Thomas Hardy

 Born in 1840, The Return of the Native (1878), on the other hand, was increasingly admired for
its powerfully evoked setting of Egdon Heath, which was based on the sombre countryside
Hardy had known as a child. The novel depicts the disastrous marriage between Eustacia Vye,
who yearns romantically for passionate experiences beyond the hated heath, and Clym
Yeobright, the returning native, who is blinded to his wife’s needs by a naively idealistic zeal for
the moral improvement of Egdon’s impervious inhabitants.
 Hardy seems always to have rated poetry above fiction, and Wessex Poems (1898), his first
significant public appearance as a poet, included verse written during his years as a novelist as
well as revised versions of poems dating from the 1860s. As a collection it was often perceived
as miscellaneous and uneven—an impression reinforced by the author’s
own idiosyncratic illustrations—and acceptance of Hardy’s verse was slowed, then and later, by
the persistence of his reputation as a novelist. Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)
contained nearly twice as many poems as its predecessor, most of them newly written.
 The Dynasts, a huge poetic drama that is written mostly in blank verse and subtitled “an epic-
drama of the War with Napoleon”—though it was not intended for actual performance. The
sequence of major historical events—Trafalgar, Austerlitz, Waterloo, and so on—is diversified
by prose episodes involving ordinary soldiers and civilians and by an ongoing cosmic
commentary from such personified “Intelligences” as the “Spirit of the Years” and the “Spirit of
the Pities.”
 Therefore, Hardy had lost faith in the religion at the middle of age under the influence of
Darwin's The Origin of Species.
 Therefore, Hardy is an agnostic and castigator of the religion; but even about 600 biblical
allusions are found in his all literary works; from which around sixty allusions had been quoted
in his novels, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, Jude the Obscure, and
Tess of the d’Urbervilles. As he wrote later,
I have been looking for God for fifty years and think that if he had existed I should have
discovered him.
 Finally, Hardy came to know that religion plays a role only that misleads and deludes various
characters of a man which cause his final fall. Hardy was the first truly urban novelist who
anticipates the themes and language of twentieth century fiction. He captured the vitality of life
and also the deprivation of Wessex.
 The term pessimism is coined from the Latin word “pessimus‟ which means „worst‟. It is a
temperamental feature of an individual, a way of thinking. An individual who is pessimistic
beholds his or her life negatively. It is a condition of having no hopefulness that one‟s
misfortunes will come to an end or that accomplishment or pleasure will come to their way. It
also means that evil is more dominant that good.
 Thomas Hardy‟s cosmos was neither governed by the Almighty God nor by social norms. He
made his own world by his own perception and people around him. Human beings are part of the
huge victim to the chance ordering of the things over which they have no domination. The
originator of this chemical world is called as “the imminent Will” , “the Spinner of the Years”,
“Heaven”, “Fate”, “Doom” and at times God; but who so ever the name it is this grieving power
which regulates all the things and not thriving.
 Thomas Hardy says: “Happiness is but the occasional episode in the general drama of pain.”
(The Mayor of Casterbridge, Chapter 45).
 “My practical philosophy is distinctly melioristic. Whatever may be the inherent good or evil of
life, it is certain that man makes it much worse than it need be. When we have got rid of a
thousand remediable ills it will be time of enough to determine whether the ills that is
irremediable, outweighs the good.”
 These lines establish his most implicit articulation of the problem of human choice, which
originated in his sensitive perception of evils, pains and sufferings in the world.
 Tess of the d’Urbervilles positions the protagonist, Tess, in an environment in which she is
surrounded by people who not only have agendas that conflict with her own, but also have wills
strong enough to impose their goals on hers. For example, Tess’s mother and father wish for her
to marry rich in order to bring money and security to her family. Tess does not seek financial
prosperity in the way her parents do, yet her course of action eventually aligns with their
agendas.
 This revelation motivates Mr. Durbeyfield to concoct a plan to take advantage of this newfound
prominence and marry Tess into wealth. Despite Tess’s wishes, this plan of her father’s sets forth
a string of conflict which will challenge Tess’s ability to live independently and dictate her own
future.
