Thomas Hardy Research Articles

Perception, Class and Environment in the Works of Thomas Hardy, by Roger Ebbatson

<i>Perception, Class and Environment in the Works of Thomas Hardy</i>, by Roger Ebbatson

Exploring the use of Language in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Focus on Social Class and Patriarchal Mindset of Victorian England

Tess of the d’Urbervilles written by Thomas Hardy explores the complicated social structure and patriarchal injustice existing during the Victorian era. In this novel, Hardy uses refined and colloquial language for characters belonging to different classes in order to portray social differences and highlight power and position.Tess, being a girl from lower class was a subject of exploitation and received physical and mental abuse from Alec, Angel and overall, the society. Alec often abused her verbally using words reflectinghis ownership over Tess while Angel and the society blamed her for her rape. This paper aims to examine the role of language in Tess of the d’Urbervilles that represents the deep-rooted domination based on gender and class. Through Hardy’s narrative style and variation in linguistics pattern themes of male dominance and abuse, possession, control, victim blaming, identity, social class. and the patriarchal mindset of the society has been explored. The findings are basedon the primary and secondary data collected from the text Tess of the d’Urbervilles and other journals, articles, research paper of various scholars respectively. Besides, it also focuses on the sympathetic narrative tone of the writer where he expressed his compassion and presented Tess as a tragic character to the readers, who had gone through all sorts of sufferings due to her gender and class. The paper also presents a connection between Tess and the women of all ages who have similar experience and how language has always been an instrument of oppression and control over women by men. Hardy’s use of language is a reflection of the social and gender oppression during the Victorian era and how words can be a way of humiliating women.

Lamenting the Idyllic--Thomas Hardy’s Nostalgia in Far from the Madding Crowd

The useful conceptions of nostalgia are instrumental for a close look at Thomas Hardy’s pastoral sentiment towards the vanishing rustic life, which is disturbed by the abrupt intrusion of industrialization in the country. Hardy’s pastoral nostalgia finds its refuge in the partly real, partly dreamlike Wessex, in which a self-contained atmosphere of idyllic contentment remains. Through a nostalgic interpretation of Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, the essay explores Hardy’s nostalgic construction of a fraternal Weatherbury community, including the incarnation of his idealized peasant type Shepherd Oak and the desirably pastoral romance. Through a collection of Hardy’s imaginations, the research aims to probe into the individual’s ambiguous psychology and complicated perception when confronting with the social and cultural transitions in the late nineteenth century England.

Far from the Madding Crowd at 150: Seven Reflections

ABSTRACT Seven scholars of Victorian literature reflect on Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd in honor of the 150th anniversary of its publication. The authors reflect their personal responses to the novel, and each has a unique focus.

Psychic Determinism: An Analysis of Michael Henchard's Character in Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge

Psychic Determinism: An Analysis of Michael Henchard's Character in Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge

Gender Stereotype in Tess of The D’urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This study focused on gender stereotypes in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). The objectives of the study were to: examine the portrayal of masculinity-femininity stereotype; examine the language used in gender stereotype and analyse the impact of traditional gender stereotype on the female characters. The study used the feminist theory to examine gender stereotype in the two male–authored novels to show how they have positioned and portrayed women in their literature in the Victorian period both in England and America The literary analysis was to ascertain whether or not the gender stereotype was a global notion in literature or a misrepresentation of the women not as persons but as sexualized figures. Gender stereotype in these novels was examined using the descriptive research design and data was collected using literary analysis. The findings indicated that both novels portrayed the female gender with discrimination, injustice, dishonesty and exploitatively. This was done with the use of symbolism, imagery, similes and metaphor. The conclusion drawn points to the fact that the quest for a masculine identity is a common theme as male characters are seen struggling to become real men with traits such as: power, strength and robustness whereas female characters were portrayed as sexualized figure used for social status in the male dominated societies. With regard to language stereotype, the male characters employed language to paint negative image in line with the accepted image in the male dominated society. The researchers recommend that detailed and comprehensive studies be conducted in the area of gender and culture and gender and literature in the novel as a genre generally

Rewriting the Literary Past: D. H. Lawrence and Geoff Dyer’s Antibiography

Abstract Why do memoirists, in order to find themselves, find it necessary to rewrite their favorite authors? This article explores this question by analyzing D. H. Lawrence and Geoff Dyer, who provide a case study for understanding the radical energies that burn beneath the surface of rewriting. The article traces Dyer’s conflicted attitude to memoir and rewriting back to Lawrence, who theorizes rewriting and puts it into practice in his own work, specifically in his Study of Thomas Hardy. If by now the book market is awash in rewrites, that is because rewriting first asserted itself as a contrarian impulse, a radically different way of thinking about the canon that has become second nature.

