy’s
novels. She is undoubtedly an intellectual type but she is quite distinct from other intellectual

women of Hardy. She is, however, very modest and simple in the earlier stages but in the later
stages she is fond of good clothes and other articles to show off her dignity and aristocracy. Like
Susan, Elizabeth Jane too possesses some of the characteristics of Henchard, particularly, his
waywardness and sensitiveness but then; she has considerable control over her emotions which
unfortunately Henchard does not possess. Hardy calls her the flower of Nature in-spite of the
fact that she is single-hearted and not sufficiently fair to Henchard although she makes sufficient
amends for unfeelingness at the close of the story during the dying moments of Henchard.
Mrs.Yeobright took Thomasin along with her to “The Quiet Woman” inn where they
encountered Wildeve. Wildeve asked Thomasin why she had left in such haste and refused to
indulge in any further arguments with her. Wildeve asked Thomasin why she had left in such
haste and refused to indulge in any further arguments with her. Wildeve then explained to Mrs.
Yeobright that it was a stupid mistake on his part that interrupted the wedding that morning.
The marriage license had been made for the city of Budmouth, and he had take Thomasin to
Anlebury as he had not bothered to read through the license. Due to his stay for sometime at
Budmouth, he originally wanted to get married there, but later he had decided to get married at
Anglebury forgetting the necessity of a new license. Mrs. Yeobright said that his foolish mistake
had brought a disgrace to her and would be something very unpleasant for her and her family. It
was a great injury; she said and could become a scandal. Wildewve asserted that there was no
question of disgrace or scandal and also asked for her permission to speak to Thomasin alone
for a few minutes.
The scenery of Egdon Heath in the background of twilight presented a sight which was lofty
without severity, impressive without being showy, emphatic in its counsellings and grandly
simple. Only in summer days did its mood touch the level of joviality. Its intensity was earnest
rather than being brilliant, and this intensity was often reached during winter darkness,
tempests and mists. The storm was Egdon Heath‘s lover, the wind its friend and then it became
the home of strange phantoms. The Heath, at this hour was a place corresponding to human
nature-neither ghastly – hateful nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning nor tame; but like
man, slighted and enduring, it was singularly colossal and mysterious in its dark monotony. Its
face suggested tragically possibilities.
As she reached the top, the woman gave a deep sigh, apparently at something in her mind and
looked through a hand held telescope in the direction of “The Quiet Woman” inn. She then
looked at an hour –glass placed next to her, and noticed that all the sand had slipped through.
She started following a foot track and headed towards another bonfire which had attracted the
attention of the group of men and women on Rainbarrow. When she reached the bonfire which
was still burning, she met a little boy who had stayed back to feed the fire with pieces of wood.
The boy told her that she had taken too long to come back. At that moment, her grandfather
called her indoor by her name, Eustacia. She replied that she would stay out there for a little
while more ashamed asked him to go to bed. She then asked the boy to keep feeding the fire a
little longer and requested him to wait for the sound of a frog jumping into the pond in order to
inform her about it. She also promised him, six pence in return. The boy unwilling got to his
work, inwardly wanting to go home.

The little boy who was feeding the fire felt frightened on his way home, of some unusual fear-y
sounds and things. So he returned to Eustacia’s house, wanting to request him to send a servant
to accompany him home. However, he spotted Eustacia talking to Wildeve, and after over-
hearing for a few minutes, decided not to interrupt them and headed on to his way home. On the
Chilly evening Eustacia strained her eyes standing on the heath in the direction of Mrs.
Yeobright’s house. After sometimes she saw a man and two women walking along the road. She
moved aside from their path. They went past her and the man bid her good-night. She also
whispered something. It was Clym Yeobright who had just arrived and had spoken to her, but
she failed to see his appearance.
Hardy describes Eustacia in his own words,” As far as social ethics were concerned
Eustacia approached the savage state, though in emotion she was all the while an
epicure. She had advanced to the secret recesses of sensuousness, and yet had hardly
crossed the threshold of conventionality.’ Sue also has been branded as an epicure in
emotion but with what a difference! Eustacia is conspicuous among Hardy’s women by
her rich sensuousness, but her sensuous nature is incapable of thought. Her indolence
hides her smoldering passions. Every action of hers is the result of some strong and
impetuous desire. She is made of nothing but instinct, and as such, she can never resist
an impulse and such a woman is bound to play the readiest victim to all kinds of follies
and frailties. She knows only emotions and animal wants. Reason is completely absent
in her. Her very soul is consumed in the fire of the flesh.
Eusytacia Vye’s passions and instincts were unlike those of a model woman. She was full limbed
and heavy but as a cloud when touched. Her light hair fell over her fore-head like night
descending upon the evening in the west. Her eyes were pagan full of nocturnal mysteries. She
had a lovely mouth and exquisitely lined lips. Her beauty was memorable as roses, rubies and
tropical midnights; she moved like the tides of the sea; her voice recalled a musical instrument.
Re-arranged of herself in a dim light, would give her a figure of one of the higher female deities.
Egdon Heath was always at war with society, an untamable thing. Civilization was its enemy and
its soil always looked the same. This great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which
could never be claimed by the sea. The sea changed, changing the fields, rivers, villages and the
people, yet Egdon remained the same. An old highway crossed its lower levels and a more aged
barrow (mound) stood prominently over it.
“Three antagonistic growths had to be kept alive his mother’s trust in him, his plan of becoming
a teacher and Eustacia’s happiness.”
One can see the partial application of this method, for the first time in English writers, like
George Eliot and others, but the method is fully developed in the novels of Hardy. Hardy is the
best exponent of this naturalism on philosophical realism. He might have exaggerated, a little
here or there in Jude the Obscure but on the whole his study of the Wessex life is deep and
thorough; and he willingly eschews the members of the upper-class society, whose characters
cannot easily be screened. Further his characters lose their individuality when they are out of
their local and natural surroundings; but within it they never fail. And again upon the heads of
these Tesses and Henchards, the sins of their fathers and ancestors are continually visited.

These writers are inimical to the theory of “Free Will” and they do not make the individual
responsible for his own acts. They aim at the reproduction of ‘a slice of life’. Men, as they see
them, are not the authors of their miseries and sorrows and hence they are helpless in warding
them off. There are other manifold causes which govern our will and doing. The influence of
heredity and of environment goes a long way in determining the behavior and character of a
man. Again, these writers are hostile to everything that is unscientific and illogical and is merely
imaginative or inventive. They have an implicit faith in determinates. Hence, they make no
useless effort of preaching and reforming the society. They give a merely naked description of it.
Hardy can be classed with those writers of the modern age who pride themselves for being the
followers of Ibsen (drama) and Zola (fiction). One of the many effects which the growing
scientific knowledge had upon fiction was the emergence of the “experimental Novel”, which
was for the first time evolved by Zola in his Les Rougon- Macquart series. These ‘experimental
writers’ or ‘naturalists’ as they are called, discarded the ‘invention method’ of an earlier date for
the accuracy of a press reporter.
The crowd that had gathered on the barrow was boys and men from neighbouring villages who
made a pile of their furze faggots and set them on fire. It was a bonfire which could now be seen
burning at various places within the bounds of the entire district. The bonfires are the direct
remnants of ancient Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies, though the custom commonly
believed was the commemoration of the gunpowder plots. The fire also symbolizes a
spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against the doming of winter, the season that brings
coldness, misery and death. The only tonic that could drive away h loneliness in Egdon was her
desire to be loved to madness. More than any particular lover, what she desired most was
passionate love. Her desire went on deepening with her loneliness. She was more interested in
the intensity of love than loyalty of love. She was a social non-conformist with a forwardness of
mind. She never valued holidays or pleasure or rest. She would always do her domestic duties
on Sundays, frequently sing a psalm on Saturday nights and read the Bible on a week-day.
Hardy, the great, humane, simple and primitive novelist did not make an attempt to explain
anything with the help of elusive symbolic content as technical subtly. He boldly presents his
matter in an obvious and direct way where enough importance is given to the human material.
The directness of Hardy is clearly brought out in the great memorable scene of the sale of the
wife in The Mayor of Casterbridge. This story is presented as simply as scriptures history. It is
not easy to forget the furmenty seller who appears as a magistrate before Henchard and who
narrates her story about the ‘large crime’ which she had witnessed twenty years back. This is a
very important moment in the book and would have normally been dealt within twenty pages
or so but Hardy with his directness slides over the scene in merely four pages. The strength of
the novel lies not in the subtly or elaboration of art but in the imagined material itself.
That evening Wildieve went to meet Eustacia in her house at Mistover and told her what had
happened. Wildeve then asked her to accompany him to America but Eustacia said that she
cannot decide before one week which he promptly gave her to consider the proposition. She did
not want to consider him then just because the other woman did not want to marry him. She did
not want to be treated as a stop-gap. She wanted time to think over the matter when Wildeve
reminded her of her declaration of love for him and her promise to accompany him anywhere

