In his novel Tess of the d'Ubervilles, as well as in a large part of his poetry, Thomas Hardy expresses his discontent, his weariness and an immense feeling of injustice in the face of the cruelty of our universal destiny, disappointment and disillusionment. Hardy argues that the hopes and desires of men are cruelly thwarted by a powerful combination of all-powerful nature, fate, unforeseen accidents and catastrophes, and tragic flaws. Although Tess, the novel's heroine, is fully realized with her physical, emotional, and mental attributes, desperate to become her own master, she is nevertheless overpowered, becoming a victim of circumstance, nature, and social hypocrisy. Likewise, Hardy's dark realities permeate and saturate his poems. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay First of all, Hardy personifies nature as the main character of the novel. Instead of letting the influence of nature manifest itself only in climatic and seasonal changes, thus allowing the reader to feel the plot, Hardy creates a nature that is not the typical capricious but distant goddess. Instead, she is terribly responsible for man's influence and control. Hardy's nature is not only essential to the sustenance of the entire agricultural countryside, but also the waxing and waning cycles - linked to weather, time of day and season - which seem to influence the actions of the characters. Every disastrous event seems predetermined by the mood of nature. Before Prince, the Durbeyfield horse, is killed, Tess's brother wonders about “the strange shapes taken by the different dark objects on the sky; of this tree which looked like an enraged tiger emerging from a den; of the one who looked like a giant's head. " (p. 24). As Abraham ponders these ominous and disturbing shapes, Tess herself becomes intensely aware: "The occasional rising of the wind became the sigh of an immense sad soul, coinciding with the universe in space and with history in time” (p. 26) The sigh of this divine and timeless soul reinforces the idea that a sad life is predetermined; Nature rotates in seasonal cycles of rebirth and death; therefore, Tess's action and moods shift from hope to despair. Summer, with its heat and abundance, brings about a tide of fertilization not only in. nature, but also among the farmers Everyone is carried away: “Amid the oozing fats and hot ferments of the Val du Var, at a time when we could almost hear the trickling of juices under the hiss of fertilization, it was impossible for the most fanciful love not to become passionate. the ready breasts that existed there were imbued with this environment” (p. 146). Likewise, the love between Tess and Angel becomes passionate and sensual. His morals of staying away from men are cast aside, illustrating the fact that nature does not follow any moral or societal laws. “Every shift of his breathing, every wave of his blood, every pulse singing in his ears, was a voice that united with nature in revolt against his scruples” (p. 175). Tess, despite all her efforts, gets caught up in the whirlwind of summer. Likewise, Hardy places a poem of lost love and bitter lesson in the icy “neutral tones” of winter. "We stood by a pond that winter day / And the sun was white, as if rebuked by God, / And a few leaves lay on the hungry turf; / - They had fallen with ashes andwere gray." The imagery of nature is brutal, like death. Seasonal death coincides with a spiritual and moral death. The speaker learns "vivid lessons that love deceives", calling the sun a "cursed God "in its bitterness, the arbitrary power of nature, which does not respect moral or ethical justice, is also doomed. The other girls on the farm, who yearn for Angel, are also caught in the tide of summer." The air of the bedroom seemed to throb with the desperate passion of the young girls. They writhed feverishly under the oppression of an emotion imposed on them by the cruel law of nature, an emotion which they had neither expected nor desired” (p. 144). Hardy goes on to call this relentless and inexorable force of nature torture. But nature is not only cruel. and tortuous, it is “shameless,” indifferent to the destructive devastation left in its wake. When Tess's baby suddenly becomes ill and dies, Hardy provides the reader with a rare comment: "Thus died Sorrow the Undesired, that intrusive creature, that intrusive creature, that intrusive creature, that intrusive creature, that intrusive creature. bastard gift d 'a shameless Nature who does not respect social law; an abandoned person for whom eternal Time was only a matter of days..' (p. 94). Nature takes the lives of even the most innocent and pure. Reflecting on the weariness of life, he writes that perhaps Sorrow's death is for Life is a "battle" that stifles the hopes and dreams we build for ourselves. Furthermore, Hardy feels the repetitive and endless cycles of Time, a component of nature. Tess says: “I'm part of a long list of discoveries. to know that there is someone like me in an old book, and to know that I will only play his role; It makes me sad, that's all. It is best not to remember that your past nature and deeds have been like those of thousands and thousands, and that your future life and deeds will be like those of thousands and thousands" (p. 125). Hardy expresses his despair and resignation at the idea, using strange coincidences and parallels in his novel to illustrate the recurrence of all events For example, long ago, the Stoke d'Ubervilles came from attacking barbarians. and overpowered the true and noble d'Ubervilles, now reduced to mere Durbeyfields. Similarly, Alec d'Ubervilles, described as having "barbaric" traits, quickly gives Tess "the kiss of mastery" Years. later, when they reunite, Alec exclaims, "Remember, my lady, I was your master once!" (p. 326). Even scarier are the hints that Tess is predestined to be a murderer. At the beginning of the story, when Prince dies, "Her [Tess's] face was dry and pale, as if she considered herself a murderer" (p. 29). Throughout we read allusions to the legend of the carriage of 'Uberville, where the woman kills her captor. Hardy has a keen sense of the accidental, of the fortuitous catastrophe, and too late The pillar of their agricultural existence, the Durbeyfield horse, is killed before Tess's meeting with the dairy comrades. of Tess, who commit suicide or become alcoholics after Tess's marriage to Angel upon the news that her mother is ill, but her father dies suddenly, leaving the family penniless. The deadly combinations of such events lead to a downward spiral toward catastrophe." Hardy states that if he knew that a god's profit was his suffering, he would at least have reason to refuse, denying: "But it doesn't. is not the case How does it happen that joy is killed, / And why makes the best hope that each one flourishes.sown? pain. "Hardy believes so strongly that life is doomed that he recommends death rather than life. Tess constantly wishes for death and thinks about suicide. "Was there another date? that of his own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day that remained sneaky and invisible among all the other days of the year, producing no sign or sound when she passed there each year, but no less surely there. When was it? » (p. 97) But more often, the thought of death is active rather than passive. After being abandoned by Angel, she wishes death would come now: “I wish it were now. » (p. 273), and seriously considers hanging himself after Angel's rejection. In his poem "To a Poor Child Unborn", Hardy tells the child: "Breath not, hidden heart: cease in silence, / And though thy hour of birth is come. beckons thee, / Sleep along sleep (sounds like Hamlet, doesn't it?) / The pile of Doomsters / Works and swarms around us here, and the specters of time turn our songs into fear. "The peace of sleep definitely trumps the pleasures of life, few and far between. Hardy refers to nature, time and destiny in original and dark ways: Doomsters, Wraiths and even sportsmen (in another poem), illustrating the casual way in which they control our lives, however, Tess, however divine her form and consciousness, has her "tragic flaw" of passionate impulse, which contributes to her undoing. Tess is portrayed as impulsive and indecisive, sometimes as a "vessel of emotion" which Hardy attributes to "the slight recklessness of character inherited from her race" (p. 89). "sometimes angry at his advances", happy "sometimes there is at least a moment" and partial acquiescence: "Tess eats in a half-satisfied, half-reluctant state everything that d'Uberville offers her" (p 36). This indecision and hesitation unnecessarily prolong the relationship. Furthermore, we find the same duality in the way Tess treats her baby, varying between a “dark indifference that almost seemed like aversion” and a “passion. strangely mixed with contempt.” Tess extends the wedding date, unable to stop the relationship, but feeling guilty about the episode with Alec. In "Tess' Lament", Tess says, "And it was I who did it all, who did it all; it was I who dropped the blow." It is this inner conflict that pushes the conscience to confess its past to Angel. and his simultaneous fear of rejection which leads to their