“PESSIMISM IN THOMAS HARDY'S NOVELS” - ISRJ

Indian Streams Research Journal Available online at www.isrj.net

Volume 2, Issue.7 , Aug. 2012

ISSN:-2230-7850

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

“PESSIMISM IN THOMAS HARDY'S NOVELS”

ARVIND VASANTRAO DESHMUKH

Asst. Professor, Dept. of English
G. V. Tonpe Arts, Commerce and Science College,

Chandur bazar, Amaravati

Abstract:

In the early 1860s, after the appearance Darwin's Origin of Species (1859),
Thomas Hardy bravely challenged many of the sexual and religious conventions of the
Victorian age, but he soon adopted the mechanical-determinist view of universe's
cruelty, reflected in the inevitably tragic and self-destructive fates of his characters. In
his poems Hardy depicted rural life without sentimentality ?his mood was often stoically
hopeless. Fate plays a major role in many of Hardy's novels; both Tess of the
D'Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge contain various instances where its effects
are readily apparent. Moreover, Hardy's novels reflect a pessimistic view where fate, or
chance, is responsible for a character's ruin. The center of his novels was the rather
desolate and history-freighted countryside around Dorchester. Hardy's writing novels of
“Wessex,” the historical, Anglo-Saxon name he gave in fiction to his native Dorset, from
this time until 1895. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, published in 1891, was immediately
popular with the reading public. But it also caused controversy: Victorian moralists and
ecclesiastics were scandalized by the author's contention that his heroine was, in the
words of the novel's subtitle, a morally pure woman. Some readers were outraged by the
book's pessimism, by the unrelieved picture of torment and misery Hardy presented.
Orthodox believers in God were scandalized by his suggestions that the beneficent warm
God of Christianity seemed absent from the world Hardy depicted.

KEYWORDS:

Pessimism, Poetry, Novels, Thomas Hardy, Philosophy, Drama, Fate.

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever asked yourself why bad things happen in the world? Why people get divorced,
good workers lose jobs, poor people get poorer, and gossip ruins innocent people's reputations? Well, you're
not alone. Over a hundred years ago, our main man Thomas Hardy was asking these big questions too. In
fact, Jude the Obscure, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of D'urbervilles, Far From the maddening Crowd
etc are Hardy's attempt at finding some answers.

Optimistic attitudes are favored and of emotional consideration. Al-Ghazali and William James
have rejected their pessimism after suffering psychological or even psychosomatic illness. Criticisms of
this sort however assume that pessimism leads inevitably to a mood of darkness and utter depression. Many
philosophers would disagree, claiming that the term "pessimism" is being abused. The link between
pessimism and nihilism is present, but the former does not necessarily lead to the latter, as philosophers
such as Albert Camus believed. Happiness is not inextricably linked to optimism, nor is pessimism
inextricably linked to unhappiness.

One could easily imagine an unhappy optimist, and a happy pessimist. Accusations of pessimism

Title :“PESSIMISM IN THOMAS HARDY'S NOVELS”
Source:Indian Streams Research Journal [2230-7850] ARVIND VASANTRAO DESHMUKH yr:2012 vol:2 iss:7

“PESSIMISM IN THOMAS HARDY'S NOVELS”

may be used to silence legitimate criticism. The economist Nouriel Roubini was largely dismissed as a
pessimist, for his dire but accurate predictions of a coming global financial crisis, in 2006. Personality Plus
opines that pessimistic temperaments (e.g. melancholy and phlegmatic) can be useful inasmuch as
pessimists' focus on the negative helps them spot problems that people with more optimistic temperaments
(e.g. choleric and sanguine) miss.

Nietzsche believed that the ancient Greeks created tragedy as a result of their pessimism. "Is
pessimism necessarily a sign of decline, decay, degeneration, weary and weak instincts ... Is there
pessimism of strength? An intellectual predilection for the hard, gruesome evil, problematic aspect of
existence, prompted by well-being, by overflowing health, by the fullness of existence?"