 Much of the conflict and rising action of the novel takes the form of Tess’s misfortunes as she
struggles to be independent, in spite of the forces working against her. Coerced by her parents to
live on a nearby d’Urberville property and oversee the matriarch’s chickens, Tess meets Alec
d’Urberville, a supposed cousin of hers who immediately regards her with romantic and sexual
desire. Being sent to live with the d’Urbervilles is the first moment in which Tess’s will fails to
override another’s, and Alec’s various attempts at seduction follow as the second. Despite all of
Tess’s efforts to reject Alec, he eventually forces her into a situation from which she is unable to
escape and rapes her, which leads to Tess’s pregnancy.
 Despite the eventual death of the child, Tess further sets out to create her own life as she travels
to the Talbothays Dairy to become a milkmaid. Here, Tess meets Angel Clare, and thus sets forth
further conflict which tests her independence and strength of will. Despite Tess and Angel
establishing an intimate and somewhat clandestine romance, Tess does not allow herself to give
in to her desires to marry Angel. Tess believes she is unfit to marry such a man, as her past
marks her as “impure” by societal expectations of the time, and a marriage between the pair
would destroy his reputation too. This determination of Tess’s to not give in to her own desire
showcases how even Tess herself serves as an obstacle to her own happiness.
 In the novel’s climax, Tess finally achieves the independence she has so desired since the
beginning. Wanting more than anything to be with Angel, yet encumbered by her relationship
with Alec and the hold he has long had over her, Tess murders Alec in his sleep. It’s notable that
the murder, much like Tess’s rape by Alec, is not shown, yet both have vast, overarching
consequences within the narrative. Indeed, much of this section is disconnected from Tess’s
perspective, after hers has been the lens through which the reader has experienced the majority of
the novel’s events. That Tess is now so distant suggests she is already lost, a victim of the fate
that envelopes her. The resolution, then, is bittersweet; Tess frees herself from Alec and briefly
finds happiness with Angel, but dooms herself in the process. The black flag rising in the end
confirms that Tess has been executed, and is in a sense now entirely free from the torments that
plagued her in life.
 Intelligent, strikingly attractive, and distinguished by her deep moral sensitivity and passionate
intensity, Tess is indisputably the central character of the novel that bears her name. But she is
also more than a distinctive individual: Hardy makes her into somewhat of a mythic heroine. Her
 name, formally Theresa, recalls St. Teresa of Avila, another martyr whose vision of a higher
reality cost her her life. Other characters often refer to Tess in mythical terms, as when Angel
calls her a “Daughter of Nature” in Chapter 18, or refers to her by the Greek mythological names
“Artemis” and “Demeter” in Chapter 20. The narrator himself sometimes describes Tess as more
than an individual woman, but as something closer to a mythical incarnation of womanhood. In
Chapter 14, he says that her eyes are “neither black nor blue nor grey nor violet; rather all these
shades together,” like “an almost standard woman.” Tess’s story may thus be a “standard” story,
representing a deeper and larger experience than that of a single individual.
 In part, Tess represents the changing role of the agricultural workers in England in the late
nineteenth century. Possessing an education that her unschooled parents lack, since she has
passed the Sixth Standard of the National Schools, Tess does not quite fit into the folk culture of
her predecessors, but financial constraints keep her from rising to a higher station in life. She
belongs in that higher world, however, as we discover on the first page of the novel with the
news that the Durbeyfields are the surviving members of the noble and ancient family of the
d’Urbervilles. There is aristocracy in Tess’s blood, visible in her graceful beauty—yet she is
forced to work as a farmhand and milkmaid.
 When she tries to express her joy by singing lower-class folk ballads at the beginning of the third
part of the novel, they do not satisfy her—she seems not quite comfortable with those popular
songs. But, on the other hand, her diction, while more polished than her mother’s, is not quite up
to the level of Alec’s or Angel’s. She is in between, both socially and culturally. Thus, Tess is a
symbol of unclear and unstable notions of class in nineteenth-century Britain, where old family
lines retained their earlier glamour, but where cold economic realities made sheer wealth more
important than inner nobility.
 Beyond her social symbolism, Tess represents fallen humanity in a religious sense, as the
frequent biblical allusions in the novel remind us. Just as Tess’s clan was once glorious and
powerful but is now sadly diminished, so too did the early glory of the first humans, Adam and
Eve, fade with their expulsion from Eden, making humans sad shadows of what they once were.
Tess thus represents what is known in Christian theology as original sin, the degraded state in
which all humans live, even when—like Tess herself after killing Prince or succumbing to Alec
—they are not wholly or directly responsible for the sins for which they are punished.
