The intention of this study is to examine the use of non-realistic materials in the fiction of Thomas Hardy. Although on the surface Hardy's work appears to be in the realistic tradition, several of his prose fictions are really closer to romance, and all of them will, on examination, be found to contain at least some romance elements. In this study the term "romance" denotes a type of prose fiction which draws on non-realistic materials and which introduces situations that depart from the ordinary rules of probability.
Closely connected to Hardy's predilection for romance is his use of myth, folklore, ballad motifs, symbolic episodes and evocative settings. These very diverse techniques do not necessarily originate in romance. Some of them are more commonly associated with poetry than with prose fiction. But they do blend easily into the romance atmosphere. They help to make a unity, create a mood and establish a world which is unique in the nineteenth-century novel. To read Hardy properly, it is therefore necessary to suspend disbelief in a way we are not normally expected to do in a realistic novel, and to approach his work more as we would that of a poet.
Hardy was strongly influenced by the great Romantics, particularly by the Gothic aspects of their work. But he was also concerned with the attitudes of the nature poets --especially Wordsworth's --to man, God and nature. As an heir to the Romantics, Hardy grew up assuming nature to be the reflection of a divine order. The loss of faith that overcame him as a young man eroded this assumption, but, as happens with many of us, the emotional side of Hardy could not easily be reconciled to what his intellect ascertained to be the truth. This ambivalence gives rise to the characteristic tension in his work between reason and emotion, between the real and the unreal, between man-made codes of behaviour and the more natural physical urges of human beings.
Hardy's intuitiveness is nowhere more evident than in his handling of the relations of the sexes. Hence his interest in the process of courtship. Above all, Hardy was impressed by the tremendous power of sexual desire and its tendency to deceive people and trap them in situations which thwart their ambitions and often doom them to unhappiness.
I have chosen to examine the foregoing motifs in detail, as they appear in a limited number of Hardy's works, rather than to skim superficially over the bulk of the fiction and poetry in what would inevitably become a tedious survey. The introductory chapter briefly considers Hardy's upbringing and interests; it then examines the nonrealistic materials, particularly those from romance literature and from Romantic poetry, that appealed to Hardy's imagination. The next three chapters deal consecutively with Hardy's first three published novels --DesEerate Remedies, Under the Greenwood Tree and A Pair of Blue Eyes --minor fictions, but indicative of Hardy's characteristic themes and techniques. Chapters V and VI discuss two neglected works of Hardy's middle period --A Laodicean and Two on a Tower. Chapter VII
considers two shorter fictions --"The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid" and "The Fiddler of the Reels". In an effort to show how the techniques derived from romance and Romanticism reached fruition in the Wessex novels, The l\'oodlanders has been chosen to complete the study.
Critics usually condemn Hardy's minor fictions; nevertheless it can be shown that they are entirely characteristic of the man, that they contain episodes that are worthy of our attention and that their relative neglect is unfortunate. This study is therefore an attempt, on a modest scale, to right a certain imbalance in Hardy studies and to reveal the major themes and techniques of a popular though, in regard to part of his achievement, a slighted writer. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/15683 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Benazon, Michael |
| Contributors | Ross, Michael L., English |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds