“There is a discord in nature of existence. Man is working to one end, Destiny to another. These ends may coincide or they may not. Either way it is Destiny who decides what shall happen.”

“One thing is certain. I do love you- past all compass and description. I love you to oppressiveness, I, who have never before felt more than a pleasant passing fancy for any woman I have ever seen. Let me look right into your moonlit face and dwell on every line and curve in it.”

Among the modern novelists the most common conflict that exists is between sympathy and judgment, immoral and rational preferences and unconscious allegiance and conscious commitment. Those we admire are at times disliked by us and those we condemn, we at times are attracted towards them. Hardy exhibits the dual characteristics of a “moral antagonism” to the aristocrat and at the same time a predilection d’artiste for the aristocrat. Hardy shows the individual destroyed though he has sympathy for the individual against the community. He both envied rebellion and non-conformity but at the same time he thought that he approved them. He rather, advocated the docile and the unaggressive. It is because of Hardy’s secret identifying sympathy for the outlaw that The Mayor of Casterbridge has attained such gentleness. Twilight was approaching in Egdon Heath on a Saturday afternoon in November. Although the sky was still bright, the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath was acquiring darkness gradually. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have felt inclined to continue work; but looking at Heath he would have decided to go home. The appearance of the Heath added half an hour to the evening, just as it delayed dawn, saddened noon, anticipated storms and intensified a moonless midnight . Precisely at this transitional point of its nightly crawl into darkness, the glory of the Egdon Heath began. The Heath was indeed, a near relation of the night.

Of all the women characters of Hardy, Tess claims our attention first, then Sue, then Eustacia and then others. Hardy has named Tess as a pure woman- and also as a ‘standard woman’. Tess undoubtedly possesses purity of the spirit. Tess’s morals are of the mind as well as of the heart. Henry Charles Duffin says about Tess, ‘She is moral as any prude, her behavior, her thoughts, her desires on all perilous occasions- with Alec d’ Urberville, early and late, with Clare, with her other admirers- are unimpeachable, considered from the most critical code appoint of view. Moreover, her shame and remorse are infinite. She has conscience that is quite amazing in view of the probability that conscience is almost entirely a matter of what one has been taught in very early childhood. Mentally and morally she is stainless, with strong intent to keep so, and probably continues so from first to last; even during the latter period of dissipation with Alec d’ Urberville her mind is drugged and dead with weariness, pain and despair, and so guiltless. But of, the body of Tess was so full of vitality and youthfulness that it was antagonistic to her soul, because Hardy more than once speaks of the splendid animal nature of Tess. Hardy has further suggested very clearly that Tess’s mind ‘the touch of yieldingness that was just necessary to allow the touch of animalism in her flesh to respond to great external pressure.’ Hardy says about Tess that ‘there was something of the habitude of the wild animal in the unreflecting instinct with which she wandered on from place to place’ but then, she had at the same time most rare and delightful mental qualities. She was high-strung, impressionable and poetic. Her soul travels into space at night; she is heroic in her self- chastisement and self-suffering, particularly in her endurance of the agonies of isolation. She has splendid faith in

Clare, she never feels- guilty of having wronged any creature on earth. Tess will always remain as one of the most lovable of Hardy’s heroines.

Clym followed Eustacia while she was on her way home and detained her asking whether his guess of her being a woman was correct. Eustacia admitted her disguise and told him that she had taken up the disguise in order to shake off her depression and to get some excitement. At this hour, when everything was under the garb of sleep, the Heath slowly appeared to wake and listen. It became a place full of a watchful intentness. Every night the Heath’s Titanic form seemed to wait for one final crisis, as if it had been waiting for centuries for the final, massive over-throw. The Heath presented a solemn and majestic sight of elemental grandeur.

Egdon Heath is all pervasive and it holds the action of the novel. It is an extended image of the nature in which man is a part, in which he is caught, which conditions his very being, and which cares nothing for him. The Heath, apart from other functions has a larger significance, as a symbol of inhumanity. Hardy portrays the rustic people as human inhabitants. Only these rustics remain unhurt at the end of Hardy’s novels since they have no ambitions and high aspirations. The rustics are as much the part of Nature, and of the life of the Heath, as the toads in March that make noises like very young ducks. These rustics provide some realistic effect to the story. Hardy has given a vivid and imaginary description of the Heath. Hardy combines the botanist’s microscope and the astronomer’s telescope. He has keenly observed even the smallest movement in the Heath. He knows the breaths and pulses of the country-side. His approach to the Heath was highly poetic. Egdon has a colossal human existence.”It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man’s nature-neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.” Hardy’s attitude to Egdon Heath shows a rich complexity. One of the most important aspects of Egdon Heath is that it dominates the lives of the human characters, infusing into them its grandeur and its melancholy. The approach of the characters to the Heath is different. For instance, Eustacia considered the Heath as her cross and shame and the potential cause of her death.

Arabella is a unique character in Hardy’s novels in the sense that she is full of impudence, coarseness and animal depravity. She can be contrasted with Sue who possesses fineness and spirituality. Lady Constantine is weak and stupid. But of, Mrs. Yeobright is noble-hearted, she has great strength of character and yet she is not admirable because of shrewdness and humour than her husband. Miss Fancy Day is not a great woman like any of the women of the first group we have analysed, and her character is quite interesting.

Eustacia is quite the extreme of Sue. In Sue the spirit governs the flesh while in Eustacia the flesh governs the spirit. Eustacia is all flesh but glorious and exultant flesh, she is full of blood-red passions, and that is why, she has been justly called an epicure in emotion. Elizabeth Jane does not impress anybody at the first sight but on closer intimacy one can bind in her a sober mien, a cold reasonableness, and a subtle soul. She has got a sense of humour to suffer all sorts of buffets of fortune and this quality is not very common to the women characters in Hardy’s novels. She is undoubtedly an intellectual type but she is quite distinct from other intellectual

women of Hardy. She is, however, very modest and simple in the earlier stages but in the later stages she is fond of good clothes and other articles to show off her dignity and aristocracy. Like Susan, Elizabeth Jane too possesses some of the characteristics of Henchard, particularly, his waywardness and sensitiveness but then; she has considerable control over her emotions which unfortunately Henchard does not possess. Hardy calls her the flower of Nature in-spite of the fact that she is single-hearted and not sufficiently fair to Henchard although she makes sufficient amends for unfeelingness at the close of the story during the dying moments of Henchard.

Mrs.Yeobright took Thomasin along with her to “The Quiet Woman” inn where they encountered Wildeve. Wildeve asked Thomasin why she had left in such haste and refused to indulge in any further arguments with her. Wildeve asked Thomasin why she had left in such haste and refused to indulge in any further arguments with her. Wildeve then explained to Mrs. Yeobright that it was a stupid mistake on his part that interrupted the wedding that morning. The marriage license had been made for the city of Budmouth, and he had take Thomasin to Anlebury as he had not bothered to read through the license. Due to his stay for sometime at Budmouth, he originally wanted to get married there, but later he had decided to get married at Anglebury forgetting the necessity of a new license. Mrs. Yeobright said that his foolish mistake had brought a disgrace to her and would be something very unpleasant for her and her family. It was a great injury; she said and could become a scandal. Wildewve asserted that there was no question of disgrace or scandal and also asked for her permission to speak to Thomasin alone for a few minutes.

The scenery of Egdon Heath in the background of twilight presented a sight which was lofty without severity, impressive without being showy, emphatic in its counsellings and grandly simple. Only in summer days did its mood touch the level of joviality. Its intensity was earnest rather than being brilliant, and this intensity was often reached during winter darkness, tempests and mists. The storm was Egdon Heath‘s lover, the wind its friend and then it became the home of strange phantoms. The Heath, at this hour was a place corresponding to human nature-neither ghastly – hateful nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning nor tame; but like man, slighted and enduring, it was singularly colossal and mysterious in its dark monotony. Its face suggested tragically possibilities.

As she reached the top, the woman gave a deep sigh, apparently at something in her mind and looked through a hand held telescope in the direction of “The Quiet Woman” inn. She then looked at an hour –glass placed next to her, and noticed that all the sand had slipped through. She started following a foot track and headed towards another bonfire which had attracted the attention of the group of men and women on Rainbarrow. When she reached the bonfire which was still burning, she met a little boy who had stayed back to feed the fire with pieces of wood. The boy told her that she had taken too long to come back. At that moment, her grandfather called her indoor by her name, Eustacia. She replied that she would stay out there for a little while more ashamed asked him to go to bed. She then asked the boy to keep feeding the fire a little longer and requested him to wait for the sound of a frog jumping into the pond in order to inform her about it. She also promised him, six pence in return. The boy unwilling got to his work, inwardly wanting to go home.

The little boy who was feeding the fire felt frightened on his way home, of some unusual fear-y sounds and things. So he returned to Eustacia’s house, wanting to request him to send a servant to accompany him home. However, he spotted Eustacia talking to Wildeve, and after over-hearing for a few minutes, decided not to interrupt them and headed on to his way home. On the Chilly evening Eustacia strained her eyes standing on the heath in the direction of Mrs. Yeobright’s house. After sometimes she saw a man and two women walking along the road. She moved aside from their path. They went past her and the man bid her good-night. She also whispered something. It was Clym Yeobright who had just arrived and had spoken to her, but she failed to see his appearance.

Hardy describes Eustacia in his own words,” As far as social ethics were concerned Eustacia approached the savage state, though in emotion she was all the while an epicure. She had advanced to the secret recesses of sensuousness, and yet had hardly crossed the threshold of conventionality.’ Sue also has been branded as an epicure in emotion but with what a difference! Eustacia is conspicuous among Hardy’s women by her rich sensuousness, but her sensuous nature is incapable of thought. Her indolence hides her smoldering passions. Every action of hers is the result of some strong and impetuous desire. She is made of nothing but instinct, and as such, she can never resist an impulse and such a woman is bound to play the readiest victim to all kinds of follies and frailties. She knows only emotions and animal wants. Reason is completely absent in her. Her very soul is consumed in the fire of the flesh.

Eusytacia Vye’s passions and instincts were unlike those of a model woman. She was full limbed and heavy but as a cloud when touched. Her light hair fell over her fore-head like night descending upon the evening in the west. Her eyes were pagan full of nocturnal mysteries. She had a lovely mouth and exquisitely lined lips. Her beauty was memorable as roses, rubies and tropical midnights; she moved like the tides of the sea; her voice recalled a musical instrument. Re-arranged of herself in a dim light, would give her a figure of one of the higher female deities. Egdon Heath was always at war with society, an untamable thing. Civilization was its enemy and its soil always looked the same. This great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which could never be claimed by the sea. The sea changed, changing the fields, rivers, villages and the people, yet Egdon remained the same. An old highway crossed its lower levels and a more aged barrow (mound) stood prominently over it.

“Three antagonistic growths had to be kept alive his mother’s trust in him, his plan of becoming a teacher and Eustacia’s happiness.”

One can see the partial application of this method, for the first time in English writers, like George Eliot and others, but the method is fully developed in the novels of Hardy. Hardy is the best exponent of this naturalism on philosophical realism. He might have exaggerated, a little here or there in Jude the Obscure but on the whole his study of the Wessex life is deep and thorough; and he willingly eschews the members of the upper-class society, whose characters cannot easily be screened. Further his characters lose their individuality when they are out of their local and natural surroundings; but within it they never fail. And again upon the heads of these Tesses and Henchards, the sins of their fathers and ancestors are continually visited.

These writers are inimical to the theory of “Free Will” and they do not make the individual responsible for his own acts. They aim at the reproduction of ‘a slice of life’. Men, as they see them, are not the authors of their miseries and sorrows and hence they are helpless in warding them off. There are other manifold causes which govern our will and doing. The influence of heredity and of environment goes a long way in determining the behavior and character of a man. Again, these writers are hostile to everything that is unscientific and illogical and is merely imaginative or inventive. They have an implicit faith in determinates. Hence, they make no useless effort of preaching and reforming the society. They give a merely naked description of it.

Hardy can be classed with those writers of the modern age who pride themselves for being the followers of Ibsen (drama) and Zola (fiction). One of the many effects which the growing scientific knowledge had upon fiction was the emergence of the “experimental Novel”, which was for the first time evolved by Zola in his Les Rougon- Macquart series. These ‘experimental writers’ or ‘naturalists’ as they are called, discarded the ‘invention method’ of an earlier date for the accuracy of a press reporter.

The crowd that had gathered on the barrow was boys and men from neighbouring villages who made a pile of their furze faggots and set them on fire. It was a bonfire which could now be seen burning at various places within the bounds of the entire district. The bonfires are the direct remnants of ancient Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies, though the custom commonly believed was the commemoration of the gunpowder plots. The fire also symbolizes a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against the doming of winter, the season that brings coldness, misery and death. The only tonic that could drive away h loneliness in Egdon was her desire to be loved to madness. More than any particular lover, what she desired most was passionate love. Her desire went on deepening with her loneliness. She was more interested in the intensity of love than loyalty of love. She was a social non-conformist with a forwardness of mind. She never valued holidays or pleasure or rest. She would always do her domestic duties on Sundays, frequently sing a psalm on Saturday nights and read the Bible on a week-day.

Hardy, the great, humane, simple and primitive novelist did not make an attempt to explain anything with the help of elusive symbolic content as technical subtly. He boldly presents his matter in an obvious and direct way where enough importance is given to the human material. The directness of Hardy is clearly brought out in the great memorable scene of the sale of the wife in The Mayor of Casterbridge. This story is presented as simply as scriptures history. It is not easy to forget the furmenty seller who appears as a magistrate before Henchard and who narrates her story about the ‘large crime’ which she had witnessed twenty years back. This is a very important moment in the book and would have normally been dealt within twenty pages or so but Hardy with his directness slides over the scene in merely four pages. The strength of the novel lies not in the subtly or elaboration of art but in the imagined material itself.

That evening Wildieve went to meet Eustacia in her house at Mistover and told her what had happened. Wildeve then asked her to accompany him to America but Eustacia said that she cannot decide before one week which he promptly gave her to consider the proposition. She did not want to consider him then just because the other woman did not want to marry him. She did not want to be treated as a stop-gap. She wanted time to think over the matter when Wildeve reminded her of her declaration of love for him and her promise to accompany him anywhere

which she had made one month ago. Then they separated, planning to meet again shortly at that hour a week hence.

Hardy’s treatment of sex shows his modernity. He deliberately breaks with the sex taboos of the earlier Victorians and seriously reflects over the problems of love and sex and the institution of marriage. He already anticipates, though unconsciously, the sex theories of Freud and the psycho-analytical method, when he considers sex as a question not-outside of life but as a source of achieving the principle life. The story now moves a step further. We find Eustacia very much interested in Clym. Clym becomes a fascinating figure for her because he was associated with the fashionable world of Paris. In this chapter Eustacia’s character is also revealed a bit, where we see that she is a highly imaginative and emotional person. She is already in love with Clym without even seeing him. Hardy tells us that if she had some self-control, she would have removed this emotion of love by sheer reasoning.

Hardy may fail to hate the modernists’ conception of plot but in his thoughts he is truly of our own times. Though by nature emotional, he always followed the dictates of his intellect; and thought he lived in and wrote of a place which was Far From The Maddening Crowd yet he showed how easily he was being affected by new theories of scientific progress which were destructive of the Biblical faith. He takes a situation but does not deal with it as a poet or as an entertainer as the early Victorians used to do. He rather grapples with the situation before him and then hints at the conclusion. As an empiricist he truly states that the sum-total of the misery in life is more than the sum-total of happiness. Thomasin was full of apology for having humiliated her aunt by failing to have got married. However she assured her aunt, that Wildeve had promised her to marry within a day or two. Explaining her aunt’s enquiries, she said that something had gone wrong with the marriage. License and Wildeve could not get another proper license the same day. On being asked why he himself had not brought her back, Thomasin said that, on finding that marriage had been postponed she felt very ill and had therefore slipped away. Mrs. Yeobright resolved to get an explanation from Wildeve himself.

The conversion among the characters provides the comic element in the story. We laugh at these characters and also sympathies with them. Apart from the comedy, these rustics are also a source of information to us as regards their social matters. Finally, ‘The Custom of the Country’ introduces us to one of the main characters of the novel- Mrs. Yeobright. Her normal manner among the rustic folk was somewhat reticent, the result of her consciousness of a superior communicative power. The credit of effecting a revolution in the field of ideas was reserved for Hardy. Historically, one can say that Hardy is one of the main transitional figures between the popular moralists and the popular entertainers of Victorian fiction and the serious, visionary, which are the symbolic characteristics of the novelists of today. Hardy’s novel-writing career is reflective of the great movement from the Vicorian to the Modern. Desperate remedies (1871) his first published novel has much in common with the Victorian sensation-novel. The novel before it could be completely modernized had to look for the publication of the story of a new type of pure woman (Tess) of a new type of man of character (Henchard). Hardy contributes many new things to the English novel. He is the first and greatest ‘regional novelist’. Again he suggests for the first time the idea of ‘epical- tragical’ in connection with the novel. The reader finds in him a curious blend of diagonically opposed talents. He is essentially a poet and yet

none can challenge his realistic outlook. He is a true representative of his times who in part revolted against the tyranny of worn-out conceptions.

The situations in the novels of Hardy are full of intrigues and hang upon the ironical decision of a cruel and reckless fate. The happiness of the people depends upon the whims of ‘chance’. The endings in his novels such as The Return of the Native or The Woodlanders mark no distance travelled from the ancient method of writing. Of course, his heroine may not be such were dolls or automations as we find in Duickens, but at the same time, they are not as fully developed as Clara Middleton (Egoist: Meredith) or Anna Karenina. Above all it is in the choice of the structure of his novels, that he essentially belongs to the past.

Hardy’s blend of traditionalism and modernism is most vividly brought out in The Mayor of Casterbridge. The tragedy of Henchard is similar to the traditional tragedies of Lear, Hamlet and Oedipus and similar to the existence of a moral order in the ancient way in which experiences of man work as the drama of his salvation and the drama of his damnation. This moral order rests satisfied only when it comes down to the total humiliation of the offender. Henchard’s self-alienation which is an impulse of self-destruction is drama, tied with modern traits.

Another distinctive quality of Hardy’s humour is that it is verbal humour, dependent for its effect upon the particular words he uses. That imaginative strain that was intrinsic to his imaginative process gives him a delight in speech, so that his humour has a literal quality. As a rule, Hardy is content to observe and record, without probably, more than bowdlerizing touch here and there; but sometimes the grotesqueries of these rustic folk suggest in their presentment a little dressing up by the literary artist. The poetic strain in his nature makes his outlook more and more subjective, humour is by definition impersonal while satire is personal. Though Hardy had the power of detachment yet he is at best in his ironical mode. Often his humour is flavoured with bitterness. In his later novels specially, Hardy speaks of a brooding spirit (sometimes called the ‘president of the Immortals’) which is keen at finding faults and foibles of life. These faults being incurable give him occasion for ironic or satiric laughter. But of, it makes him all the more humanistic for he realizes the impotency of man while at war with these higher powers. This is the grim of life which Hardy presents.

