Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840—1928), was an English novelist and poet. Fate is the «villain» in most of Hardy's books, and his character fight a losing battle against this impersonal force. Hardy summed up his anger at the unfairness of life in the novel «Tcss of the d'Urbervilles». He wrote that, with the heroine's death, «Justicc was done, and the President of the Immortals,...had ended his sport with Tess».

Recent criticism has tended to view Hardy's characters as people with psychological weakness. But it seems fair to say that Hardy saw human downfall not primarily as personal weakness, but rather as the result of an unwilling conflict with a hostile, meaningless universe.

Most of Hardy's stories take place in the fictional county of Wesscx, a place of gloomy landscapes well suited to stories of trag­edy. Hardy modeled Wessex on the country of Dorset, his birthplace.

Hardy's first successful novel, «Far from the Madding Crowd» (1874), contrasts selfish love with selfless love. «The Return of the Native» (1878), is a somber story of the tragic results of a man's illicit love for a woman. «The Mayor of Casterbridgc» (1886), traces the spiritual and physical deterioration of arespected man. Hardy's last great novels, «Tcss of the d'Urbervilles» (1891), and «Jude the Obscure» (1895), treat the theme of sexual attraction with a frank­ness that shocked the people of his time. The public outcry against

«Jude the Obscure» was so great that Hardy stopped writing novels and turned to poetry.

He wrote lyric poetry of high quality, but he is best known for a three-part epic drama in verse. «The Dynasts» (1903—1908). The poem centers around Napoleon. Hardy used abstract figures to sym­bolize «Immanent Will», the blind force that he felt moves the world.

Hardy was born in Upper (or Higher) Bockhampton in Dorset. He studied architecture and worked as an architect. In the early 1870's, he abandoned architecture for a full-time career as a writer.