 His first name, Alexander, suggests the conqueror—as in Alexander the Great—who seizes
what he wants regardless of moral propriety. Yet he is more slippery than a grand conqueror. His
full last name, Stoke-d’Urberville, symbolizes the split character of his family, whose origins are
simpler than their pretensions to grandeur. After all, Stokes is a blunt and inelegant name.
Indeed, the divided and duplicitous character of Alec is evident to the very end of the novel,
when he quickly abandons his newfound Christian faith upon remeeting Tess. It is hard to
believe Alec holds his religion, or anything else, sincerely.
 His devilish associations are evident when he wields a pitchfork while addressing Tess early in
the novel, and when he seduces her as the serpent in Genesis seduced Eve. Additionally, like the
famous depiction of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Alec does not try to hide his bad qualities.
In fact, like Satan, he revels in them. In Chapter 12, he bluntly tells Tess, “I suppose I am a bad
fellow—a damn bad fellow. I was born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad, in all
probability.”
 A freethinking son born into the family of a provincial parson and determined to set himself up
as a farmer instead of going to Cambridge like his conformist brothers, Angel represents a
rebellious striving toward a personal vision of goodness. He is a secularist who yearns to work
 for the “honor and glory of man,” as he tells his father in Chapter 18, rather than for the honor
and glory of God in a more distant world. A typical young nineteenth-century progressive, Angel
sees human society as a thing to be remolded and improved, and he fervently believes in the
nobility of man.
 He rejects the values handed to him, and sets off in search of his own. His love for Tess, a mere
milkmaid and his social inferior, is one expression of his disdain for tradition. This independent
spirit contributes to his aura of charisma and general attractiveness that makes him the love
object of all the milkmaids with whom he works at Talbothays.
 The narrator says that Angel shines rather than burns and that he is closer to the intellectually
aloof poet Shelley than to the fleshly and passionate poet Byron.
 His love for Tess may be abstract, as we guess when he calls her “Daughter of Nature” or
“Demeter.” Tess may be more an archetype or ideal to him than a flesh and blood woman with a
complicated life. Angel’s ideals of human purity are too elevated to be applied to actual people.
 Angel awakens to the actual complexities of real-world morality after his failure in Brazil, and
only then he realizes he has been unfair to Tess. His moral system is readjusted as he is brought
down to Earth. Ironically, it is not the angel who guides the human in this novel, but the human
who instructs the angel, although at the cost of her own life.
The Injustice of Existence
 Unfairness dominates the lives of Tess and her family to such an extent that it begins to seem
like a general aspect of human existence in Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Tess does not mean to kill
Prince, but she is punished anyway, just as she is unfairly punished for her own rape by Alec.
 Christianity teaches that there is compensation in the afterlife for unhappiness suffered in this
life, but the only devout Christian encountered in the novel may be the reverend, Mr. Clare, who
seems more or less content in his life anyway. For others in their misery, Christianity offers little
solace of heavenly justice. Mrs. Durbeyfield never mentions otherworldly rewards. The
converted Alec preaches heavenly justice for earthly sinners, but his faith seems shallow and
insincere.
 Generally, the moral atmosphere of the novel is not Christian justice at all, but pagan injustice.
The forces that rule human life are absolutely unpredictable and not necessarily well-disposed to
us. The pre-Christian rituals practiced by the farm workers at the opening of the novel, and
Tess’s final rest at Stonehenge at the end, remind us of a world where the gods are not just and
fair, but whimsical and uncaring.
 When the narrator concludes the novel with the statement that “‘Justice’ was done, and the
President of the Immortals (in the Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess,” we are
reminded that justice must be put in ironic quotation marks, since it is not really just at all. What
passes for “Justice” is in fact one of the pagan gods enjoying a bit of “sport,” or a frivolous
game.
Changing Ideas of Social Class in Victorian England
 Tess of the d’Urbervilles presents complex pictures of both the importance of social class in
nineteenth-century England and the difficulty of defining class in any simple way. Certainly the
Durbeyfields are a powerful emblem of the way in which class is no longer evaluated in
Victorian times as it would have been in the Middle Ages—that is, by blood alone, with no
attention paid to fortune or worldly success. Indubitably the Durbeyfields have purity of blood,
yet for the parson and nearly everyone else in the novel, this fact amounts to nothing more than a
piece of genealogical trivia.
