LECTURE SEVEN
Thomas hardy born in 1840 ,towards the mid Victorian period ,dieing in 1928 we will see that he has witnessed almost have of the Victorian period and three decades of the modern time , so you can see that there is some sort of transition , even later on when he started writing towards the 70s ,80s, and 90s and some of his books were published at the beginning of the 20th c.
So these kinds of writers who come in a transitional stages usually witness t he change from one period to the other. E said something about George Eliot that she was revolutionary in trying to bring about changes in the Victorian novel, now we know Thomas hardy today as a novelist and a poet , he was a short story writer , we will look at his fiction mainly his major works , because he started as a poet and actually he was an architect , and later on following the advice of one of his friends George martin a Victorian novelist he started to write novels. At the very beginning his novels were not very successful and he did not succeed in getting them published , they were burnt but not by him but by someone who was looking after his property after his death , that is why we do not have any trace of his early novels only the later ones.
He was born in Dorchester south of England , where people lived in a place that is so lavish with its natural beauty and it is beside the sea too , so again you can see similarities in the birth place and the environment in which the two novelists we are discussing have grown up and the beautiful nature that sparkled the imagination of the two novelists .
He had a very informal education as a child and mainly it was his mother who was very careful about the type of books her son had ,because he was living in the suburbs so he did not get a really good education at that time ,. But she was careful to introduce him to the world of culture and knowledge and books of literature that she made him read , so she had a major influence over him and we can always remember Thomas hardy's mother for her influence in the creativity of Thomas hardy at that time. As for his father he was a local builder , he was not a very educated man.
At his 20s he moved in 1862 to London and there he got the chance for a proper education , he became a student at King's Collage in London, to study architecture and this had much influence on his writings, he succeeded in getting a degree in architecture.
He have had two marriages the first one was to a woman who he was in love with and it was not a very long marriage because his wife died early and it seems that the sense of loss and grief over her death has resulted a number of poems written to show his sense of grief over his wife ,so yet it was a tragic experience it was very nourishing for him as a writer and as a poet.
As for his second marriage he married his secretary , who was 40 years younger than himself , this was an unusual thing during the Victorian time, the marriage was successful, his wife Emma was careful in collecting his notes, articles and journals in a biography so we are thankful to Emma for doing that because of the incident of burning his house so without Emma we couldn't have had anything to read and learn from Thomas hardy if it was not for her.
Thomas hardy belongs to the realist school like George Eliot his, his characters were most depicted from his society and the topics he choose were again related to society , the changes in peoples' morals and traditions and how he felt about these traditions and the way he puts them in his novels in a very realistic style ,so we can consider him as a realist ,like George Eliot there was many objectionable things about his views the experiences and the type of novels , maybe he has not done something as outrageous as George Eliot by living with a married man , but he has expressed freely and openly his views of religion and society and how society change the morals that Victorians were holding on to ,he has expressed his criticism about these things very frankly in his novels, that is why his novels were not favorably received by his readers and critics of that time.
One of the things that he has expressed freely is his view of religion , we can see in his works that his faith was there it was intact , yet we have certain views about the traditional Christian view of god , which we as Muslims look at and criticize .
People did not understand why he is criticizing there morals, traditions and believes and that affected his reputation as a writer , he was not received very well .
He wrote about supernatural elements ,which is obvious in his works as we will see in The Return of The Native ex: people having superstitions about magic , full moon , witches and witchcraft .
We said that there is something very distinctive about his character that he usually explore tragic characters , traveling in their passions and in the same time he shows character traveling against social circumstances. So theme of passion was not something to be discussed in the literature and novels of the Victorian period that is why his works were not received very well.
The new generation of younger writers started to appreciate Thomas hardy we can mention 2 very important and influential novelists D.H Lawrence and Reginualمش متأكدة من الاسم هذا are just examples of the writers who came later and appreciated Thomas hardy's works and they have mentioned hardy's work as a great influence on their own novels.