which she had made one month ago. Then they separated, planning to meet again shortly at
that hour a week hence.
Hardy’s treatment of sex shows his modernity. He deliberately breaks with the sex taboos of the
earlier Victorians and seriously reflects over the problems of love and sex and the institution of
marriage. He already anticipates, though unconsciously, the sex theories of Freud and the
psycho-analytical method, when he considers sex as a question not-outside of life but as a
source of achieving the principle life. The story now moves a step further. We find Eustacia very
much interested in Clym. Clym becomes a fascinating figure for her because he was associated
with the fashionable world of Paris. In this chapter Eustacia’s character is also revealed a bit,
where we see that she is a highly imaginative and emotional person. She is already in love with
Clym without even seeing him. Hardy tells us that if she had some self-control, she would have
removed this emotion of love by sheer reasoning.
Hardy may fail to hate the modernists’ conception of plot but in his thoughts he is truly of our
own times. Though by nature emotional, he always followed the dictates of his intellect; and
thought he lived in and wrote of a place which was Far From The Maddening Crowd yet he
showed how easily he was being affected by new theories of scientific progress which were
destructive of the Biblical faith. He takes a situation but does not deal with it as a poet or as an
entertainer as the early Victorians used to do. He rather grapples with the situation before him
and then hints at the conclusion. As an empiricist he truly states that the sum-total of the misery
in life is more than the sum-total of happiness. Thomasin was full of apology for having
humiliated her aunt by failing to have got married. However she assured her aunt, that Wildeve
had promised her to marry within a day or two. Explaining her aunt’s enquiries, she said that
something had gone wrong with the marriage. License and Wildeve could not get another
proper license the same day. On being asked why he himself had not brought her back,
Thomasin said that, on finding that marriage had been postponed she felt very ill and had
therefore slipped away. Mrs. Yeobright resolved to get an explanation from Wildeve himself.
The conversion among the characters provides the comic element in the story. We laugh at
these characters and also sympathies with them. Apart from the comedy, these rustics are also a
source of information to us as regards their social matters. Finally, ‘The Custom of the Country’
introduces us to one of the main characters of the novel- Mrs. Yeobright. Her normal manner
among the rustic folk was somewhat reticent, the result of her consciousness of a superior
communicative power. The credit of effecting a revolution in the field of ideas was reserved for
Hardy. Historically, one can say that Hardy is one of the main transitional figures between the
popular moralists and the popular entertainers of Victorian fiction and the serious, visionary,
which are the symbolic characteristics of the novelists of today. Hardy’s novel-writing career is
reflective of the great movement from the Vicorian to the Modern. Desperate remedies (1871)
his first published novel has much in common with the Victorian sensation-novel. The novel
before it could be completely modernized had to look for the publication of the story of a new
type of pure woman (Tess) of a new type of man of character (Henchard). Hardy contributes
many new things to the English novel. He is the first and greatest ‘regional novelist’. Again he
suggests for the first time the idea of ‘epical- tragical’ in connection with the novel. The reader
finds in him a curious blend of diagonically opposed talents. He is essentially a poet and yet

none can challenge his realistic outlook. He is a true representative of his times who in part
revolted against the tyranny of worn-out conceptions.
The situations in the novels of Hardy are full of intrigues and hang upon the ironical decision of
a cruel and reckless fate. The happiness of the people depends upon the whims of ‘chance’. The
endings in his novels such as The Return of the Native or The Woodlanders mark no distance
travelled from the ancient method of writing. Of course, his heroine may not be such were dolls
or automations as we find in Duickens, but at the same time, they are not as fully developed as
Clara Middleton (Egoist: Meredith) or Anna Karenina. Above all it is in the choice of the
structure of his novels, that he essentially belongs to the past.
Hardy’s blend of traditionalism and modernism is most vividly brought out in The Mayor of
Casterbridge. The tragedy of Henchard is similar to the traditional tragedies of Lear, Hamlet and
Oedipus and similar to the existence of a moral order in the ancient way in which experiences of
man work as the drama of his salvation and the drama of his damnation. This moral order rests
satisfied only when it comes down to the total humiliation of the offender. Henchard’s self-
alienation which is an impulse of self-destruction is drama, tied with modern traits.
Another distinctive quality of Hardy’s humour is that it is verbal humour, dependent for its
effect upon the particular words he uses. That imaginative strain that was intrinsic to his
imaginative process gives him a delight in speech, so that his humour has a literal quality. As a
rule, Hardy is content to observe and record, without probably, more than bowdlerizing touch
here and there; but sometimes the grotesqueries of these rustic folk suggest in their
presentment a little dressing up by the literary artist. The poetic strain in his nature makes his
outlook more and more subjective, humour is by definition impersonal while satire is personal.
Though Hardy had the power of detachment yet he is at best in his ironical mode. Often his
humour is flavoured with bitterness. In his later novels specially, Hardy speaks of a brooding
spirit (sometimes called the ‘president of the Immortals’) which is keen at finding faults and
foibles of life. These faults being incurable give him occasion for ironic or satiric laughter. But of,
it makes him all the more humanistic for he realizes the impotency of man while at war with
these higher powers. This is the grim of life which Hardy presents.
Almost all the humour in the Wessex novels that is worth preserving is rustic humour- caught
up with joy from the lips of the villagers themselves, redundancies removed, the form perfected,
but otherwise the pure unadulterated essence of the nineteenth century rustic humour. It is
rustic; it is elemental; it is grotesque; it is Gothic; it is traditional. One may note, Hardy’s mode
of conveying this humour is leisurely i.e., Elizabethan and it is adorned with a flourish of
whimsical fancy. Hardy’s humour is throughout ironic, except of course, when he is dealing with
his rustic folk. He, unlike, Dickens, does not exaggerate a thing to the point of ludicrousness, but
takes the privilege of a scientist and realist to make it more accurate and more poignant. In the
later novels he seems to inveigh the whole human society and human civilization as is obvious
from Jude the Obscure but in his earlier novels he is purely and outright a fatalist. The whims
and lopsidedness of characters do not interest him as much as the ironies of circumstances- for
example the double pledging under the trees in A Pair of Blue Eyes. His irony is pointed and
well-devised and “Power behind things wears always a mocking smile to Hardy.” He finds that
the higher powers which control the destinies of a Tess or a Jude are playing hide and seek with

human fate and their attitude towards us is “As flies to wanton boys are we to Gods- They kill us
for their sport.” And occasions like these confer opportunities on Hardy for a grim smile over
the failure and wrongs of men which they commit out of sheer helplessness. There are moments
when his irony and satire lose humour and are purely devastating. The death of Jude Fawley or
that of Henchard or the scene of the baptism of Tess’s dying child or the death of Sue’s children
is examples of this kind. But in, the death scene of Sue’s children the horror culminates in a
touch of humour; “Done because we are so many.”
Had there been no humour, his tragedies would have been terribly grim and grave, much
gloomy than they are now. His sunny humour dispels a bit of that all pervading gloom.
The sum and substance of Hardy’s conception is serious and tragic; such a view of life
necessarily seems to exclude all consideration of gaiety and mirthfulness. Critics like Duffin
altogether deny the existence of humour in Hardy. “Hardy was not a humourist in any proper
sense. He was quick to see the humour of things, but he was not humerously built and again he
was a Teutonic rather than a Celtic in his temper.” Though we may not agree with such an
extreme view yet it must be admitted that the humour we find in Hardy’s novels is not a genial
quality.
Yet occasionally there are glimpses of a momentary flash of humour in Hardy which are as deep
as the rustic laughter divorced from its broadness and superficiality. Again there are passages of
merely humerous description whereby arrival action is described or the purpose of some
passing act is guessed at by the help of either negation or exaggeration, as the dialogue in Far
From the Maddening Crowd “Shepherds would like to hear the pedigree of your life, father,
would not you shepherds”? “Ay, that I should”, said Gabriel, with the heartiness of a man who
had longed to hear it for several months.
“It is next to impossible for an appreciative woman to have a positive repugnance towards an
unusually handsome and gifted man.”
So he is a pessimist. But of, there is a dark, grimly dark and gloomy as well as a bright side of his
philosophy. He is not a pessimist- a misanthrope like Hobbes who thinks man essentially a
beast, mean, abject, low detestable and an odious creature. He is a pessimist like the classical
writers who consider Man merely a puppet in the hands of mighty Fate. Simply Hardy is more
gloomy than they are. He always sees and finds Fate unjust, cruel, blind and jealous of happiness
of mankind. He considers the ways of that Unknown Will immoral, unjust and condemnable. In
fact, throughout his creative work there is a latent philosophy of revolt and revenge.
Humour is not the quality that one might expect to find in Hardy, so grand and as gloomy as he
is. But of, it is there all tight. Nor is it incongruous with the rest of his achievement. Though
Hardy is lacking in humour, he is everywhere quick to mark the absurd and the grotesque. The
essential nature of his humour is rustic. The rustic characters are not the victims of the irony of
fate and are, therefore, the happiest creations of Hardy. They are always in a jolly or buoyant
mood, and cheer up the reader by their rustic speeches and tones. Hence this humour has been
described by various adjectives such as rustic, elemental, grotesque, gothic, traditional, etc.
Here we are suddenly reminded of the same method which George Eliot had employed in
novels, The Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede. The examples of such humour for instance are the