RESEARCH NETHODOLOGY

Critical analysis will be the Central agenda of the proposed research paper. The basic concept of
Pessimism in Thomas Hardy's novels is explored and explained with understanding different perspective.
The Harvard system of Research Methodology will be followed for this exploratory comparative research
paper.

FINDINGSAND IMPLICATIONS & RESEARCH PAPER HARDYASAPESSIMIST

He is a pessimist like the classical writers who consider Man merely a puppet in hands of mighty
fate. Simply he is gloomier than they are. His pessimism is redeemed by two other ingredients in his work –
his lofty view of human nature and his capability to make us laugh at comic side of things. Being a fatalist,
chance and coincidence play a key role in his novels. In real life chance may lead to success or sometimes to
failure but in Hardy's case chance always proves mishap. Hardy is not a cynic by any means and his comic
gift relives the atmosphere of gloom and despondency in his novels:
“To cal Hardy a thoroughgoing pessimist is to forget his conception of human nature male and female.”

Hardy himself says:

“My pessimism, if pessimism it be, does not involve the assumption that the world is going to the
dogs … On the contrary my practical philosophy is distinctly Melioristic.”

The fact that Hardy resented being called a pessimist is no reason why he should not be thus
described. Hardy was the painter of darker side of life as it was no wonder if people charged him of
“pessimist”. The opinion is both right and wrong in this context. In fact, there are some factors that compel
us to believe him a pessimist. He was hypersensitive; his own life was tragic and gloomy. For a speculative
soul, this world is a thorny field.

The gloomy effect of his age plays an important role in his writings. Doubts, despair, disbelief,
frustration, industrial revolution, disintegration of old social and economic structure, Darwin's theory of
evolution were the chief characteristics of that age. All these factors probe deep into his writings and
heighten its somber, melancholic and tragic vision.

His pessimism is also the outcome of the impressions that he receives from villager's life. They
were plenty of tragedies in the life of the poverty stricken Wessex folk. Hardy's philosophy of the human
condition is determined by his natural temper and disposition. He says:
“Aman's philosophy of life is an instinctive, temperamental matter.”

Hardy, practically, excludes from his writings the sense of splendor and beauty of human life
completely. Tess' life is totally devoid of even a single moment of happiness. He is of the opinion:
“Happiness is but an occasional episode in a general drama of pain.”

Hardy's conception of life is essentially tragic. He is one of those who believe that life is boom. His
novels concentrate on human sufferings and show that there is no escape for human beings. Hardy's attitude
towards life is highly melancholic and depressive. He loves people but he hates life intensely. He perceives
it in the hands of cruel, blind and oppressive 'Unknown Will'.

As flies to wanton boys,
Are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport.

Hardy's universe is neither ruled by God, the Father, not informal by divine spirit. Men are part of
great network of cause and effect which make them, almost always, a prey to the chance over which they
have no control. The creator of this hostile universe is called the “Immanent Will”, the spinner of Years,

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“PESSIMISM IN THOMAS HARDY'S NOVELS”

Fate, Doom and sometimes God.
Hardy's attitude toward his female characters is extraordinarily complex. His most famous female

characters include Sue Bridehead of Jude the Obscure, Bathsheba Everdene of Far from the Madding
Crowd, and Tess from Tess of the D'Urbervilles. They portray great strength, but are also prone to great
weakness. Of these, Sue Bridehead is probably the most complex. Jude the Obscure was written while
Hardy's first wife, Emma, was still alive. It is not difficult to see dissatisfaction with marriage evident in the
novel, which presumably reflects his marital problems. Sue Bridehead can be seen as a sort of romantic
fantasy, someone Hardy wished he had married. The fact that the relationship between Sue and Jude fails
reflects not just Hardy's pessimism, but his unwillingness to make an adulterous relationship successful. No
actual adultery on his part was ever proved.