 The issue of class confusion even affects the Clare clan, whose most promising son, Angel, is
intent on becoming a farmer and marrying a milkmaid, thus bypassing the traditional privileges
of a Cambridge education and a parsonage. His willingness to work side by side with the farm
laborers helps endear him to Tess, and their acquaintance would not have been possible if he
were a more traditional and elitist aristocrat. Thus, the three main characters in the Angel-Tess-
Alec triangle are all strongly marked by confusion regarding their respective social classes, an
issue that is one of the main concerns of the novel.
 Even Angel’s love for Tess, as pure and gentle as it seems, dominates her in an unhealthy way.
Angel substitutes an idealized picture of Tess’s country purity for the real-life woman that he
continually refuses to get to know. When Angel calls Tess names like “Daughter of Nature” and
“Artemis,” we feel that he may be denying her true self in favor of a mental image that he
prefers. Thus, her identity and experiences are suppressed, albeit unknowingly. This pattern of
male domination is finally reversed with Tess’s murder of Alec, in which, for the first time in the
novel, a woman takes active steps against a man. Of course, this act only leads to even greater
suppression of a woman by men, when the crowd of male police officers arrest Tess at
Stonehenge.
 Images of birds recur throughout the novel, evoking or contradicting their traditional spiritual
association with a higher realm of transcendence. Both the Christian dove of peace and the
Romantic songbirds of Keats and Shelley, which symbolize sublime heights, lead us to expect
that birds will have positive meaning in this novel. Tess occasionally hears birdcalls on her
frequent hikes across the countryside; their free expressiveness stands in stark contrast to Tess’s
silent and constrained existence as a wronged and disgraced girl.
 These birds offer images of hope and liberation. Yet there is irony attached to birds as well,
making us doubt whether these images of hope and freedom are illusory.
 In the end, when Tess encounters the pheasants maimed by hunters and lying in agony, birds no
longer seem free, but rather oppressed and submissive. These pheasants are no Romantic
songbirds hovering far above the Earth—they are victims of earthly violence, condemned to
suffer down below and never fly again.
 The Genesis story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is evoked repeatedly
throughout Tess of the d’Urbervilles, giving the novel a broader metaphysical and philosophical
dimension. The roles of Eve and the serpent in paradise are clearly delineated: Angel is the noble
Adam newly born, while Tess is the indecisive and troubled Eve. When Tess gazes upon Angel
in Chapter 27, “she regarded him as Eve at her second waking might have regarded Adam.”
Alec, with his open avowal that he is bad to the bone, is the conniving Satan. He seduces Tess
under a tree, giving her sexual knowledge in return for her lost innocence. The very name of the
forest where this seduction occurs, the Chase, suggests how Eve will be chased from Eden for
her sins. This guilt, which will never be erased, is known in Christian theology as the original sin
that all humans have inherited.
 Just as John Durbeyfield is told in Chapter I that “you don’t live anywhere,” and his family is
evicted after his death at the end of the novel, their homelessness evokes the human exile from
Eden. Original sin suggests that humans have fallen from their once great status to a lower
station in life, just as the d’Urbervilles have devolved into the modern Durbeyfields. This Story
of the Fall—or of the “Pure Drop,” to recall the name of a pub in Tess’s home village—is much
more than a social fall.
 It is an explanation of how all of us humans—not only Tess—never quite seem to live up to our
expectations, and are never able to inhabit the places of grandeur we feel we deserve.
 The transformation of the d’Urbervilles into the Durbeyfields is one example of the common
phenomenon of renaming, or variant naming, in the novel. Names matter in this novel. Tess
knows and accepts that she is a lowly Durbeyfield, but part of her still believes, as her parents
also believe, that her aristocratic original name should be restored.
 Hardy’s interest in name changes makes reality itself seem changeable according to whims of
human perspective.
 The horse’s demise is thus a powerful plot motivator, and its name a potent symbol of Tess’s
own claims to aristocracy. Like the horse, Tess herself bears a high-class name, but is doomed to
a lowly life of physical labor. Interestingly, Prince’s death occurs right after Tess dreams of
ancient knights, having just heard the news that her family is aristocratic.