wonderful chapters abounding in dialogues and characterization of Oak and Weatherbury in the
Malta House (Far From the Madding Crows) or the instance of the rustic philosophy of greed
and mother wit noted by Mrs. Henchard. Such examples of pure mirthfulness can be gathered
from all the other novels of Hardy as well.
When Hardy sees life’s little ironies besides the ironies of fate and chance, he indulges in grim
laughter. Here it may be said, as Lord David Cecil says, that this humour and the mode of
conveying it is Elizabethan. It is pregnant with the Elizabethan fondness for the macabre and it
is adorned with a flourish of whimsical fancy. Like the grave-diggers; most of the characters in
Hardy’s novels create a grim humour out of their comment upon funerals and coffins: “What a
weight you will be, my lord for our arms to lower under the aisle of Endelston church some
day?”
Though Hardy was deeply influenced by the progress of science in his day, yet the poet in him
never died and this poetic strain composed the imaginative vision of the author. Hardy’s
humour is partly intellectual, but it is not confined merely to situations. It is poetic and has a
literary flavor. Sometimes it is verbal and arises from the quaint tones of the characters. Again it
arises out of the way of description as the description of Gabriel Oak’s watch. “It was older
than, grandfather went either too fast or not at all.”This humour which is full of ironies has little
place for grace and finish; on the contrary the humour of Hardy is ghastly and hideous. However
his satire is not as sharp as that of Jonathan Swift or of Samuel Butler. He feels too much the
burden of humanity upon himself and he feels the pity to things and beings. Therefore his satire
and irony mingle with tears.
H. C.Duffin classifies Hardy’s humour into three categories according to the range of people.
First the thorough-going humourist likes Shakespeare or Carlyle. The opposite of this is the non-
humourist as we find in Emily Bronte and others. Hardy belongs to a third category by which he
takes a little portion of life seriously and laughs boisterously at the rest. This type of humour at
its best is to be found in novelists like Dickens and Thackeray and Meredith whose sense of
ridiculous meets with general approval. Hardy did believe, in the saying of Carlyle that “Humour
is a sympathy with the seamy side of things”, and in this respect Hardy is no insignificant rival of
Dickens and Meredith in his employment of the faculty of humour. But of, then Hardy does not
leave his readers merely on a note of despondency. Time and again he emphasizes the fact that
we are in the grip of the “Immanent Will” and therefore it is not in our power either to improve
or to deteriorate as is the case with Henchard. The only way, he points out, is a lesson and
application of is interestedness and to cherish no false illusion. But on, at the same time he
suggests that we must make contribution to the happiness of our children and of the future
generation. For this we try to change and to remould our instincts with the help of an intelligent
grasp of the existing defects. An attitude of indifference and irresponsibility is often the cause of
tragedy. “Tragedy”, says Hardy, “should arise from the gradual closing in on a situation that
comes of ordinary human passions, prejudices and ambitions by the reason of the character
taking no trouble to ward off the disastrous events produced by the said passion, prejudices and
ambitions.”
The primary aim of this provision of humour is to make us laugh. The mood which inspires them
is the mood of simple, genial enjoyment. That is why Hardy’s novels lack satiric, caustic, bitter

humour. He does not poke fun at the faults, follies and foibles of his characters. He is too much
of a realist to take pleasure in caricature; too little of the moralist to make effective use of satire.
But of, one thing one should bear in mind saves when dealing with his rustic characters, Hardy’s
humour usually takes the form of irony. If human beings desire amelioration, the only way to do
so is to chalk out a code of mortality which is in conformity with the changing values of life by a
thorough study of evolutionary science and a complete knowledge of the prevailing defects. If
the “primal cause” is destitute of all mortality then Hardy would have human endeavour being
directed to force mortality upon it, but that is still a distant vision.
Hardy is primarily an artist and as an artist he depicts the tragic side of life. He has stated his
position very clearly: “Different natures find their tongues in the prism of different
spectacle…that to whichever of these of life a writer’s instinct of expression the more readily
responds, to that he should allow it to respond.” In other words, Hardy’s temperament has
conditioned his tragic outlook on life. As an empiricist he maintains that “happiness is merely an
episode in the general drama of pain.”When he looked at this universe, he was baffled not to find
any Causa de proposal. He saw plainly that in our day-today life we desire and expect
something which, in the long run, proves merely an illusion. Everywhere I his novels there is the
irony of circumstances, for instance, the double pledging under the tree (A Pair of Blue Eyes) or
the slipping away of Tess’s letter under the carpet, a fine irony which even a noted ironist like
Anatole France would fail to invent, may be met with in Two on a Tower. The whole story of
Eustavia Vye, is a irony of circumstance. Behind these ‘chance-happenings’ of the ‘cross-
casualties’, as Hardy prefers to call them, there seems to be some sinister power which mocks at
the fruitless attempts of these human weaklings. According to his own interpretation,
abandoned by God, treated with scorn by nature, man lies helplessly at the mercy of those
‘purblind doomsters’ accidents, chance and time, from which he had to endure injury and insult
from the cradle to the grave. This fate is always wrathful and, raising its finger at the man says,
“Since thou art born, thou shalt suffer.”A cursory perusal of Hardy’s output will give us the
impression that the novelist’s attitude towards life is of “unquestioned acceptance.” Everything,
every action, even every will and desire of ours is preordained, and that men try in vain to seek
happiness and glory. Hardy is of the opinion that we should never defy the ‘First Cause’ and
humbly accept whatever comes. However, this attitude of “unquestioned acceptance” is equally
an attitude of “dogged defiance.” In novel after novel, (except of course his epic The Dynasts,
where even such Titanic figures as that of Napoleon and others are reduced to shadowy
nothingness) he creates a number of characters, who throw the gauntlet against the so-called
“Purblind doomsters.”Instead of Eustacia, it is Clym who has come. Suddenly, they hear a sound.
It is the sound of somebody falling in the stream. Clym fears that it is Eustacia. He runs towards
the spot and Wildeve follows him with a lamp. Both of them jump into the water to rescue her.
Painter of the darker side of life as he was, it is no wonder if people gave him the appellative of a
“pessimist”. The opinion is both right and wrong. Sometimes, Hardy does vehemently oppose a
system which runs throughout this world that he gives the singular impression of being turned
into a pessimist. Hardy calls a novel essentially ‘an impression’ and he himself makes no
pretensions to philosophy. But if, one reads his novels one after the other, one is bound to find a
series of consistent thoughts, which systematically arranged will form his philosophy of life, and
the philosophy so formed, will essentially be pessimistic. Temperamentally, Hardy has a leaning

towards the somber. “To have a complete picture of life,” Hardy thinks, “It is necessary to have a
full view at the worst. “Though developed in brain, Hardy was inordinately feeble in physique.
Even in his adolescent days, he used to sit ‘Like patience on a monument’ and ‘often smiling at
grief’. He was easily moved to tears. He used to relish the full flavor of a joke if it was profane or
sardonic intone. In his early youth he saw two men hanged from a tree which made an
ineffaceable mark upon his plastic brain. He, it is said, never missed a funeral though he rarely
attended a marriage party. All these events coupled with a want of health tended to make his
outlook life somber. For the present, the only thing there which human beings can do to escape
the wrath of the Supreme Power is a proper adjustment of their lives and instincts to the
existing conditions (environment). That is the only way to make limited opportunities
endurable; and this had to be accomplished by man’s labour. For this, one mist not expects any
deliverance from above. The concluding note in The Dynasts also is equally inspiring for while it
does not give any hope it at least excludes despair. If everything depends upon human toil, then,
it must be said, that hardy, if he is a pessimist, is a healthy and optimistic pessimist and thus he
himself insists upon being called by the word borrowed from Aeschylus, “an evolutionary
ameliorist.”
“But surely you loved me?”
“Yes. But I wanted to let it stop there, and go on always as mere lovers; until”
The reddleman is on his way to Thomasin’s house along with her and he also hears the noise. He
sends Thomasin with two men and he goes toward the pool. The two men, send along with
Thomasin also arrive at the spot and with their help the reddleman is able to lift Clym and
Wildeve out. Then after another search they find the body of Eustacia.But of, Hardy’s concept of
life is not so somber as to exclude all possibilities of happiness. The very existence of happiness
even though as an episode inspires a hope in the human bosom besides, the lower world in
Hardy or the world of rustic characters is joyful and content. Only characters with potential
greatness, who strive to raise above a given negation- a sign of pessimism but one affirmation of
human nobility- the sign of a tragic sense of life. “Tess was not crushed into anything lower by
the cruelty of life that bore down so leadenly upon her against its pressure raised herself into
something of infinite nobility”, as Duffin says. In the tragedies of Shakespeare “Character is
Destiny” but in the tragedies of Hardy “Destiny is Character.” His characters are not the
architects of their fortune and nor can they influence their own actions. For them everything is
determined. But of, then they have their tragic faults too just as the tragic characters of
Shakespeare. Henchard is impulsive, Jude is ambitious. Tess is too innocent. Eustacia wants “to
be loved to madness”. Jude’s flaw is an internal evil symbolized by instincts and emotions chiefly
(a) sex-desire which is as blind a desire as the “will live” and (b) ambition. These internal evils
are greatly aggravated by external environment such as nature (Prime Cause, Cross-casualties,
Environment etc.) and society and modern scientific progress and these things appear positively
as villains in the novels of Hardy. After receiving the signal from Eustacia, Wildeve makes
preparation to help her in her flight. He is inwardly wishing to accompany her though the
arrangement is that he would merely drive her to Budmouth harbor and leave her there. He sets
the carriage ready and drives it to a spot by the roadside at twenty minutes to twelve some
quarter of a mile below the inn and begins waiting for Eustacia. The whole system is set at
naught by the mischievous maneuvers of that Supreme Power which delights in inflicting pain

