Critical Essay Hardy's Philosophy and

Ideas
Hardy is primarily a storyteller and
should be viewed more as a
chronicler of moods and deeds than
as a philosopher. Yet a novel such
as Far from the Madding
Crowd, which raises many questions
about society, religion, morals, and
the contrast between a good life and
its rewards, is bound to make the
reader curious about the author who
brings them up.
Hardy lived in an age of transition.
The industrial revolution was in the
process of destroying the agricultural
life, and the subsequent shifting of
population caused a disintegration of
rural customs and traditions that had
meant security, stability, and dignity
for the people. It was a period when
fundamental beliefs — religious,
social, scientific, and political — were
shaken to their core and brought in
their stead the "ache of modernism."
The new philosophies failed to satisfy
the emotional needs of many people.
As a young man, Hardy read
Darwin's Origin of the
Species and Essays and
Reviews (the manifesto of a few
churchmen who held radical
theological opinions), both of which
were to influence his views toward
religion. He found it difficult, if not
impossible, to reconcile the idea of a
beneficent, omnipotent, and
omniscient deity with the fact of
omnipresent evil and the persistent
tendency of circumstances toward
unhappiness.
When one thinks of Hardy the
novelist, that aspect of his work that
comes to mind most readily is his
frequent use of chance and
circumstances in the development of
his plots. But the reader must learn to
view Hardy's stories in the light of the
author's fatalistic outlook on life, for
Hardy fluctuates between fatalism
and determinism. Fatalism is a view
of life which acknowledges that all
action is controlled by the nature of
things, or by a Fate which is a great,
impersonal, primitive force existing
through all eternity, absolutely
independent of human wills and
superior to any god created by man.
Determinism, on the other hand,
acknowledges that man's struggle
against the will behind things is of no
avail, that the laws of cause and
effect are in operation — that is, the
human will is not free and human
beings have no control over their own
destiny, try as they may. Hardy sees
life in terms of action, in the doomed
struggle against the circumstantial
forces against happiness. Incident,
for example, plays an important role
in causing joy or pain, and often an
act of indiscretion in early youth can
wreck one's chances for happiness.
In Hardy's novels, then, Fate appears
as an artistic motif in a great variety
of forms — chance and coincidence,
nature, time, woman, and convention.
None is Fate itself, but rather all of
these are manifestations of the
Immanent Will.
The use of chance and coincidence
as a means of furthering the plot was
a technique used by many Victorian
authors but with Hardy it becomes
something more than a mere device.
Fateful incidents (overheard
conversations and undelivered
letters, for instance) are the forces
working against mere man in his
efforts to control his own destiny. In
addition, Fate appears in the form of
nature, endowing it with varying
moods that affect the lives of the
characters. Those who are most in
harmony with their environment are
usually the most contented; similarly,
those who can appreciate the joys of
nature can find solace in it. Yet
nature can take on sinister aspects,
becoming more of an actor than just
a setting for the action.
Besides the importance of nature in
Hardy's novels, one should consider
the concept of time. There is
tremendous importance placed on
the moment, for time is a great series
of moments. The joys of life are
transitory and the moments of joy
may be turned to bitterness by time.
Woman, also, is used by Hardy as
one of Fate's most potent instruments
for opposing man's happiness. Closer
to primitive feelings than man,
woman is helpless in the hands of
Fate and carries out Fate's work. In
her search for love, the motivating
passion of her life, woman becomes
an agent in her own destiny. In short,
one is, according to Hardy, powerless
to change the workings of Fate, but
those things that are contrived by
man — social laws and convention,
for example — and which work
against him can be changed by man.
Man is not hopelessly doomed.