The novels reflect Hardy's preoccupation with social class that continues through his novels.
Hardy had connections to both the working and the upper class, but felt that he belonged to neither. This is
reflected in the pessimism contained in Tess of the d'Urbervilles toward the chances for Tess to ascend in
society and Angel's precarious position as neither a member of the upper class nor a working person
equivalent to his fellow milkers at Talbothays. Again, like Angel Clare, Thomas Hardy found himself torn
between different social spheres with which he could not fully align himself. Tess of the d'Urbervilles
reflects that divide.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, also known as Tess of the
d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, Tess of the d'Urbervilles or just Tess, is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first
published in 1891. It initially appeared in a censored and serialized version, published by the British
illustrated newspaper, The Graphic. It is Hardy's penultimate novel, followed by Jude the Obscure. Though
now considered a great classic of English literature, the book received mixed reviews when it first
appeared, in part because it challenged the sexual mores of Hardy's day. The original manuscript is on
display at the British Library, showing that it was originally titled "Daughter of the d'Urbervilles."

After the bitter denunciation of the sexual double standard in Tess, Hardy expanded his satiric
attack in his next novel, Jude the Obscure (1895), which criticized the institutions of marriage, the Church,
and England's class system. Again Hardy was savaged by critics who could not countenance his
subversiveness. He was attacked in the press as decadent, indecent, and degenerate. Among those offended
was his wife, who took the novel as anti-religious, and thus a blow to the devoutness she believed she shared
with her husband. Distressed by such small-mindedness, Hardy, now financially secure, vowed to give up
novel-writing and return to the composition of poetry, his first literary love, which he felt would afford him
greater artistic and intellectual freedom. From 1898 on Hardy published mainly poetry. He became one of
the few English authors to produce a significant body of poetry as well as novels.

In all of Hardy's great novels there are frustrating, imprisoning marriages that may reflect his own
first marriage. Though these relationships may seem almost 'sexless' to the modern reader, they are
nevertheless quite believable. The "stale familiarity" that characterizes the relationship between young
Susan and Michael Henchard as they trudge towards Weydon- Priors in the opening pages of The Mayor of
Casterbridge is a nimbus that hangs over the unions of Eustacia and Clym in The Return of the Native,
Lucetta and Farfrae in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Bathsheba and Troy in Far from the Madding Crowd,
and, of course, Jude andArabella in Jude. The novelist, united in holy acrimony for all but three of the thirty-
eight years of his first marriage, clearly saw the need and argued eloquently for reasonable and human
divorce laws. Unsuitable matches in his novels inevitably lead to suffering for both partners. Early in the
same year which saw the death of Emma Hardy, the novelist expressed the opinion in Hearst's Magazine
(1912) that "the English marriage laws are. . . the gratuitous cause of at least half the misery of the
community." There is a strong element of wish- fulfilment in Hardy's sparing Donald Farfrae in The Mayor
of Casterbridge a protracted marriage to the egotistical and small-minded Lucetta.

Hardy put so much of himself into his fiction that it is hardly surprising he gave it up for poetry
after the hostile reception of his last and greatest novels, Tess and Jude. It was his cynical pessimism and
social realism rather than his sympathy with his largely female protagonists that led him into difficulties.
Hardy had no children but his marriages were extremely significant factors in his life and can be seen as
having a strong effect on his work. He was in love several times and engaged once to a maid named Eliza
Nicholls before meeting his first wife. In 1870, he met Emma Gifford on a trip to Cornwall, and married her
in 1874. Her family disapproved of the marriage and considered Hardy beneath Emma. Though Hardy
loved Emma, the marriage became unhappy, but continued until her death in 1912. Later, Hardy looked
back on her with affection.

"Though he was a modern, even a revolutionary writer in his time, most of us read him now as a
lyrical pastoralist. It may be a sign of the times that some of us take his books to bed, as if even his
pessimistic vision was one that enabled us to sleep soundly.”