upon others. These higher powers shower their malignity upon mankind and plan everything
maliciously. Lovers are made only to be crossed. Children are born where they are not wanted
and when the environment is antagonistic to their bringing up. Father Time’s remark and his
anger towards his parents of their not having taken his permission to bring him on the earth is
really the most sardonic. Hardy ascribes the whole tragedy of humanity to some
“Unsympathetic First Cause.” In his earlier novels this Supreme Power is exhibited as essentially
evil though in his later works he suggests that it is rather blind and indifferent. According to him
“Providence is nothing if not coquettish, which brings rains when they are not needed and never
a drop of water when it is highly urgent.” It even takes a malicious delight in killing us without
cause. The concluding note in Tess of the d’Urbervilles is also peculiarly Hardian: “Justice was
done and the President of the Immorals (an Aeshylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.”
But of, there is one essentially great difference between the tragedies of Hardy and those of
Shakespeare. ‘Pity’ is aroused by both the writers; but whereas Shakespeare arouses ‘awe’ and
‘healthy terror’, the terror aroused in Hardy’s novels very often degenerates into melodrama. In
Shakespeare, the flaw arises mainly from the romantic mould of the hero. It is in his power to
curb it, but, constituted as he is, he does not like to be otherwise; not so with Hardy-with whose
characters there is the question of ‘compulsion’ and not of ‘liking’. Environment and heredity
compel a Hardy character to follow a particular course of action. The father of Eustacia Vye was
a musician and her grandfather was a navy-man. She takes the refinement and the
adventurousness of both and consequently wants to be loved to madness in Paris. But for,
factors of environment and heredity are, in turn, helpless in the hands of some Supreme Power.
The result is that the denouement depends upon the ironical decision of some cruel ‘chances’.
The plots of all his stories depend on such change- happenings.”Accident” according to Hardy,
“are common enough in fact”, though perhaps not in fiction. But at, if a tragedy is made
completely dependent upon them, the universal impression of waste is so strong upon us that
we grow indignant upon this whole scheme. Hardy’s attitude, in reality, is neither an attitude of
calm resignation nor that of dogged persistence. For want of a better phrase this attitude may
perhaps be best defined as of “realism”, and nothing but realism.’ Hardy preaches no other-
worldly compensation and scarcely believed, as Browning does, that the broken arcs will be
united in heaven’s perfect round. He himself had seen many trials and tribulation of life true
lovers being estranged, true aspiration meeting frustration, the never happening of the desired
and the ever happening of the unexpected and the undesired. He did not see anywhere
“Nature’s holy plan” on the contrary, nature, to him, is red in “tooth and claw”. He felt that God is
not in heaven and all’s not right with the world. Had it not been so, human beings might have
attained a bright and sunny life. Hardy is not an out and out pessimist though he sometimes
gives an impression of becoming so. A writer does not become a pessimist for the simple reason
that he is not an optimist. In fact Hardy is too great and original a writer to be tied down by any
formula. He maintains again and again that he is not a philosopher. To Hardy “a novel is an
impression, strike him without any intention whatever.” His novels, according to his own
definition, are “a series of fugitive impressions and do not aim at a consistent philosophy. All the
bodies are put into Wildeve’s carriage and taken to Wildeve’s house. The signs of life are left
with Clym, but the other two are dead. Clym gets recovered by morning. He says that she is the
second woman whom he killed that year. He wished that he himself should have died instead of
the two. This is an important chapter and Eustacia’s death occurs in this chapter. Hardy does

not make it clear whether this is an accident or suicide. Wildeve is so much in love with
Eustacia, and for her he sacrifices his life. This chapter forms the climax of the tragedy of
Eustacia Wildeve. Clym is filled with great self –reproach and holds himself responsible for the
death of his mother and now Eustacia. He laments “I was a great cause of my mother’s death;
and now I am the chief cause of hers.”Seeing all this, Hardy thinks it is necessary to prepare ‘The
Funeral of God’. But of, it is not here but rather in his epic ‘The Dynasts that one can find the
clearest exposition of Hardy’s philosophy. The “Immanent Will”, according to Hardy, is not cruel
so much as it is indifferent. It is merely blind and purposeless. Here it must be noticed that
Hardy’s philosophy has been dynamic rather than static. It has been improving and becoming
healthier. In his earlier novels up-to The Mayor of Casterbridge the gloom has been
unnecessarily intensified with the occlusion of a single ray of hope but in his last novels- Tess
and Jude, there are possibilities of happiness. Here is no blind impugning of God and Fate but a
shifting stand taken against a society and a code of convention seriously infecting human
happiness. There is a suggestion that human endeavors can rectify and can do away with a
system which has outlived its cutlet.
Now Hardy does not realize this thing. So his tragidies are not Sophoclean. They lack the
Athenian calmness and enlightenment. Hardy knew too much. He has outgrown the old Greek
anti-pessimism. He has chosen the classics for his guide and then refused to put their mortality
into practice and so lost their virtue. He no longer believes that mortals through suffering learn
wisdom and gain anything at all. So he chooses those heroes and heroines who lead self-
conscious and insulted lives. He chooses those who run after joy and suffer. Lie does not justify
the ways of God. Compelled by the demands of his art, by the background and the need of a
progressive story, to make his stories more tragic than they need be, to pick-nut a tortuous and
bloodstained pattern in the carpet of life, he employed the contrivance of malevolent chance
again and again. It spoiled the superb beauty of his tragedies. However his overcharged
pessimism appealed to the two tendencies of the time:
The disillusionment of the intellectuals and the sentimentality of the real or pseudo-humanists’
of melancholy is the note of refinement. Thomas hardy is a truly great novelist. He casts his spell
on us, but we cannot ignore his defects. He is a great painter and creator of characters. He
depicts the landscape vividly, begins his tales brilliantly and ends them eloquently. But of, he
does not paint all these things uniformly. The Wessex novels are not sustained in their grandeur
and excellence. Every novel is characterized by some defects. Some of these novels are very bad,
they make a regularly sinuous curve. That is why David Cecil says that Hardy’s genius works in
flashes. When this flash comes it dazzles the reader. When it goes the reader gropes about in
wilderness. He has the creative genius understands his materials artistically, but he lacks the
critical qualities which are necessary for presenting all the imaginative conceptions to the best
of advantage. He is a great artist but not a great craftsman. The range of his novels is very
limited. They are confined to the life and people of Wessex which is a literary region created by
Hardy himself. He is always concerned with certain types of characters, situations and scenes
only. When he goes beyond these things, he treads on slippery grounds. He deals with the
struggle of common people with their destiny. These people are born to work hard, fall in love
and die. They do not do anything else. His comedy is also confined to the humour of rustics only.
The limits imposed by the scene are increased by those of the perspective in which he sees

them. Hardy does not deal with many aspects of human nature. His man is one who faces the
universe. He is not concerned with man as a member of the family, a citizen or a businessman.
When Hardy works outside his range, he shows weakness. He cannot analyse the working of
human kind. He fails to paint a modern sceptic in Fitzpiers or a modern thinker in Knight. Each
of them is but a collection of views, imperfectly clothed in flesh and blood. When Hardy invents
such characters, he lapses into philosophic inconsistency. On the one hand he holds
circumstances as responsible for the downfall of his characters and on the other he criticizes
them for their defects and weaknesses.
Hardy has a much deeper insight into Women’s character than into Men’s character. It is only in
the case of Jude and Clare that Hardy seems to have an unusually acute insight into male
character. Hardy does not always paint the world as he finds it but sometimes he paints it as he
wants to see it or as it appears in his poetic or philosophic vision. It cannot be said of Hardy as
some critics have said that Hardy’s novels have heroines but no heroes. It cannot even be said
that Hardy’s women are superior to his men. Hardy’s men and women are equally full of
interest, significance, moral and general quality. Hardy is not a feminist.
The forms of Hardy’s novels are also not without some defects. He uses old words which are no
longer in vogue. He violates the ordinary rules of syntax also. His weakness as a craftsman is
revealed by the design of his novels. He is a good plotter but a bad designer. His plots are well-
knit, but his designs are clumsy. He is almost always concerned with the conflict between man
and the nature of things, but he incarnates it in a highly intricate and improbable story. His plots
have to do little with this imaginative stimulus. Both the plot and stimulus pull against each
other. The themes of Hardy are fit for fiction but the execution of his designs is loose or careless.
Sometimes he effects the development of character by revealing an incident. Sometimes Thomas
Hardy is so poetic or imaginative in creating an emotional impression that he disregards
probability. The result is that the picture presented by him id a falsification of real life. This is so
because his creative power is stronger than his critical faculty or sense. He disregards
probability when it seems to be standing in the way of the emotional impression which he
wants to make on the reader. He ended The Return of the Native with the marriage of Venn and
Thomasin. The public and the publishers forced him to give the present conclusion. Tess and
Jude, are innocent, but they meet a tragic end. He breaks with probability for giving his
catastrophe the required intensity, of blackness. He brings Alec d’Urbeville back to the life of
Tess intends to return to him, we fail to understand why she stabs him to death with a breakfast
knife. Thomas Hardy flings probability to the winds in Jude the Obscure also. In this novel the
theme is concerned with a conflict between a sensitive passionate temperament and a cruel
conventional world... Arabella is a symbol of tragedy of modern life. There are many incidents
and events in Wessex novels which are not consistent with real life. He seems to care more for
creating a tragic impression than for giving a real picture of life. He is not a good judge of
probability. That is why he emphasizes the part played by chance, coincidence or circumstance.
Chance incarnates or embodies the blind force of fate or destiny. This some crucial is to be
introduced in fiction only as a determining factor at some crucial moment when time is
everything. But of, in order to produce the effect of a hostile fate Hardy crosses many
improbable incidents or chance-happenings in a short period of time or space. Thus he twists
his plots to suit this purpose.