Hardy’s Philosophy or Tragic

Vision of Life
Hardy, the novelist, was
essentially a poet and an artist
rather than a philosopher. Hardy
was primarily a story-teller and
should be viewed more as
chronicler of moods and deeds
than a philosopher. He repeatedly
affirmed that the 'Views' expressed
in his novels were not his
convictions or beliefs; they were
simply "impressions" of the
moment. In The Return of the
Native, Hardy proves a dismal
view of life in which coincidence
and accident conspire to produce
the worst of circumstance due to
the indifference of the Will.
In order to understand Hady’s
philosophy, we should have a fair
idea of Hardy’s biography. Hardy
lived in an age of transition. The
industrial revolution was in the
process of destroying the
agricultural life, and the
subsequent shifting of population
caused a disintegration of rural
customs and traditions. It was a
period when fundamental beliefs —
religious, social, scientific, and
political — were shaken to their
core and brought in their stead the
"ache of modernism." The new
philosophies failed to satisfy the
emotional needs of many people.
As a young man, Hardy read
Darwin's Origin of the
Species and Essays and
Reviews (the manifesto of some
radical clergymen), both of which
influenced Hardy’s attitude toward
religion profoundly. He found it
difficult, if not impossible, to
reconcile the idea of a beneficent
and benevolent, omnipotent, and
omniscient deity with the fact of
omnipresent evil and the persistent
tendency of circumstances toward
unhappiness.

Hardy's novels can be best

understood in the light of the
author's fatalistic outlook on life,
for Hardy fluctuates between
fatalism and determinism. Fatalism
is a view of life which
acknowledges that there is some
malignant power that controls the
universe, and which is out to
thwart and defeat men in their
plans. It is especially hostile to
them who try to assert themselves
and have their own way.
Determinism, on the other hand,
acknowledges that man's struggle
against fate is futile and man is
but puppet in the hands of
destiny. In Tess of D’urbervilles,
we are told that,
“Justice was done, and
President of Immortals(in
Aeschylean phrase) had ended
his sport with Tess.”
In The Return of the Native, Hardy
again reminds us that,
 “What a sport for
Heaven this woman Eustacia
was!”
In Hardy's novels, then, Fate
appears in the form of chance and
coincidence, nature, time and
woman. None is Fate itself, but
rather all of these are
manifestations of the Immanent
Will. Fateful incidents are the
forces working against men in
their efforts to control their
destinies. In addition, Fate appears
in the form of nature as a powerful
agent, that affects the lives of the
characters. Those who are most in
harmony with their environment
can find some solace, but those
who are indignant and
rebellious, it destroys all their
happiness.Eustacia suffers in The
Return of the Native, because of
her direct confrontation with Edgon
Heath, which symbolizes nature. In
the end Eustacia 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…I
have been injured and blighted
and crushed by things beyond
my control.”
Hardy remarks:
 “ What of Immanent Will
and its designs? It works
unconsciously as heretofore,
Eternal artistries in
circumstance.”
In Hardy's considered view, all
life is suffering. Man suffers from
the moment of his birth upto his
death. Happiness is only
occasional, it is never the general
rule:
"Happiness is but an
occasional episode in a general
drama of pain".
There is none who gets more
than he deserves but there are
many who get much less than what
they deserve. Not only man
suffers, but all life suffers.
Suffering is writ large on the face
of nature. A ruthless, brutal
struggle for existence is waged
everywhere in nature. All nature is
red in tooth and claw and life lives
upon life. Thus all life, including
human life, is subject to this law of
suffering and none can escape the
operation of this law.
Hardy’s characters are also a
prey to irony of circumstance.
Right things never happen at the
right time : they happen either not
at all, or too late, when their
happening brings nothing but
misery and suffering in their train.
The heroines of Hardy, like Tess
and Eustacia, as well as his male
characters, like Clym, Henchard,
Angel, Alec are all the victims of
the irony of circumstance. In ill-
conceived scheme of things there
is nothing but “strange oschestra
of victim shriek and
pain.”Almost all of the Hardy’s
characters are susceptible to this
omnipresent evil power.
In The Return of the Native,
Hardy suggests the philosophy of
Rustic Resignation. Man must be
resigned to one’s lot. It is useless
to complain or resist for nothing
can refom “ill-conceived scheme
of things.” If he is rash, hot-
headed and obstinate, like
Henchard or Eustacia, he can bring
about his own downfall. On the
other hand, if he is contended ang
resigned to his own lot like
Thomasin, he can make much of
his limited opportunities.
Summing up, Hardy’s philosophy
in The Return of the Native is
certainly ‘twilight’ and gloomy one
but it is not too much pessimistic
or nihilistic, for nihilism implies
negation of life, a wish not to have
been born at all. It is only in his
last novel “Jude of Obscure” that
some cynicism enters, and Hardy
becomes pessimistic otherwise he
is an acute realist. “My practical
philosophy”, says Hardy, “is
distinctively meliorist”, an
honest facing of human suffering.
“If a way to the better there
be, it implies good look at the
worst.”
Hardy is a humanist, a poet
who wants men to turn from
nature to their own kind for
“There at
least discourse trills
around

There at least smells

abound

There same-time
are
found

Life-Loyalties.”