Almost all the humour in the Wessex novels that is worth preserving is rustic humour- caught up with joy from the lips of the villagers themselves, redundancies removed, the form perfected, but otherwise the pure unadulterated essence of the nineteenth century rustic humour. It is rustic; it is elemental; it is grotesque; it is Gothic; it is traditional. One may note, Hardy’s mode of conveying this humour is leisurely i.e., Elizabethan and it is adorned with a flourish of whimsical fancy. Hardy’s humour is throughout ironic, except of course, when he is dealing with his rustic folk. He, unlike, Dickens, does not exaggerate a thing to the point of ludicrousness, but takes the privilege of a scientist and realist to make it more accurate and more poignant. In the later novels he seems to inveigh the whole human society and human civilization as is obvious from Jude the Obscure but in his earlier novels he is purely and outright a fatalist. The whims and lopsidedness of characters do not interest him as much as the ironies of circumstances- for example the double pledging under the trees in A Pair of Blue Eyes. His irony is pointed and well-devised and “Power behind things wears always a mocking smile to Hardy.” He finds that the higher powers which control the destinies of a Tess or a Jude are playing hide and seek with

human fate and their attitude towards us is “As flies to wanton boys are we to Gods- They kill us for their sport.” And occasions like these confer opportunities on Hardy for a grim smile over the failure and wrongs of men which they commit out of sheer helplessness. There are moments when his irony and satire lose humour and are purely devastating. The death of Jude Fawley or that of Henchard or the scene of the baptism of Tess’s dying child or the death of Sue’s children is examples of this kind. But in, the death scene of Sue’s children the horror culminates in a touch of humour; “Done because we are so many.”

Had there been no humour, his tragedies would have been terribly grim and grave, much gloomy than they are now. His sunny humour dispels a bit of that all pervading gloom.

The sum and substance of Hardy’s conception is serious and tragic; such a view of life necessarily seems to exclude all consideration of gaiety and mirthfulness. Critics like Duffin altogether deny the existence of humour in Hardy. “Hardy was not a humourist in any proper sense. He was quick to see the humour of things, but he was not humerously built and again he was a Teutonic rather than a Celtic in his temper.” Though we may not agree with such an extreme view yet it must be admitted that the humour we find in Hardy’s novels is not a genial quality.

Yet occasionally there are glimpses of a momentary flash of humour in Hardy which are as deep as the rustic laughter divorced from its broadness and superficiality. Again there are passages of merely humerous description whereby arrival action is described or the purpose of some passing act is guessed at by the help of either negation or exaggeration, as the dialogue in Far From the Maddening Crowd “Shepherds would like to hear the pedigree of your life, father, would not you shepherds”? “Ay, that I should”, said Gabriel, with the heartiness of a man who had longed to hear it for several months.

“It is next to impossible for an appreciative woman to have a positive repugnance towards an unusually handsome and gifted man.”

So he is a pessimist. But of, there is a dark, grimly dark and gloomy as well as a bright side of his philosophy. He is not a pessimist- a misanthrope like Hobbes who thinks man essentially a beast, mean, abject, low detestable and an odious creature. He is a pessimist like the classical writers who consider Man merely a puppet in the hands of mighty Fate. Simply Hardy is more gloomy than they are. He always sees and finds Fate unjust, cruel, blind and jealous of happiness of mankind. He considers the ways of that Unknown Will immoral, unjust and condemnable. In fact, throughout his creative work there is a latent philosophy of revolt and revenge.

Humour is not the quality that one might expect to find in Hardy, so grand and as gloomy as he is. But of, it is there all tight. Nor is it incongruous with the rest of his achievement. Though Hardy is lacking in humour, he is everywhere quick to mark the absurd and the grotesque. The essential nature of his humour is rustic. The rustic characters are not the victims of the irony of fate and are, therefore, the happiest creations of Hardy. They are always in a jolly or buoyant mood, and cheer up the reader by their rustic speeches and tones. Hence this humour has been described by various adjectives such as rustic, elemental, grotesque, gothic, traditional, etc. Here we are suddenly reminded of the same method which George Eliot had employed in novels, The Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede. The examples of such humour for instance are the

wonderful chapters abounding in dialogues and characterization of Oak and Weatherbury in the Malta House (Far From the Madding Crows) or the instance of the rustic philosophy of greed and mother wit noted by Mrs. Henchard. Such examples of pure mirthfulness can be gathered from all the other novels of Hardy as well.

When Hardy sees life’s little ironies besides the ironies of fate and chance, he indulges in grim laughter. Here it may be said, as Lord David Cecil says, that this humour and the mode of conveying it is Elizabethan. It is pregnant with the Elizabethan fondness for the macabre and it is adorned with a flourish of whimsical fancy. Like the grave-diggers; most of the characters in Hardy’s novels create a grim humour out of their comment upon funerals and coffins: “What a weight you will be, my lord for our arms to lower under the aisle of Endelston church some day?”

Though Hardy was deeply influenced by the progress of science in his day, yet the poet in him never died and this poetic strain composed the imaginative vision of the author. Hardy’s humour is partly intellectual, but it is not confined merely to situations. It is poetic and has a literary flavor. Sometimes it is verbal and arises from the quaint tones of the characters. Again it arises out of the way of description as the description of Gabriel Oak’s watch. “It was older than, grandfather went either too fast or not at all.”This humour which is full of ironies has little place for grace and finish; on the contrary the humour of Hardy is ghastly and hideous. However his satire is not as sharp as that of Jonathan Swift or of Samuel Butler. He feels too much the burden of humanity upon himself and he feels the pity to things and beings. Therefore his satire and irony mingle with tears.

H. C.Duffin classifies Hardy’s humour into three categories according to the range of people. First the thorough-going humourist likes Shakespeare or Carlyle. The opposite of this is the non-humourist as we find in Emily Bronte and others. Hardy belongs to a third category by which he takes a little portion of life seriously and laughs boisterously at the rest. This type of humour at its best is to be found in novelists like Dickens and Thackeray and Meredith whose sense of ridiculous meets with general approval. Hardy did believe, in the saying of Carlyle that “Humour is a sympathy with the seamy side of things”, and in this respect Hardy is no insignificant rival of Dickens and Meredith in his employment of the faculty of humour. But of, then Hardy does not leave his readers merely on a note of despondency. Time and again he emphasizes the fact that we are in the grip of the “Immanent Will” and therefore it is not in our power either to improve or to deteriorate as is the case with Henchard. The only way, he points out, is a lesson and application of is interestedness and to cherish no false illusion. But on, at the same time he suggests that we must make contribution to the happiness of our children and of the future generation. For this we try to change and to remould our instincts with the help of an intelligent grasp of the existing defects. An attitude of indifference and irresponsibility is often the cause of tragedy. “Tragedy”, says Hardy, “should arise from the gradual closing in on a situation that comes of ordinary human passions, prejudices and ambitions by the reason of the character taking no trouble to ward off the disastrous events produced by the said passion, prejudices and ambitions.”

The primary aim of this provision of humour is to make us laugh. The mood which inspires them is the mood of simple, genial enjoyment. That is why Hardy’s novels lack satiric, caustic, bitter

humour. He does not poke fun at the faults, follies and foibles of his characters. He is too much of a realist to take pleasure in caricature; too little of the moralist to make effective use of satire. But of, one thing one should bear in mind saves when dealing with his rustic characters, Hardy’s humour usually takes the form of irony. If human beings desire amelioration, the only way to do so is to chalk out a code of mortality which is in conformity with the changing values of life by a thorough study of evolutionary science and a complete knowledge of the prevailing defects. If the “primal cause” is destitute of all mortality then Hardy would have human endeavour being directed to force mortality upon it, but that is still a distant vision.

Hardy is primarily an artist and as an artist he depicts the tragic side of life. He has stated his position very clearly: “Different natures find their tongues in the prism of different spectacle…that to whichever of these of life a writer’s instinct of expression the more readily responds, to that he should allow it to respond.” In other words, Hardy’s temperament has conditioned his tragic outlook on life. As an empiricist he maintains that “happiness is merely an episode in the general drama of pain.”When he looked at this universe, he was baffled not to find any Causa de proposal. He saw plainly that in our day-to- day life we desire and expect something which, in the long run, proves merely an illusion. Everywhere I his novels there is the irony of circumstances, for instance, the double pledging under the tree (A Pair of Blue Eyes) or the slipping away of Tess’s letter under the carpet, a fine irony which even a noted ironist like Anatole France would fail to invent, may be met with in Two on a Tower. The whole story of Eustavia Vye, is a irony of circumstance. Behind these ‘chance-happenings’ of the ‘cross-casualties’, as Hardy prefers to call them, there seems to be some sinister power which mocks at the fruitless attempts of these human weaklings. According to his own interpretation, abandoned by God, treated with scorn by nature, man lies helplessly at the mercy of those ‘purblind doomsters’ accidents, chance and time, from which he had to endure injury and insult from the cradle to the grave. This fate is always wrathful and, raising its finger at the man says, “Since thou art born, thou shalt suffer.”A cursory perusal of Hardy’s output will give us the impression that the novelist’s attitude towards life is of “unquestioned acceptance.” Everything, every action, even every will and desire of ours is preordained, and that men try in vain to seek happiness and glory. Hardy is of the opinion that we should never defy the ‘First Cause’ and humbly accept whatever comes. However, this attitude of “unquestioned acceptance” is equally an attitude of “dogged defiance.” In novel after novel, (except of course his epic The Dynasts, where even such Titanic figures as that of Napoleon and others are reduced to shadowy nothingness) he creates a number of characters, who throw the gauntlet against the so-called “Purblind doomsters.”Instead of Eustacia, it is Clym who has come. Suddenly, they hear a sound. It is the sound of somebody falling in the stream. Clym fears that it is Eustacia. He runs towards the spot and Wildeve follows him with a lamp. Both of them jump into the water to rescue her.

Painter of the darker side of life as he was, it is no wonder if people gave him the appellative of a “pessimist”. The opinion is both right and wrong. Sometimes, Hardy does vehemently oppose a system which runs throughout this world that he gives the singular impression of being turned into a pessimist. Hardy calls a novel essentially ‘an impression’ and he himself makes no pretensions to philosophy. But if, one reads his novels one after the other, one is bound to find a series of consistent thoughts, which systematically arranged will form his philosophy of life, and the philosophy so formed, will essentially be pessimistic. Temperamentally, Hardy has a leaning

towards the somber. “To have a complete picture of life,” Hardy thinks, “It is necessary to have a full view at the worst. “Though developed in brain, Hardy was inordinately feeble in physique. Even in his adolescent days, he used to sit ‘Like patience on a monument’ and ‘often smiling at grief’. He was easily moved to tears. He used to relish the full flavor of a joke if it was profane or sardonic intone. In his early youth he saw two men hanged from a tree which made an ineffaceable mark upon his plastic brain. He, it is said, never missed a funeral though he rarely attended a marriage party. All these events coupled with a want of health tended to make his outlook life somber. For the present, the only thing there which human beings can do to escape the wrath of the Supreme Power is a proper adjustment of their lives and instincts to the existing conditions (environment). That is the only way to make limited opportunities endurable; and this had to be accomplished by man’s labour. For this, one mist not expects any deliverance from above. The concluding note in The Dynasts also is equally inspiring for while it does not give any hope it at least excludes despair. If everything depends upon human toil, then, it must be said, that hardy, if he is a pessimist, is a healthy and optimistic pessimist and thus he himself insists upon being called by the word borrowed from Aeschylus, “an evolutionary ameliorist.”

“But surely you loved me?”

“Yes. But I wanted to let it stop there, and go on always as mere lovers; until”

The reddleman is on his way to Thomasin’s house along with her and he also hears the noise. He sends Thomasin with two men and he goes toward the pool. The two men, send along with Thomasin also arrive at the spot and with their help the reddleman is able to lift Clym and Wildeve out. Then after another search they find the body of Eustacia.But of, Hardy’s concept of life is not so somber as to exclude all possibilities of happiness. The very existence of happiness even though as an episode inspires a hope in the human bosom besides, the lower world in Hardy or the world of rustic characters is joyful and content. Only characters with potential greatness, who strive to raise above a given negation- a sign of pessimism but one affirmation of human nobility- the sign of a tragic sense of life. “Tess was not crushed into anything lower by the cruelty of life that bore down so leadenly upon her against its pressure raised herself into something of infinite nobility”, as Duffin says. In the tragedies of Shakespeare “Character is Destiny” but in the tragedies of Hardy “Destiny is Character.” His characters are not the architects of their fortune and nor can they influence their own actions. For them everything is determined. But of, then they have their tragic faults too just as the tragic characters of Shakespeare. Henchard is impulsive, Jude is ambitious. Tess is too innocent. Eustacia wants “to be loved to madness”. Jude’s flaw is an internal evil symbolized by instincts and emotions chiefly (a) sex-desire which is as blind a desire as the “will live” and (b) ambition. These internal evils are greatly aggravated by external environment such as nature (Prime Cause, Cross-casualties, Environment etc.) and society and modern scientific progress and these things appear positively as villains in the novels of Hardy. After receiving the signal from Eustacia, Wildeve makes preparation to help her in her flight. He is inwardly wishing to accompany her though the arrangement is that he would merely drive her to Budmouth harbor and leave her there. He sets the carriage ready and drives it to a spot by the roadside at twenty minutes to twelve some quarter of a mile below the inn and begins waiting for Eustacia. The whole system is set at naught by the mischievous maneuvers of that Supreme Power which delights in inflicting pain

upon others. These higher powers shower their malignity upon mankind and plan everything maliciously. Lovers are made only to be crossed. Children are born where they are not wanted and when the environment is antagonistic to their bringing up. Father Time’s remark and his anger towards his parents of their not having taken his permission to bring him on the earth is really the most sardonic. Hardy ascribes the whole tragedy of humanity to some “Unsympathetic First Cause.” In his earlier novels this Supreme Power is exhibited as essentially evil though in his later works he suggests that it is rather blind and indifferent. According to him “Providence is nothing if not coquettish, which brings rains when they are not needed and never a drop of water when it is highly urgent.” It even takes a malicious delight in killing us without cause. The concluding note in Tess of the d’Urbervilles is also peculiarly Hardian: “Justice was done and the President of the Immorals (an Aeshylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.”

But of, there is one essentially great difference between the tragedies of Hardy and those of Shakespeare. ‘Pity’ is aroused by both the writers; but whereas Shakespeare arouses ‘awe’ and ‘healthy terror’, the terror aroused in Hardy’s novels very often degenerates into melodrama. In Shakespeare, the flaw arises mainly from the romantic mould of the hero. It is in his power to curb it, but, constituted as he is, he does not like to be otherwise; not so with Hardy-with whose characters there is the question of ‘compulsion’ and not of ‘liking’. Environment and heredity compel a Hardy character to follow a particular course of action. The father of Eustacia Vye was a musician and her grandfather was a navy-man. She takes the refinement and the adventurousness of both and consequently wants to be loved to madness in Paris. But for, factors of environment and heredity are, in turn, helpless in the hands of some Supreme Power. The result is that the denouement depends upon the ironical decision of some cruel ‘chances’. The plots of all his stories depend on such change- happenings.”Accident” according to Hardy, “are common enough in fact”, though perhaps not in fiction. But at, if a tragedy is made completely dependent upon them, the universal impression of waste is so strong upon us that we grow indignant upon this whole scheme. Hardy’s attitude, in reality, is neither an attitude of calm resignation nor that of dogged persistence. For want of a better phrase this attitude may perhaps be best defined as of “realism”, and nothing but realism.’ Hardy preaches no other-worldly compensation and scarcely believed, as Browning does, that the broken arcs will be united in heaven’s perfect round. He himself had seen many trials and tribulation of life true lovers being estranged, true aspiration meeting frustration, the never happening of the desired and the ever happening of the unexpected and the undesired. He did not see anywhere “Nature’s holy plan” on the contrary, nature, to him, is red in “tooth and claw”. He felt that God is not in heaven and all’s not right with the world. Had it not been so, human beings might have attained a bright and sunny life. Hardy is not an out and out pessimist though he sometimes gives an impression of becoming so. A writer does not become a pessimist for the simple reason that he is not an optimist. In fact Hardy is too great and original a writer to be tied down by any formula. He maintains again and again that he is not a philosopher. To Hardy “a novel is an impression, strike him without any intention whatever.” His novels, according to his own definition, are “a series of fugitive impressions and do not aim at a consistent philosophy. All the bodies are put into Wildeve’s carriage and taken to Wildeve’s house. The signs of life are left with Clym, but the other two are dead. Clym gets recovered by morning. He says that she is the second woman whom he killed that year. He wished that he himself should have died instead of the two. This is an important chapter and Eustacia’s death occurs in this chapter. Hardy does

not make it clear whether this is an accident or suicide. Wildeve is so much in love with Eustacia, and for her he sacrifices his life. This chapter forms the climax of the tragedy of Eustacia Wildeve. Clym is filled with great self –reproach and holds himself responsible for the death of his mother and now Eustacia. He laments “I was a great cause of my mother’s death; and now I am the chief cause of hers.”Seeing all this, Hardy thinks it is necessary to prepare ‘The Funeral of God’. But of, it is not here but rather in his epic ‘The Dynasts that one can find the clearest exposition of Hardy’s philosophy. The “Immanent Will”, according to Hardy, is not cruel so much as it is indifferent. It is merely blind and purposeless. Here it must be noticed that Hardy’s philosophy has been dynamic rather than static. It has been improving and becoming healthier. In his earlier novels up-to The Mayor of Casterbridge the gloom has been unnecessarily intensified with the occlusion of a single ray of hope but in his last novels- Tess and Jude, there are possibilities of happiness. Here is no blind impugning of God and Fate but a shifting stand taken against a society and a code of convention seriously infecting human happiness. There is a suggestion that human endeavors can rectify and can do away with a system which has outlived its cutlet.