Wildeve correctly assessed Clym that “He’s an enthusiast about ideas, and careless about
outward things. He often reminds me of the Apostle Paul.”
Sometimes Thomas Hardy makes his novels a vehicle of his philosophy. He emphasizes his
belief that man is but short of an indifferent destiny. It is the lack of a critical sense which leads
him to the error of preaching. While behaving like a moralist or preacher he is no more than a
typical Victorian. Being obsessed with the universe he turns from an imaginative creator into a
propagandist. He forgets that as a tragic artist his first obligation is to his vision of life and not to
the set of his intellectual beliefs. Unlike the modern writer of novels he does not remember that
moral beliefs or views should be left to reveal themselves involuntarily. He forgets his own
principle of recording his own impressions in a novel. Life his contemporaries he is interested in
working out his own philosophy of life. He seems to be delivering his moral lectures on the
bitterness of fate.
It had been a convention, before Hardy; in English tragedy that hero must commit some deed for
which he suffers. This deed may be due to an error of judgment as it is in King Lear or Julius
Caesar or it may be of a criminal nature as in the case of Macbeth. But of Hardy, has his own
conception of tragedy. He is an innovator of a new form of tragedy. The tragedy of Tess begins in
a crime and ends in a crime. Alec pays the penalty for his misdeeds. But of, he is only a
subordinate character. The central figure of the novel, the heroine, Tess suffers the most and
still she has committed no crime. She is free from any wrong doing. She is essentially a pure
woman and still she is poor wounded name! She is more sinned against than sinning. So we find
Hardy’s conception of tragedy radically different from the old conception of tragedy. Pessimism,
Regionalism, Meliorism, and Realism are some elements for which he is prominent. No doubt
everybody before him tried these things, but in abundance and in superiority everyone lagged
behind.
The Tragedy in Hardy’s Novels occurs mainly on account of the circumstances beyond the
control of the hero or heroine. Tess’s ‘will to enjoy’ is nothing extravagant, there is no hardihood
in it which the relentless assimilating forces of worldly destiny might seize on and punish for its
badness. But of no-the President of the Immortals is against her; circumstances are beyond her
control. She must fall. She must suffer. The twenty-fifth of next month has been fixed for the
marriage of Thomasin and Diggory. On the wedding-day the heath folks have gathered to make
a bed tick as a present for Thomasin and Venn. Meanwhile, at Blooms-End, Clym refuses to
attend the celebration but performs the formality of giving away Thomasin to Diggory at the
Church ceremony. Thomasin, knowing his temperament, kindly excuses him from attending.
Near the cottage, Clym meets Charly and Charly asks him to give something that once belonged
to Eustacia. Clym gives him a lock of Eustacia’s hair. Charly is so grateful and nearly in tears.
On the Sunday that follows the wedding, Clym stands on Rainbarrow preaching a sermon to an
assorted gathering of the Heath folk. Clym has decided to deliver the first of a series of moral
lectures or “Sermoms on the Mount”. He wandered through the surrounding places to deliver
his preaching. He finds solace in his teachings on moral subjects. The novel ends with a happy
note. In this chapter Thomasin and Venn find happiness in their marriage. And Clym finds his
happiness in his preachings. This chapter also brings all the surviving characters of the novel,
including the rustics.

Wildeve and Eustacia still continue to live in Egdon as their story is told throughout for many
weeks and months. Clym allows her and her daughter to live in his own house. Thomasin has
intense grief though Wildeve had not been faithful to her. Her chief concern is the future of her
child, who is also named Eustacia. Clym is a changed man both physically and mentally after the
misfortunes. He believes that he has been ill-treated by fortune.
After one year Diggory Venn appears at Clym’s house. He is no longer a reddleman. He has
washed away the red colour given to his skin by the riddle that he has been handling previously
and has changed into a gentleman’s clothes. He has changed dairy farming which has his father’s
trade. He wants to obtain permission from Thomasin for May Pole-Day celebrations close to
Clym’s house. Thomasin grants him the permission.
Greek classics profoundly influenced his imagination from adolescence onward. He is after
Homer, Sophocles and Euripides who confess “Life is a tragedy, but despite resemblances of
sentiment.” Hardy can’t lay claim to the classical broad-mindedness and vision. The great
Hellenic poets and historians were indeed impressed by the briefness of individual lives and the
insecurity of mortal happiness, but they were judging heroes who played for their grand stakes
in life. The mighty figures in Homer, Herodotus, Virgil, are not actuated by a vague instinct for
joy, like the humble folk of Wessex. These legendary heroes just miss the happiness that might
have been theirs; generally they invite misfortune through ignorance, inadvertence, or vanity;
and yet the onlooker’s pity is tempered with admiration. Great deeds dispose the reader to think
greatly. One feels that even their errors proceed from a certain unguarded magnanimity and
that they would have suffered less if they had been smaller. The disaster brings to the surface
what Sophocles called reverence and Euriphides’ high courage. It is even more noteworthy that
their downfall culminates in enlightenment. The classical humanists recognized that human
disasters were fated, sometimes contrived, by an inhuman power, and could not be averted.
“But at the same time they convinced themselves that this unfriendly providence was compact
of wisdom and justice.”
Thomasin is in a mood to attend the May Pole-Day celebrations with Clym, but Clym finds it
contrary to his present mood to visit a place of gaiety. Thomasin’s maid, however, takes her
gloves without her permission and goes to the festival. The maid drops one of the gloves at the
fair, and Diggory picks it up. However, the original conception of the story had not designed a
marriage between Thomasin and Venn. He was to have retained his isolated and weird
character to the last, and to have disappeared mysteriously from the Heath, nobody knowing
whether-Thomasin remains a widow. Since, the novel has been published in a serial form;
Hardy altered the end in accordance with the public opinion. The events which are following are
only about the subsequent happenings which occurred to the life of Diggory and Thomasin. The
main plot has already come to an end with the tragedy in the previous chapter. In spite of all
these defects and demerits Thomas Hardy remains a great novelist. We love him for his
sensitive brooding imagination which likes to play over the past and to see in is moldering
relics-symbol of a pomp and power that can still affect the lives and imagination of people. He
interests us in the permanent impulses of pagan feelings and religious sentiments that have
come down to us. The main interest of Hardy’s novels lies not in the skilful handling of their
plots but in the treatment of their characters. It is this emphasis on character that makes Hardy
a modern writer. His ideas and philosophy, his treatment of love and sex, his frank discussion of

religious problems and faith, are in advance of his time. Dickens or Thackeray treats love not as
an experience but as an emotion which is to be felt. Hardy treats it both as experience and
emotion. This increases the range of subject-matter in the English novel. They like Hardy for the
introduction of a poetic intensity into his novels. It is in this thing that the major contribution of
Thomas Hardy to the development of English fiction consists. It means that Thomas Hardy
conceives novels on a higher plane. Thomasin knew that her maid had dropped one of her
gloves. One day while she is having a walk meets Diggory and asks him to return her gloves. He
keeps it in his breast pocket all the time, he takes it out and gives it to her. She tells him that she
had settled all her money on her baby, and that she had kept just enough for herself to live on, in
reply to Diggory’s opinion that she is rich. Thomasin has a feeling of great awe for his
perseverance for he covered his feelings in a practical manner and never betrays any signs of his
love or sentiments towards her in the public. After their conversation they often meet on Heath
near the old Roman Road. This chapter is only in the continuation of the sub-plot. We find that
Diggory’s faithful love is at last reciprocated. The most striking feature is Hardy’s use of
coincidence in the incident concerning the mystery of the lost glove. Clym is always thinking of
his duty towards Thomasin. His mother had wished him to marry Thomasin. Thomasin had
already thought about her re-marriage even before Clym could express his intention to
Thomasin. She tells Clym about her intention to marry Venn but Clym does not agree. He does
not regard Diggory as a suitable husband for his cousin. Thomasin is unhappy about his decision
but she keeps her feelings unexpressed. On the very next day she says that Venn is a very
respectable man now. Clym’s resistance is now weaker and he allows her to fulfill her wishes.
The memories of his mother and Eustacia haunt him. He wants to become a preacher and starts
a night school. This chapter is devoted for the development of the sub-plot. This chapter further
analyses the working of the mind of Clym’s character.
“I often think that women do not know how to manage an honest man.”
‘He hates life but he loves the people who live it’. He hates life because he perceives it in the grip
of cruel, blind and oppressive Unknown Will and he loves human beings as they are essentially
moral, good, brave, bold and heroic. All his novels become moral dramas in which the conflict of
wills, impelled by passions, predominates. And in all his novels chance in its purely malevolent
aspect is an important though invisible character. It exercises its remote control over the lives of
his characters and every careless and irresponsible action brings, subsequently, a tragic harvest
of pain, suffering and bitterness. Nothing can be avoided. And it is this insistent human affair
that creates the peculiar tragic atmosphere of hopelessness that engulfs his heroes. According to
His Conception, Tragedy is a state of things which converts some natural aim or desire (of
warning happiness) into a catastrophe. This tragedy in Hardy’s novels is always brought about
by that blind and malicious Immanent Will overhead, who thinks “human life is a plaything.”
While giving us a convincing picture to create an orderly pattern with the chaotic and
heterogeneous view of life unlike Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy fails to do so, for his vision of life
is affective but not realistic. It has got in it the profusion and energy of reality. When he forces it
into a pattern, he tends to impose an unconvincing plot on it. This failure is very well illustrated
by Tess of the d’Urbervilles. In this novel Alec d’Urberville is a rich young man who loves his
animal pleasures only. He is responsible for the sufferings and tragic end of Tess. We fail to