 The death of the horse symbolizes the sacrifice of real-world goods, such as a useful animal or
even her own honor, through excessive fantasizing about a better world.
 A double-edged symbol of both the majestic grandeur and the lifeless hollowness of the
aristocratic family name that the Durbeyfields learn they possess, the d’Urberville family vault
represents both the glory of life and the end of life. Since Tess herself moves from passivity to
active murder by the end of the novel, attaining a kind of personal grandeur even as she brings
death to others and to herself, the double symbolism of the vault makes it a powerful site for the
culminating meeting between Alec and Tess.
 When Tess is executed, her ancestors are said to snooze on in their crypts, as if uncaring even
about the fate of a member of their own majestic family. Perhaps the secret of the family crypt is
that its grandiosity is ultimately meaningless.
 Even more exotic for a Victorian English reader than America or Australia, Brazil is the country
in which Robinson Crusoe made his fortune and it seems to promise a better life far from the
humdrum familiar world. Brazil is thus more than a geographical entity on the map in this novel:
it symbolizes a fantasyland, a place where dreams come true. As Angel’s name suggests, he is a
lofty visionary who lacks some experience with the real world, despite all his mechanical know-
how in farm management.
 Hardy lived and wrote in a time of difficult social change, when England was making its slow
and painful transition from an old-fashioned, agricultural nation to a modern, industrial one.
Businessmen and entrepreneurs, or “new money,” joined the ranks of the social elite, as some
families of the ancient aristocracy, or “old money,” faded into obscurity. Tess’s family in Tess of
the d’Urbervilles illustrates this change, as Tess’s parents, the Durbeyfields, lose themselves in
the fantasy of belonging to an ancient and aristocratic family, the d’Urbervilles. Hardy’s novel
strongly suggests that such a family history is not only meaningless but also utterly undesirable.
Hardy’s views on the subject were appalling to conservative and status-conscious British readers,
and Tess of the d’Urbervilles was met in England with widespread controversy.
 In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, we gain insight into Hardy's view on religion as he uses his
characters to make observations that may have been quite disconcerting to his Victorian readers.
This is not to say that Hardy abandoned his views on religion, instead, he "became an agnostic,
[and] he remained emotionally involved with the Church." Hardy's greatest dispute was with the
dogma or beliefs of the church.
 She learns that her own ceremony is the same as if it were performed in church; however, on the
subject of a proper Christian burial, the local vicar replies, "Ah — that's another matter." In the
true sense of charity, Hardy argues, Tess should have been allowed to bury Sorrow in a proper
manner, not be relegated to the part of the cemetery that has unbaptized infants, drunks, and the
damned. The burial is carried out under the cover of darkness, not during the daylight hours, to
 protect Tess and to shield her from the scorn of churchgoers. Hardy's point is that Sorrow's burial
should have been treated as any other burial. The position of the church is too harsh, Hardy
seems to argue, when Sorrow is christened in the proper manner, but is not given a proper
Christian burial.
 Hardy uses comparison throughout the novel to reveal character and theme. The most obvious
comparison is between Angel and Alec. The juxtaposition of Angel, who represents the ideal
love of Tess, is contrasted with Alec, who represents the sexual possession of Tess. Since neither
character is a perfect personification of good or evil, Hardy has both men exhibit both passion
and coldness when they interact with Tess. Angel is passionate about Tess and his love for her,
while he coolly dismisses her after learning of her torrid past. Alec is at first cool in his treatment
of Tess as a possession, a symptom of his class, and then he decides later that he cannot live
without her.
 Hardy's Tess is filled with these side-by-side comparisons. Peter J. Casagrande, in his book Tess
of the d'Urbervilles: Unorthodox Beauty, coins a new word "beaugly," a combination of the
words "beautiful" and "ugly." He argues that the novel is chock-full of these comparisons:
poor/rich, good/evil, Angel/brothers; Tess/her siblings; high class/low class, and past/present.
Even the title of Casagrande's work, "Unorthodox Beauty," suggests a beauty that is does not
conform to the standards by which other novels before or since Tess have been judged. Hardy
himself points the out the rationale for his philosophy: "The business of the poet and novelist is
to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things, and the grandeur underlying the sorriest
things."
