Just like Milton towers up between the Jacobean and the
Restoration era, in a similar fashion Thomas Hardy stands between the Victorian
and the Modern age. He combines the narrative interest of the Victorians with
the artistic form and technique of the Modern age to portray a tragic vision of
life in his novels. His highly pessimistic approach to life, to the futility of
human existence links him with the ancient Greek tragedians as well as the
Moderns.
As Mr. Guerard points out, “Hardy at his best is both
traditional and modern, rudely archaic yet minutely observant, with a
scriptural simplicity and a complex psychological insight.”
Tragedy, according to Aristotle, is the story of a man of
high place and birth who having a nature not ignoble, has fallen into sin and
pays suffering the penalty of his act. According to Aristotle, neither a villainous
person nor an extremely noble man can be a tragic character. Starting off as a
hay-trusser, Michael Henchard rises to
the position of the mayor of Casterbridge. But fate brings him down and he dies
like a destitute on the plains of wind-swept Egdon Heath.
Hardy’s concept of tragedy is quite distinct from the
religious orientation we find in Greek tragedies. He believed that human life
is everywhere a state where much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed; as
Elizabeth-Jane at the end of the novel realises, ‘Happiness is but an
occasional episode in a general drama of pain.’ “He (Hardy) is a fatalist”,
says Symons. Hardy regarded Fate as the ‘Immanent Will’ which dominates all
events and controls the course of life of every individual. That’s why in his
works, we find a universal force in operation, opposed to the will and desire
of his characters. According to Virginia Woolf, “Henchard is pitted, not
against another man but against something outside himself which is opposed to
men of his ambition and power.”
The Greeks considered Fate to be more or less a just power
presiding over men and acting as a weapon in the hands of an even-headed
Providence. But Hardy appreciated man’s continuous striving in a world full of
gloom and disappointments. Henchard, one of the best and representative
characters ever created, has the drive and ruthless power to master adverse
situations. Although laborious, he is a remnant of the old agricultural world
undergoing a change to give way to Industrialization. In a desperate bid to
recapture his old position by depending on the weather-prophet’s forecast, he
hoards corn. But the result is disastrous – he is ruined financially to not even
a penny to his name. The citadel which he had built up with indomitable energy
and frantic labour crushes in front of his eyes. Surrendering to Farfrae, his
erstwhile manager and fortune’s favourite, Henchard says, “…You then stood
without a chattel to your name, and I was the master of the house in Corn
Street. But now I stand without a stick or a rag, and the master of that house
is you.”
With destiny playing a trick, Henchard cannot be blamed for
his impulsive nature or for anything he does, except for the crime he committed
years ago in a drunken fury – selling off his wife years ago to a sailor. In
the end, he is left with the dark knowledge, “…nothing to come, nothing to wait
for.” He dies – a pitiable man rejected by men and Gods. Bonamy Dobree opines, “The
end of tragedy is to show the dignity of man for all his helpless bitterness in
the face of the universe, for all his nullity under the blotting hand of time.”
While Henchard’s dignity makes him ‘a man of character’, it
is this dignity which forces him to acknowledge and accept Susan when she comes
like a ghost from the dark background of his past. His is a story of pain, loneliness
and struggle against Fate. Virginia Woolf observes, “In backing the old Mayor…
Hardy makes us feel that we are backing human nature in an unequal contest.”
It is through Elizabeth-Jane that Hardy voiced his vision of
life at the end of the novel, “…happiness is an occasional episode in a general
drama of pain.” A writer of multifarious abilities, Hardy’s works speculate
over the position of man in the universe. He regards human beings more as
representative of a species than as individuals, in relation with the ultimate
condition of existence.
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