know why or how he turns into a preacher. This conversion is impossible. Tess does not believe
in it. All these things show that he loaps the dice but to lose the game.
Compton Rickett has showered upon him the greatest praise which is his due. “…Difference of
opinion must naturally be held by Hardy as a critic of life; but as an artist, a painter of certain
concrete aspects of that life, he is among the greatest in English Literature.”
So we see most of the male protagonists and, certainly not all, are Creatures of Intellect. But of,
one remarkable fact is, he avoids indulgence in intellectual complexities that delight some
novelists. His best characters are not subtle and complex. Subtle characters, it is true, he does
essay at times, and he is too fine a psychologist to fail entirely in portraying them, but they are
certainly inferior to his simple and more primal types. Let us first consider his chief
protagonists among the male category and try to find out what the case is. Jude is a man in
whom Passion is comparatively unimportant. His mind retains its level throughout; there are no
storms and not subsiding: and this is a mark of reasonable nature. In fact he is a creature of
Intellect. Passing over to Gabriel Oak we find him also of the same category. He is never
overpowered by his love for Bathsheba. His reason is his guide always. And, then, Angel Clare
though once reason fails him, it can’t be questioned that he is an intellectual being. By his reason
he leaves his dogmatic paternal religion. His serious intellectual questioning shake the faith of
Tess and through her that of Alec. Moreover, he is never overpowered by his emotions and
passions. His general comprehension of truth is obtained rather through the medium of reason
than through that of Passion. His plan of life is closely considered and thought out from a nobly
rational point of view. It is reason that brings him from Paris, formulates his didactic projects,
gives him endurance under misfortune and plays a considerable part, though a part shared by
emotion, in his quarrel and attempted reconciliation with Eustacia. Farfrae is an alloy of reason
and emotion. Now let us consider his female characters. Most alive of them are the Creatures of
Passion. The most alive of the women of Hardy are Tess, Sue, Eustacia, Bathsheba and Elizabeth
Jane. All of these love their lovers passionately “Passion (an ambiguous term, but no other
connotes the necessary intensity) is used with a spiritual significance, denoting ‘elements in the
higher nature of man’ (to misquote Jowett), and covering Love, Religion, and Poetry-all three
words being intended in a mystical sense.”(Duffin) . Now, we see Tess, Sue, Eustacia, Bathsheba
and Elizabeth Jane love their lover with intensity, without any reason and their love tends to
attain spiritual strength.
Yeobright’s opposition comes out of a practical mind. She laments when Clym marries Eustacia
“O, it is a mistake” and “And he will rue it some day, and think of me.”
The unreasonable, almost violent and cruel ideal of womanhood that belongs to Clare is
essentially poetic in appearance, nature and power. Is not Jude’s dream of scholarship and Sue’s
conception of conjugalities poetic? Not otherwise is philanthropy of Yeobright and serene and
nature sweet chivalry of Winterborne. But of, sometimes his poetic conception of a character
fails. In Jude the Obscure when we first meet ‘Father Time’ in the train he is a memorable and
poetic conception, but increasingly he becomes the author’s mouthpiece; and thus, we realize he
is the good little child of sentimental Victorian fiction. But in, his worst failure is when we read
of ‘Father Time’s Killing’ of Sue’s children and his suicide: ‘Done because we are too many’. Here
Hardy’s imagination fails him. We cannot believe all this. When Hardy describes men or women,

he does it not like a photographer, not even like the general run of portrait-painters but like a
transcendental phrenologist. That is why his characters are no portraits but living beings. And,
then, these living beings are not only living beings but human beings as well. They are neither
angels nor devils. They belong to earth, they are earthly. They are gems but ‘flawed gems’ not
pure gems. There are villains but not unredeemed villains. He simply can’t create odious
people. Odiousness implies meanness; and mean people neither feel deeply nor are aware of
any issues larger than those involved in the gratification of their own selfish desires. And he can
only draw at full length people whose nature is of sufficient fine quality to make them realize
the greatness of the issues in which they are involved. If Hardy does try to draw odious persons,
he is a dreadful failure. Simply he can’t get into the hearts of such persons and see how life
seems to them. Not all of his successful creations and virtuous- Henchard and Eustacia, to name
no others, commit sins in the grand manner. But of, the grand manner is the expression of an
overmastering passion, not the calculated consequence of selfish lust. Moreover, they know they
are doing wrong-they torn with conscience. We do not dislike them.
In short, Hardy’s characters belong to earth. They are universal characters as Nell i.e., they are
neither realistic only, nor types. Like a photographer, with an eye of camera, he does not present
only an outside view of his creatures except in the portrayal of country folk, even over country a
veil of romantic, glamour is thrown, they are in a degree idealized. On the other hand, through
photographic portraits of individuals , the designer of type-figures plunges further into the
depth of human nature, gets below the surface of idiosyncrasies, he classifies individuals and
arrives at types and presentation of one ‘type’ and reveals nothing of another ‘type’ of
characters. Great characters of Hardy’s novels are neither types nor individuals but ‘Universals’
each comprehending within itself the whole of human nature.
Chance in its purely malevolent aspect enters our life and spoils it, brings trials and tribulations,
sorrows and sufferings, pain and agony in its train. What is the use of being a ‘play thing’, a toy,
in the hands of the mischievous ‘President of the Immortals’. As regards the dictum ‘character is
destiny’ he thinks that man is what he is because of his environment and ancestry and these in
turn are determined by our Fate. Hardy’s mastery in the art of characterization is seldom
questioned. Once we open the door of memory and a large train of his characters enters in. Not
only great male characters i.e. , Jude Fawley, Gabriel Oak, Angel Clare, Michael Henchard, Henry
Knight, Clym Yeobright, Giles Winterborne, Farfrae, Tillston, Troy,Alec d’ Urbervilled, Jorelyn
Pierston, but also great female characters i.e. Tess, Sue, Bathsheba, Elizabeth Jane, Elfride,
Eustacia, Vivietta, Grace, Marty…come sweeping by and inhabit our mind and heart.
‘Fate is overruling, overpowering and irrepressible so in his ideas ‘Our destiny is our character’.
And to portray human nature correctly he chooses his characters from the lower strata of
society because in his opinion, the conduct of the upper class is screened by conventions, and
thus the real character is not seen; if it is seen it must be portrayed subjectively; whereas in the
lower walks, conduct is a direct expression of the inner life: and thus character can be directly
portrayed through the act.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
Now we have come to his art of character-portrayal. It is a question of presentation as well as
conception. As far as question of presentation is concerned, his characters are made living to us
by their conversation as well as action. He exhibits his characters first by their actions, secondly
by their word. As concentrated he is exclusively on the grand tragic issues of human fate, his
characters live in virtue of their vitality when such issues are in question. The actions he
emphasies are important actions that reveal their motives and feelings. Their inner life is left to
our imagination of which we make use to understand their individuality by their speech.
Further, his conception of human nature is not by any means a low one. He does not conceive of
low natures; he brings forth at full length only those people who have nature of sufficiently fine
quality to make them realize the greatness of the issues with which they are involved and they
must have that magnetism or beauty of nature which makes a poetic presentation appropriate.
In Hardy the most alive of the men are the creatures of the intellect and the most alive of the
women are the creatures of passion.
“He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.”
In a harsh world Hardy sees man thirsting for happiness and imagining that he will find it by
love in some form or another. This love may make him selfless or selfish, forgiving or resentful,
he may struggle or he may submit; but his object is always the same. So, a character of Hardy
always reacts to his circumstances in one of the above-mentioned ways. Another cause of the
limitation of his range of characters is his attachment to Wessex. Almost all his characters
belong to Wessex and to the low strata of society. Hardy’s range includes not great ladies or
great men. But of, within his own range, he is an “unchallenged master”. He has created
immortal characters.
Though it cannot be said of him that “he had no heroes, only heroines” or even, that his women-
put the men in the shade yet we must admit that admirable as many of his male characters are,
they yield both in clarity and intensity of interest to his women. These women stamp
themselves on our memories in those heightened moments when their fascination, putting
forward its full power compels the hearts of men. Really, Hardy is almost a specialist in women.
We see them the lovers’ angle: they are real. It is only one aspect. But of, since Hardy’s stories
are love-stories, it is enough to make them convincing. ‘Hardy’s world is a Glorious One’. True!
‘He loves his people’ All the more true! Go with a searchlight into Hardy’s world to find out a
pack of villains and you will return disappointed. Of course, you will come across many a one
who become the instruments of evil fate and become the cause of the ruin of his protagonists.
But as, you will see, odious villains, detestable amend condemnable knaves few there are. Even
a few villainous persons, that you happen to come across, are not unredeemed villains. Simply

