Thomas Hardy, the author of Mayor of Casterbridge(add date), was born during a morally turbulant time

for the christian theological social structure. Man had gone through aeons believing they were special,
the meticulous craftsmanship of god and were watched over, protected by the all mighty. These beliefs
were challenged to their core during this period, and through this challenge, were fundementally
shattered for the christian populace of yore. To understand Hardy's philosophy we must understand the
historical context and look to his texts and the influence his beliefs had in his writing.

"one of the first points which strikes us, is, that they generally differ much more from each other, than
do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature."

With these words, in 1859, Charles Darwin Fundementally challenged the christian orthodox institution
and their teachings. He propunded a view that man was not the result of divine craftsmanship but was
the acumulative positives emerging from the chaos of evolution. The christian institutions teachings
were already weakening in the wake of the industrial revolution and the misery that haunted the
working class with the strengthening of the owning class and lack of regulations.

Hardy's eagle eyes saw the misery and could not reconcile within himself the contradiction of what he
saw, the weakening of the old beliefs and the misery of the people with what he was taught, the
benevolent all mighty who resides over heaven and brings down justice over the wrong doers. WIth the
additional influence of his philosophical studies and the influence of several ethical and political
philosophers,

Hardy, in keeping with the conventional reaction to the advent of mordernism, took on a fatalistic stance
towards life. We can see a succint elucidation of his views in the following quote-

"When she plodded on in the shade of the hedge, silently thinking, she had the hard, half-apathetic
expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance, except, perhaps, fair-
play. "

Hardy was a pessmistic determinist in his life. His life experiences and philosophilcal education had
consolidated in the belief that life was predetermined and we are the pawns of an unfeeling monarch.

"Henchard, like all his kind, was superstitious, and he could not help thinking that the concatenation of
events this evening had produced was the scheme of some sinister intelligence bent on punishing him"

Hardy's opinion about life, through these lines and the proceeding lines is one that is duelfold. The
preceeding line might establish the possiblity of some sinister force that plays with the peoples lives, .

"Yet they had developed naturally. If he had not revealed his past history to Elizabeth he would not have
searched the drawer for papers, and so on. "

Hardy still assents that Henchard's suffering is more due to his own incorrigeble personality, rather than
some divine force. Hardy believed that life was a general "drama" of pain, he was not blind to the
possibility that man causes their own demise.
In The Return of the Native, Hardy again reminds us that,

“What a sport for Heaven this woman Eustacia was!”

"neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given" but there are many who get much less
than what they deserve. Not only man suffers, but all life suffers. Suffering is writ large on the face of
nature. A ruthless, brutal struggle for existence is waged everywhere in nature. All nature is red in tooth
and claw and life lives upon life. Thus all life, including human life, is subject to this law of suffering and
none can escape the operation of this law.

"And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence
of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult
stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a
general drama of pain. (45.32)"

The unforseen, The cruel unforseen, It is without a consistant law, it works without thought The
"unbroken tranquility" accorded to Elizabeth came at the cost of a childhood of nightmares. This line
summerizes Hardy's philosophy of life with great accurecy. For Hardy, The gods toyed with men and
women, they were not benevolent but tyrants

In summery, Hardy's philosophy of was that of iife as a gladiatorial trial, where we fight against infinite
misfortune, That happiness was merely a transient, ephemeral priod of ad interim relief, misery shall
come again, man will fight again. Henchard comments on the possibilty of some force plaguing hhim
multiple times, and Elizabeth-jane makes an explicit comment contemplating the undeserving suffering
assigned to the innocent and virtuous.