THE TRAGIC HISTORY OF THOMAS HARDY

ABSTRACT

The force of history is obvious throughout Thomas Hardy's work, both in regard to the setting in which
his novels and poems were written and published, as well as in the way the past is portrayed within the
lyrics and stories. The epistemological upheaval and socio-cultural transformations of the late
nineteenth century are evident in Hardy's writings, both ideologically and linguistically. One may add
Hardy's deep interest in the memory of locations to the context's effect on his work. The past is
rendered relevant in the settings of his works, whether actual or imagined, by an in-depth inscription in
the soil, showing its numerous layers like a palimpsest might, and thereby endowing the stories with a
chronological, geographical, and subjective consistency, broadening their breadth. History, on the other
hand, frequently emerges in Hardy's writing as evidence of erosion or decay, as an ironic relic of a
brilliant past. In this portrayal, historical traces are like scars, and big events that drive the historical
process – such as wars – also reflect the process's brutality.

Keywords: epistemological upheaval, past, palimpsest, history, historical process

INTRODUCTION: WESSEX, A PLACE OF HISTORY

Thomas Hardy's name is inextricably linked to Wessex, a semi-imaginary area developed, modeled, and
maintained over the course of the works, partly influenced by the author's own Dorset and surrounding
counties. If Hardy appears to limit the action and location of the great majority of his works to this area,
he is not only a regional novelist. Its formation in Wessex, admittedly, is founded on both geographical
facts and the convocation of local folklore, a dialect, rural customs, and individual stories restricted by
Wessex's borders. However, according to Hardy's own comments, the delimitation by these limits serves
an aesthetic function, since it provides all the coherence and universal impact of a tragic scene in the
style of the ancients:

Hardy would seem to be the prime embodiment of Englishness, rendered through his regional novels,
with their cohesive national past reaching back into myth and history. Wessex might naturally be
inscribed on the English flag. The biannual Thomas Hardy conference in Dorchester is practically as much
an exercise in patriotism as in literary discussion. It attracts both tourists and scholars, and after the
papers are read, tours are conducted of the ‘Wessex’ countryside. Nationhood has been called an
‘imaginary political community’ by Benedict Anderson and other cultural historians; so, Wessex is a
created imaginary regional community, which would seem to line up well with the larger imaginary
community of England itself (Wilson 23).

Thomas Hardy's attitude to history is also guided by his desire for a universal scope: how to inscribe the
small narrative both local chronicle, tradition and narrative, story in the vast history, and how to make
the two meet and feed one another. Hardy establishes a link between tale and history by the power and
significance of the historical trace, which is manifested in the form of a real, physical inscription. This
may be seen, for example, in the impact of the circumstances in which Hardy wrote on his work.
Returning to the story, it is almost always prompted by the exploration of a temporal and spatial
thickness, and so seems palimpsest. Nonetheless, the historical trail also points to a wound, if not a
wound, in Hardy's case, the ironic mark of a disappearance.
1. Writing is inextricably linked to his environment.

The historical trace in Hardy's work and writing is first and foremost a trace of history on his work and
writing, as well as an anchoring in his period and a trace of context.

Hardy's life span, from 1840 to 1928, is not only long, but also full of ideological and socio-cultural
revolutions. The complete emergence of the Victorian era in the mid-nineteenth century was followed
by true intellectual upheavals, which lasted and manifested themselves in art at the turn of the
twentieth century. Hardy was simultaneously a contemporary of Dickens, the great Victorian poetry, the
Pre-Raphaelite movements, the realist novelists, but also modernism, surrealism, futurism... As proof of
the wealth of experience - artistic in particular - thus offered to Hardy by virtue of his longevity, one
could indicate that the latter was simultaneously a contemporary of Dickens, the great Victorian poetry,
the Pre-Raphaelite movements, the realist novelists, but also modern Hardy observes the emergence of
all of these movements as a careful autodidact, but he does not integrate any of them. On the scale of
significant historical events, Hardy may be seen, for example, in the early years of 1860, listening to Lord
Palmerston, a major player in nineteenth-century British politics who had previously held the position of
Minister of War during the Napoleonic Wars. Hardy, on the other hand, will be familiar with the Europe
of the Great War, as well as the fervor with which his country embraced the discovery of barbarism and
the absurdity of war.

