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This paper explores and interrogates late Victorian anxieties concerning the issues of masculinity and labor, taking Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure as a key text in this discourse. I argue that Hardy, drawing upon his own experiences, offers a meditation on the differing Victorian modes of masculinity outlined and embodied in the thought of John Henry Newman and Thomas Carlyle, and in doing so, constructs a dialectical tension between already outmoded, yet remarkably persistent, answers to the questions and pressures of modernity. Through the use of one of the text’s central images—that of Christminster and its accompanying Gothic architecture—Hardy creates an opposition between an idealized intellectual labor and the earthy reality of manual labor. Both forms—figured in either the heroic and organic terms of Carlyle or the reserved, tradition-bound reaction of Newman—represent the ideal that allows Jude to live, but also the force that leads to his death. Therefore, in the clash between the ideal and real, the dialectic fails to deliver a possible synthesis, and instead spirals restlessly in the darkened gaps of self-negation. At the same time, because the specter of a crude social and biological Darwinism consciously haunts the edges of the story, the dialectic never stops demanding a synthesis if Jude is to discover the grounding for a fully integrated identity or ethics. The central question for Hardy thus becomes one of form: For a modern masculine subjectivity to take hold, external social forms must have a connective vitality with interior dispositions, a proposition that Hardy views as a near impossibility. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Tufts University, 1999. / Adviser: Sheila Emerson. Submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 177-184). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Zugl.: Berlin, Humboldt-Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2003

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:25:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-05-23Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:08:08Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 silva_ie_me_arafcl.pdf: 547814 bytes, checksum: b7e92a8c84d9d767a09f24764778abb4 (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Thomas Hardy é um autor cuja produção se assenta no período que compreende o final do século XIX e o começo do século XX, momento que marca não apenas o fim de uma era histórica e o recomeço de novos tempos, mas caracteriza também uma ocasião de mudança na concepção literária. No caso inglês, aquele período apontava para um declínio da literatura vitoriana – com seus temas baseados na moral austera da época, ancorada na figura íntegra da rainha Vitória – e revelava os primeiros indícios de uma tendência literária voltada para o retrato do homem cindido, imerso no processo de crise existencial e destituído de muitas de suas antigas certezas. Este trabalho apresenta uma análise do romance Tess of the d‟Urbervilles com vistas a flagrar, segundo o ponto de vista de Thomas Hardy, a crise de valores que se estabelece, quando o modo de produção capitalista avança sobre as antigas instituições feudais na Inglaterra daquele tempo e deflagra um processo de reconsideração dos papéis dos indivíduos na sociedade. O estopim desta efervescência foram os desdobramentos da Revolução Industrial e as inovações nos campos científico e cultural que convulsionaram os padrões de comportamento e colocaram em questionamento a própria conduta humana. Com ironia, a sociedade vitoriana é criticada e, seus costumes, em grande monta, são apresentados como hipócritas no romance de Hardy, que tem um desfecho fatalista e parece retratar a visão desencantada do homem daquele momento sobre o destino de sua própria espécie no mundo em ascendente ebulição. Publicado pela primeira vez em 1891 e concebido sob a forma realista, interessa à pesquisa o romance Tess of the d‟Urbervilles justamente pelo seu caráter duplo: pertence ao cânone da literatura vitoriana e, ao mesmo tempo, antecipa a temática modernista do colapso da solidez humana. Para apontar esta crise, adotamos... / Thomas Hardy‟s works are set in a time comprehending the end of nineteenth century and the beginning of twentieth century, a period that not only highlights the end of a historical era and the beginning of a new time, but also characterizes an occasion of change in literary conception. That period in England was representative of the decay of Victorian literature – with moral-based themes inspired in Queen Victoria‟s integrity – and it showed up the first signs of a literary tendency of revealing the image of the divided man, sunk into the process of existential crisis and void of many of his previous certainties. This study presents an examination on Tess of the d‟Urbervilles in order to depict, according to Thomas Hardy‟s point of view, the crisis of values installed in the social order, when capitalism advances over the old feudal institutions in England at that time and sets forth a process of reconsideration of the roles of the individuals in society. The starting point of all this effervescence was the Industrial Revolution and its implications that brought innovation to scientific and cultural realms, disrupting old standards of behaviour and putting human conduct in check. The Victorian society is criticized with irony and many of its habits are taken as hypocrisies in Hardy‟s novel, which ends fatalistically, seeming to portrait man‟s disappointed view about his own destiny in the disturbed world in that time. Tess of the d‟Urbervilles, written under the realist form, was published for the first time in 1891 and it is important to this research because of its double character: it belongs to the canon of Victorian literature and, at the same time, anticipates the modernist theme of the collapse of human solidity. To point out this crisis, we take Raymond Williams‟s position that considers Hardy not simply a regionalist writer exclusively worried with... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

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This study examines the forces which shaped the main character--Tess Durbeyfield--in Hardy's novel in terms of the effects which her alcoholic family had upon her mental and emotional potential and which ultimately become the determining factors in her self-destruction. Using the elements and patterns set forth in the literature regarding the dynamics of the alcoholic family, I attempt to show that Hardy's novel may best be understood as the story of a woman whose life and destiny are controlled by the consequences of her father's alcoholism. This interpretation seems to account best for many elements of the novel, such as Tess's destruction, and provides a rich appreciation of Hardy's technique and vision.