Now Hardy does not realize this thing. So his tragidies are not Sophoclean. They lack the Athenian calmness and enlightenment. Hardy knew too much. He has outgrown the old Greek anti-pessimism. He has chosen the classics for his guide and then refused to put their mortality into practice and so lost their virtue. He no longer believes that mortals through suffering learn wisdom and gain anything at all. So he chooses those heroes and heroines who lead self-conscious and insulted lives. He chooses those who run after joy and suffer. Lie does not justify the ways of God. Compelled by the demands of his art, by the background and the need of a progressive story, to make his stories more tragic than they need be, to pick-nut a tortuous and bloodstained pattern in the carpet of life, he employed the contrivance of malevolent chance again and again. It spoiled the superb beauty of his tragedies. However his overcharged pessimism appealed to the two tendencies of the time:

The disillusionment of the intellectuals and the sentimentality of the real or pseudo-humanists’ of melancholy is the note of refinement. Thomas hardy is a truly great novelist. He casts his spell on us, but we cannot ignore his defects. He is a great painter and creator of characters. He depicts the landscape vividly, begins his tales brilliantly and ends them eloquently. But of, he does not paint all these things uniformly. The Wessex novels are not sustained in their grandeur and excellence. Every novel is characterized by some defects. Some of these novels are very bad, they make a regularly sinuous curve. That is why David Cecil says that Hardy’s genius works in flashes. When this flash comes it dazzles the reader. When it goes the reader gropes about in wilderness. He has the creative genius understands his materials artistically, but he lacks the critical qualities which are necessary for presenting all the imaginative conceptions to the best of advantage. He is a great artist but not a great craftsman. The range of his novels is very limited. They are confined to the life and people of Wessex which is a literary region created by Hardy himself. He is always concerned with certain types of characters, situations and scenes only. When he goes beyond these things, he treads on slippery grounds. He deals with the struggle of common people with their destiny. These people are born to work hard, fall in love and die. They do not do anything else. His comedy is also confined to the humour of rustics only. The limits imposed by the scene are increased by those of the perspective in which he sees

them. Hardy does not deal with many aspects of human nature. His man is one who faces the universe. He is not concerned with man as a member of the family, a citizen or a businessman. When Hardy works outside his range, he shows weakness. He cannot analyse the working of human kind. He fails to paint a modern sceptic in Fitzpiers or a modern thinker in Knight. Each of them is but a collection of views, imperfectly clothed in flesh and blood. When Hardy invents such characters, he lapses into philosophic inconsistency. On the one hand he holds circumstances as responsible for the downfall of his characters and on the other he criticizes them for their defects and weaknesses.

Hardy has a much deeper insight into Women’s character than into Men’s character. It is only in the case of Jude and Clare that Hardy seems to have an unusually acute insight into male character. Hardy does not always paint the world as he finds it but sometimes he paints it as he wants to see it or as it appears in his poetic or philosophic vision. It cannot be said of Hardy as some critics have said that Hardy’s novels have heroines but no heroes. It cannot even be said that Hardy’s women are superior to his men. Hardy’s men and women are equally full of interest, significance, moral and general quality. Hardy is not a feminist.

The forms of Hardy’s novels are also not without some defects. He uses old words which are no longer in vogue. He violates the ordinary rules of syntax also. His weakness as a craftsman is revealed by the design of his novels. He is a good plotter but a bad designer. His plots are well-knit, but his designs are clumsy. He is almost always concerned with the conflict between man and the nature of things, but he incarnates it in a highly intricate and improbable story. His plots have to do little with this imaginative stimulus. Both the plot and stimulus pull against each other. The themes of Hardy are fit for fiction but the execution of his designs is loose or careless. Sometimes he effects the development of character by revealing an incident. Sometimes Thomas Hardy is so poetic or imaginative in creating an emotional impression that he disregards probability. The result is that the picture presented by him id a falsification of real life. This is so because his creative power is stronger than his critical faculty or sense. He disregards probability when it seems to be standing in the way of the emotional impression which he wants to make on the reader. He ended The Return of the Native with the marriage of Venn and Thomasin. The public and the publishers forced him to give the present conclusion. Tess and Jude, are innocent, but they meet a tragic end. He breaks with probability for giving his catastrophe the required intensity, of blackness. He brings Alec d’Urbeville back to the life of Tess intends to return to him, we fail to understand why she stabs him to death with a breakfast knife. Thomas Hardy flings probability to the winds in Jude the Obscure also. In this novel the theme is concerned with a conflict between a sensitive passionate temperament and a cruel conventional world... Arabella is a symbol of tragedy of modern life. There are many incidents and events in Wessex novels which are not consistent with real life. He seems to care more for creating a tragic impression than for giving a real picture of life. He is not a good judge of probability. That is why he emphasizes the part played by chance, coincidence or circumstance. Chance incarnates or embodies the blind force of fate or destiny. This some crucial is to be introduced in fiction only as a determining factor at some crucial moment when time is everything. But of, in order to produce the effect of a hostile fate Hardy crosses many improbable incidents or chance-happenings in a short period of time or space. Thus he twists his plots to suit this purpose.

Wildeve correctly assessed Clym that “He’s an enthusiast about ideas, and careless about outward things. He often reminds me of the Apostle Paul.”

Sometimes Thomas Hardy makes his novels a vehicle of his philosophy. He emphasizes his belief that man is but short of an indifferent destiny. It is the lack of a critical sense which leads him to the error of preaching. While behaving like a moralist or preacher he is no more than a typical Victorian. Being obsessed with the universe he turns from an imaginative creator into a propagandist. He forgets that as a tragic artist his first obligation is to his vision of life and not to the set of his intellectual beliefs. Unlike the modern writer of novels he does not remember that moral beliefs or views should be left to reveal themselves involuntarily. He forgets his own principle of recording his own impressions in a novel. Life his contemporaries he is interested in working out his own philosophy of life. He seems to be delivering his moral lectures on the bitterness of fate.

It had been a convention, before Hardy; in English tragedy that hero must commit some deed for which he suffers. This deed may be due to an error of judgment as it is in King Lear or Julius Caesar or it may be of a criminal nature as in the case of Macbeth. But of Hardy, has his own conception of tragedy. He is an innovator of a new form of tragedy. The tragedy of Tess begins in a crime and ends in a crime. Alec pays the penalty for his misdeeds. But of, he is only a subordinate character. The central figure of the novel, the heroine, Tess suffers the most and still she has committed no crime. She is free from any wrong doing. She is essentially a pure woman and still she is poor wounded name! She is more sinned against than sinning. So we find Hardy’s conception of tragedy radically different from the old conception of tragedy. Pessimism, Regionalism, Meliorism, and Realism are some elements for which he is prominent. No doubt everybody before him tried these things, but in abundance and in superiority everyone lagged behind.

The Tragedy in Hardy’s Novels occurs mainly on account of the circumstances beyond the control of the hero or heroine. Tess’s ‘will to enjoy’ is nothing extravagant, there is no hardihood in it which the relentless assimilating forces of worldly destiny might seize on and punish for its badness. But of no-the President of the Immortals is against her; circumstances are beyond her control. She must fall. She must suffer. The twenty-fifth of next month has been fixed for the marriage of Thomasin and Diggory. On the wedding-day the heath folks have gathered to make a bed tick as a present for Thomasin and Venn. Meanwhile, at Blooms-End, Clym refuses to attend the celebration but performs the formality of giving away Thomasin to Diggory at the Church ceremony. Thomasin, knowing his temperament, kindly excuses him from attending. Near the cottage, Clym meets Charly and Charly asks him to give something that once belonged to Eustacia. Clym gives him a lock of Eustacia’s hair. Charly is so grateful and nearly in tears.

On the Sunday that follows the wedding, Clym stands on Rainbarrow preaching a sermon to an assorted gathering of the Heath folk. Clym has decided to deliver the first of a series of moral lectures or “Sermoms on the Mount”. He wandered through the surrounding places to deliver his preaching. He finds solace in his teachings on moral subjects. The novel ends with a happy note. In this chapter Thomasin and Venn find happiness in their marriage. And Clym finds his happiness in his preachings. This chapter also brings all the surviving characters of the novel, including the rustics.

Wildeve and Eustacia still continue to live in Egdon as their story is told throughout for many weeks and months. Clym allows her and her daughter to live in his own house. Thomasin has intense grief though Wildeve had not been faithful to her. Her chief concern is the future of her child, who is also named Eustacia. Clym is a changed man both physically and mentally after the misfortunes. He believes that he has been ill-treated by fortune.

After one year Diggory Venn appears at Clym’s house. He is no longer a reddleman. He has washed away the red colour given to his skin by the riddle that he has been handling previously and has changed into a gentleman’s clothes. He has changed dairy farming which has his father’s trade. He wants to obtain permission from Thomasin for May Pole-Day celebrations close to Clym’s house. Thomasin grants him the permission.

Greek classics profoundly influenced his imagination from adolescence onward. He is after Homer, Sophocles and Euripides who confess “Life is a tragedy, but despite resemblances of sentiment.” Hardy can’t lay claim to the classical broad-mindedness and vision. The great Hellenic poets and historians were indeed impressed by the briefness of individual lives and the insecurity of mortal happiness, but they were judging heroes who played for their grand stakes in life. The mighty figures in Homer, Herodotus, Virgil, are not actuated by a vague instinct for joy, like the humble folk of Wessex. These legendary heroes just miss the happiness that might have been theirs; generally they invite misfortune through ignorance, inadvertence, or vanity; and yet the onlooker’s pity is tempered with admiration. Great deeds dispose the reader to think greatly. One feels that even their errors proceed from a certain unguarded magnanimity and that they would have suffered less if they had been smaller. The disaster brings to the surface what Sophocles called reverence and Euriphides’ high courage. It is even more noteworthy that their downfall culminates in enlightenment. The classical humanists recognized that human disasters were fated, sometimes contrived, by an inhuman power, and could not be averted. “But at the same time they convinced themselves that this unfriendly providence was compact of wisdom and justice.”

Thomasin is in a mood to attend the May Pole-Day celebrations with Clym, but Clym finds it contrary to his present mood to visit a place of gaiety. Thomasin’s maid, however, takes her gloves without her permission and goes to the festival. The maid drops one of the gloves at the fair, and Diggory picks it up. However, the original conception of the story had not designed a marriage between Thomasin and Venn. He was to have retained his isolated and weird character to the last, and to have disappeared mysteriously from the Heath, nobody knowing whether-Thomasin remains a widow. Since, the novel has been published in a serial form; Hardy altered the end in accordance with the public opinion. The events which are following are only about the subsequent happenings which occurred to the life of Diggory and Thomasin. The main plot has already come to an end with the tragedy in the previous chapter. In spite of all these defects and demerits Thomas Hardy remains a great novelist. We love him for his sensitive brooding imagination which likes to play over the past and to see in is moldering relics-symbol of a pomp and power that can still affect the lives and imagination of people. He interests us in the permanent impulses of pagan feelings and religious sentiments that have come down to us. The main interest of Hardy’s novels lies not in the skilful handling of their plots but in the treatment of their characters. It is this emphasis on character that makes Hardy a modern writer. His ideas and philosophy, his treatment of love and sex, his frank discussion of

religious problems and faith, are in advance of his time. Dickens or Thackeray treats love not as an experience but as an emotion which is to be felt. Hardy treats it both as experience and emotion. This increases the range of subject-matter in the English novel. They like Hardy for the introduction of a poetic intensity into his novels. It is in this thing that the major contribution of Thomas Hardy to the development of English fiction consists. It means that Thomas Hardy conceives novels on a higher plane. Thomasin knew that her maid had dropped one of her gloves. One day while she is having a walk meets Diggory and asks him to return her gloves. He keeps it in his breast pocket all the time, he takes it out and gives it to her. She tells him that she had settled all her money on her baby, and that she had kept just enough for herself to live on, in reply to Diggory’s opinion that she is rich. Thomasin has a feeling of great awe for his perseverance for he covered his feelings in a practical manner and never betrays any signs of his love or sentiments towards her in the public. After their conversation they often meet on Heath near the old Roman Road. This chapter is only in the continuation of the sub-plot. We find that Diggory’s faithful love is at last reciprocated. The most striking feature is Hardy’s use of coincidence in the incident concerning the mystery of the lost glove. Clym is always thinking of his duty towards Thomasin. His mother had wished him to marry Thomasin. Thomasin had already thought about her re-marriage even before Clym could express his intention to Thomasin. She tells Clym about her intention to marry Venn but Clym does not agree. He does not regard Diggory as a suitable husband for his cousin. Thomasin is unhappy about his decision but she keeps her feelings unexpressed. On the very next day she says that Venn is a very respectable man now. Clym’s resistance is now weaker and he allows her to fulfill her wishes. The memories of his mother and Eustacia haunt him. He wants to become a preacher and starts a night school. This chapter is devoted for the development of the sub-plot. This chapter further analyses the working of the mind of Clym’s character.

“I often think that women do not know how to manage an honest man.”

‘He hates life but he loves the people who live it’. He hates life because he perceives it in the grip of cruel, blind and oppressive Unknown Will and he loves human beings as they are essentially moral, good, brave, bold and heroic. All his novels become moral dramas in which the conflict of wills, impelled by passions, predominates. And in all his novels chance in its purely malevolent aspect is an important though invisible character. It exercises its remote control over the lives of his characters and every careless and irresponsible action brings, subsequently, a tragic harvest of pain, suffering and bitterness. Nothing can be avoided. And it is this insistent human affair that creates the peculiar tragic atmosphere of hopelessness that engulfs his heroes. According to His Conception, Tragedy is a state of things which converts some natural aim or desire (of warning happiness) into a catastrophe. This tragedy in Hardy’s novels is always brought about by that blind and malicious Immanent Will overhead, who thinks “human life is a plaything.” While giving us a convincing picture to create an orderly pattern with the chaotic and heterogeneous view of life unlike Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy fails to do so, for his vision of life is affective but not realistic. It has got in it the profusion and energy of reality. When he forces it into a pattern, he tends to impose an unconvincing plot on it. This failure is very well illustrated by Tess of the d’Urbervilles. In this novel Alec d’Urberville is a rich young man who loves his animal pleasures only. He is responsible for the sufferings and tragic end of Tess. We fail to

know why or how he turns into a preacher. This conversion is impossible. Tess does not believe in it. All these things show that he loaps the dice but to lose the game.

Compton Rickett has showered upon him the greatest praise which is his due. “…Difference of opinion must naturally be held by Hardy as a critic of life; but as an artist, a painter of certain concrete aspects of that life, he is among the greatest in English Literature.”

So we see most of the male protagonists and, certainly not all, are Creatures of Intellect. But of, one remarkable fact is, he avoids indulgence in intellectual complexities that delight some novelists. His best characters are not subtle and complex. Subtle characters, it is true, he does essay at times, and he is too fine a psychologist to fail entirely in portraying them, but they are certainly inferior to his simple and more primal types. Let us first consider his chief protagonists among the male category and try to find out what the case is. Jude is a man in whom Passion is comparatively unimportant. His mind retains its level throughout; there are no storms and not subsiding: and this is a mark of reasonable nature. In fact he is a creature of Intellect. Passing over to Gabriel Oak we find him also of the same category. He is never overpowered by his love for Bathsheba. His reason is his guide always. And, then, Angel Clare though once reason fails him, it can’t be questioned that he is an intellectual being. By his reason he leaves his dogmatic paternal religion. His serious intellectual questioning shake the faith of Tess and through her that of Alec. Moreover, he is never overpowered by his emotions and passions. His general comprehension of truth is obtained rather through the medium of reason than through that of Passion. His plan of life is closely considered and thought out from a nobly rational point of view. It is reason that brings him from Paris, formulates his didactic projects, gives him endurance under misfortune and plays a considerable part, though a part shared by emotion, in his quarrel and attempted reconciliation with Eustacia. Farfrae is an alloy of reason and emotion. Now let us consider his female characters. Most alive of them are the Creatures of Passion. The most alive of the women of Hardy are Tess, Sue, Eustacia, Bathsheba and Elizabeth Jane. All of these love their lovers passionately “Passion (an ambiguous term, but no other connotes the necessary intensity) is used with a spiritual significance, denoting ‘elements in the higher nature of man’ (to misquote Jowett), and covering Love, Religion, and Poetry-all three words being intended in a mystical sense.”(Duffin) . Now, we see Tess, Sue, Eustacia, Bathsheba and Elizabeth Jane love their lover with intensity, without any reason and their love tends to attain spiritual strength.

Yeobright’s opposition comes out of a practical mind. She laments when Clym marries Eustacia “O, it is a mistake” and “And he will rue it some day, and think of me.”

The unreasonable, almost violent and cruel ideal of womanhood that belongs to Clare is essentially poetic in appearance, nature and power. Is not Jude’s dream of scholarship and Sue’s conception of conjugalities poetic? Not otherwise is philanthropy of Yeobright and serene and nature sweet chivalry of Winterborne. But of, sometimes his poetic conception of a character fails. In Jude the Obscure when we first meet ‘Father Time’ in the train he is a memorable and poetic conception, but increasingly he becomes the author’s mouthpiece; and thus, we realize he is the good little child of sentimental Victorian fiction. But in, his worst failure is when we read of ‘Father Time’s Killing’ of Sue’s children and his suicide: ‘Done because we are too many’. Here Hardy’s imagination fails him. We cannot believe all this. When Hardy describes men or women,

he does it not like a photographer, not even like the general run of portrait-painters but like a transcendental phrenologist. That is why his characters are no portraits but living beings. And, then, these living beings are not only living beings but human beings as well. They are neither angels nor devils. They belong to earth, they are earthly. They are gems but ‘flawed gems’ not pure gems. There are villains but not unredeemed villains. He simply can’t create odious people. Odiousness implies meanness; and mean people neither feel deeply nor are aware of any issues larger than those involved in the gratification of their own selfish desires. And he can only draw at full length people whose nature is of sufficient fine quality to make them realize the greatness of the issues in which they are involved. If Hardy does try to draw odious persons, he is a dreadful failure. Simply he can’t get into the hearts of such persons and see how life seems to them. Not all of his successful creations and virtuous- Henchard and Eustacia, to name no others, commit sins in the grand manner. But of, the grand manner is the expression of an overmastering passion, not the calculated consequence of selfish lust. Moreover, they know they are doing wrong-they torn with conscience. We do not dislike them.

In short, Hardy’s characters belong to earth. They are universal characters as Nell i.e., they are neither realistic only, nor types. Like a photographer, with an eye of camera, he does not present only an outside view of his creatures except in the portrayal of country folk, even over country a veil of romantic, glamour is thrown, they are in a degree idealized. On the other hand, through photographic portraits of individuals , the designer of type-figures plunges further into the depth of human nature, gets below the surface of idiosyncrasies, he classifies individuals and arrives at types and presentation of one ‘type’ and reveals nothing of another ‘type’ of characters. Great characters of Hardy’s novels are neither types nor individuals but ‘Universals’ each comprehending within itself the whole of human nature.