 The poor versus rich comparison should not escape modern readers. Alec's seemingly endless
wealth contrasts with the Durbeyfield's abject poverty. Hardy uses this juxtaposition to
demonstrate the difference between the "haves" and the "have nots." However, even Hardy
makes the point that at sometime in the distant past, just as Alec and his kind take advantage of
Tess and her kind, the ancient d'Urbervilles had their way with the poor of their time.
 Another contrast is found in the families themselves, the Durbeyfields and the Clares. The
Durbeyfields, even though impoverished, have a closeness that binds them. Tess' weakness is her
siblings and their well being. In fact, Alec uses his wile to tempt her, much like the character of
Satan uses temptation in the Bible and in Milton's Paradise Lost. Hardy describes Tess' siblings
as "six helpless creatures, who had never been asked if they wished for life on any terms, much
less if they wished for it on such hard conditions as were involved in being of the shiftless house
of Durbeyfield."
 Usually, we can look at the setting of a novel as a small portion of a work. With Tess, however,
nature is a close second only to the main characters. Therefore, the reader is obligated to examine
Hardy's use of setting and environment in Tess. Tess of the d'Urbervilles takes place in Wessex, a
region encompassing the southern English county of Dorset and neighboring counties
Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, and Devon.

The Return of the Native

 The novel opens with the action of the plot already underway. The reddleman Diggory Venn
rides onto the heath with Thomasin Yeobright in the back of his wagon: her marriage to Damon
Wildeve was delayed by an error in the marriage certificate, and Thomasin collapsed. We soon
learn that Wildeve orchestrated the error himself. He is infatuated with Eustacia Vye, and is, at
least to some extent, using Thomasin as a device to make Eustacia jealous.
 But Venn's attempts to persuade Eustacia to allow Wildeve to marry Thomasin, like his own
marriage proposal to Thomasin, are unsuccessful.
 Into this confused tangle of lovers comes Clym Yeobright, Thomasin's cousin and the son of the
strong-willed widow Mrs. Yeobright, who also serves as a guardian to Thomasin. Eustacia sees
in the urbane Clym an escape from the hated heath. Even before she meets him, Eustacia
convinces herself to fall in love with Clym, breaking off her romance with Wildeve, who then
marries Thomasin.
 Once Wildeve hears of Eustacia's marriage, he again begins to desire her, although he is already
married to Thomasin.
 In marrying Eustacia, Clym distances himself from his mother. Yet distance soon begins to grow
between the newlyweds as well. Eustacia's dreams of moving to Paris are rejected by Clym, who
wants to start a school in his native country. Wildeve inherits a substantial fortune, and he and
the unhappy Eustacia once again begin to spend time together: first at a country dance, where
they are seen by the omnipresent observer Diggory Venn, and then later when Wildeve visits
Eustacia at home while Clym is asleep.
 Eustacia drowns. Trying to save her, Wildeve drowns as well. Only through heroic efforts does
Diggory Venn save Clym from the same fate. The last part of the novel sees the growth of an
affectionate relationship, and an eventual marriage, between Thomasin and Diggory. Clym,
much reduced by his travails and by weak eyesight brought on by overly arduous studies,
becomes a wandering preacher, taken only half-seriously by the locals.
 Since the modernist movement at the beginning of the 20th century, literature has tended to pose
questions rather than define answers. One of the hallmarks of modern literature can be said to
be Unreliability: authors and readers recognize that literature is difficult; it is not to be trusted, or
to be taken at its face value.
 In 1878, when The Return of the Native was first published, ambiguity was hardly understood to
be the cornerstone of the novelistic edifice. And yet, while The Return of the Native is formally
conventional, thematically it thrives on doubt and ambiguity. With its extensive narrative
description, abundant classical and scriptural references and stylized dialogue, the book adheres
closely to the high Victorian style.
 Take, for instance, the example of Egdon Heath, the first "character" introduced into the book.
The heath proves physically and psychologically important throughout the novel: characters are
defined by their relation to the heath, and the weather patterns of the heath even reflect the inner
dramas of the characters. Indeed, it almost seems as if the characters are formed by the heath
itself: Diggory Venn, red from head to toe, is an actual embodiment of the muddy earth.
 But, importantly, the heath manages to defy definition. It is, in chapter one, "a place perfectly
accordant with man's nature." The narrator's descriptions of the heath vary widely throughout the
novel, ranging from the sublime to the gothic. There is no possible objectivity about the heath.