Another theme that we are going to see is fate, and how fate plays a major role in the lives of his characters , which something that Thomas hardy is interested in showing us , he shows very important moments in the lives of his characters where they have to make very important decisions, in other words characters trapped or countering cross roads where they have to decide to left or right , straight or backwards, these are the types of characters that hardy likes to portray.
One of the major elements of his works is the setting , he has used settings in a very special way to make it highly influential ex: like the mill and the floss they had their influence on the lives of the people living at that part of England. When we talk about Thomas hardy we see this done in a very high degree, now again similar to George Eliot he has chosen the area on which he was born and brought up which is Dorchester south of England a very beautiful area in terms of natural beauty he has chosen Dorchester to be the setting and the background of many of his novels all his major novels were set in Dorchester , but he does not give the real name of the area he uses the name Wessex , which is a fictional setting of his works , Wessex is not only the background or the place of the action , it really determines so many things about the choices that the characters make the decisions that they have to make in their lives so in his works you will find very accurate description you will see when you read the of the novel that it is mainly description of the heaths.
If we appreciate the works of Thomas hardy as a novelist we can say that despite the criticism of the themes , characters that he used to portray he became a celebrity around the 1900s with highly successful novels yet he felt disgust out of public reception towards his latest works and he gave up writing fiction all together .
So he began as a poet not as a novelist following the recommendation of the novelists he started writing his first novels but they were not published the publishers did not like the topics and the themes and the type of characters he portrays, but he managed to publish his later works almost 5 or 6 major novels and after these novels he decided to stop writing fiction because he felt that it is useless to continue writing and having the same unfavorable reception from critics and public readers , but nowadays Thomas hardy is appreciated .
If we come to talk about the major titles of his novels ex. Far From The Madding Crowd , you can see Wessex this fictional setting. In Jude The Obscure which was published in 1895 it was not received well but in a very negative outcry from the Victorian public , it was known as Jude the obscene it was nicknamed by that because of the free and open sense of love and sex and sense of passion which are seen in all of his major novelsTess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) it really attracted criticism because the protagonist was a fallen woman, at first it was refused to be published but later on he managed to get it published.
It seems that Thomas hardy was really upset because people did not understand that he has a moral to convey through his depiction of a fallen woman, even sinners have some good in them, this is the nature of human beings , so he wanted people to understand that we shouldn't really condemn people and give strict and rigid judgments on them, we should look really deep inside to find goodness were ever we may find it. So although she was a fallen woman he described her as a pure woman, showing that she has some aspects of goodness inside her that people did not see , they only see her as a sinner.
Both Jude The Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles received many criticism upon publication because the examination of the fallen woman ,scenes of love and sex ,class system and that was a recurrent topic in his novels, and some views about religion ex. He said that marriage should be dissolvable, that it should come to an end as soon as it becomes a cruelty to the other party , such views shocked Victorian readers in Christianity they do not allow divorce at all if you are married you are stuck with that person for life.
Critics gave some of his characters the description of being immoral , they did not really look at the purpose of drawing such characters, all of the points that we have discussed we can put them under the title of social constraints , we can also see the society versus the individual , when an individual wants to achieve something , ex. Like in the return of the native she wants to achieve her inspirations, but her society did not allow her to do that , this reminds us of Maggie Tulliver so you see the similarities between the 2 works .
The 7th of May is the anniversary of the publication of one of Thomas hardy's novels so that is why hardies society is making some sort of seminar in celebrating this anniversary next Saturday .
The setting is in Wessex but the action of the return of the native took place in a heath called Egdon, some critics feel that the setting is so important in the return of the native that they make the setting one of the major characters in the novel, you will see this name in the character list of the novel , the setting is a major factor in the novel , an actor playing a great role in the lives of the people living in that area , in what way ???