In truth, it is above all the history of thought that leaves a determining mark on Hardy's work. Hardy's
writing, both romantic and poetic, thus becomes the direct relay of what he calls, in Tess of the
D'Urbervilles (1891), "the ache of modernism" (Hardy, 2003b, 19), this illness of century which translates
into a profound collective disenchantment that was initially diffuse, but which finds many foundations in
the advances of science and the decline of Christian thought.

At the heart of the doubts echoed in Hardy's writing is therefore the crisis of religion. Christine Krueger
argues that ‘people with a sense of spiritual vocation, ordained or lay, regardless of denomination,
shared one common ground: the Bible’ (Krueger 142).

We can still see the depth of Hardy's ideological environment here, as he clearly confirms his own
misgivings, notably in his poetry, where he felt more at ease. Because his loss of religion is accompanied
by a great longing for believing, it will be more agnosticism than atheism in his case, as it is in many of
his contemporaries'. The poet practically performs the Nietzschean idea of God's death, exactly planning
his burial in 'God's Funeral,' with compassion (Satires of Circumstance, 1914). Hardy reads Nietzsche
only in translation and in criticism and is not really influenced by his thought. One cannot mention
Nietzsche without mentioning another philosopher often associated with Hardy's writing:
Schopenhauer. 'Father Time is similarly a multiple individual, burdened by history, who lives out in his
body the pain -but certainly not the joy-of those who have gone before' (Mallett 146). We discover in
him ideas like the Immanent Will that appear to be Schopenhauerian, but this is more of a confluence of
thought than a true influence, because Hardy takes inspiration from a variety of sources, and there is no
indication that he studied the German philosopher. Faced with accusations of pessimism, he defends a
more personal perspective of history, a melioristic vision to which we shall return.
Hardy's interest in modern science, particularly his adherence to questions related to evolutionism, the
past of the universe, and the human species, is most clearly reflected in his work: geology, astronomy,
genealogy, heredity, and other sciences that feed on Darwinism and evolutionism all find an echo in
Hardy's work. This post-Darwinian residue may be seen most clearly in Hardy's vision and painting of
nature: the sense of a violent and merciless environment, as well as the staging of a battle for existence
inside bucolic frames. This is shown by The Woodlanders (1887), in which the forest is never a source of
peace and comfort. For example, the tableau that greets Grace Melbury, a fugitive betrayed hiding in
Giles Winterborne's cabane, and depicts the cohabitation of trees as a struggle for survival:
Next were more trees close together, wrestling for existence, their branches disfigured with wounds resulting
from their mutual rubbings and blows. It was the struggle between these neighbours that she had heard in the
night. Beneath them were the rotting stumps of those of the group that had been vanquished long ago, rising
from their mossy setting like black teeth from green gums. Further on were other tufts of moss in islands
divided by the shed leaves ― variety upon variety, dark green and pale green; moss like little fir-trees, like plush,
like malachite stars; like nothing on earth except moss. (Hardy, 1998b, 311)

This environment only inspires the narrator with warrior rage and a vision of dread. Another example of
evolutionism's effect may be found in certain Hardyan characters' sympathy for animal species, such as
Tess and Jude, which originates from Darwin's idea of a big family of species, of a relationship between
creatures that is no longer dictated by anthropocentrism. The discovery, through evolutionary views, of
the enormity of the cosmos temporal immensity, as we will see, and spatial immensity (Two on a Tower,
1882), also abolishes this Christian anthropocentrism.

This thematic presence of modern science's background in Hardy's work is also accompanied by a clear
language record. Hardy's erudition is doubled by his obvious taste for linguistic material, for words and
sounds, and it is in this way that his writing frequently incorporates a difficult scientific vocabulary,
which serves less as a relay for a desire for geological, astronomical, or biological precision, and more as
a concrete trace of the profound upheavals of existence down to the smallest detail. This is how Hardy's
work already combines tiny and large stories.

2. The palimpsest of places