Scrolling Along: Spatial Design as Narrative in Thomas Hardy

Abstract: Thomas Hardy uses the painterly triptych of foreground, middle distance, and background in his narrative structures. These developments can be read as spatial scrolls. Their design recalls the narrative chronotope described by Mikhail Bakhtin. While the scroll is simple in form, Hardy deploys it complexly to delineate location, perspective, value, and identity. Many illustrations from his poetry such as "Wessex Heights," "The Pedigree," and "Poems of 1912–13" are examined. A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), Return of the Native (1873), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), Jude the Obscure (1895) and other novels use the scroll. The scroll design mediates the narrative interplay of optics and options in Hardy's work. The construct of Wessex is Hardy's most elaborate narrative and his most elaborate scroll.

Reinvestigating Thomas Hardy’s Motives in The Characterisation of Alec D’urbervilles and Angel Clare in Tess of the D’urbervilles

One stable error of judgement by critics of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles is regarding Alec D’Urbervilles as a villainous tool of fate instrumental to Tess Durbeyfield’s tragedy. This idea goes with the associated assumption that Tess has all the moral and ethical reasons to reject him and embrace Angel. This paper seeks to redeem the name of Alec in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles by positing that all the odium placed on him result from gross misrepresentation and that he is a hero of love, whose tragedy results from bestowing his love on Tess unrequitedly. It will be proven by comparison that Angel Clare is ironically the evil in the set-up, and the embodiment of all the tragic contents of Victorian moral laws and patriarchal customs. This study is a product of a qualitative research approach, involving interpretive and content analysis aimed at deepening the argument that while Alec’s conduct is almost completely unimpeachable, Angel is the agent of distraction and destruction that single-handedly brings about the tragedy of both Tess and Alec. The key finding is that Tess’s tragedy happens as a result of her rejecting Alec’s love and bestowing her love on the wrong person.

Intonation in Speech and Thought Reporting

Abstract Directly reported speech and thought are not only deictically and syntactically, but also prosodically less well integrated with the quotative expression than indirect reports. Though not an established result of the longstanding linguistic and philosophical scrutiny of the modes of speech and thought reporting, it was yet something Thomas Hardy noticed, revising his poem Afterwards for re-publication and struggling with some crucial wordings and with punctuation in circumstances where quotative and report had distinct illocutionary force, with the one a question and the other a statement.

CRITICAL ANIMAL STUDIES AND NON-SPECIESIST PERCEPTION OF ANIMALS IN THOMAS HARDY'S POETRY

CRITICAL ANIMAL STUDIES AND NON-SPECIESIST PERCEPTION OF ANIMALS IN THOMAS HARDY'S POETRY

Exploring Deviation and Conformity in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native

Exploring Deviation and Conformity in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native

EMMA TENNANT’S tEss: HARDY’S CANONICAL NOVEL FROM A FEMALE REVISIONIST PERSPECTIVE

Depending on the perspective, Emma Tennant’s tess (1993) can be interpreted as a neo-Victorian, postmodernist, and revisionist novel. This paper is aimed at analyzing tess from the aspect of revisionism. By offering a familiar story from a female perspective and combining it with an imaginative biography of Hardy’s life and a polemic account of the history of women’s oppression, the narrator intends to challenge the well-known past and rewrite it. The Victorian era is represented as “the last great age of punishment for women”, but such representation is extended to Thomas Hardy. By presenting unknown facts that portray the writer in a negative context, the narrator intends to “shake” our understanding of the allegedly well-known past and break into history. The novel implies that the Victorian age was even bleaker than it is usually thought of, but this vision is extended to the present, which is arguably represented in an even grimmer light. By pointing to the patterns visible both in the past and the present, the narrator’s purpose is to highlight the timeless, universal topics that permeate all the literary and historical periods, such as the oppression of women. As suggested by the novel, the only way to end the tradition of women’s subordination and punishment is to allow women to tell their own stories.