You will see different reactions to the setting , some characters like the protagonist Eustacia she does not want to live in the heath , she feels that it is restraining her she wants the best chance to get out of there , on the contrary we find Clym the main character in the novel having had some time away from Egdon heath and we see him at the beginning of the novel coming back to the heath from Paris after getting an education and going through trading and after becoming rich, when he returns back to the heath he feels a sense of belonging and a sense of yearning that he wants to stay there forever, so you see the difference In reaction some people feel that they belong there and some want to get out of there, the heath is restricting them it is not allowing them to find their dreams so they want to leave it.
In one of the quotations of the protagonist she tells her husband later on when she marries ,she tells him I have a very hungry imagination and the heath is making me starve .
Your assignment for this week is to write about the importance of Egdon Heath in the return of the native.
So this is a summary of both characters and plot because you will not understand the plot unless you understand who the major characters are and what are their relations to each other ..you can read more in the internet.
To start we have Egdon heath as an important actor in the return of the native,Eustacia is she the female protagonist in the novel and she is described as being sensual person she really follows her passion she searches for love but she is continuously dissatisfied with the people there and it seems that she has a bad reputation there , because of her relationships with men.
One of the characters that Eustacia looks at as a rival is Thomasin another female who is very traditional ,blond , typical Victorian young woman , that so many male characters want to marry, both of them live in Egdon heath.
Damon Wildeve , he has a relationship with Eustacia though he has proposed to Thomasin, so you can see the complicated relationship and in the opening of the novel you will see that he is way ahead in getting married to Thomasin but on the wedding day something happens and they find out that some of the papers are missing , so they cannot really go on with the wedding and this gives him another chance to go to Eustacia and ask her to marry him so we can see that he is not in love with Thomasin though he proposed to marry her.
Mrs.Yeobrightis Thomasin's aunt, she is also the mother of Clym Yeobright whom Eustacia is to marry, he is the gentleman coming from Paris, educated , handsome and rich , when he returns to the heath, he sees how the people are living in superstition , he decides to become a teacher and educate them.
Diggory Venn , his job is to put the print or the mark on the sheep as the cattle belonging to a certain person , so that is a lob that is common in such places, he is in love with Thomasin and he has proposed to her , but she has rejected his proposal , he continues to love her throughout the novel, and he helps her to marry the man she loves, eventually when the man she loves dies at the end he marries her. Damon Wildeve has proposed to Eustacia but though she loves him she believes that he is not suitable for her because of her wild dreams of leaving the heath, she feels that he is inferior she wants someone better, that is why when Clym comes back she feels that he is the suitable person for her that will take her out of the heath and will make her achieve her dreams , and she sees him as her chance of leaving the heath and going to Paris.
Wildeve eventually marries after the complications of the papers , her aunt advises her not to marry him because she could see that he is not really in love with Thomasine and gossip in the heath says that he is still in love with Eustacia.
What about Eustacia the protagonist , whom does she marry???
She marries Clym under the hope that he is going to take her to Paris, he promises her that maybe after a while he might take her to Paris, he tells her that Paris is not as fascinating as she thinks it is, something happened so had to stay in the heath , she did not fulfill her dream of going to Paris, and there were gossip about her and Damon, the village accused her as a witch because of her superstition and her influence on the young men in the heath and you can see some of the practices of witchcraft and how do they punish her , so this is the end of the supernatural that is seen in the novel.
These are the major details of the novel, the title says the return of the native, who returns ??? Clym= he is the native of the heath who returns after spending some time in Paris.
Like the mill on the floss you can see that the novel is devided onto many parts and chapters , this happens with many Victorian novels because of the publication that was available at that time , many Victorian novels were first serialized in magazines in weekly chapters then later on they are published as books or novels, writing in parts defiantly affects the writers writings , it affects its plot , its depiction of the characters , when you put the parts together it will be a very long series, and the publishers in order to keep readers following the series and reading they ad a lot of suspense by adding lots of subplots, so to keep the suspense the writer would end that part in a very important event , that would guarantee that the readers suspense would be high so that they will continue to read the other installments usually this is referred to in literature as a cliffhanger.
هذي ملزززمه من العاام للبرووز ان شاء اللله تفيدكم