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(Anatole Broyard in New York Times, May 12, 1982)

English poet and regional novelist, whose works depict the county "Wessex", named after the
ancient kingdom of Alfred the Great. Hardy's career as writer spanned over fifty years. His earliest books
appeared when Anthony Trollope (1815-82) wrote his Palliser series, and he published poetry in the decade
of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Hardy's work reflected his stoical pessimism and sense of tragedy in human
life.

"Critics can never be made to understand that the failure may be greater than the success... To have
the strength to roll a stone weighting a hundredweight to the top of a mountain is a success, and to have the
strength to roll a stone of then hundredweight only halfway up that mount is a failure. But the latter is two or
three times as strong a deed." (Hardy in his diary, 1907)

Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) came into conflict with Victorian morality. It explored the dark
side of his family connections in Berkshire. In the story the poor villager girl Tess Durbeyfield is seduced by
the wealthy Alec D'Uberville. She becomes pregnant but the child dies in infancy. Tess finds work as a
dairymaid on a farm and falls in love with Angel Clare, a clergyman's son, who marries her. When Tess tells
Angel about her past, he hypocritically deserts her. Tess becomes Alec's mistress. Angel returns from
Brazil, repenting his harshness, but finds her living with Alec. Tess kills Alec in desperation, she is arrested
and hanged.

Tess is worst fated to the sufferings of life. She tries her best to come out of her fated circle of
misfortunes but remains fail. Throughout the novel she keeps on revolving around the predetermined
circles of her cruel fate. Being the eldest child she has to go to D'Urbervilles for earning. Her seduction
plays a vital role in her destruction. She is rejected by society on becoming pregnant. She goes to earn for
her family to Talbothays. Her love affair, her marriage and then sudden rejection by Angle Clare, all this
make her a victim of conventional social attitude. Her sufferings in winter season of Talbothays after the
departure of Angel Clare and in the courtship with Alec are untold. Her murder of Alec in order to rejoin
Angel and her hanging soon afterwards also show a long series of sufferings but she faces them boldly.

We can see Tess in the light of author's fatalistic outlook on life. The death of his father, death of
“Prince”, role of nature, her birth in a shiftless family, Tess' attempts to confess to Angel, slipping of letter
under the carpet, overheard conversation, too late arrival of Angel, meeting again with Alec, are the
examples of fateful incidents. It sees that as they are pre-planned.

Time, also, is used as a motif of fate. The time of joy withAngel is transitory and time of miseries is
very prolonged. Love, a source of happiness is also badly fated in Tess' case. Her love with Angle roves
futile. Tess becomes an agent of her own destiny / fate. She is a manifestation of irony of fate.
“She is alone in desert island, would she have been wretched at what had happened to her?”

Tess of the d'Urbervilles deals with several significant contemporary subjects for Hardy, including
the struggles of religious belief that occurred during Hardy's lifetime. Hardy was largely influenced by the
Oxford movement, a spiritual movement involving extremely devout thinking and actions. Hardy's family
members were primarily orthodox Christians and Hardy himself considered entering the clergy, as did
many of his relatives. Yet Hardy eventually abandoned his devout faith in God based on the scientific
advances of his contemporaries, including most prominently Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Hardy's
own religious experiences can thus be seen in the character of Angel Clare, who resists the conservative
religious beliefs of his parents to take a more religious and secular view of philosophy.
. Hardy's Jude The Obscure (1895) aroused even more controversy. The story dramatized the
conflict between carnal and spiritual life, tracing Jude Fawley's life from his boyhood to his early death.
Jude marries Arabella, but deserts her. He falls in love with his cousin, hypersensitive Sue Bridehead, who
marries the decaying schoolmaster, Phillotson, in a masochist fit. Jude and Sue obtain divorces, but their
life together deteriorates under the pressure of poverty and social disapproval. The eldest son of Jude and
Arabella, a grotesque boy nicknamed 'Father Time', kills their children and himself. Broken by the loss, Sue
goes back to Phillotson, and Jude returns to Arabella. Soon thereafter Jude dies, and his last words are:
"Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul?".
. Tess and Jude are helpless in front of fate or destiny. But in some novels, Hardy makes characters
responsible too, as in “The Mayor of Casterbridge” Henchard is somewhat responsible for his tragic life.
But Tess is shown thoroughly a toy in hands of fate. In the end of the novel he says:
“Justice was done and the President of the Immortals, by Aeschelylian Phrase, had ended his sport with
Tess”