Chance in its purely malevolent aspect enters our life and spoils it, brings trials and tribulations, sorrows and sufferings, pain and agony in its train. What is the use of being a ‘play thing’, a toy, in the hands of the mischievous ‘President of the Immortals’. As regards the dictum ‘character is destiny’ he thinks that man is what he is because of his environment and ancestry and these in turn are determined by our Fate. Hardy’s mastery in the art of characterization is seldom questioned. Once we open the door of memory and a large train of his characters enters in. Not only great male characters i.e. , Jude Fawley, Gabriel Oak, Angel Clare, Michael Henchard, Henry Knight, Clym Yeobright, Giles Winterborne, Farfrae, Tillston, Troy,Alec d’ Urbervilled, Jorelyn Pierston, but also great female characters i.e. Tess, Sue, Bathsheba, Elizabeth Jane, Elfride, Eustacia, Vivietta, Grace, Marty…come sweeping by and inhabit our mind and heart.

‘Fate is overruling, overpowering and irrepressible so in his ideas ‘Our destiny is our character’.

And to portray human nature correctly he chooses his characters from the lower strata of society because in his opinion, the conduct of the upper class is screened by conventions, and thus the real character is not seen; if it is seen it must be portrayed subjectively; whereas in the lower walks, conduct is a direct expression of the inner life: and thus character can be directly portrayed through the act.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.”

Now we have come to his art of character-portrayal. It is a question of presentation as well as conception. As far as question of presentation is concerned, his characters are made living to us by their conversation as well as action. He exhibits his characters first by their actions, secondly by their word. As concentrated he is exclusively on the grand tragic issues of human fate, his characters live in virtue of their vitality when such issues are in question. The actions he emphasies are important actions that reveal their motives and feelings. Their inner life is left to our imagination of which we make use to understand their individuality by their speech. Further, his conception of human nature is not by any means a low one. He does not conceive of low natures; he brings forth at full length only those people who have nature of sufficiently fine quality to make them realize the greatness of the issues with which they are involved and they must have that magnetism or beauty of nature which makes a poetic presentation appropriate.

In Hardy the most alive of the men are the creatures of the intellect and the most alive of the women are the creatures of passion.

“He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.”

In a harsh world Hardy sees man thirsting for happiness and imagining that he will find it by love in some form or another. This love may make him selfless or selfish, forgiving or resentful, he may struggle or he may submit; but his object is always the same. So, a character of Hardy always reacts to his circumstances in one of the above-mentioned ways. Another cause of the limitation of his range of characters is his attachment to Wessex. Almost all his characters belong to Wessex and to the low strata of society. Hardy’s range includes not great ladies or great men. But of, within his own range, he is an “unchallenged master”. He has created immortal characters.

Though it cannot be said of him that “he had no heroes, only heroines” or even, that his women- put the men in the shade yet we must admit that admirable as many of his male characters are, they yield both in clarity and intensity of interest to his women. These women stamp themselves on our memories in those heightened moments when their fascination, putting forward its full power compels the hearts of men. Really, Hardy is almost a specialist in women. We see them the lovers’ angle: they are real. It is only one aspect. But of, since Hardy’s stories are love-stories, it is enough to make them convincing. ‘Hardy’s world is a Glorious One’. True! ‘He loves his people’ All the more true! Go with a searchlight into Hardy’s world to find out a pack of villains and you will return disappointed. Of course, you will come across many a one who become the instruments of evil fate and become the cause of the ruin of his protagonists. But as, you will see, odious villains, detestable amend condemnable knaves few there are. Even a few villainous persons, that you happen to come across, are not unredeemed villains. Simply

he can’t draw odious people. Odiousness implies meanness; and means people neither feels deeply nor is aware of any issues larger than those involved in the gratification of their selfish desires. If Hardy tried at all, to draw such persons, it is a dreadful failure, Alec d’ Urbeville is just the conventional vile seducer of melodrama and not a very successful portrait. Hardy can’t get inside such a person and see how life looked to him. Not that his successful creations like Henchard and Eustacia, to name no others, commit sins in a grand manner. But of, it is the grand manner, the expression of an over mastering passion, not the calculated consequence of selfish lust. Moreover, they know they are wrong, they torn with conscience. “We don’t dislike-them” (Cecil). On the other hand, he excels at drawing good characters, noble characters and great characters but he does not copy some lifeless model of ideal goodness. Mankind, to him, always assumes the heroic proportions of a figure seen against the vast sky of Destiny. So, indeed, his world i.e. the people living in his world are glorious creatures. He loves them.

He cannot think of Man but ranged against an ‘Immanent Will’. So all of his protagonists are representatives of Man fighting against an evil fate. Essentially, fundamentally, basically, they are ‘Men’ rather than individual ‘Man’. His memorable characters all have a family-likeness. Most of them can be divided into a few simple categories. And when Hardy tries to cross the limitations of his range and deliberately attempts to break away to a new type he fails in the end to make it intrinsically different from the old. In fact, Hardy’s view of life made this kinship between his creatures inevitable. He always conceives man in relation to his ultimate destiny, and in such a relation only certain qualities strike him as significant. Hardy’s portrayal of human characters is within a limited range. His portrayal of women characters are of wide range than that of the male characters. Hardy’s portraits of women are superb and are perfectly realistic and convincing. His most successful women characters include Marty, Bathsheba, Thomasin, Mrs. Yeobright, Eustacia and Tess. Hardy’s sensibility to feminine charm and his power to discriminate its distinguishing quality are the chief means by which he makes his heroines live, whether it is Fancy’s willful innocent coquetry, or Bathsheba’s ardent glowing smiles and tears, or Anne’s demure rural neatness, or Eustacia’s somber gorgeousness.

“As flies to wanton boys, are we to the Gods-

They kill us for their sport.”

(Act IV, Sc-1, King Lear, William Shakespeare)

Chance in its purity malevolent aspect enters our life and spoils it, brings trials and tribulations, sorrows and sufferings, pain and agony in its train. What is the use of being a plaything in the hands of ‘the President of the Immortals’? So he is a Pessimist, but there is a dark, grimly dark and gloomy as well as a bright sunny side of his philosophy. He is not a misanthrope like Hobbes who thinks man essentially a beast, mean abject, detestable and an odious creature. He is a pessimist like the classical writers who considered man merely a puppet in the hands of mighty Fate- unjust, cruel, blind and jealous of happiness of mankind.

‘The violent or ambitious natures are more opulent in a state of revolution against themselves; the quiet or constant natures are more refined and proud in their bearing, they suffer, but in silence and with strength. Not one of them all is a copy of another, but these are the general distinctions to be traced among them.’

But of he hated life intensely. He does not think it worth living. He perceives it in the grip of cruel, blind and oppressive Unknown Will.

Hardy has given so much attention to portray Eustacia. Hardy’s vivid, imaginative and picturesque description of Eustacia is marvelous and in the richness and splendor of which every phrase is salient and arresting. The method of conveying to us the exquisite loveliness of Helen in his play Doctor Faustus. We can even contrast it with Enobarbus’s description of Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, ‘The barge she sat was like a burnished throne, burned in the water, The poops were beaten gold, purple the sails The chapter Queen of Night overflows with the imagination of Hardy. Hardy says in this chapter: “Her presence brought memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies and tropical midnight; her moods recalled lotus-eaters and the march in Athalie; her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the Viola. In a dim light, and with a slight rearrangement of her hair, her general figure might have stood for that of either of the higher female deities. The new moon behind her head, an old helmet upon it, a diadem of accidental dewdrops round her brow, would have been adjuncts sufficient to strike the note of Artemis, Athena or Hera respectively with as close an approximation to the antique as that which passes musters on many respected canvases.”

Hardy is a master craftsman. His plots show a remarkable unity and symmetry. The unity of impression is achieved through a well- knit plot, and various love-stories are so closely interwoven. The actions take place in Edgon Heath, so as to produce the unity of place. Eustacia, Thomasin and Mrs. Yeobright are the three important women characters in The Return of the Native. The contrast between the three is striking and offer interesting studies. A minor woman character is Susan Nunsuch, who belongs to the rustic group and represents the superstitious beliefs of the rustic group. The opening chapter introduces Edgon Heath, one of the principal characters into the novel. The pictorial opening scene of Hardy is famous. In most of the novels of Hardy, attention have been paid to give a vivid, picturesque portrayal of the countryside in which the major actions the story takes place. The Heath is the dark, immemorial environment whose influence controls obscurely the lives and destinies of those who dwell contentedly among us in wilderness and those who feel themselves cruelly out of their element there. After describing the plot, Hardy introduces the heroine of the novel, Eustacia Vye who is entangled in a secret love affair with the local inn-keeper, Wildeve. Eustacia, from a love-affair that is growing tiresome, is stimulated by the news that Clym Yeobright is coming back from Paris. Clym and Eustacia fall in love. Clym, weary of the materialistic city life, plans to open a school in Egdon and teach something akin to Rousseau’s gospel of Nature and simplicity as the antidote to artificial maladies, but Mrs.Yeobright, his mother who is strongly opposed to both the plans. She considers Eustacia to be wanton. She thinks that Clym must go back to Paris to continue with his job, but Clym is stubborn with his objectives.

The plot suffers from several flaws. Unconvincing accidents and coincident were used by Hardy. It is difficult to believe that a wise woman like Mrs. Yeobright trusted a person like Christian Cantle with a considerable sum of money. The chain of coincident is a vast one which results ultimately in the tragedy. Hardy uses coincidence as the weapon to run the story. Mrs. Yeobright plans to visit Clym at the same time when he plans to visit her. When she arrives at Clym’s house Wildieve too arrives there and has a private meeting with Eustacia. These chance happenings

detract from the realism of the plot, although the realism of character-portrayal remains unaffected.

On the other hand, Thomasin is nowhere near the splendor and glamour of Eustacia. She has a simple rural charm and is described as having a fair, sweet and honest country face reposing in a nest of wavy chestnut hair. Her face is “between pretty and beautiful.” She is gentle, modest, humble, affectionate, and sensitive to the opinions of her neighbours and others while Eustacia is haughty, proud, vain of her beauty, reserved, somewhat mysterious, and indifferent to public opinion. On some occasions she shows firmness of her mind like that in her rebelliousness against her aunt in her decision to marry Wildeve despite her aunt’s opposition, but on the whole she is a passive kind of character, at the turn of events. At the outset of the story, when Wildeve is unable to marry Thomasin, she is heartbroken, the chief reason for her sorrow being her fear of what people will say. This results in the separation of the mother and son. After the marriage, Eustacia continues to meet Wildeve. Mrs. Yeobright’s attempt for reconciliation results in her death. Eustacia, after the quarrel with Clym leaves him and when makes an attempt to escape is drowned. At the end Clym transforms into a preacher.

Hardy portrays the vicinity of Edgon Heath not only as a mere background, but as the driving force which controls the destinies of the inhabitants in it. It influences the characters as well as the plot. For Eustacia and Clym the Heath was entirely different. Eustacia hates it. “It is my cross, my shame, and will be my death.” She says prophetically. But for, Clym it is “exhilarating, strengthening and soothing.” He too has some of its qualities, especially strangeness and remoteness. For the reddleman too the Heath seems to be good. Major actions in the story take place in by Heath and it undoubtedly adds to the richness and complexity of the story and shows also how Nature may play a hostile, though occasionally friendly, role in human affairs. In comparison with Eustacia, Thomasin is certainly a homely girl cut out to make an excellent home-spun which Eustacia can never be. Eustacia’s mind is haunted by the thoughts of a better living in Paris. She hates the life in Egdon. On Egdon Heath she says “Tis my cross, my shame and will be my death.”

Egdon Heath partially affects the destinies of these characters. It is cruel to the old woman and she calls it “a ridiculous old place”, but she is yet quite happy there because it is her natural habitat any other environment is inconceivable for her. Eustacia too finds her death in Egdon. At the end, it is Thomasin who turns happy, leading a contented life with Diggory Venn.

These failures are botches, but they do not ruin the work, because though large enough when measured in terms of plot they are small when seen against the vastness and strength of the design behind the plot. Hardy’s main focus is on expressing the significance of the great design in purely human terms.

Eustacia, to a large extent is responsible for the tragedy in The Return of the Native. The root cause occurs from Eustacia’s peculiar nature and temperament, manifesting themselves in her actions, deeds and utterances. She is responsible, but not fully. Almost all the major characters are knowingly or unknowingly responsible for the tragedy. The tragedy begins with the death of Mrs. Yeobright and the circumstances in which it occurs. Her death is followed by a quarrel between Eustacia and Clym which later results in the deaths of both Eustacia and Wildieve.

Hardy makes a number of comments in the course of the narrative which can also be considered as a fault. For instance, speaking on the love between Mrs. Yeobright and her son, “He had reached the stage in a young man’s life when the grimness of the general human situation first becomes clear; the realization of this causes ambition to halt a while. In France it is not uncustomary to commit suicide at this stage in England we do much better, or much worse, as the case may be.” These comments may add some philosophic interest to the play, but it is superfluous, as far as the plot-construction is considered. Eustacia dreamed of a life in Paris. She hopes that if she marries Clym, he may take her to Paris. She has fascination for the pompous city life. Clyn on the other hand is weary of the materialistic life a city offers. He wants to settle in Egdon and intends to start a school. Eustacia once says to Clym that “Sometimes I think there is not that in Eustacia Vye which will make a good home-spun wife.” On another occasion she says, “To be your wife and live in Paris would be heaven to me; but I would rather live with you in a hermitage here than not yours at all.” However, her hatred towards Edgon Heath, the environment in which she lives and Clym’s firmness to stay in the Heath makes her feel dissatisfied with life. She is blindly attracted by the colourful, hollow life in Paris and is unable to catch the subtle beauties of the Heath and looks upon it as a monster.

“The purposive, unmotived, dominant Thing

Which sways in brooding dark their wayfaring.”

The cause of the quarrel between the two arises out of the hatred between the two. Both are responsible for the tragedy, because neither of them show the tolerance of spirit which could have led to some sort of understanding between them.

While Eustacia’s heart throbs for the luxurious life in Paris, Clym gives up his educational project to furge-cutting. This causes much distress to Eustacia, and she sheds bitter tears over the changes occurring in her life, which are against her expectations, she begins to feel that her social status has been very much lowered. From her sense of dissatisfaction, the tragedy begins to shape. Eustacia begins to feel that Clym is not taking care of her ambitions. Gradually, she is attracted to Wildieve though for that Hardy uses a set of coincident. She is happy when Wildieve visits her at her house. At the same time Mrs. Yeobright comes there and knocks the door. Here coincidence plays a major role. Eustacia thinks that Clym, who is sleeping, will open the door. But for, it is her responsibility to open the door. Mrs. Yeobright thinks that Eustacia is deliberately avoiding her. She returns and on her way she dies. Eustacia rightly experiences a sense of guilt though, “instead of blaming herself for the issue, she laid the fault upon the shoulders of the some indistinct, colossal Prince of the world. Who had framed her situation and ruled her lot.”

Mrs.Yeobright’s death creates a sense of guilt in the mind of Clym, it constantly haunts his mind. As result, of his probe into the circumstances leading to the death of his mother, a fierce quarrel takes place between him and Eustacia. But on, she is very stubborn not to disclose her visit’s identity. Angered by Clym’s attitude, she leaves the house and goes to her grandfather’s house. We can experience the crowding guilt when she says to Wildeve “I am to blame this. There is evil in store for me. O, what shall I do?” To Charley in a later stage she says “Why should I not die if I wish? I have made a bad bargain with life, and I am weary of it-weary.”

Eustacia finally decides to escape from Edgon Heath. Her intense desire to be in Paris, and her predicament forces her to take a most unwise decision, all the more unwise in that she seeks Wildieve’s help. On her way at night she realizes that she does not allow her to ask monetary help from Wildieve. She 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; O, how hard it is of ?Heaven to devise such tortures form, who have done no harm to Heaven at all.” On an earlier occasion she puts the entire blame on some “colossal Prince of the World”. She does not hold the entire blame on her and it is a characteristic feature of Eustacia. Eustacia’s own responsibility for the tragedy is substantial, though destiny plays a vital part in the shape of malicious accidents and coincident. Hardy introduces his characters with their physical appearance vividly. For instance, Clym’s face is described as well-shaped, but one on which his habit of reflection and meditation is beginning to produce visible marks. He bears evidence to the fact that ideal physical beauty and a philosophic awareness of the complexity and significance of things do not go together. Hardy’s most memorable character portrayal occurs in the chapter ‘Queen of Night’. Eustacia is described as “full-limbed and somewhat heavy; without ruddiness, as without pallor and soft to the touch as a cloud.” She has pagan eyes, full of nocturnal mysteries. To see her hair is to fancy that a whole winter does not contain darkness enough to form its shadows. Diggory Venn is described “as young and, if not exactly handsome, approaching very near to handsome”, and his eyes are “keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist.” Wildeve’s movement is singular and it is “The panoramic expression of a lady-killing career.” These descriptions create unforgettable images on our minds and Hardy has the mastery to show even the smallest details.

Hardy’s talent is limited in the field of characterisation. They have some similarity. Most of them can be grouped into a few categories. Troy in Far from the Madding Crowd, Wildeve in The Return of the Native, Fitzpiers in The Woodlanders and D’Urberville in Tess of the D’urberville can be grouped under the dashing fickle breaker of women’s hearts. Gabriel Oak in Far from the Madding Crowd, Giles Winterborne in The Wood Landers, John Loveday in The Trumpet Major and Diggory Venn in The Return of the Native can be grouped under the staunch, selfless, sympathetic hero. There are some women characters like Tess in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Marty South in The Woodlanders, Elizabeth Jane in The Mayor of Casterbridge and Thomasin in The Return of the Native who are patient, devoted and forgiving. Another group contains the passion tormented, romantic enchantress like Eustacia in The Return of the Native, Mrs. Charmond in The Woodlanders, Lucetta in The Mayor of Casterbridge and Lady Constantine in Two on a Tower. These are the basic types of Hardy’s characters. Sometimes he adds to this, a group conceived in more intellectual; vein. We may feel that the same elements drive Henchard and Clym, Jude and Mrs. Yeobright, though these elements and passions may be mixed in different proportions. In Hardy’s portrayal of human characters, rustics stand alone as a separate group, though each member of the group is easily distinguishable from others.