This dissertation politically analyses the principles of literary evaluation (here called "axiology") argued and applied by the English critics Christopher Caudwell, Raymond Williams, and Terry Eagleton. The paradoxical fact that all three claim to be working within a Marxist framework while producing mutually divergent rationales for literary evaluation prompts a detailed examination of Marx and Engels. Moreover, since Caudwell and Eagleton acknowledge Leninism to be Marxism, and, further, since Eagleton and I both in our own ways argue that Trotskyism--as opposed to Stalinism--is the continuator of Leninism, the evaluative methods of Lenin and Trotsky also become relevant. Examined in light of that revolutionary tradition, however, and in view of the (English) critics' high political self-consciousness, the latter's principles of "literary" evaluation reveal definitive political differences between each other and with Marxism itself, centrally over the question of organised action. Thus, each of the chapters on the English critics begins with an examination of the chosen critic's purely political profile and its relationship to his general theory of literature. Next, I show how the contradictions of his "axiology" express those of his politics. Finally, with Hardy as a focus, I show the influence of each critic's political logic on his particular "literary" assessment of individual authors and texts. The heterogeneity of these critics' evaluations of Hardy, the close correspondence of each critic's general evaluative principles to his political beliefs, and the non-Marxist nature of those beliefs themselves all concretely suggest that none of the three English critics is strictly a Marxist. I do not know whether a genuinely Marxist axiology is inevitable; however, I do admit such a phenomenon as a logical possibility. In any case, I argue, this possibility will never be realised unless aspiring Marxist axiologists seek to match their usually extensive knowledge of literature with an active interest in making international proletarian revolution happen. And, since it can only happen if it is organised, the "Marxist" axiologist without such an orientation will be merely an axiologist without Marxism. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

L’unitarienne Elizabeth Gaskell rejetait les doctrines anglicanes qui aliéneraient Thomas Hardy de sa religion. Elle était aussi championne de plusieurs penseurs qui exerceraient une forte influence sur les convictions d'Hardy. La continuité de la religion de Gaskell avec la vision du monde d'Hardy est évidente dans leurs écritures personnelles et aussi dans leurs romans. L'authenticité de voix que tant Gaskell que Hardy donnent aux caractères marginalisés, et spécialement aux femmes, provient aussi de leurs valeurs chrétiennes communes. Les convictions religieuses des deux auteurs et l'influence de la religion sur leurs travaux ont été abondamment étudiées, mais une comparaison entre elles doit encore être entreprise. Après avoir examiné les liens entre la foi de Gaskell et les convictions d'Hardy, je compare les attitudes des deux auteurs envers la classe dans North and South et The Woodlanders et leurs sympathies envers la femme tombée dans Ruth et Tess of the d’Urbervilles. / As a progressive Unitarian, Elizabeth Gaskell rejected the Anglican doctrines that would later alienate Thomas Hardy from his religion. She also championed many of the thinkers who would exert a strong influence on Hardy’s beliefs. The connection between Gaskell’s religion and Hardy’s worldview is evident in their personal writings and in their novels. The authenticity of voice that both Gaskell and Hardy give to marginalized characters, specifically to women, also springs from their common Christian-based values. Both authors’ religious convictions and the influence of religion on their works have been extensively studied, but a comparison between them has yet to be undertaken. After examining the links between Gaskell’s Unitarianism and Hardy’s beliefs, I compare the two authors’ attitudes towards class in North and South and The Woodlanders and their sympathies with the fallen woman as expressed in Ruth and Tess of the d’Urbervilles to demonstrate their intellectual and artistic affinities.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the concept of a godless universe governed by a consciousless and conscienceless Immanent Will in Hardy's poetry is an ineluctable outcome, given the expanded scientific knowledge of the nineteenth century, of the pantheistic views of the English Romantic poets. The purpose is accomplished by tracing characteristically Romantic attitudes through the representative poetry of the early Victorian period and in Hardy's poetry. The first chapter is a brief introduction. Chapter II surveys major Romantic themes, illustrating them in Wordsworth's poetry. Chapter III treats the decline of the Romantic vision in the poetry of Tennyson and Arnold. Hardy's views and the Victorian poets' influence are the subject of Chapter IV. Chapter V demonstrates Wordsworth's influence on Hardy in several areas.