he can’t draw odious people. Odiousness implies meanness; and means people neither feels
deeply nor is aware of any issues larger than those involved in the gratification of their selfish
desires. If Hardy tried at all, to draw such persons, it is a dreadful failure, Alec d’ Urbeville is just
the conventional vile seducer of melodrama and not a very successful portrait. Hardy can’t get
inside such a person and see how life looked to him. Not that his successful creations like
Henchard and Eustacia, to name no others, commit sins in a grand manner. But of, it is the grand
manner, the expression of an over mastering passion, not the calculated consequence of selfish
lust. Moreover, they know they are wrong, they torn with conscience. “We don’t dislike-them”
(Cecil). On the other hand, he excels at drawing good characters, noble characters and great
characters but he does not copy some lifeless model of ideal goodness. Mankind, to him, always
assumes the heroic proportions of a figure seen against the vast sky of Destiny. So, indeed, his
world i.e. the people living in his world are glorious creatures. He loves them.
He cannot think of Man but ranged against an ‘Immanent Will’. So all of his protagonists are
representatives of Man fighting against an evil fate. Essentially, fundamentally, basically, they
are ‘Men’ rather than individual ‘Man’. His memorable characters all have a family-likeness.
Most of them can be divided into a few simple categories. And when Hardy tries to cross the
limitations of his range and deliberately attempts to break away to a new type he fails in the end
to make it intrinsically different from the old. In fact, Hardy’s view of life made this kinship
between his creatures inevitable. He always conceives man in relation to his ultimate destiny,
and in such a relation only certain qualities strike him as significant. Hardy’s portrayal of human
characters is within a limited range. His portrayal of women characters are of wide range than
that of the male characters. Hardy’s portraits of women are superb and are perfectly realistic
and convincing. His most successful women characters include Marty, Bathsheba, Thomasin,
Mrs. Yeobright, Eustacia and Tess. Hardy’s sensibility to feminine charm and his power to
discriminate its distinguishing quality are the chief means by which he makes his heroines live,
whether it is Fancy’s willful innocent coquetry, or Bathsheba’s ardent glowing smiles and tears,
or Anne’s demure rural neatness, or Eustacia’s somber gorgeousness.
“As flies to wanton boys, are we to the Gods-
They kill us for their sport.”
(Act IV, Sc-1, King Lear, William Shakespeare)
Chance in its purity malevolent aspect enters our life and spoils it, brings trials and tribulations,
sorrows and sufferings, pain and agony in its train. What is the use of being a plaything in the
hands of ‘the President of the Immortals’? So he is a Pessimist, but there is a dark, grimly dark
and gloomy as well as a bright sunny side of his philosophy. He is not a misanthrope like Hobbes
who thinks man essentially a beast, mean abject, detestable and an odious creature. He is a
pessimist like the classical writers who considered man merely a puppet in the hands of mighty
Fate- unjust, cruel, blind and jealous of happiness of mankind.
‘The violent or ambitious natures are more opulent in a state of revolution against themselves;
the quiet or constant natures are more refined and proud in their bearing, they suffer, but in
silence and with strength. Not one of them all is a copy of another, but these are the general
distinctions to be traced among them.’

But of he hated life intensely. He does not think it worth living. He perceives it in the grip of
cruel, blind and oppressive Unknown Will.
Hardy has given so much attention to portray Eustacia. Hardy’s vivid, imaginative and
picturesque description of Eustacia is marvelous and in the richness and splendor of which
every phrase is salient and arresting. The method of conveying to us the exquisite loveliness of
Helen in his play Doctor Faustus. We can even contrast it with Enobarbus’s description of
Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, ‘The barge she sat was like a burnished
throne, burned in the water, The poops were beaten gold, purple the sails The chapter Queen of
Night overflows with the imagination of Hardy. Hardy says in this chapter: “Her presence
brought memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies and tropical midnight; her moods
recalled lotus-eaters and the march in Athalie; her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her
voice, the Viola. In a dim light, and with a slight rearrangement of her hair, her general figure
might have stood for that of either of the higher female deities. The new moon behind her head,
an old helmet upon it, a diadem of accidental dewdrops round her brow, would have been
adjuncts sufficient to strike the note of Artemis, Athena or Hera respectively with as close an
approximation to the antique as that which passes musters on many respected canvases.”
Hardy is a master craftsman. His plots show a remarkable unity and symmetry. The unity of
impression is achieved through a well- knit plot, and various love-stories are so closely
interwoven. The actions take place in Edgon Heath, so as to produce the unity of place. Eustacia,
Thomasin and Mrs. Yeobright are the three important women characters in The Return of the
Native. The contrast between the three is striking and offer interesting studies. A minor woman
character is Susan Nunsuch, who belongs to the rustic group and represents the superstitious
beliefs of the rustic group. The opening chapter introduces Edgon Heath, one of the principal
characters into the novel. The pictorial opening scene of Hardy is famous. In most of the novels
of Hardy, attention have been paid to give a vivid, picturesque portrayal of the countryside in
which the major actions the story takes place. The Heath is the dark, immemorial environment
whose influence controls obscurely the lives and destinies of those who dwell contentedly
among us in wilderness and those who feel themselves cruelly out of their element there. After
describing the plot, Hardy introduces the heroine of the novel, Eustacia Vye who is entangled in
a secret love affair with the local inn-keeper, Wildeve. Eustacia, from a love-affair that is
growing tiresome, is stimulated by the news that Clym Yeobright is coming back from Paris.
Clym and Eustacia fall in love. Clym, weary of the materialistic city life, plans to open a school in
Egdon and teach something akin to Rousseau’s gospel of Nature and simplicity as the antidote to
artificial maladies, but Mrs.Yeobright, his mother who is strongly opposed to both the plans. She
considers Eustacia to be wanton. She thinks that Clym must go back to Paris to continue with his
job, but Clym is stubborn with his objectives.
The plot suffers from several flaws. Unconvincing accidents and coincident were used by Hardy.
It is difficult to believe that a wise woman like Mrs. Yeobright trusted a person like Christian
Cantle with a considerable sum of money. The chain of coincident is a vast one which results
ultimately in the tragedy. Hardy uses coincidence as the weapon to run the story. Mrs. Yeobright
plans to visit Clym at the same time when he plans to visit her. When she arrives at Clym’s house
Wildieve too arrives there and has a private meeting with Eustacia. These chance happenings

detract from the realism of the plot, although the realism of character-portrayal remains
unaffected.
On the other hand, Thomasin is nowhere near the splendor and glamour of Eustacia. She has a
simple rural charm and is described as having a fair, sweet and honest country face reposing in
a nest of wavy chestnut hair. Her face is “between pretty and beautiful.” She is gentle, modest,
humble, affectionate, and sensitive to the opinions of her neighbours and others while Eustacia
is haughty, proud, vain of her beauty, reserved, somewhat mysterious, and indifferent to public
opinion. On some occasions she shows firmness of her mind like that in her rebelliousness
against her aunt in her decision to marry Wildeve despite her aunt’s opposition, but on the
whole she is a passive kind of character, at the turn of events. At the outset of the story, when
Wildeve is unable to marry Thomasin, she is heartbroken, the chief reason for her sorrow being
her fear of what people will say. This results in the separation of the mother and son. After the
marriage, Eustacia continues to meet Wildeve. Mrs. Yeobright’s attempt for reconciliation
results in her death. Eustacia, after the quarrel with Clym leaves him and when makes an
attempt to escape is drowned. At the end Clym transforms into a preacher.
Hardy portrays the vicinity of Edgon Heath not only as a mere background, but as the driving
force which controls the destinies of the inhabitants in it. It influences the characters as well as
the plot. For Eustacia and Clym the Heath was entirely different. Eustacia hates it. “It is my cross,
my shame, and will be my death.” She says prophetically. But for, Clym it is “exhilarating,
strengthening and soothing.” He too has some of its qualities, especially strangeness and
remoteness. For the reddleman too the Heath seems to be good. Major actions in the story take
place in by Heath and it undoubtedly adds to the richness and complexity of the story and
shows also how Nature may play a hostile, though occasionally friendly, role in human affairs.
In comparison with Eustacia, Thomasin is certainly a homely girl cut out to make an excellent
home-spun which Eustacia can never be. Eustacia’s mind is haunted by the thoughts of a better
living in Paris. She hates the life in Egdon. On Egdon Heath she says “Tis my cross, my shame
and will be my death.”
Egdon Heath partially affects the destinies of these characters. It is cruel to the old woman and
she calls it “a ridiculous old place”, but she is yet quite happy there because it is her natural
habitat any other environment is inconceivable for her. Eustacia too finds her death in Egdon.
At the end, it is Thomasin who turns happy, leading a contented life with Diggory Venn.
These failures are botches, but they do not ruin the work, because though large enough when
measured in terms of plot they are small when seen against the vastness and strength of the
design behind the plot. Hardy’s main focus is on expressing the significance of the great design
in purely human terms.
Eustacia, to a large extent is responsible for the tragedy in The Return of the Native. The root
cause occurs from Eustacia’s peculiar nature and temperament, manifesting themselves in her
actions, deeds and utterances. She is responsible, but not fully. Almost all the major characters
are knowingly or unknowingly responsible for the tragedy. The tragedy begins with the death of
Mrs. Yeobright and the circumstances in which it occurs. Her death is followed by a quarrel
between Eustacia and Clym which later results in the deaths of both Eustacia and Wildieve.