This sentence represents the acme of pessimistic thinking and clinches the argument. But Hardy is
not a thorough going pessimist. His pessimism is not oppressive. Bonamy Dobree observes:

“Hardy's pessimism is not oppressive; it is not the outcome of a soul which rebelled against life.
Rebellion against life itself …”

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Now it is crystal clear that Hardy is a melodist rather than a pessimist. R.A. Scott James observes:
“Hardy did not set out to give us a pessimistic philosophy … Hardy is pessimistic about the governance of
the Universe, but not about human beings.”

In 1896, disturbed by the public uproar over the unconventional subjects of two of his greatest
novels, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, Hardy announced that he would never write fiction
again. A bishop solemnly burnt the book, "probably in his despair at not being able to burn me", Hardy
noted. Hardy's marriage had also suffered from the public outrage ?critics on both sides of the Atlantic
abused the author as degenerate and called the work itself disgusting. InApril, 1912, Hardy wrote:

"Then somebody discovered that Jude was a moral work - austere in its treatment of a difficult
subject - as if the writer had not all the time said in the Preface that it was meant to be so. Thereupon many
uncursed me, and the matter ended, the only effect of it on human conduct that I could discover being its
effect on myself - the experience completely curing me of the further interest in novel-writing."

Throughout his life, Hardy became infatuated with seemingly unattainable women. While Emma
was still alive, he carried on an intense correspondence with Mrs. Florence Henniker, a writer who lived in
Dublin. She was to have a great influence on Hardy. Meanwhile, Emma had become fanatically religious
and nearly insane. After Emma's death he married Florence Dugdale, who had been his secretary and
literary aide for several years. The second marriage proved happier. Florence Hardy wrote a biography of
her husband, part of which was dictated by Hardy himself.

“We have it on his [Hardy's] own assurance that the Wessex of the novels and poems is practically
identical with the Wessex of history, and includes the counties of Berkshire, Wilts[hire], Somerset,
Hampshire, Dorset, and Devon — either wholly or in part”.

(Hermann Lea, Thomas Hardy's Wessex, 1913: xvii)

Certainly, there are other parallels between Hardy's own life and the portrayal of Jude, though it
was far from autobiographical. Hardy himself was apprenticed to an architect, Jude a stone mason who does
church reconstruction, like Hardy's father. Hardy studied Greek on his own, as Jude does. Finally, at age
twenty-six, Hardy was in love with his cousin, Tryphena Sparks who, at sixteen was studying to become a
teacher. It is difficult not to believe that this was the source for the character of Sue Bridehead, although she
is also said to be based on Florence Henniker. It is clear that Hardy preferred to write about the world of his
childhood and adolescence rather than the more sophisticated world in which he moved as an adult. In none
of his novels, and particularly not in Jude, was the Wessex countryside overly sentimentalized? Though he
saw its beauty, he also saw its dark side.

Hardy's last two novels, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, were his most
controversial. Jude the Obscure, like many novels of the time, was published serially both in England and
the United States. The American version was “cleaned up” so as to be suitable for all ages. References to
extramarital relations were deleted, as were the gruesome deaths.