Eustacia Vye and Clym Yeobright stands apart from other characters created by Hardy. Hardy calls Eustacia as “The raw material of a divinity.” She is the most powerfully drawn woman in Hardy’s portrait-gallery. “Her presence brings memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies and tropical midnights; her moods recalled lotus eaters and the March in Athalie; her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola.” Hardy says that in her power, and

capriciousness, she is a goddess; in her rebelliousness, a Titaness, in her solitude and mystery, a witch, and a Cleopatra in her pride, her passion and her scorn of consequences. However, Hardy’s effort to describe Eustacia is self-defeating. His description of Eustacia is so complicate that it is difficult to form a consistent image of her.

Compared to Eustacia, Clym’s portrayal is less complex. He is the one who ‘returns’. He is weary on the materialistic and fashionable life, Paris provides. Hardy is said to have remarked that Clym is the nicest of all his heroes. “Yeobright loved his kind. He had a conviction that the want of most men was knowledge of a sort which brings wisdom rather than affluence.” The author effectively conveys to us the various mental conflicts, aroused in his mind, when he is pulled in different directions by his love for his mother, his passion for his wife, and his intense desire to become a teacher. His aversion towards the life of Paris, his decision to become a school-master and educator, his deep love for his mother, his ardent passion for Eustacia, his stoical acceptance of his misfortune, all combine to make him one of the most convincing characters.

Hardy weaves his characters so subtly so that we may get feeling that we have actually met the various persons whom Hardy portrays in his fiction. He makes his characters in a most vital manner. Hardy gives his thought matter to provide his characters an element of pathos. Hardy exhibits his characters with his various techniques. Mostly he gives the apt picture through the running commentary which the rustics provide on the various principle characters. Hardy often uses his own comments on characters, some things through their utterances and sometimes through their actions.The rest of the characters too are portrayed vividly. Mrs. Yeobright is portrayed as a shrewd and practical minded lady. An important aspect of Hardy’s characterization is the contrast between characters. Thomasin is described as a simple and homely lady contended with life; in contrast with the sophisticated, ambitious and highly complex Eustacia. Again, Wildeve and Venn stand in two extremes; one, unscrupulous and inconsistent in love and the other, honest and devoted. Clym is highly philosophical and less practical, when contrasted with Wildeve and Venn.

‘“But people in love couldn’t live for ever like that!”

“Women could, men can’t because they won’t. An average woman is in this superior to an average man- that she never instigates, only responds. We ought to have lived in mental communion and no more.”’

Rustics are an essential part of Hardy. “Here the rustics are Timothy Fairway, Grandfer Cantle, Christian Cantle, Susan Nunsuch and her son Johny, and the mummers. It would be wrong to regard these persons as curiosities, or as interesting literary fossils planted in the environment for the verisimilude that they give. They not only take part in the series of festivals that provide a symbolic chronological pattern for the novel; but they also participate in the critical action itself, as agents of destiny.” Although they most often appear as a grout, they have been individualized on some occasions by Hardy. Susan Nunsuch represents the superstitious beliefs of the rural folk. Grandfer Cantle and Christian Cantle are also individualised. The former is distinguished for his egoism and vanity, and the latter for his fear of ghosts, his timidity and his pathetic inferiority complex in relation to women. The realistic effect of the novel is heightened by the presence of these characters.

Egdon has a colossal human experience. “It was at present a place perfectly in accordance with man’s nature- neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance, it had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities”. It barely heeds to the changes of the season. No absolute hour of the day is reckoned by the dwellers on its monotonous surface and only in midsummer docs it flame in crimson and scarlet.

“Women are never tired of bewailing men’s fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub their constancy.”

Hardy is famous for his picturesque, elegant natural description. Edgon Heath is the Wessex of his own life. He exquisitely describes the Heath either in a panoramic way or in brief passages such as his description of the Devil’s Bellows. In the very opening scene itself, Hardy conveys to us an impression of the black, inhospitable moorland stretching as far as eye can reach beneath the gathering winter twilight “the harsh heath, unaltered in the memory of the human race. Its somber nature intensifies the sad hours of day and night, and is enigmatic, needing explanation.”

Hardy’s habitual personification of Nature can be seen in its best when he describes Egdon Heath. Hardy himself was born on the edge of the Heath and “it was his playground when his genius was germinating.” The lines which Hardy used on Clym that “he was permeated with its scenes, with its substance, and with its odours, he might be said to be its product. His estimate of life had been coloured by it” is obviously autobiographical. It is eminently symbolical of Hardy’s philosophy.

“But I firmly believe I’ve to complete

The role assigned to me here

Where I dream and breathe.“

Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native is all-pervasive and it holds the action of the novel and its character as though in the hollow of its hand. It is an extended image of the nature of which man is part, in which he is caught, which conditions his very being , and which cares nothing for him. The Heath, apart from other functions, has a larger significance as a symbol of inhumanity. In a way, the tragedy that occurred to Eustacia and Clym was a result of their attempt to live alone, ignoring others, though not from the same motives, but they cannot be like the Heath in its ‘vast impassivity’ and ‘imperturbable indifference’, and their attempts to escape the consequences of their common humanity fail because, just as Venn’sd and Wildeve’s dice game “amid the motionless and uninhabited solitude-intruded-the battle of dice, and the exclamations of the reckless players.” So Hardy suggests that the Heath will remain unchanged, and indifference as ever when all these human antics, comical and tragic, are over. Hardy stressed much on the transience of man and the insignificance of his being generally by reference to the brooding permanence of the vast Heath.”This obscure, obsolete, superseded country” is the world of nature under the aspect of time, geological and historical alike. Sometimes the Heath “seemed to belong to the ancient world of the carboniferous period, when the forms of plants

were few, and of the fern kind; when there was neither bud nor blossom, nothing but a monotonous extent of leafage, amid which no bird sang.”

The final tragedy in The Return of the Native occurs by the deaths of Eustacia and Wildieve. Eustacia jumps into the water, overcoming her dark thoughts. To save her both Wildieve and Clym jump but it is Venn who saves Clym, fishes out the bodies of Eustacia and Wildeve. The words spoken by Clym bring more tragic effect. Full of grief he says, -She is the second woman I have killed this year. I was a great cause of my mother’s death; and I am the chief cause of hers. I spoke cruel words to her, and she left my house. I did not invite her back till it was too late. It is I who ought to have owned myself. Those who ought to have lived lie dead; and here I am still alive. The quarrel between Eustacia and Clym is one of the dramatic scenes in the story. Clym comes to know that it is Eustacia who is indirectly responsible for his mother’s death. When he accused her with contempt, her pride cannot bear it and she leaves Clym and goes to his grandfather’s house, sobbing and saying that his cruelty towards her is of a savage kind. The death scene of Mrs. Yeobright is deeply moving. She returns back with a broken heart at the thought that her son and daughter-in-law have deliberately closed the door to her. On her way an adder bites her. Exhausted by feelings of dejection, she sits down, almost fainting with fatigue. Clym arrives at the spot bit he can do nothing but to watch his mother dying. His grief becomes indescribable because of the guilt. The narration attains some tragic quality.

Egdon Heath plays a major role in the destiny of the characters in this novel. The characters are related by temperament to the Heath. Their personalities are derived from, or are reflected by some aspect of the Heath itself. For Eustacia the Heath is indifferent, feline and untamed. She hates it. She laments that “Tis my curse, my shame, and will be my death.” Her words come true as she drowned. Ironically she is like the Heath in her utter selfishness and indifference to others. The passage that follows after Mrs. Yeobright lies down on the Heath to rest is of high symbolic significance:”While she looked a heron arose on that side of the sky and flew on with his face towards the sun. he had come dripping wet from some Pool in the valleys, and as he flew the edges and lining of his wings, his thighs, and his breast were so caught by bright sunbeams that he appeared as if formed of burnished silver. Up in the zenith where he was seemed a free and happy place, away from all contact with the earthly ball to which she was pinioned, and she wished that she could arise uncrushed from its surface and fly as he flew then.” Here in the loveliest of birds, is an image of freedom and release from life itself. These two images are beautifully coined by the author, drawn with the sharply selective eye of a poet. Only a nature-observer whose mind is in harmony with Nature can write these kinds of descriptions. When Hardy sticks most closely to strict truth of fact, as he does here, he achieves his most moving effects. Another important scene in this novel is the game of dice played between Christian Cantle and Wildeve, and then between Wildeve and Diggory Venn. After winning a prize at the raffle, Christian Cantle feels encouraged to play a game of dice with Wildeve. Wildeve too encourages him by telling some stories to him on great winners. Christian Cantle, too excited by the stories, begins to play and eventually loses his hundred guineas, belonging to Thomasin and Clym. Christian leaves the spot groaning and Diggory Venn, Wildeve makes a sudden appearance from behind the bushes, and asks Wildeve to have a bout with him. Eventually it is Wildeve’s turn to lose. When sixty of the hundred guineas have passed into the hands of Diggory Venn, Wildeve feels furious. He throws the box into darkness, uttering a fearful

imprecation. However, the dice is recovered and the game resumes, and Wildeve loses all the money.

Mrs.Yeobright asks Eustacia whether she has received any money from Wildeve. Though she asks innocently, Eustacia thinks that Mrs. Yeobright is accusing her of having relations with Wildeve. This resulted in a quarrel between the two. Both the women lose their tempers and feel more hostile than before. Before leaving Mrs.Yeobright in her extreme fury warns her that if she shows any such temper against Clym, she will have to pay because “you will find that though he is as gentle as a child with you now, he can be as hard as steel.” Hardy is at his best when he is describing Nature. He is famous for his description of Nature in the opening chapter. Hardy gives much importance and in four pages of sustained eloquence the author coveys to us an impression of the black, inhospitable moorland as far as eye can reach beneath the gathering winter twilight “the harsh heath unaltered in the memory of the human race.” Hardy says,” It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. Smiling champaigns of flowers and fruits hardly do this, for they are permanently anonymous only with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than the present. Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolve a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity.”

Mrs. Yeobright strongly opposes Clym’s plan to marry Eustacia. She is also against his plans to give up his job in Paris. And settle down in Egdon as school-teacher. She is a highly practical minded lady who is so much concerned about his future. She falsely believes that it is Clym’s infatuation which compels him to take the decision to stay in Egdon. She says to Clym,”I can understand objections to the diamond trade-I really was thinking that it might be inadequate to the life of a man like you, even though it might have made you a millionaire. But now I see how mistaken you are about this girl. I doubt if you can correct other things.”

Commenting on Eustacia, she says, “Is it best for you to injure your prospects for such a voluptuous, idle woman as that? Don’t you see that by the very fact of your choosing her you prove that you do not know what is best for you?” however, Clym thinks the other way . He says that his mother’s analysis is not true. He is fed up with his mother’s nagging. In a mixture of entreaty and command he says,” I won’t hear it. I may be led to answer you in a way which we shall both regret.” This scene shows Mrs. Yeobright’s responsibility and material solitude. It also shows her firmness, bluntness and sternness. Clym’s strength of purpose and unflinching determination is also revealed through this scene.

The Return of the Native stands unique among the words of Hardy. Egdon Heath represents both the indifferent world of Nature and the stage on which human dramas have been enacted from time immemorial, sets the tone for the somber story of trapped human passions. This novel is the most artistic presentation among the Wessex novels a of the theme which is always present to Hardy’s consciousness, the theme which he heard in the song of the trees in the Yell’ ham wood-

Concatenated affections or the heavy piling-up of circumstances and accidents bind The Return of the Native together. All the major characters are linked together indissolubly in a balanced and perfectly designed whole that seems quite unlike the disorderly arrangements of life. The

novel displays certain forces of hate and love, attraction and repulsion. It is a very much like a cob-web involving human beings. When the web is disturbed from one stand, the other begins to vibrate. When the love between Eustacia and Clym begin to cool Clym’s relations with his mother, Eustacia’s affair with Wildeve, and Thomasin’s relationship to Diggory Venn are altered in various directions and degrees. The vibration becomes stronger when Mrs. Yeobright dies.

Hardy is well-known for his portrayal of Wessex. These landscapes of meadow and wood, all these pictures of villages and rustic scenes are indebted for their existence and immortalization to Hardy. The Return of the Native undoubtedly holds a very high position among the Wessex novels. Abercrombie says that The Return of the Native clearly specifies Hardy for the importance of formative imagination in art. Hardy did not create thereafter such shapely symmetry of construction, so complete a blending of the setting with the story. Nor was he able again to maintain his own personality so completely in solution throughout the book.

The novel The Return of the Native is a realistic novel as it presents to us ordinary human beings who seem faithfully rendered. The characters are motivated with the same desires and are equipped with the same vices and virtues as ourselves. Hardy portrays Egdon Heath, the Wessex of his own life, so that one can accept it as a credible environment for the novel. Many critics have commented on Hardy’s ability to describe the Heath, either in a panoramic way or through descriptive passages. His description of the mummer’s play is another example of realism, showing his knowledge of the customs of England. These elements argue that Hardy is a realistic novelist, but compared to certain other novels of Hardy even these examples fail to convince everyone. In matters of treatment, it is a polished, impeccably organized drama, unlike the ordinary chaos of life. Hardy’s novel has none of the freedom, or diffuseness that, are characteristic of modern realists as Preiser or Zola. His art is classical only because of its orderliness and balance. In reality, his realism is a distortion of life that the incidents of plot follow too neatly upon each other to be the approximation to life that we call realism. Many critics have complained about this polished finicky control Hardy exerts over his material. Hardy’s portrayal of Eustacia is noted for his poetic grandeur. She is described as “full-limbed and somewhat heavy; without enddiness, as without pallor; and soft to the touch as a cloud.” She has pagan eyes, full of nocturnal mysteries. In chapter seven, “Queen of night”, Hardy gives a vivid imaginative portrait of her. The method employed in describing her shows that she is intended to be taken very seriously, as a study of strong but abnormal personality, and by no means a mere vulgar butter-fly, pining, for frivolity at any cost.

Before she meets Clym, she has elevated him to an ideal status and when reality comes, her dreams and illusions shattered. Her degradation takes place when she turns to Wildeve. Finally she rehabilitates her dignity by not surrendering her honour with her death which is most probable a suicide.

One major theme of the novel is the contrast between appearance and reality, between illusion and fact. The theme is symptomatic of the disillusionment suffered by Hardy and his nineteenth-century contemporaries. Clym, the protagonist, has returned to Egdon Heath as a result of his feeling of suffocation to the life in Paris. He returned with knowledge that others on the heath do not have that his life in Paris “was the idlest, vainest, most effeminate business that ever a man could be put to.” Eustacia is portrayed as a figure, passionate to pompous life. She is a

person having some romantic illusions. Before their marriage, she elevated him to an ideal status. But of, after marriage, the illusion is completely shattered, and the truth observed, when Clym first pursues his favourite profession of a schoolmaster, and then that of a farmer. Her final accusation contains a self-revelation. “You deceived me-not by words, but the appearances, which are less seen through than words.” Another major theme in the novel is the shrinkage of man in the modern world as a result of his inability to control his own destiny. The novel portrays this modern vision of man with a texture composed of elements of mischance, accident, uncontrollable passion, petty errors and cross purposes. Throughout the story there are man-made errors and destiny of the major characters is greatly influenced by minor accidents, such as the simultaneous arrival of Mrs. Yeobright and Wildeve at Clym’s cottage, the fatal snake bite and the unreceived letter.

The third important theme is the nature of the universe in which a man finds himself. Throughout the novel, Hardy uses the image of “a victim” or “prisoner” as a means to describe his characters.

Wildeve correctly assessed ‘her’ as “a confoundedly good little women.” In reality, he loves her. But of, Eustacia has something more to offer. Her charm is superior to that of Thomasin. Thomasin is certainly a homely girl cut out to make an excellent ‘home-spun’ which eusdtacia as a mysterious person.

The Return of the Native is as much a “tragedy of environment” as it is a “tragedy of character”. Both character and environment are involved in the destiny of man. Egdon Heath can almost be called the principal character in this book, for we are made to feel its vast impassivity as a living presence. It provides one of the two elements which are always to be found in Hardy’s art at its best. The fundamental meaning is the same whether we call these elements the transient and the abiding, or the human heart and the impersonal universe. In this novel, Egdon Heath influences all the human characters, moving them, to love or to hate, to despair or to the philosophic mind. The novel also contains matters purely based on Hardy’s personal experiences. For instance, the comical description, in the fifth chapter, of the playing of clarinet by Thomasin’s father is a humerous reproduction of the tales which Hardy had heard in his youth of the prowess of his grandfather, Thomas Hardy. There is a reminiscence of Hardy’s own residence at Weymouth in 1869, when part of Desperate Remedies was written, in chapter ten when Venn praises Budmouth.

“Not you. This place I live in.”

Destiny shows its power in a more glaring form, namely in the form of accidents and coincident. For instance, Mrs. Yeobright dies because of coincidence. She arrives at Clym’s house and knocks at the door. At the same time Wildeve is present there and Eustacia makes some delay in opening the door. She turns and on her way back is bitten by an adder which ultimately results in her death. In the final stage of the story he writes a letter to Eustacia, pleading her to come back. The letter has been delayed for some-time. Clym, waiting for the arrival of Eustacia is informed by Thomsin that Eustacia and Wildeve are planning to run away from the Heath. These accidents, supplemented by a number of other make us feel that the culprits are the major characters themselves. Whatever the cause, at the very moment the well-intentioned step is

taken, events take such a courtesy that consequences prove disastrous, and the grand satire lies in this fact. To a large extent, the weaknesses of the characters themselves are responsible for the tragedy. By nature Clym is noble. He is fed up with the materialistic city life in Paris. So he returns to Egdon Heath to start a school. He marries Eustacia even after his mother strongly opposed the marriage. He fails to unveil the real nature of Eustacia. He is unable to strike a balance between his mother and his wife, at first inclining wholly towards his wife and later very largely towards his mother. Hardy’s attitude towards life is pessimistic. Hardy believes that man is born to suffer. He is of the opinion that destiny governs human life and it is hostile to man. Destiny often inflicts human beings with very little free will and inflicts undeserved sufferings upon them. There are villains in his novels but he believes on the whole that there is more goodness and nobleness in human nature than evil, and that man is capable of heroic endurance of misfortune. The logic of cause and effect is much at work as an arbitrary supernatural power is recurrent in the novels of Thomas Hardy. The same is evinced in The Return of the Native through the tragedy of protagonists Eustacia, Wildeve and Mrs. Yeobright.