Philosophic
analysis
DeterminismA coherent
philosophy?Deterministic factors in
TessObjectionsModernismWas Hardy a
modernist?The novel as a reflection of its
timesPost-modernismHardy's ambiguities
and silencesChristianSecularised Christian
themes – the pilgrimSecularised Christian
themes – purity not
righteousnessSecularised Christian themes –
natural laws not ChristianRepresentatives of
religion
• Early attempts at interpretation of
Tess frequently tried to reconstruct
Hardy's philosophy and then interpret
the novel in the light of the
reconstruction
• Later attempts continued to engage
with Hardy's stated beliefs but also
took on board literary theory
connected with modernism or
postmodernism
• All such attempts have yielded
valuable insights, though Hardy
never saw himself as a philosopher,
and to that extent, all reconstructions
 of Hardy's philosophy are somewhat
hypothetical.

Determinism
A coherent philosophy?
Attempts at this construct of the novel
assume Hardy acts as
the omniscient narrator. His comments
are therefore not questioned but
ascribed to some coherent and
overarching system of authorial belief.
Such interpretations emphasise Hardy's
use of the terms 'Fate', 'Destiny', 'Time'.
Phrases like 'the President of the
Immortals' are given prominence,
though Hardy denied he meant the
phrase literally:
• One such interpretation sees Hardy
as believing in a Creator who is
unseeing, less conscious and
 sensitive than his creations,
especially human beings
• Other reconstructions go back to
Greek ideas of the three Fates, or
blind Fate
• Others investigate the German
philosophers popular in the late
nineteenth century, whom Hardy
read. Most of their systems could be
collected under the term
'determinism': that is, we have little
control over our own destinies. The
concept of choice is largely an
illusion (see Determinism and free
will). Even evolutionism can be seen
as largely deterministic.
Deterministic factors in Tess
A deterministic analysis of Tess would
focus on the following:
 • Her belonging to the fallen family of
the d'Urbervilles is a sign of her
continued descent, whatever choices
she tries to make to the contrary.
She may not be at fault for this fall,
but, once started, it cannot be
reversed
• Instincts to find happiness are bound
to be thwarted because Fate /
Destiny / Providence has no interest
in human aspirations. A moment of
happiness will soon be annulled by
disaster or calamity
• Tess is thus a victim of her past and
of Fate itself. Her glory is that she
does not succumb fatalistically to her
suffering.
Objections
It could be objected that Hardy's own life
does not bear this philosophy out. He
had a remarkably successful life, marred
by very few tragedies. It has also been
suggested the fatalism in the novel is
merely a reflection of the fatalism of
rural folk who have used it as a way of
coping with natural disasters for
centuries, and so no philosophical
weight should be put on it.

Modernism
Was Hardy a modernist?
Hardy's critique of modernity, especially
in the characters of Alec and Angel, has
led some commentators to see Hardy as
a judge of his own era, critiquing it in a
modern way. As a literary
movement, Modernism began before
Hardy had died. When Tess was written,
'proto-modernism' might be a better term
to describe this avant-garde movement:
 • Such writers used either irony or
satire to attack Victorianism
• They tried to establish much freer
structures by which to assess
morality
• They sought to liberate the roles of
men and especially women in
modern society
• However, such writers also critiqued
the attitudes and behaviour of those
who reacted to Victorian convention.

(The dramatists Henrik Ibsen and

George Bernard Shaw would be good
examples of contemporary proto-
modernist writers.)
Modernist writers also experimented
with time and time sequences. However,
Hardy is a very traditional writer. His
time sequence is in order, and causal
connections are established firmly.
The novel as a reflection of its
times
Tess does talk of the 'ache of
modernity', and Hardy was obviously
very aware that the loss of beliefs and
values left a sense of alienation among
modern people:
• Alec's drifting around is one symptom
of this
• Angel's rebellion of faith is another.
His modernity is not thought through
but over-optimistic. He, too, is in
danger of drifting
• Tess is also alienated from her
family, her village and ultimately from
society as a whole. She becomes an
outsider and her life is marked by
loss and quest. She loses her simple
 faith, and becomes disillusioned by
the men in her life. She becomes a
wanderer and, in the end, modern life
hounds her to death.
At times, Hardy suggests that, in the
discernible future, enough progress will
have been made to avoid all this. But his
view of progress is somewhat
pessimistic, (typical of modernist
writers). Social conventions change
slowly and human freedoms are slowly
won.