 For Clym, the heath is beautiful; for Eustacia, it is hateful. The plot of the novel hinges around
just this kind of difference in perception. Most of the key plot elements in the novel depend upon
misconceptions--most notably, Eustacia's failure to open the door to Mrs. Yeobright, a mistake
that leads to the older woman's death--and mistaken perceptions. Clym's eventual near- blindness
reflects a kind of deeper internal blindness that afflicts all the main characters in the novel: they
do not recognize the truth about each other. Eustacia and Clym misunderstand each other's
motives and true ambitions; Venn remains a mystery; Wildeve deceives Thomasin, Eustacia and
Clym. The characters remain obscure for the reader, too.
 All of the novel's characters prove themselves deeply flawed, or--at the very least--of ambiguous
motivation. Clym Yeobright, the novel's intelligent, urbane, generous protagonist, is also,
through his impatience and single-minded jealousy, the cause of the novel's great tragedy.
Diggory Venn can either be seen as a helpful, kind- hearted guardian or as an underhanded
schemer. Similarly, even the antagonistic characters in the novel are not without their redeeming
qualities.
 The novel seems to privilege a bleak understanding of human nature. Given the tragedy of the
double drowning, it seems impossible that the novel could end happily. And yet, Diggory Venn
and Thomasin are contentedly married. This is not, however, the way the novel was first
conceived; Hardy was forced to give the novel a happy ending in order to please the Victorian
public. In an uncharacteristic footnote, Hardy remarks, "The writer may state here that the
original conception of the story did not design a marriage between Thomasin and Venn But
certain circumstances of serial publication led to a change of intent. Readers can therefore
choose between the endings." Thus, even the true conclusion of the novel is left in doubt, a
fitting end for a novel that thrives on uncertainty and ambiguity.
 A local innkeeper, Damon Wildeve is described as a "lady-killer." At the start of the novel, he
puts off his marriage to Thomasin Yeobright in order to pursue a relationship with the woman he
truly wants, Eustacia Vye; when he is jilted by Eustacia, however, he marries Thomasin, and has
a daughter with her.
 Across Egdon Heath (a "vast tract of unenclosed wild . . . a somber, windswept stretch of brown
hills and valleys, virtually treeless, covered in briars and thorn bushes"), an older man makes his
way. Soon he encounters a horse-drawn van, being led by Diggory Venn, a reddleman (seller of
a reddish powdery dye used by sheep farmers to identify their flock).

Far From the Madding Crowd

 At the beginning of the novel, Bathsheba Everdene is a beautiful young woman without a
fortune. She meets Gabriel Oak, a young farmer, and saves his life one evening. He asks her to
marry him, but she refuses because she does not love him. Upon inheriting her uncle's
prosperous farm she moves away to the town of Weatherbury.
 After rescuing a local farm from fire he asks the mistress if she needs a shepherd. It is Bathsheba,
and she hires him. As Bathsheba learns to manage her farm she becomes acquainted with her
neighbor, Mr. Boldwood, and on a whim sends him a valentine with the words "Marry me."
Boldwood becomes obsessed with her and becomes her second suitor.
 That very night, Bathsheba meets a handsome soldier, Sergeant Troy. Unbeknownst to
Bathsheba, he has recently impregnated a local girl, Fanny Robin, and almost married her. Troy
falls in love with Bathsheba, enraging Boldwood. Bathsheba travels to Bath to warn Troy of
Boldwood's anger, and while she is there, Troy convinces her to marry him. Gabriel has
remained her friend throughout and does not approve of the marriage.
 The title Far From the Madding Crowd comes from Thomas Gray's famous 18th-century poem
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard": "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Their
sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool sequestered vale of life They kept the
noiseless tenor of their way." By alluding to Gray's poem, Hardy evokes the rural culture that, by
Hardy's lifetime, had become threatened with extinction at the hands of ruthless industrialization.
His novel thematizes the importance of man's connection to, and understanding of, the natural
world.
 The novel also contemplates the relationship between luck, or chance, and moral responsibility:
Why should we live a morally upright life if tragedy strikes us all equally anyway? While some
characters, like Gabriel, are always responsible and cautious, others, like Sergeant Troy, are
careless and destructive. Hardy was very much influenced by the ideas of Charles Darwin, who
maintained that the development of a biological species--and, by extension, of human society
and history--is shaped by chance and not by the design of a god.