Both Clym and Eustacia are symbols of humanity in the hands of some power against which it is vain to struggle. Hardy’s genius lies in the fact that each of his greater novels is his portrayal of general human situation. This is summed up here in the firm opposition of inner or outer circumstances to the desires of two people who would like to be free agents but who can only struggle blindly and convulsively in the net of destiny. Hardy leaves the decision for the reader, whether the hostile influences are external to man, or whether they may be regarded as the composite result of man’s weakness and accumulated blunders, and the recalcitrance of crude matters. The scenery is obviously symbolical of the predicament in which humanity finds itself. As the novel’s story progresses it is clear that the separation of Clym and Eustacia is inevitable because their thoughts and ambitions never meet. The graphic symbolism, by which the unseen powers, whatever they may be, are shown fitfully interfering, is as necessary to Hardy’s picture as was Flaubert’s relentless analysis of mind and motive applied to Madame Bovary, (1857) a parallel but essentially different case from Eustacia’s. Hardy’s peculiar genius is in its full flow in The Return of the Native.

‘’Life offers to-deny.”

In case of Eustacia too, her character is largely responsible for the tragedy. Unlike Clym, she wants to live in Paris and hates the life in Egdon Heath. She has a passionate nature which does not find the satisfaction it craves. She cannot accept the simple nature of Clym and his occupation as a furze-cutter. Though a practical minded and shrewd woman Mrs. Yeobright has some faults. She is unable to understand the workings of the mind of Clym. She is unsympathetic to his humanitarian projects. Her oppositions towards Eustacia create a wall between the mother-son relationships. Wildeve’s actions create most of the troubles to other characters. He fluctuates between one woman and another, marries one of them but keeps running after the other, bringing uncertainty and unhappiness into the lives of both. In the novels of Hardy, Nature is mostly personified. Nature plays a major role in The Return of the Native. The heath is the dark immemorial environment whose influence controls obscurely the lives and destinies of those who dwell contentedly amid its wilderness and also those who feel themselves cruelly out of their element here. The Heath proves to be an enemy to Mrs. Yeobright. Eustacia regards the Heath as her enemy. Egdon Heath proves to be inimical. It brings about her death as on the day

of her escape it is swept by rain and storm. Her words, “It is my cross, my shame, and will be my death”, become prophetical. Egdon Heath symbolizes the whole cosmic order, in which man is but an insignificant particle.

Hardy’s conception of life is essentially tragic. For Hardy “Happiness is an occasional episode in a general drama of pain.” Almost all the characters of his novels go through a phase of disappointments, misfortunes and sufferings except the thick- skinned rustics who do not have any ambitions and high dreams like the thick-skinned rustics who do not have any ambitions and high dreams like the cultivated people. In his novels, the conflict is one in which there is the remotest chance to escape. Man suffers from a lack of foresight and from, an inability to subdue his own insubordinate nature. Therefore, he must be unhappy; and the situation is aggravated by the operation of a mysterious, spiteful power which manifests itself through accidents and coincident which further contribute to man’s unhappiness. Nature is not always friendly to man. In the novel The Return of the Native the tragedy is mainly due to the actions of the characters themselves, but there are some workings of the Fate through hostile accidents and coincident, and through the forces of Nature embodied in Egdon Heath. Nature is sometimes callous and cruel to the human beings.

Clym Yeobright, Eustacia Vye and Wildeve are the most important characters in the novel. Though the novel ends with a happy note with Venn marrying Thomasin, Eustacia is disgruntled, with life to the point of morbidity, entangled in a secret love-affair with the local inn-keeper Wildeve. Wildeve here acts almost as a foil to the lives of Clym, Eustacia and Thomasin. His interference resulted in the deaths of Mrs. Yeobright and Eustacia, and finally he has to sacrifice his own life. Another character which resembles Wildeve is Dr. Fitzpiers in The Woodlandlers, who after marrying Crace, goes after Felice. Clym Yeobright is the one who ‘returns’. He hates the materialistic attitudes of the people in the city. So, he is coming back to his native place to start a school and thus, to do some service to his people. Eustacia on the other hand hates the life in Egdon Heath. She loves the pompous life in a big city like Paris. While Clym prefers simplicity in life, Eustascia prefers the colourful aspect of the city life. Naturally, their married life is not successful. Both live in two extremities and unless one or the other gives way, they will drift further and further apart.

Diggory Venn cannot forget the words of Thomasin: “Help me to keep him home in the evenings.”

The novel The Return of the Native opens with the description of Egdon Heath. Hardy is famous for his nature’s description. His pictorial opening is famous. The chief character, he introduces in the opening is Egdon Heath. This environment influences the destinies of the inhabitants as they are helplessly looking on the action of Fate upon them. It is indifferent to the sufferings and misfortunes of the people. Egdon Heath symbolizes the whole cosmic order, in which man is but an insignificant particle. In this novel man is helpless against the invisible mysterious power of Nature. The novel tells the history of two or three people who are conscious of the dilemma in which nature has placed them and who try now and again to play their own parts in the life to which they have been condemned; and it is a novel where individual assertions end in futility each time.

Thus, there is a conflict in the novels of Hardy but it is not a conflict between one man and another, or between man and an institution. In Hardy’s books, man has to fight against impersonal forces, called in a general way: Fate. Henchard is full hatred for Farfrare, Bathsheba considers Troy as the main cause of her unhappiness. But in, actually those who they think their enemies are as much as themselves puppets in the hand of Fate. Fate, is ultimately responsible for their quarrels unless they were destined to do so. They would not be in conflict with each other and indeed it is significant that Hardy-as a rule-emphasizes the fact that even those characters the world would call wicked, who are so much the creatures of circumstance that they are far more to be pitied than to be blamed. Tess is a noble girl. She has no wish to make other people unhappy, only, forced by the pressure of her nature, she throws aside anything that checks her way. Fate is her enemy, as it is that of her rivals “Justice was done and the President of the Immortals had ended his sport with Tess”- in that sentence we have the very essence of Thomas Hardy’s idea of human life. Man is a creature in the hands of an impenetrable Fate, cold, passionless and indiscriminating.

In Hardy’s novels, Fate plays a very important part. Sometimes it appears that human beings in this world have no individual life of their own, they are controlled by Fate. Not only this, it appears they are controlled by Fate from outside as well as from within. In other words it means that Fate interferes in the lives of human beings through some external happenings. For example, Newson in The Mayor of Casterbridge appears just at the time when Henchard most needed the help of his step-daughter Elizabeth Jane. Newson claims back Elizabeth Jane and Henchard feels greater loneliness, which led him to desperate acts. In this case, Fate works from outside. But of fate, in Hardy, works from within the characters as well. It is just a matter of Fate that Jude with his intellectual aspirations also had a high degree of sensuousness, which led to his misfortune. Thus, to repeat it once again, one of the strongest impressions that one gets on reading Hardy’s novels is that Fate is all-powerful and it works both from within the characters and outside of them. The noted Hardy critic, David Cecil says: “A struggle between the man on the one hand and, on the other an omnipotent and indifferent Fate-that is Hardy’s interpretation of the human situation.”

All the characters of Hardy can be divided into the following three grades- those who are protagonists of the whole human drama, the people in contact with the protagonists or who have some part in the machinery and are of small interest in themselves, the rustic bystanders. These rustic bystanders i.e. the minor characters are country folk from all walks of country life. The category includes almost all the farm hands, woodlanders, shepherds, dairy-maids, furze-cutters, and carriers, non-descript labourers, servants, cottagers who form the main populace o the Wessex scenes. One of the chief characteristics of these rustic bystanders is that they always appear in a group usually at some public meeting place, and never separately, they are not full-length portraits. They are drawn in a different convention. Here Hardy is in the straight tradition from Shakespeare. But of, many of these lesser people, with very small parts to sustain, are sharply individualized. These rustic folk impersonate the spirit of the place. They are soaked in tradition, the traditions of a primitive class, rooted in the soil, which it is their function to typify. We may in them read the spiritual history of a country side, Feudalism and Catholicism and Protestantism, law and education and tradition, changes in agriculture and commerce and

tenure, in traffic and society and living, all these have worked and wrought upon these people. They are as eternal as the woods and fields and heaths.

Egdon Heath plays a major role in The Return of the Native. The book is, indeed the story of Egdon Heath. In this novel Nature receives more prominence than in any other novels of Hardy. Hardy has put so much life in Egdon that he spent less effort on the human figures, with the result that the characters in this novel are not drawn according to the high scale of Far from the Madding Crowd. Egdon Heath is the background of the action and often it plays more than the role of a mere observer to an active participant. Sometimes, it dominates the plot and determines the characters. Egdon is sentient, it feels, it speaks, it kills. Egdon presents a face upon which time makes but little impression.

“She was another illustration of the rule that succeeding generations of women are seldom marked by cumulative progress, their advance as girls being lost in their recession as matrons so they move up and down the stream of intellectual development like flotsam in a tidal estuary. And this perhaps not by reason of their faults as individuals, but of their misfortune as child rearers.”

These rustic people play quite an important role in his novels. They are the ‘cement’ if his protagonists are ‘bricks and slabs’ of the palace of his fine novels. Without these his novels would collapse and suffer. –Their services in making the machinery run smoothly and perspicuously are invaluable and they also help to bring out not merely the immediate but also the ulterior significance of all that is talking place. In a sense, they represent Hardy himself. They are quiet but deeply interested observers who see more of what is going on than the gentlefolk are aware, and they are continually dropping shrewd comments. In fact the role of these minor characters is as that of ‘Chorus in a Greek Tragedy’. They serve another useful and important purpose in the grim and tragic stories of Hardy and they provide rich comic relief. One may regard these minor characters merely as so much background, furnishing a racy comment and genial comic relief to the matters in the fore front, yet they are by no means drawn as wooden figures of the same kind and quality. Their minds are not revealed; but it does look as if they really were minds behind those gnarled, weather beaten, and merry or sardonic visages. They are not by any means an unthinking herd, no mere stage furniture.

It is to be observed that these Wessex folk display their thoughts and humours most really and richly, when talk turns upon the more common emotions: birth and death, and the two or three intermediate affairs of the moment. Their talk is shrewd, rude, of an earthly and material savior. It is the harmony between themselves and their surroundings that the country folk owe the impressiveness of their virtue and of their vice. Moreover, they never lose their hold upon life and truth, in Hardy’s hands; not one of them is set up, a puppet of the stage, to draw bucolic commonplaces in a dialect, or to pass the bounds of nature in savagery and whimsically and uncouthness. In short, successful portrayal of country folk is one of the artistic triumphs of Hardy.

Hardy makes his rustics speak in Wessex dialect because he thinks Wessex dialect is the passport to our intimacy with the Wessex folk. However, he makes but a sparing use of the local words of Wessex dialect because he properly understands that too much use of these words or

an exact phonograph of Wessex dialect will spoil his works. So he contrives to reconcile the demands of truth with those of art in a way which brings Wessex before our eyes and the echo of Wessex speech resounds in our ears. They are far from the madding crowd. How the life of these country folk, away from the confused commerce of towns, and tumult and turmoil of the madding crowd, is a life in which nature plays a direct part with what influence upon soul and body, it is no light task to say. For crowds and multitudinous traffic, these men have the innumerable society of natural things, trees and winds and waters; they find companionship in creatures of the woodland and the fields; their hopes, fears, experiences, sciences, their faith and love, sorrow and hate, are nourished by the Mighty Mother Earth.

Hardy is the unchallenged monarch of the countries of Berkshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Somerset, Devon and especially Dorset, united under the scepter of his pen. Never was a region so compromisingly celebrated as in these books. He belonged to Dorchester, and he wrote of that south-western part of England which he renamed Wessex and succeeded in building up, through his books an immortal region. It is a land of his invention. It owes to Hardy its fairest title of nobility. He has revealed its beauties and its charms to our eyes and immortalized it. It must not be supposed that the writer inhabited a region with which none could compare in beauty, or that such spots exist nowhere else. What is true is that all these landscapes of meadows and woods, all these pictures of villages and rustic scenes are indebted for their existence and immortalization to Hardy. This wonderful observer discovered things which did not exist for the ordinary eye. It is enough to travel in Wessex to be convinced that many a land become a realm charged with poetry and beauty, if only it finds the hand which will illuminate. Hardy is great in virtue of his penetrating and flexible interpretation of his native earth. The people living in Wessex are soaked in tradition, the traditions of a primitive class rooted in the soil, which it is their function to typify. We may in them read the spiritual history of countryside- Feudalism and Catholicism and Protestantism, law and education and tradition, changes in agriculture and commerce and tenure, in traffic and society and living, all these have worked a wrought upon these people. They are as eternal as the woods and fields and heaths. It is to be observed that these Wessex folk display their thoughts and humours most racially and richly, their talk turns more upon the common emotions: birth and death, and the two or three intermediate affairs of the moment their talk is shrewd, rude of an earthly and material savour. He makes them talk in such a language as with a smattering of Wessex dialect, brings Wessex before our eyes and the echo of its speech resounds in our ears. These Wessex folk, fast rooted in the soil, have mental immobility i.e. orthodoxy. Their religion is represented as ‘fetishistic’: a primitive superstition about places and things, persons and practices, of a pagan original, and only disguised under a Christian nomenclature. They entertain many superstitions. They are impregnated with legendary lore.

The weather and even the time of the day and their effect on mood are included in his descriptions. The strange, unearthly feeling of early morning to Clare in proximity to Tess, the tense, foreboding atmosphere while Gabriel Oak is working to save Bathsheba’s ricks from burning, these and many more scenes show natural assists working on the mood of the parsonage and through him or her, on that of the reader. Hardy has, thus, reproduced atmosphere by working in scenic and atmospheric effects, and it is done quite successfully. It is notable that his most living characters are bred in the lap of nature, and further, the actors and

their setting are absolutely co-ordinated, we can’t imagine one without the other. He has broad, comprehensive outlook that takes in the smaller creatures as well as the greater. What a quality of sympathy is evinced in the way he tells how, as the frost came on, “Many a small bird went to bed supper less that night among the bare boughs” or now with the advent of spring “birds began not to mind getting wet”. Here it is playful and humorous but it often becomes charged with deep pathos, when the sorrows of the animal world are shown to be not less than our own, in proportion to their capacity for feeling. Tess, wounded in spirit, spends a night in a wood; and is melted to rears, by the sufferings of the peasants maimed in the interests of ‘sport”, draws a lesson from their plight with reference to her own. The Return of the Native is a novel in which, indeed, nature enters more than into any other. It is, in fact, the story of the Egdon Heath. Egdon is not only the scene of the play; it dominates the plot and determines the characters. Hence Nature is not just the background in his drama but a leading character in it.

In fact, Hardy has completely identified himself with Wessex. He is a part of his own Wessex world, one with his people, a child of his countryside. When he leaves it he is quaint and mannered, like a farmer comes to a town in a stiff suit or perhaps an old country doctor. But of, back in his own world, all his sagacity, scholarship, his first hand knowledge of place and people, of nature and the ineffable spirit of time and place, return to inform his art. Most of the novelists are not at home among the places of, their imagination: from first to last, they describe their woods and fields, not as long familiarity makes them appear, but as they appeared to unaccustomed eyes; there is no art in them. But of, Hardy has the art of impressing upon us so strong a sense of familiarity with his scenes that we read of Wessex, and we think of our own homes, far away and far different though they may be. Hardy has celebrated Wessex not in an academic manner but in a popular manner i.e., his descriptions of the different aspects of country-life does not come from the graceful inspirations of culture but it is the ‘pagan’ sentiment, the sentiment of homely villagers that moves his pen and his genius gives a speciality to Wessex. Hardy’s Wessex is much more than a scene is setting for his stories and poems; it is the dominating overcharacter-booding constantly above his works and casting its changeless shadow upon the author as well as the people in his books. ‘Wessex and its people’ is the only one and great theme, on which all of his novels are written. Without a proper appreciation of Wessex, it is impossible to appreciate his works.

A novel must have a “plot” and a “story” –the action should be governed by a single idea, a visible idea and one of which the essential story is the result. In the construction of his plots, Hardy was a follower of Fielding. Hardy’s novels have a structure, a design, a plan, a framework which is definite, not loose. These plots are dramatic in quality, nothing superfluous, extraneous, unrequited-for, is inserted in them. It was but necessary for him to adopt Foielding’s convention for his plots because he always aimed at tracing a single pattern in the carpet of life and for the achievement of his aim, for the representation of any special vision of reality must involve a process of elimination, he must avoid and repeat superfluous things from his plots. They lead a calm and quiet life, away from the tumult and turmoil, confused commerce and multitudinous traffic of the madding crowd. They live in the lap of nature and are deeply affected by it. It is by creation of these full-blooded people who dance and sing, eat and drink, work and make love; and on some occasions they do more desperate things, such as murder and adultery, and moral cheating; that Hardy has impressed upon our minds a vivid picture of His

Wessex. One remarkable fact is that Hardy is among those who have given us works of art wherein, having grasped the central idea of each, we find it to be not only a thing of beauty, de3light and charm but grand moral lesson also. Due to his philosophy, all his plots turn to be a drama of conflict; between man and “the Immanent Will” and Man always plays his part manfully. Heroically and nobly and this is a grand moral lesson! Another notable fact is that his plots always consist of an eternal triangle i.e., one man loved by two or more than two damsels or one Eve being hunted after by two or more than two Adams at the same time. An architect by profession, Hardy gave to his novel a design that was architectural. He was a superb master on the constructive side of his plots. He builds it as a mason or an architect builds a house. The string of every part is calculated, every stone has its place, every crumb of mortar bears its part. The creative work of Hardy is governed by a powerful logic, the logic of events infinitely dear, never moving by the tenth part of a millimeter from appointed sequences. “The broad sweep of design” goes hand in hand with a strict accuracy in details. Nothing, not even the slightest part, is forgotten. The ends of final issues in Hardy’s stories are foregone conclusions. Things and circumstances being as they are, the results will be as they must be. No trait of Hardy’s work is so marked as this and none is so impressive. Of all great writers of the English novel, he alone has, in equal proportions, great gifts of imagination and extraordinary powers of intention.