Post-modernism
In literary studies, post-modernism is
most frequently seen in what is called
'Deconstruction'. Post-modern readings
do not claim that Hardy himself is post-
modern. In fact, post-modernism puts no
great faith in the ‘narrator' and drives a
wedge between narrator and creator of
the text. 'The unreliable narrator' is a
typical post-modern phrase.
So instead of trying to construct what
the author is saying, the method is to
deconstruct the surface text, and to see
its ambiguities and contradictions.
Rather than assume a coherent
authorial philosophy, post-modern
readings of the text attempt to see just
how many perspectives and viewpoints
are included in the text, whether any are
'privileged' and if so, why.
Hardy's ambiguities and silences
Hardy is ambiguous in that what he says
is not always what he shows, and he
should not always be taken at face-
value. Tess herself can be seen as a
fractured reference point rather than a
coherent identity, whom readers have to
construct from a series of fragments.
Post-modernism also explores silences
and borders or margins, where one
state of being crosses into another:
• Tess is full of silences, of things that
are not written out, such as Tess's
confession. Why not? Why this
evasion?
• Tess also lives on the margins of her
societies, crossing over all sorts of
borders in her own development and
in the class structures of the day.
See also: Characterisation: Angel; Tess
as outsider; Modernity; Coincidence,
destiny and fate

Christian
The three main subtexts used by Hardy
in Tess are all Christian, so the novel
lends itself to interpretation in this way.
Hardy was particularly aware
of Christianity, if only because he was
once a believer and then became a critic
of it. His thinking is still influenced by
Christian concepts and his rejection of
Christianity needs critiquing.
Secularised Christian themes – the
pilgrim
One aspect to explore is how Hardy
uses Christian themes, but in a secular
way. The idea of the secular pilgrim is a
good example, drawing on the subtext
of The Pilgrim's Progress:
• While the Christian searches
for salvation, in Tess the protagonists
instinctively seek happiness or even
love
• For a Christian, redemption is
permanent, dependent on Christ, not
on fallible humans
• In Tess, although it is an ‘angel' who
seeks to save Tess, he fails
miserably, almost damning her to
a hellish life with Alec
• Rather than repentance being
appropriate for the pilgrim / Tess, it is
the ‘saviour' / Angel who needs to
repent and go through
a purgatorial experience
• A salvation of happiness in
a paradise of love is achieved, but it
is transitory, not permanent
• Angel can't even offer Tess the
consolation that they will be together
in heaven, a central tenet for
Victorian Christians.
Secularised Christian themes –
purity not righteousness
In Tess, the defining moral term
appropriate to salvation is purity, not
the righteousness of Christianity:
• Hardy's point is that purity must be
attributed to Tess because of her
good intentions
• However, ‘good intentions' are a
subjective value judgement,
compared to the objective terms of
Christian salvation, where
righteousness depends on the
perfect life and death of Jesus. See
Big ideas from the
Bible: Redemption, salvation.
Secularised Christian themes –
natural laws not Christian
Christians believe that God's word / law
is perfect. Hardy ostensibly replaces
biblical teaching with 'nature's law', yet
is ambivalent about this:
• Sometimes, natural laws stand in
contrast to the work of time
• Wordsworth's position was that
nature was part of God's providence
and therefore was basically good,
revealing God's love
• Hardy can see no such role for
nature, but lacking a substitute belief,
can only lament.
Representatives of religion
Hardy is obviously attacking the
Christian church as an institution
through the way in which he portrays its
representatives:
• The vicar of Marlott is embarrassed
by Tess's baby
• The Clares, both parents and sons,
are restricted by their class
conventions
• Alec's conversion is suspect
• Only Mr Clare emerges with any
honour. But, even here, Hardy gives
no reason why Mr
Clare's Pauline theology is not valid,
only that he does not like it
• Perhaps the greatest criticism of the
institutional church is that its impact
on Tess and her community is
limited. She is affected far more by
Alec and Angel's faithlessness. The
loss of her own faith (through Angel)
only brings harm to her.