Like most of Hardy's novels, The Mayor of Casterbridge is a tragedy – no matter what the main
characters try to accomplish, the fates (or their own flaws) seem to get in the way. The subtitle of the novel,
"The Life and Death of a Man of Character," already tells us that Henchard will die at the end. And since this
is a Thomas Hardy novel, we're betting that it won't be a happy death. The Mayer of Casterbridge is a kind of
pessimistic story of its protagonist Michel Henchard. He is the main character who has become puppet of
his own luck though he is labourious man. He tries to do well and becomes a good human being but
everywhere he gets frustration, disillusionment, alienation and disorder in his life. His whole life is tragic
one. His very crucial and unforgivable mistake is selling his wife and daughter being in drunkard mood. But
even here to reader's sympathy goes towards Henchard because everything had become unconsciously. But
after that Henchard tried to do good all the time. He searched his wife and daughter. He promised not to
drink even a drop of wine for a long time. He got economic success; He reached at the top of his power. He
undoubtly welcomed his previous wife and his so-called own daughter. He tried his best to take care of his
daughter, wife, friends, and believers.

All his life resulted in very pessimistic mood. He believed Farfrae as his own right hand but
couldn't get the ultimate satisfaction. He felt high range of economic downfall but at last everything
resusted in to the very initial position of Henchard. Rather more bad position than that of his previous one.

Henchard is pessimistic protagonist of the novel because his couldn't get happiness at any time.
His success has become the antithesis of his happiness. His small error groups all kinds of happiness and
ordered life patterns. If there is anything that is very responsible to give the pessimistic tone of the novel. It
is only coincidences. Coincidences have played the very crucial role to take the pessimistic vision in the
entire life journey of Michael Henchard through the whole novel.

The sense of pessimism in Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge has been presented in a bit different

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way. No doughty the protagonist of the novel is a pessimistic character but the whole credit of his
pessimism has not been given to his own flow only. But the pessimism has been broadly caused by the luck,
fate, coincidence of human being. Life has been presented there as pessimistic in the hand of luck or
chances. Our pessimistic life is a kind of truth but the very cause behind it is beyond our control. This sort of
pessimism is there is Henchard's life too.

Mayor of Casterbridge, though not as dark as some of his final work, is a fairly representative
novel. The Mayor of the title is a respected grain merchant with a dark secret in his past. When he was a
young man and a bad drunk, he auctioned off his wife and daughter to a sailor at a county fair while in his
cups. Given a chance to redeem himself when his widowed ex-wife tracks him down, he remarries her and
tries to be a good husband and father, figuring that no one need ever know of the scandal in their past.
Needless to say, things don't quite work out. The wife dies. The sailor turns up alive. The daughter is
revealed to be the sailor's and not the Mayor's. And the Mayor loses his fortune and dies alone and broke.

CONCLUSION

Thomas Hardy's secured himself a permanent place in critic's hearts by first writing with profound
pessimism about Victorian England and then abandoning novels altogether in order to write Poetry &
Novels. Even where he a total hack, this one-two punch of political correctness and literary pretense would
have at least ensured that he was overrated. But the fact that he was also a capable writer has ensured that he
is one of the most overestimated novelists in the English language. Fate is also revealed by means of many
omens and signs. Hardy's tragic vision has a tinge of Greek tragedy in which character is helpless in the
hands of fate. Shakespeare, on the other hand, holds character fully responsible for mishap. Fate plays a
major role in many of Hardy's novels; Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, The Mayor of
Casterbridge etc contains various instances where its effects are readily apparent. Moreover, Hardy's
novels reflect a pessimistic view where fate, or chance, is responsible for a character's ruin. Although it is
much more subdued, FATE and PESSIMISM are still visible.

WORKS-CITED

Gibson, James. Thomas Hardy:ALiterary Life. London: Macmillan, 1996.
Vann, J. Don. Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985.
Herman, William R. "Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles." Explicator 18, 3 (December 1959), item no. 16
Morgan, Rosemarie. "Passive Victim? Tess of the D'Urbervilles." Thomas Hardy Journal 5, 1 (January
1989): 31-54.
Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (New York: Routledge, 1988).
Webber, Carl J. "Editorial Epilogue." An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress by Thomas Hardy.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1935.

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