Hardy presents this blind indifferent Fate in various forms. Sometimes it appears as a natural force. Henchard’s plans for making himself rich are brought to nothing by a bad harvest, the weather takes the part of fate here. Sometimes, Fate appears as some inner weakness of character. Angel Clare’s life becomes unhappy because from the very birth he did not have enough of the animal in him, but Fate in the novels of Hardy generally appears in two forms: as chance and, as love. Of these, chance is the most common. In no other novel does chance play such an important part in the lives of people. For example, at the very beginning of her life as a young girl Tess meets the wrong man. A few days before she marries Angel Glare, she pushes under the door of his bed-room, a written letter full of compassion, which slips under the carpet where it remains until found by Tess on the wedding morning. On a Sunday, Tess walks fifteen miles to the house of the Angel Glare to seek protection there is no answer to her ring at the door, for the family is at the Church. Just as a matter of chance indeed. At just the wrong time she now meets Alec once more. A letter she sends to Angel in Brazil is delayed, and he reaches home a few days. Later on all these occasions Fate in the form of chance stood in the way of Tess’s happiness. Examples of this type can be given from almost all novels of Hardy. Thus, it is clear that in the novel of no other novelist do chance and Fate play such an important part on the course of events as in Hardy’s. Hardy has been blamed for this. And no doubt, he does sometime overdoes it, but to condemn his use of chance altogether is to misunderstand his view of life. When we read his novels, we are witnessing a battle between Man and Destiny. Destiny is an unknown force, we do not know its nature or its intentions. And we cannot, therefore, predict what it will. Do. As a result of this, its acts always show themselves in the form of unexpected blows of chance. The world of his novels is by no means a world in which all things can be reduced to obvious law and explained by common sense. The strange, the unexpected, the inexplicable occur everywhere and always. The method is quite deliberately used, and is well;-rooted in Hardy’s philosophy. In simple words, Hardy makes it clear that the chance happenings that take place in his novels also take place in life. He believes that there are indeed more things on heaven and earth that are dreamt of in man’s philosophy. From the above account, it is clear

that Fate plays a dominant part in the novels of Hardy. Quite often Fate acts on the lives of the characters in the form of chance happenings. It is no use blaming Hardy for the excessive use of Fate and chance in his novels for by the very nature of his theme they are essential in this world. In the world of Hardy, the struggle is between man and Destiny and the latter is more powerful than the former. Moreover, Destiny is an unknown force- we do not know how it acts. As a result of this it shows itself in the form of unexpected blows of chance. Thus, considering his philosophy of life, Hardy is justified in the use of Fate and chance to such a great extent in his novels.

What strikes us first in his nature-pictures is their precision. Hardy has the acute discriminating senses of an observer, who takes in things with an attention at the same time analytical and impassioned. His records of impressions owe nothing to literature; they are wholly direct and grow out of the object itself; as they formulate what the most impressionable peasants would subconsciously register, they extend our knowledge at many points. No one before him has caught or at least expressed through words, the peculiar rustling of the wind in the tiny bells of dried heather blossoms. His ear for the sounds of nature is both sensitive and highly trained. His power of framing vivid and beautiful metaphor; and similies has much to do with his success in reproducing impressions from without. There are ugly exceptions and occasional illustrations only to be understood by the technician but for the most part they are telling and give that impression of utter rightness which atone stamps a simile or a metaphor with success.

Hardy follows the methods of Thomson in nature description with quite facility his landscapes have a “power” that results from a hand of unerring skill working in exact harmony with an incredibly observant eye. A great poet of nature, he freely displays an exceptional gift for description, which owes a vast range to the perception usual both of fine shades and of vast solemn harmonies. The descriptions of Tess two valleys, Blackmoor vale and the vale of the Var-where the waters were clear as the pure River of Life shown to the Evangelist, rapid as the shadow of a cloud, with pebbly shallows that prattled to the sky- are gloriously good, but too long to quote. A point worth noting is that Hardy’s landscape, like Turner’s, rests on geology i.e., mostly he describes its geological feature. In Hardy’s nature-descriptions, we are always aware of nature moving on its appointed cores, warming to spring, yellowing to autumn, with recurrent punctuality careless whether Tess dies or finds her true love.

As the bonfires began to subside, some of the men-folk in the crowd decided to go to Wildeve’s inn “The Quite Woman” and congratulate him on his marriage with Thomasin which was believed to have taken place that very morning.

Before concluding the essay, it must be said that there is no “variety of plots” i.e., they are always hung on the same peg of love, they always work in the same atmosphere of Wessex, they always move in almost the same way, they sooner or later, turn out to be a drama of conflict, between the Immanent Will and Man. And sometimes we do feel an occasional stiffness and eccentricity of mechanical contrivance-chance. He sometimes makes too much use of chance and fate. Perhaps, “coincidence” is a device, with him, for bringing about crisis or denouement and this sometimes spoils the artistic value of his plots. His narratives are conducted slowly at the first, and great pains are taken to make clear the spirit of the country, with its works and ways when that has been made clear, the play quickens into passions and begins to move with

an increasing momentum to an incalculable goal; the actors come into conflict, there is strong attraction and repulsion, “ spirits are finely touched” then, there is a period of waiting, a breathing space, an ominous stillness and a pause till, at the last, with increased force and motion, it goes forward to the “fine issues” ; all the inherent necessities of things cause their effects, tragic or comic, triumphs of the right or of the wrong and the end of all is told with a soft solemnity, a sense of pity striving against a sense of fate. The final grandeur is the logical climax of converging trivialities. In each separate incident there is an element which proves necessary in the completion of the whole. When we close one of the Hardy’s greatest books, the deepest impression is always of something fated and inevitable. In the sequence of events and this impression rests equally upon his skill in episode and his power of climax, his genius in invention and his genius for imagination, his logic in science, turned him a novelist, a mathematician dealing with dramatic and poetic material. We find no digressions, no superfluities, no redundancies. His novels always produce a unity of impression. His plots in his novels are simple, unimpeded, organic and symmetrical, they move in direct lines. And however great the play of an external fate, the life or motive which is at the centre of each plot is essentially psychological. Every novel is an answer to the question, “Given certain characters in certain circumstances, what will-happen- what will become of them?” Wordsworth in his nature-descriptions confines himself in general to the broad outlines of his subjects. With broad brush he sketches in, mountain, lake and sunset sky, Clare and Cowper, on the other hand, concentrate mainly on details with loving patient accuracy. Hardy combines both methods. And, as usual, that mixture of poetry and truth which is the hallmark of his creative-faculty and is the chief factor in his achievement in the share of Nature description. If word-pictures could be hung on walls, a great gallery could be filled with Hardy’s nature-pictures deliberate oil-paintings, delicate water colours and etchings, whole portfolios of sketches and studies. And certainly it is a source of satisfaction that the Hardian Tragedy, like the human one, is set amid the all consoling beauty of the most beautiful of the possible works-nature.

Hardy’s nature descriptions seldom have the impersonalness of the camera. In a majority of cases the natural scenery shown to us at any point in a story will be found to have an emotional connection with the events happening at that moment. With the progressive wreck of happiness of Tess, there is also a symbolic change in the climates and atmospheres of the places where she goes- from the secluded vale of Blackmoor to the hushed valley of the Great Dairies, the bleak chalk table- land of Flintcomb-Ash, fashionable sandy Sandbourne and at last the great Plain and the Druid temple of Stonehenge. Human life is very essential feature in his picture of the nature world. He won’t go to paint nature for its own sake. “Further, nature is to him emblem of those impersonal forces of Fate” with whom he presents mankind in conflict. In two of his books, The Woodlanders and The Return of the Native the setting is made to stand for the Universe; and in all his other successful works it has symbolic value.

No other writer but Hardy has envisaged the English the English landscape in so many aspects. He loves the sea, but does not so often describe it. “He has lovingly described the elementary, grand and sad aspects of nature; the land which appeals to him most is that which is freest from human dwellings. He loves to paint the woods, where the seasons go through the infinitely varied circle of rich pastures, the sober hills of his native district, the bare uplands where the furrow of a Roman road runs straight and empty to the horizon, the gloomy vastness of the

moor in which everything vanishes as if swallowed up in the depths of the centuries whose image is called immobility.” (Cazamian)He did not believe that Nature has any holy plan or healing power. Being influenced by the theory of evolution he found much in nature that was cruel and antagonistic to man. “To Hardy, man was simply a part who was indifferent to his aspirations and went his way without caring much for it,” as David Cecil observed.

Not a background, but a actor in the play, it is always present, as the incarnation of a living force with a will and a purpose of its own- now and again taking an actual hand in the story- running Henchard’s crops, killing Giles- but more often standing aloof, the taciturn and ironic spectator of the ephemeral human insects who struggle on its surface. In fact, eliminate Nature from Hardy’s novels and perhaps, we will perhaps, feel them insipid. Nature has a great role to play in Hardy’s novels. Such books as The Woodlanders, Under the Greenwood Tree and Far From the Madding Crowd, bear the sign manual of Nature-loving Hardy in their titles and the generous manner in which these novels fulfill the promise thus held needs no demonstration.

And Hardy’s style is essentially of the Philosophic type, an emanation of his mind. Hardy may or may not be a pessimist but it is undeniable that his outlook on the visible world is grey- and his style is grey- grey as November skies. His style is not conspicuously beautiful; it is not luxuriant or alluringly harmonious. There is naiveté in style. It is in the main, a bare significant narrative Style of easy but not obtrusive balance. It is a prose, a pure prose, its movement has nothing in it of passion. It is iron cold-cold with the stillness of dead passion. It carries with it an impression of stern, sad eyes, gazing steadily and unflinchingly out over the wilderness of the world’s wrong. Whatever there may be in it of bitterness is generally repressed. Of each page and paragraph and sentence, we can say, that we know the reason of its existence: the measured expression, one with another, each contributing its just service, compose an organic whole. There is integrity and balanced progress in his prose. It is a deliberate and grave style and the accent of stateliness and of solemnity is maintained throughout, unsoftened by and unrelieved by the gentler spirit of sympathy. Moreover, it is a leisurely style, so to say. There is no hurry, none of that haste to be concise and tense, which makes a cluster of exited epigrams do the work of many rich and thoughtful pages. In his own style he expresses his thoughts clearly and effectively. Thus it satisfies the first the first demand that all styles are called upon to fill- it perfectly corresponds with and expresses the profoundest intention of the writer. One thing we should note particularly that the grave atmosphere in Hardy’s novels is chiefly due to his style; it breathes in every paragraph, and is as recognizable and characteristic as the scent of the salt ocean. After discussing the general features of his style, we can now dissect his style further more. For the general progress of narration, he employs a style that is undistinguished almost to baldness. It is capable of taking on an almost shocking degree of triteness, banality at times. A tragic style predominates in his The Mayor and Jude. There it is in Tess as well. Purple patches written in his tragic style, however, are legitimate objects of admiration, provided they are the outcome of spontaneous rise in feeling. Many passages of a somber beauty are written in this style. In these, he maintains the accent of stateliness and of solemnity, unsoftened by and unrelieved by the gentler spirit of sympathy. His third variety is on a scarcely lower level than the tragic-style, it is used when Hardy gets absorbed in the details of Wessex life. It is racy, of the soul, humorous, perfect without self-consciousness, and dialect flows into and out of it without disturbance.

Another domain of his we may name safely and correctly “the pastoral style” which predominates in his Far from the Madding Crowd, The Woodlanders, Tess and The Return of the Native. In this style, Hardy the poet is reflected. It remains the prose of a poet in close contact with the objects of nature, a creature of tangibility, even in the imaginative handling of abstract ideas. There is indeed a Keats like quality in Hardy. We think of Keats’s description of Madeline unclasping her warmed jewels, one by one, when we read of Hardy’s picture of Tess coming down, on a hot summer afternoon, from her nap, to the silent kitchen, and yawning “like a sunned cat”. We feel his power of visualization. His creative power shows itself most continuously and most characteristically in its capacity to embody its inspiration in visible form. This power he achieves first by his sheer ability to picture his scene completely and secondly by his extensive use of arresting similes. Style is as essential to a prose writer as passion to a poet. Style in prose not only depends upon matter, it is a form of matter- the most ethereal, imponderable form. It is the most personal and, therefore, the most important thing that the writer has to say, the part of his meaning which is inexpressible in words he expresses in his style.

Hardy’s strange individuality does contrive to imprint itself on his actual use of language. Even though he uses clinches, the final effect of his writing is never commonplace. His very clumsiness and roughness differentiate it from the leading article, and reveal a characteristic idiosyncrasy in the use of language. We can...never mistake a paragraph by Hardy for a paragraph by anybody else… The truth is, two elements go to make a good style. First, which Hardy is noticeably lacking, is the grasp of the nature of the English language which enables a writer to write it clearly, accurately and economically; second, which Hardy has in the highest degree, is the feeling for the flavor of a word and the flow of a rhythm which enables him to write it eloquently and expressively. In fact, Hardy was not a born master of style like Thackeray, nor a made one like Stevenson, but when his theme makes demands as it does more than half the time he is writing he is inspired by it to heights and splendours not easily excelled.

But of, Hardy’s attitude to woman in his novels is generally cynical. This tone of cynicism is easily perceptible in many of the words spoken by the various characters in the novels. Mark what Ruben Davy speaks to his son Dick “When you have made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand, she is as good as any other, they be all alike in the ground work; it is only in the flourishes there is a difference.” One of the Lylyan epigrams says “It is woman’s nature to be false except to a man, and man’s nature to be true except to a woman.”

His words are the simple appropriate, well-chosen and well consorted by the scholar’s discrimination. These words are full of strength and beauty. They are expressive. And effective in producing a sense of strangeness wonder, but against his vocabulary, here and there has been brought a charge of undue parade and pomp, in the use of erudite words: a fondness for the expressions of physical sciences, the phraseology of the arts and the like. When he uses dialect, however, he uses it with the touch of a master hand. He makes but a sparing use of the local words of Wessex dialect because he rightly understands that a phonograph of Wessex dialect will spoil the dialogues. He successfully contrives to reconcile the demands of truth with those of art in a way which brings Wessex before our eyes and the echo of its speech into our ears. “The gypsing” at Alderworth, where Eustacia danced with Wildeve, and the festivities round the

maypole in front of Thomasin’s house, are both drawn from the original happening that must have been common enough in Hardy’s youth. Less common, doubtless, is the spectacle of the frying of adders to obtain oil for the cure of snakebite; and least common of all, but most interesting, the ghastly incantation, where with Susan Nunsuch cursed Eustacia, mutilating and burning a warren image of hers. Hardy’s introduction of this real and ancient theme from folklore into the crescendo of his own composition, culminating in Eustacia’s death, is a clever piece of work.”

A minor matter is the question of the names of Hardy’s characters. Few novelists like him have cared to label their characters with names distinctive of the qualities the reader is to find in them.

Hardy sometimes makes use of quotations as well and apt and unforced quotation gives great pleasure, partly intellectual and largely emotional, but notable is his skill in the use of similes. They attract the attention and excite admiration. They have a very felicitous and original illuminations in all parts of the comparison, but certainly not all of Hardy’s similes are beautiful. He has also made use of the epistolary form. His letters are much less ambitious, perfectly appropriate and varied and much detached pleasure can be derived from them. Some of his letters are profoundly revealing. And a letter ought to be revealing. After all, epistolary form is only a special kind of dramatic expression or projection that is required in a novel. Some of the best specimens of his letters are in the novel Tess.

Hardy does not make much use of ‘satire’, but whatever use he makes of it, it seems wasted on an impersonal Cause of Things i.e., Fate. Furthermore, although the whole Hardy world is found on irony, irony as a figure is rare in his style. He seems to be incompetent in the ordinary mechanics of his trade. He often cannot manage the ordinary syntax and grammar of the English language. He finds it hard to make a plain statement plainly.

The function of the Heath in the novel is to emphasise the real circumstances in which man lives. The entire action of the novel takes place in the Heath and it provides a special dimension to the story. Without the all-pervasive Egdon Heath, the novel is incomplete. Nature is the background to almost all the novels of Thomas Hardy. Without Egdon Heath, The Return of the Native would not hold together. Thus, this book has been called “the book of Egdon Heath. Egdon in this novel influences all the characters. It is not in different to the actions of human beings, but it plays an active role in the novel. Egdon in symbolical of Hardy’s philosophy, it is “perfectly accordant with man’s nature-neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, neither unmeaning nor tame; but like man, slighted and enduring.” In The Return of the Native, Nature enters more than into any other novels of Hardy. Hardy has put so much lie into Egdon that he spent less effort on the human figures, with the result that the characters in this novel are not drawn according to the high scale of Far from the Madding Crowd. Egdon Heath is the background of the action and often it plays more than the role of a mere observer to an active participant. Sometimes it dominates the plot and determines the characters. Egdon is sentient, it feels, it speaks, it kills. Egdon presents a face upon which time makes but little impression. The Heath often assumes the role of a major character that is above all the other characters. The characters are related by temperament to the Heath. Their personalities are derived from, or are reflected by, some aspect of the Heath itself. For Eustacia the Heath is indifferent, feline and

untamed. She laments that it is her curse, shame and death. Her words later become prophetical. The Heath is also hostile to Mrs. Yeobright.

Hardy is the unchallenged monarch of the countries of Berkshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Somerset, Devon and especially Dorset, united under the scepter of his pen. Never was a region so compromisingly celebrated as in these books. He belonged to Dorchester, and he wrote of that south-western part of England which he renamed Wessex and succeeded in building up, through his books an immortal region. It is a land of his invention. He has revealed its beauties and charms to our eyes and immortalized. It is enough to travel in Wessex to be convinced that many a land become a realm charged with poetry and beauty, if only it finds the hand which will illuminate. Hardy is great in virtue of his petrating and flexible interpretation of his native earth. Hardy’s Wessex is much more than a scenic setting for his stories and poems; it is the dominating character-brooding constantly above his works and casting its changeless shadow upon the author as well as the peopled in his books. Wessex and its peopled, is the great theme on which all of his novels are written. Without a proper appreciation of Wessex, it is impossible to appreciate his works.

The rustics provide some humour to the novel. Their actions and unconscious wits are relief to the otherwise tragic and somber story. They show a fatalistic outlook upon life besides being keen observes of things and events. Almost all the novels of Hardy portray human beings as the mere objects in which natural forces show their might. He shows us the bad consequences of a conflict of contradictory wills, and the development of this conflict of contradictory wills, and the development of this conflict is crossed at every moment by accidents which interrupt them. They are bound with the forces of nature so that they are unable to go with their free will. Hardy is more interested in the sorrows of life. He practically excludes from his writings any sense of sublimities, the splendor, and the beauty of human life, concentrating mainly upon its depths and sorrows. His philosophy is based on the assumption that man is destined by God to suffer the overwhelming pain and suffering which exist in the world. Eustacia Vye is a lady with romantic dreams. Her mind is always filled with the dreams of life in Paris. She is so much fascinated by the life of the fashionable people. She marries lym under an illusion that he will fulfill her dreams and would help her to escape from her remote and isolated life in Egdon Heath. Disillusionment is the outcome after her marriage with Clym. He has the least interest in a life in Paris while she hungers for it most. To add her pain he gives up his idea to start a school and stars furze-cutting. She feels that her social status has been demolished. Disillusionment, conflict with her mother-in-law, and a violent quarrel with her husband, lead her to attempt a desperate flight with Wildeve, but on her way to meet him she gets drowned, and Wildeve in his attempt to save her, loses his life. Hardy deliberately hides from us whether it is an accident or a suicide, since she considers herself trapped between the intolerable alternatives of staying on Egdon Heath or living with a lover she thinks considerably inferior to herself.