separation. In two instances, Tess has ample opportunity to tell Angel, but cannot. His first excuse is lame. “Driven to subterfuge, she stammered, “Your father is a pastor and your mother would not like you to marry like me. She will want you to marry a lady” (p. 168). The second excuse reveals his Uberville heritage, but little else. “She didn’t say it. At the last moment, her courage had failed her, she feared that she would be reproached for not having told her sooner; and her instinct for self-preservation was stronger than her frankness" (p. 186). She lies once and that is enough. When Tess writes Angel a confession letter, circumstances prevent her from obtaining it, but she knows that There's still time to tell him. She makes it easier for herself by catching him at a time when he's naturally urging Tess to tell Angel that it's an extremely difficult choice to make. , but this will lead to misery and violence in his poem "The Coquette and after" with "Sinners, two, at last one pays the penalty, the woman, women always do!" Hamlet, Hardy raises another question of illusion versus reality,their own hopes, dreams and ideas lead to misjudgments and misunderstandings. Tess increases her own suffering by elevating Angel to the rank of god. “She loved him so passionately and he was so divine in her eyes; and being, although untrained, instinctively refined, his nature called for his tutelary guidance (p. 178). Indeed, Angel's tragic flaw is his hypocrisy, but Tess doesn't look at all the facts. "He was all that goodness could be known, all that a guide, a philosopher and a friend should know. She thought that every line of the outline of his person was the perfection of masculine beauty, his soul the soul of a saint, her intellect that of a clairvoyant as if she saw something immortal before her" (p. 189) Likewise, Angel's love is not as emotionally passionate as spiritual (her name ), calling Tess Artemis and Demeter "[Angel] could love desperately, but with a love more particularly inclined to the imaginative and ethereal. Angel falls in love with Tess's thought, but does not love her in it." as a whole person Hardy is anti-modern and, although nature is cruel, it provokes our emotions, unlike the deadly influence of machines. Machines on the ground are depicted as dehumanizing, with powerful imagery of l. "The isolation of his manners and color gave him [the mechanic] the appearance of a creature from Tophet (hell) which he served as fire and smoke in the service of his Plutonian master. " (pg. 319). Machines drain life, deaden emotions, and isolate people from each other, unlike nature, which can certainly be described as vibrant and ever-changing. Hardy, furthermore, uses irony to describe "the process, humorously referred to by statisticians as 'the tendency of the rural population towards the great cities,' being in reality the tendency of water to rise upward when 'it is forced by machines' (p. 346). In The Milkmaid, Hardy uses the train as a symbol of industrialism. "Is this train that passes, / Whose alien roar offends its country, the trains of ears howl until the ears are torn." But in “The Mother Mourns,” Hardy personifies Mother Nature, wondering why she gave man the power to pursue his own crazy creations. "Why have I released my control here / To mechanize to the sky, he considers his own shell of a soul inept - / My greatest achievement - / Despises me for my wayward inventions / Inopportune and foolish" Angel and Alec all two "feelings which could almost have The ideas put forward are largely, but the latest fashion in terms of definition, a more precise expression, by words ending in logy and ism, of sensations which men and women vaguely have seized for centuries” (p. 123). This “evil of modernism” separates Angel’s reason from his emotions and explains his hypocrisy. Angel himself feels free from social barriers and madness. “He spent years and years in study, enterprise, and desultory meditation; he began to show considerable indifference towards social forms and observances. The material distinctions of rank and wealth he increasingly despised. » (p. 115) And yet, after Tess forgives him for the same crime, he exclaims with revulsion: "O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to this case! You were a person; now you are another. My God, how can forgiveness encounter such grotesque prestige-conjuring as this! » (p. 224) Suddenly, his mind blocks his emotions (because in fact, he still loves Tess) and represses them until too late. “There was hidden a hard logical deposit, like a vein of metal in soft soil, which had!"