The Transformative Power Of Use Of Space in Hardy’s “Satires Of Cırcumstances: In Fifteen Glimpses”: A Change From The Public Space To Private and Vice Versa

“Satires of Circumstances” which is a part of a poetry collection by Thomas Hardy consists of fifteen poems which produce a moral question and a scenery of a daily life of people. The settings of these poems are ordinary places ranging from a living room, bride’s room, in a restaurant, in a store, outdoors, and in the cemetery. There are three poems which take place in the cemetery: “By Her Aunt’s Grave”, “In the Cemetery”, and “In the Moonlight”. These poems are of importance to discuss in terms of cemetery’s dynamism as a both public and a private space are designated through the relations and activities of the people. The cemetery in the three poems as a dynamic area is discussed in terms of public and private space and the dynamism in between drawing on the notions of public space put forward by Mike Devereux and David Littlefield, and definitions of private space by.

Threads of Tradition Social Expectations and Marriage in Emma by Jane Austen and Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

This study explores the theme of marriage and social expectations in two beloved novels: In case of two British novelists Jane Austen's Emma and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The paper is focused on revealing a multi-faceted character of the figure of gender roles, social values and traditions linking the lives of Emma Woodhouse and Tess Durbeyfield by means of a comparative analysis. These tensions between female characters' individual goals and social constraints are exposed by the study and the opinions of Elizabeth V. Spelman, Ann Bo-Hubert, Hazel Carby, Elaine Showalter, Susan Gubar and Sandra M. Gilbert are referred to. Austen dismantled the precedent social norms of the Regency period through the vital tool of satire and wit after this novel is through and through analysed out. The made decision to make the word association “Brain” instead of “love” is a pretty good way to show the society who sees marriage as only a calculated action, not the passionate connection. The multilayered substructures of a theme are formed due to the "crazy woman in the attic" metaphor constructed by Gilbert and Gubar which implies the true self of a woman in society is suppressed due to restricted roles. Unlike Stone's 'Greek Myths,' Hardy in Tess of the D’Urbervilles focusing on a gloomy story that work to demonstrate the harmful consequences of ignoring Victorian society rules. The article analyses the marriage and gender role issues that Hardy has shown in a vivid manner as Eagleton says. The main conflict of the play is about what man want and what society demands, that is: what is true happiness and what is right in social term. Social class differences get intensively scrutinized, as the plot shows how the social systems influence the lives of the characters and build their destinies which deepens the theme analysis further. The study shows that these classic novels have been excellent guides and examples that have helped readers figure out what they would like to do with their lives. Moreover, the readers have been able to see people confront the challenges they encounter from institutions or interpersonal dynamics as well as expectations to balance their culture and social obligations.

In Default of Providence: Tragedy and Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Abstract Reconsidering Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman in view of newly discovered textual discrepancies between editions and critical scholarship, this essay makes a necessary intervention in the reading tradition of the rape-fall-punishment triad by shifting the central event of the novel to the murder as it relates to aspects of the novel's religious framework. It argues that Tess's actions are contingent on a critical phrase, “a shining light,” that has been suppressed through the novel's complicated publication history and reconnects sections of the plot to restore the significance of tragedy in the novel without explaining that tragedy through her violation. By recovering the religious significance of conversion in the text as crucial to a structure of extralegal justice on which the events of the novel hinge, the essay argues that Tess's crime, rather than serving as mere irony, is motivated by faith and an understanding of justice that illuminates the problem of the uncanny God of the nineteenth century, present through absence. As the salvation plot is brought back into relevance with the marriage plot, the concept of Tess's love as a powerful force that should be able to overcome all is reduced to a failed attempt at epistemic reform. Through her failure, the novel raises questions about the possibilities of radical world-making that have historically been overlooked by Hardy's critics.

How I Built Myself a House: A Brazilian Translation of Thomas Hardy’s First Published Literary Piece

Thomas Hardy foi um prolífico escritor inglês que viveu entre 1840 e 1928 — autor de romances, contos, poemas e uma peça. Trabalhando com arquitetos no início da vida adulta, enquanto se aventurava em composições literárias, sua primeira publicação foi o conto How I Built Myself a House, divulgado pelo periódico Chamber’s Journal em março de 1865, quando o autor tinha 24 anos. Apesar de a consolidação da carreira lhe ocorrer já aos mais de 50 anos, com romances trágicos que incitavam reflexões sobre a humanidade, a religião, a ciência, o matrimônio e a sociedade que lhe garantiam um certo desagrado pela crítica literária da época, esta primeira composição literária de Hardy apresenta um bom humor que antecede esse teor dramático de seus futuros trabalhos. O texto aborda as desventuras enfrentadas por um casal que pretende deixar para trás um lar nada prático e se mudar para a casa de seus sonhos. O protagonista e sua esposa, então, veem-se na necessidade de renunciar a muitas de suas idealizações durante a obra da nova residência, que também lhes gera problemas. Esta tradução brasileira de How I Built Myself a House é a primeira tradução da narrativa para a língua portuguesa.