She has been longing for “life-rustic, poetry, passion” which existed in Paris, but her wish is not granted. In her desperate position she cries “How I have tried and tried to be splendid women, and how destiny has been against me! I do not deserve my lot!” and “O the cruelty of putting me into this ill conceived world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blasted and crushed by things beyond my control! O how odd it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to Heaven at all!” Destiny puts her into a world which is an utter

contrast to world she desires. Fate effectively manipulates her life, and it frustrates her desire to taste the joys and pleasures of the fashionable life in Paris, driving her ultimately to commit suicide.

“Strange conjunctions of circumstances, particularly those of a trivial everyday kind, are so frequent in an ordinary life that we grow used to their accountableness…”

Hardy’s rustic characters provide comic relief to the novel like Shakespeare. The humour in this novel is mainly provided by the unconscious wit of Grandfer and Christian Canle. In the course of the narration these characters appear with amusing gossips to entertain us. When the boy was on his way home he met the reddleman whose unforeseen appearance frightened him. The reddleman whose stopped the boy and through his enquiries learnt about Eustacia’s conversation with Wildeve, and after over-hearing for a few minutes, decided not to interrupt them and headed on his way home.

Destiny approaches the chararacters also through Nature. Here nature is represented as Egdon Heath. For Eustacia it is her “cross” and “shame”. She is drowned in a stormy and rainy night. Mrs. Yeobright has been bitten by an adder which shows Nature’s hostility towards her. The importance of Egdon Heath in this novel has universally been recognized, although some critics feel that the role of the Heath was unduly exaggerated by Hardy. Hardy’s description of the scenes which are tragic is deeply moving. The death of Mrs. Yeobright and Eustacia brings out the catharsis of pity and terror.

Fate or Destiny plays a major role in the novels of Hardy. The characters too attribute to their misfortunes. Clym is good at heart but he is not practical. He does not hear his mother’s advice to stay back in Paris and not to marry Eustacia. Mrs. Yeobright on the other hand fails to understand his son’s noble plans. Eustacia is in a dreamland. She is too romantic and blind towards the subtle beauties which the Heath provides. Destiny comes into the characters’ life in the form of accidents and coincident. A series of ironic accidents and coincident brings the death of Mrs. Yeobright. She came to Clym’s house for reconciliation. Fate works as Eustacia fails to open the door because of the presence of Wildeve. On her way back she is bitten by an adder which results in her death. This is followed by a bitter quarrel between Clym and Eusatacia and Eustacia goes to her uncle’s house. Subsequently, she plans to run away from Egdon and this proves fatal to her life as she gets drowned.

Hardy placed these rustic characters in the story to provide a chorus. The chorus is the symbol of the great majority of humdrum mortals, who go on living through their conventional life, whatever misfortunes may overtake the dental figures in the narrative. Hardy applied chorus to persons in his novel who represent a communal point of view, or the perspective of a cultural group. The rustics get away from the sufferings and misfortunes unlike the leading characters. They provide a standard of normality by which the reader can assess the great heights and depths to which the main characters rise and fall. In a sense they represent Hardy himself. The rustics are the powerful background which gives the novel a realistic effect. They have some logic in their talks as Shakespeare’s peasants and not a mere background. Hardy’s view of tragedy is revealed through The Return of the Native and it is quite typical of his views on tragedy. The background in almost all the novels of Hardy is the countryside. Hardy here selects

Egdon Heath and all the principal characters belong to this countryside which Hardy called Wessex. Hardy’s tragic heroes are different from conventional tragic heroes of exalted rank. Hardy’s tragic heroes are ordinary people. The Return of the Native is essentially a village tragedy which brings us into contact with ordinary people though the principal characters belong to a social class one degree above the peasantry.

Tragedy can only occur as a result of deep inner as well as outer conflicts. The outer conflicts take place mainly between Clym and Mrs. Yeobright, between Clym and Eustacia between Mrs. Yeobright and Eustacia and between Venn and Wildeve. The inner conflicts take place mainly in Mrs. Yeobright, Clym and Eusyacia. Clym experiences a conflict between his educational project and his desire to please his mother; he also experiences a conflict between the claims of his mother and claims of his wife. “These antagonistic growths had to keep alive: his mother’s trust in him, his plan for becoming a teacher, and Eustacia’s happiness.” Yeobright’s conflict is between her pride and her motherly desire for reconciliation. Eustacia’s conflict is mainly because of her unsatisfied desires. To Eustacia’s reply “I am glad to hear that he’s so grand in character as that”, Wildeve rightly adds the following remark. “Yes; but the worst of it is that though Paul was excellent as a man in the Bible he would hardly have done in real life.”

The novel, The Return of the Native is full of chances and co incents. It is another form of destiny which plays upon the lives of major characters. Chance plays a major role as Diggory Venmn wins Mrs. Yeobright’s money from Wildeve who has won it from Christan Christian Cantle. The renewal of love between Eustacia and Wildeve occurs accidently. But of, the most important role played by Fate can be seen in the scene in which Mrs. Yeobright comes to her son’s house for reconciliation. At the same time Wildeve is there talking with Eustacia. Had Clym been awake, or Wildeve had not come at the same time there the tragedy would not have occurred. But in, we cannot say like that because the story moves in accordance with the intention of the novelist. After Mrs, Yeobright’s return, Clym sets out to meet his mother for reconciliation. The irony lies in the fact that both the son and mother are set ready for a reconciliation, but fate intervened in between them in the form of an adder, which bites Mrs. Yeobright. Subsequently, Clym and Eustacia enter into a vigorous quarrel. Eustacia’s decision to flee from Egdon occurs as another accident. Charley sets a bonfire to amuse Eustacia. Wideve thinks that it is a signal for him and reaches there and they discuss a plan to escape.

Rustic characters are an inseparable part in the novels of Thomas Hardy. Only his last two novels, Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure are exceptions. These characters provide a local colour to the novel and are a part of the background. Sometimes their talk and gossip are source of much information to us about the leading characters. Moreover, their comments on their superiors give us interesting glimpses of the life and temperaments of those superiors. They also provide some humour to the otherwiser somber and tragic stories. Hardy often presents e characters in a group. In The Return of the Native this group consists of Grandfer Cantle, Fairway, Humphry, Christian Cantle, Susan Nunsuch, Olly Dowden, Sam etc. Some of these characters, however slight to the plot, occasionally play a crucial play a crucial role in the story.

The beauty of Hardy’s Wessex lies in the rustic people since they give life to the land. The somber beauty of the country and the quaintness of peasant ways and thought penetrated his

spirit and became the very ground and substance of his imagination. Although the rustics appear in his novels a few times, they sometimes affect the novel. Often they give some vital information about the characters through their gossips. It is from their conversation that we learn that Clym is returning g from Paris and Wildevew is a strange man. They say that Eustacia is a girl, very strange in her ways, living with her grandfather, and not mingling with people. “She is a well-favoured maid enough, especially when she’s got one of her dandy gowns on.” They have their own opinion about everybody.

“The Label of ‘A Pessimist’ is affixed to his name for ever and for ever. But he resented it during his life time.”

The rustic characters often come into contact with the principal characters. They all go in a group to sing at his Quiet Women Inn in order to celebrate Wildeve’s marriage though they are not aware of the fact the marriage has not taken place. When Yeobright is bitten by an adder they assist Clym and it is Sam’s suggestion to apply adder’s fat onto the wound. Susan Nunsuch represents the superstitious beliefs of the rustic people as she makes a waxen effigy of Eustacia and burns it to destroy Eustacia. The rustic characters give a wedding present to Thomasin and Venn at an evening party after their marriage. Christian Cantle loses all the money he has been carrying for Clym and Thomasin in a gambling bout with Wildeve. However, the money is regained by Diggory Venn and he gives it to Thomasin, thereby creating a complication which leads to a bitter quarrel between Eustacia and Mrs. Yeobright. And hardens the antagonism between the two women. In a later stage of the play Fairway fails to produce the letter from Clym to Eustacia which ultimately results in the deaths of Eustacia and Wildeve. The rustic characters appear in the novel very clearly on the occasion of the anniversary of Gunpowder plot, and the rustics have lighted gunfire. There they speak out some facts relating to Clym, Wildeve, Eustacia and Thomasin. They have mixed opinion on Wildeve. Clym’s return is revealed through their conversation. They are of the opinion that Clym is a clever man. Eustacia’s character is strange for them. “She’s a well-favoured maid enough, especially when she’s got one of her dandy gowns on.” The readers know about Clym’s occupation through this conversation. Humphry says that he has become “a real perusing man, with the strangest notions about things, because he went to school early, such as the school was.” They sat that Clym and Eustacia are good pair. “Both of one mind about niceties for certain, and learned in print, and always thinking about high doctrine- there could not be a better couple.”Hardy’s novels are noted for its melancholic touch, but the rustic folks with their innocent wits provide a lot of humour to the otherwise somber story. Mostly this humour is not aroused deliberately, but unconsciously by the rustics. Their peculiar way of putting things, their manner of expressing thoughts and the way in which they express facts are all interesting. Both the Cantles –Grandfer and Christan – are sources of rich, unconscious humour. His vanity and egoism is obvious when he speaks to his son: “Really all the soldering and smartness in the world in the father seems to count for nothing in forming the nature of the son,” means that his son has not inherited his boldness of spirit. “But seventy one, though nothing at home, is a high figure for a rover.” He is proud of his stamina and says that, even if he had been stung by ten adders, he would not lose even a single day’s work. “Such is my spirit when I am on my mettle. But perhaps, its natural in a man trained for war.”

The second important fact is that Upper Bock-Hampton near Dorchester, in the neighbourhood of which he lived a retired and secluded life for practically the whole of his long and busy life, is situated in the lap of Nature. He was an imaginative lad, so impressions received of nature in his early life stamped his work later on. “Nature” in his novels is very important. It is not just the background in his drama but a leading character in it. sometimes it exercises an active influence on the course of events: more often it is a spiritual agent, colouring the mood and shaping the disposition of human beings.

Henry Charles Duffin remarks about Bathsheba-

“There is nothing subtle or wonderful in Bathsheba’s nature. She is more common place than any of the four women Tess, Sue, Elfride and Eustacia, even Elfride has the inexplicable charm of a dainty Caroline lyric. Bathsheba is prose, and pedestrian at that. Indeed, he was enthusiastic enough about her to call an Elizabeth in brain and a Mary Stuart in spirit. She is a little overshadowed by some among her company, but she gains beauty from the tale of which she is the centre. One gathers, moreover, that the book shows her only in this work-shop, undergoing the probation of pain that is to make her the woman she is meant to be the worthy mate of Gabriel Oak. One fancies her, in an imaginary sequel, clothed in the sunset hues of graver wisdom, a saner sufferer in love, and a staunch comradeship that is fore-shadowed in the scene of the saving of the corn-stacks.’’ Sometimes he would retort that to object to a writer being a pessimist was to ask him to close his eyes to human ills. He said that he was simply recording sincerely, faithfully and truly the impressions of life that he had received. Further, in his opinion: “As in looking at a carpet, by following one colour a certain pattern is suggested by following another” and he said that in his novels he had simply traced out such a single pattern by looking at the carpet of life. So why this abuse of single pattern by looking at the carpet of life. So why this abuse of ‘Pessimist’ should be hurled on him over and over again.

A critic says: “…Impressions are always vague but he is so sure, so definite that we should call his so called impressions His Convictions.”

The character of Bathsheba Everdene is a distressing picture of feminist folly, which the average woman commits in spite of good heredity, good education and upbringing. Women are generally attracted by the tinsel and very seldom by gold. Bathsheba is a striking example of woman’s frailty in spite of all her strength of character as the manager of her farm, as a corn dealer, as the master of her farm servants, and as a woman dealing with the common generality of the male sex. The very fact that Bathsheba is tempted by Troy at the very first encounter goes to prove her mettle and the mettle of her race, particularly when there is no strict strong guardian behind her. As compared with Oak and Boldwood, Troy is an indifferent sort because he not only gambles with the hearts of women but betrays them most treacherously as he betrays both Bathsheba and Fanny. Bathsheba is indeed very true to life in the sense that most women are frail and foolish like her. Jealousy is the cause of ruin in the case of both Bathsheba and Sue. Bathsheba marries Troy secretly and hastily simply because Troy tells her a lie that he has seen a more beautiful girl than Bathsheba. Bernard Shaw would interpret Bathsheba’s weakness for Troy as the urge of the ‘Life-Force’ in her which seeks to swallow and consume altogether any young man whoever comes before that ‘Life-Force’. From the very outset of the story itself we can experience the antagonism between Eustacia and Mrs. Yeobright. Mrs. Yeobright ardently

opposed the idea of Clym to marry Eustacia. For her Eustacia is an “idle and Volutuous” kind of woman. She says to Clym: “Is it best of you to injure your prospects for such a voluptuous, idle woman as that? Don’t you see that by the very fact of your choosing her you prove that you do not know what is best for you?” Eustacia is very well aware of the strong hostility of Mrs. Yeobright to her. Mrs. Yeobright is a highly orthodox, seasoned, shrewd, practical woman with a sound knowledge of human nature. It is obvious when she handles Wildeve after he has failed to marry Thomasin on the first occasion. Again, her assessment of Eustacia is correct. To her, Eustacia is completely unworthy to become the wife of a gentleman. The only similarity that exists between them is that they are both disinclined to yield to any external pressures.

Of course he has traced a certain pattern in the carpet, but certainly this pattern is not always, but rarely and not in such thick dark colour, found in life.-...

The tragedy in The Return of the Native is the result of the intervention of some unknown natural force. Both Clym and Eustacia are symbols of humanity in the hands of some power against which it is vain to struggle. Hardy’s greater novels deal with the picture of human predicament. In almost all the novels of Hardy, chance and coincidence plays a vital role. Chance and coincidence acts as a decisive factor influencing the destitute of human beings. Hardy believes that human beings are to be governed by the Nature’s unknown powers. Man is totally helpless against the invisible might it exercises upon him. Hardy believes in a supernatural power. In Hardy’s novels human beings are not fully responsible for their tragedy but mainly because of the intervention of an unknown mysterious force. Chance and coincidence again plays a major role in the death of Eustacia. On the night which she decides to escape from the Heath, rain and storm hit the place. The weather partly contributes its share for Eustacia’s decision to end her life, after she realizes that, since she had no money for her expenses, she would be degrading herself by asking Wildeve for monetary assistance. The hero and heroine are different from other characters so as to make a different impression. Hardy spends a lot of words to describe the heroine probably. Eustacia who is the most powerfully drawn woman in the portrait gallery of Hardy. Her beauty, charm and splendor provides a “celestial imperiousness” to her even though she is selfish, has no control over her passions, and her aspirations are low pitched. Clym’s character to some extend can be revealed through these lines. “Yeobright loved his, kind. He had a conviction that the want of most men was knowledge of a sort which brings wisdom rather than affluence. In striving at high thinking, he still cleaved to plain living…”. Hardy has delineated one of the nicest characters in Clym. His love for knowledge and learning, his distaste for materialistic pursuits of life, his idealistic aims to educate the village community, his deep sense of duty towards his mother and wife and his unselfishness, all make a good impression on the readers. However, his stubbornness and his rigidity in his attitudes towards both his mother and wife show his weak aspects. The little boy, Johnny Nunsuch, overhears the conversation between Eustacia and Wildeve, and he happens to meet Venn, the reddleman and informs him about the relation between Wildeve and Eustacia. He thinks that Wildeve would never give up Eustacia and he goes to Mrs. Yeobright and renews his earlier offer to marry Thomasin. Mrs. Yeobrigjht uses this offer as an instrument to put pressure on Wildeve who visits Thomasin, after meeting Eustacia and promises to marry her. All these happenings are important to the plot but it arises merely out of an accidental meeting. Mrs. Yeobright thinks about Clym’s house and decides to reconciliate with his son. When she

arrives there Wildeve was there talking to Eustacia in the house. Eustacia thinks that Clym, who was sleeping will open the door. Mrs. Yeobright on the other hand thinks that the door was deliberately closed against her. On her way back she is bitten by an adder which proves fatal to her life. Clym has a fierce quarrel with Eustacia and subsequently, she goes to her grandfather’s house. Much of the tragedy of the novel thus centres round the closed door to which a number of accidents contribute. One of the peculiar ironies in this context is that Clym sets out to meet his mother for reconciliation at the same time. Mrs. Yeobright has sat down in the Heath in a state of exhaustion on her homeward journey, being bitten by an adder later. The game of dice played between Christian Cantle and Wildeve occurred clearly by accident. Cantle, carrying the money of Mrs. Yeobright meets a group of village folk who take him to a raffle where he luckily wins a prize. Encouraged by this he agrees to play a game of dice with Wildeve, and loses all the money. Venn suddenly appears on the scene and plays with Wildeve and wins the whole amount. He then passes the whole amount to Thomasin. Mrs. Yeobright does not receive any message from Clym. Clym innocently asks Eustacia whether she had received any money from Wildeve, and this question creates a misunderstanding and results in a bitter quarrel between the two women, thus complicating Eustacia’s relationship with Clym. Clym had planned to start an educational project after his return from Paris. When his educational project, proves a failure, he is compelled to become a furze- cutter. Eustacia thinks that his new job will diminish her social status. Later Eustacia says to Wildeve that “The marriage is not a misfortune in itself. It is simply the accident which has happened since that has been the cause of my ruin.” The root cause of the accident is Clym’s semi-blindness.

Mrs. Yeobright has a bad opinion about her. When she finds that Clym is in love with her she says, “Is it best for you to injure your prospects for such a voluptuous, idle woman as that? Don’t you see that by the very fact of your choosing her you prove that you do not know what is best for you?” Eustacia was a very clever lady who would never get provoked immediately.

“Her presence brought memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies, and tropical mid night; her moods recalled lotus-eaters and the march in Athalie; her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola. In a dim light, and with a slight rearrangement of her hair, her general figure might have stood for that of either of the higher female deities. The new moon behind her head, an old helmet upon it, diadem of accidental dewdrops round her brow, would have been adjuncts sufficient to strike the note of Artemis, Athena, or Hera respectively, with as close an approximation to the antique as that which passes muster on many respected canvases.”

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EXCEPT SETTING, REFERENCES, CONTEXTUALIZED, CHANGE OF THOUGHTS, ADDITION OF A-FEW QUOTES, A-FEW CHANGES FROM ORIGINAL; DETAIL-WORDS AND SENTENCES, CONVERSATIONAL-QUOTES FOLLOWED FROM COMPLETELY DR.S.SEN.

Rituparna Ray Chaudhuri.