Abstract
This chapter reads Hardy’s The Woodlanders (1887), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895) as ambivalent responses to the new conception of human intelligence that emerged from Victorian psychology and evolutionary theory. Although these novels reflect Hardy’s endorsement of the new biological model of intelligence, they also register his resistance to what many late Victorians assumed to be its corollary: that mental worth can be an object of scientific measurement, classification, and ranking. The chapter clarifies how these novels challenge the scientific reification of intellectual inequality and attempt to vindicate overlooked and stigmatised forms of intelligence.
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