Gender, Borders and Boundaries in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

The concept of borders and boundaries is one of the important themes in English literature. It might refer to national borders or divisions within countries or symbolize physical barriers, societal divisions or personal limitations. Metaphorically, borders and boundaries might mean the boundaries based on caste, color, creed or sex or represent expectations and prejudices or search for selfhood and identity. Writers from the marginalized communities take up the themes of construction of identity in their writing. Similarly, African-American writers, while addressing the issues of race, gender and class, illustrate their struggle and experiences. Their own lives serve as an inspiration to write about the trauma of displacement and slavery. The English novel in the 18th and 19th century largely focused on women primarily confined to the roles of wife, mother and homemaker. However, some novelists such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Aphra Behn challenged gender stereotypes and advocated for greater female autonomy and intellectual freedom. Similarly, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Bronte etc. questioned the prevailing attitudes and provided a fresh perspective on gender issues. Whereas Jane Austen celebrates intelligent and strong-willed female characters who resist societal pressures, Gaskell delves into the lives of working-class women and those on the margins of society. Similarly, Hardy chooses the sub-title A Pure Woman for his novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles in order to question the Victorian norms. The paper discusses Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and analyses how the novel embodies rebellion against societal constraints by presenting an unconventional heroine who is able to move beyond boundaries and carve her path amid restrictions imposed by society in which she lives.

A Comparative Analysis of the Concepts of War in the Poetry of Thomas Hardy and Abdullah Pashew

Twentieth century witnessed marvelous uprisings and revolutions, besides the two world wars. This continuous unrest led some British poets to portray the real scenes and what they really observed and felt toward wars and they started questioning, protesting and, sometimes, celebrating the nature and purpose of the conflicts. Both of Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) and Abdulla Pashew (b.1946-present) expressed the struggle between human beings and they ennoble wars for their legitimate impulsions, and at the same time, they deprecate the spurious pretexts to provoke wars. Hardy, due to the First World War, tried to depict the reality of the war that either glorifies or ruins the mankind in most of the times, while Pashew shows glorification of wars against the dictatorship as a defense for his homeland (Kurdistan) in one side, and he also condemns it when the blameworthy civil war happened during nineties among his nation in the other side. So, both denounce and venerate wars depending on certain reasons and vindications. The study aims at examining the poems in a comparative way to show the differences and the similarities between the two nations understandings about the case of dealing with wars long ago and even the recent times. The paper is divided into two main parts each to show the concepts of war first with the British poet Thomas Hardy in his selected poems(“The man He killed”, “Christmas 1924” , “The Drummer Hodge” , “A wife in London”) . The other main part is to show the concept of war with the Kurdish poet and his selected poems (“The Lost Solider”, “The Unseen”, “I do not Understand”, “Two Faced or Sided”), then the paper ends up with the conclusions that are the findings of the study to illustrate more precisely on the major outcomes been found during the study.

The intimate viewfinder: poetic ekphrasis of photographs and the illusion of the real

ABSTRACT As digital photography proliferates in the contemporary world, theorists and creative writers continue to debate what photographs signify and how the poetic ekphrasis of photographs should be understood. This has become a pressing issue in an age when new technologies allow the easy manipulation of digital images – which, depending on the context in which they are viewed, are increasingly being characterised as creative, imaginative, unreliable or deceptive. Yet nineteenth- and early to mid-twentieth-century theorists tended to assume that photographs had a direct, if complex, relationship to observable, external reality, something reiterated by Susan Sontag as late as 1977. This paper discusses how ekphrastic poems by Thomas Hardy and Philip Larkin enshrine assumptions about photography that are now shifting, and how contemporary ekphrastic poems about photographs increasingly challenge, sometimes subversively, photography’s link to the ‘real’. Such poetry continues to emphasise the way photographs connote a ‘chasm’ or ‘thickening’ of time but are more troubled than earlier authors by the idea that photographs may not represent anything clear or knowable. Eve Joseph’s and Leslie Scalapino’s poetry demonstrates ways in which photographs tend to juxtapose a sense of transience with a new sense of photography’s sometimes obdurate problematics.