Hardy makes a number of comments in the course of the narrative which can also be considered
as a fault. For instance, speaking on the love between Mrs. Yeobright and her son, “He had
reached the stage in a young man’s life when the grimness of the general human situation first
becomes clear; the realization of this causes ambition to halt a while. In France it is not
uncustomary to commit suicide at this stage in England we do much better, or much worse, as
the case may be.” These comments may add some philosophic interest to the play, but it is
superfluous, as far as the plot-construction is considered. Eustacia dreamed of a life in Paris. She
hopes that if she marries Clym, he may take her to Paris. She has fascination for the pompous
city life. Clyn on the other hand is weary of the materialistic life a city offers. He wants to settle
in Egdon and intends to start a school. Eustacia once says to Clym that “Sometimes I think there
is not that in Eustacia Vye which will make a good home-spun wife.” On another occasion she
says, “To be your wife and live in Paris would be heaven to me; but I would rather live with you
in a hermitage here than not yours at all.” However, her hatred towards Edgon Heath, the
environment in which she lives and Clym’s firmness to stay in the Heath makes her feel
dissatisfied with life. She is blindly attracted by the colourful, hollow life in Paris and is unable
to catch the subtle beauties of the Heath and looks upon it as a monster.
“The purposive, unmotived, dominant Thing
Which sways in brooding dark their wayfaring.”
The cause of the quarrel between the two arises out of the hatred between the two. Both are
responsible for the tragedy, because neither of them show the tolerance of spirit which could
have led to some sort of understanding between them.
While Eustacia’s heart throbs for the luxurious life in Paris, Clym gives up his educational
project to furge-cutting. This causes much distress to Eustacia, and she sheds bitter tears over
the changes occurring in her life, which are against her expectations, she begins to feel that her
social status has been very much lowered. From her sense of dissatisfaction, the tragedy begins
to shape. Eustacia begins to feel that Clym is not taking care of her ambitions. Gradually, she is
attracted to Wildieve though for that Hardy uses a set of coincident. She is happy when Wildieve
visits her at her house. At the same time Mrs. Yeobright comes there and knocks the door. Here
coincidence plays a major role. Eustacia thinks that Clym, who is sleeping, will open the door.
But for, it is her responsibility to open the door. Mrs. Yeobright thinks that Eustacia is
deliberately avoiding her. She returns and on her way she dies. Eustacia rightly experiences a
sense of guilt though, “instead of blaming herself for the issue, she laid the fault upon the
shoulders of the some indistinct, colossal Prince of the world. Who had framed her situation and
ruled her lot.”
Mrs.Yeobright’s death creates a sense of guilt in the mind of Clym, it constantly haunts his mind.
As result, of his probe into the circumstances leading to the death of his mother, a fierce quarrel
takes place between him and Eustacia. But on, she is very stubborn not to disclose her visit’s
identity. Angered by Clym’s attitude, she leaves the house and goes to her grandfather’s house.
We can experience the crowding guilt when she says to Wildeve “I am to blame this. There is
evil in store for me. O, what shall I do?” To Charley in a later stage she says “Why should I not
die if I wish? I have made a bad bargain with life, and I am weary of it-weary.”

Eustacia finally decides to escape from Edgon Heath. Her intense desire to be in Paris, and her
predicament forces her to take a most unwise decision, all the more unwise in that she seeks
Wildieve’s help. On her way at night she realizes that she does not allow her to ask monetary
help from Wildieve. She laments How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman and how
destiny has been against me I do not deserve my lot; O, how hard it is of ?Heaven to devise such
tortures form, who have done no harm to Heaven at all.” On an earlier occasion she puts the
entire blame on some “colossal Prince of the World”. She does not hold the entire blame on her
and it is a characteristic feature of Eustacia. Eustacia’s own responsibility for the tragedy is
substantial, though destiny plays a vital part in the shape of malicious accidents and coincident.
Hardy introduces his characters with their physical appearance vividly. For instance, Clym’s face
is described as well-shaped, but one on which his habit of reflection and meditation is beginning
to produce visible marks. He bears evidence to the fact that ideal physical beauty and a
philosophic awareness of the complexity and significance of things do not go together. Hardy’s
most memorable character portrayal occurs in the chapter ‘Queen of Night’. Eustacia is
described as “full-limbed and somewhat heavy; without ruddiness, as without pallor and soft to
the touch as a cloud.” She has pagan eyes, full of nocturnal mysteries. To see her hair is to fancy
that a whole winter does not contain darkness enough to form its shadows. Diggory Venn is
described “as young and, if not exactly handsome, approaching very near to handsome”, and his
eyes are “keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist.” Wildeve’s movement is
singular and it is “The panoramic expression of a lady-killing career.” These descriptions create
unforgettable images on our minds and Hardy has the mastery to show even the smallest
details.
Hardy’s talent is limited in the field of characterisation. They have some similarity. Most of them
can be grouped into a few categories. Troy in Far from the Madding Crowd, Wildeve in The
Return of the Native, Fitzpiers in The Woodlanders and D’Urberville in Tess of the D’urberville
can be grouped under the dashing fickle breaker of women’s hearts. Gabriel Oak in Far from the
Madding Crowd, Giles Winterborne in The Wood Landers, John Loveday in The Trumpet Major
and Diggory Venn in The Return of the Native can be grouped under the staunch, selfless,
sympathetic hero. There are some women characters like Tess in Tess of the d’Urbervilles,
Marty South in The Woodlanders, Elizabeth Jane in The Mayor of Casterbridge and Thomasin in
The Return of the Native who are patient, devoted and forgiving. Another group contains the
passion tormented, romantic enchantress like Eustacia in The Return of the Native, Mrs.
Charmond in The Woodlanders, Lucetta in The Mayor of Casterbridge and Lady Constantine in
Two on a Tower. These are the basic types of Hardy’s characters. Sometimes he adds to this, a
group conceived in more intellectual; vein. We may feel that the same elements drive Henchard
and Clym, Jude and Mrs. Yeobright, though these elements and passions may be mixed in
different proportions. In Hardy’s portrayal of human characters, rustics stand alone as a
separate group, though each member of the group is easily distinguishable from others.
Eustacia Vye and Clym Yeobright stands apart from other characters created by Hardy. Hardy
calls Eustacia as “The raw material of a divinity.” She is the most powerfully drawn woman in
Hardy’s portrait-gallery. “Her presence brings memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies
and tropical midnights; her moods recalled lotus eaters and the March in Athalie; her motions,
the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola.” Hardy says that in her power, and

capriciousness, she is a goddess; in her rebelliousness, a Titaness, in her solitude and mystery, a
witch, and a Cleopatra in her pride, her passion and her scorn of consequences. However,
Hardy’s effort to describe Eustacia is self-defeating. His description of Eustacia is so complicate
that it is difficult to form a consistent image of her.
Compared to Eustacia, Clym’s portrayal is less complex. He is the one who ‘returns’. He is weary
on the materialistic and fashionable life, Paris provides. Hardy is said to have remarked that
Clym is the nicest of all his heroes. “Yeobright loved his kind. He had a conviction that the want
of most men was knowledge of a sort which brings wisdom rather than affluence.” The author
effectively conveys to us the various mental conflicts, aroused in his mind, when he is pulled in
different directions by his love for his mother, his passion for his wife, and his intense desire to
become a teacher. His aversion towards the life of Paris, his decision to become a school-master
and educator, his deep love for his mother, his ardent passion for Eustacia, his stoical
acceptance of his misfortune, all combine to make him one of the most convincing characters.
Hardy weaves his characters so subtly so that we may get feeling that we have actually met the
various persons whom Hardy portrays in his fiction. He makes his characters in a most vital
manner. Hardy gives his thought matter to provide his characters an element of pathos. Hardy
exhibits his characters with his various techniques. Mostly he gives the apt picture through the
running commentary which the rustics provide on the various principle characters. Hardy often
uses his own comments on characters, some things through their utterances and sometimes
through their actions.The rest of the characters too are portrayed vividly. Mrs. Yeobright is
portrayed as a shrewd and practical minded lady. An important aspect of Hardy’s
characterization is the contrast between characters. Thomasin is described as a simple and
homely lady contended with life; in contrast with the sophisticated, ambitious and highly
complex Eustacia. Again, Wildeve and Venn stand in two extremes; one, unscrupulous and
inconsistent in love and the other, honest and devoted. Clym is highly philosophical and less
practical, when contrasted with Wildeve and Venn.
‘“But people in love couldn’t live for ever like that!”
“Women could, men can’t because they won’t. An average woman is in this superior to an
average man- that she never instigates, only responds. We ought to have lived in mental
communion and no more.”’
Rustics are an essential part of Hardy. “Here the rustics are Timothy Fairway, Grandfer Cantle,
Christian Cantle, Susan Nunsuch and her son Johny, and the mummers. It would be wrong to
regard these persons as curiosities, or as interesting literary fossils planted in the environment
for the verisimilude that they give. They not only take part in the series of festivals that provide
a symbolic chronological pattern for the novel; but they also participate in the critical action
itself, as agents of destiny.” Although they most often appear as a grout, they have been
individualized on some occasions by Hardy. Susan Nunsuch represents the superstitious beliefs
of the rural folk. Grandfer Cantle and Christian Cantle are also individualised. The former is
distinguished for his egoism and vanity, and the latter for his fear of ghosts, his timidity and his
pathetic inferiority complex in relation to women. The realistic effect of the novel is heightened
by the presence of these characters.

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