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312 The nineteenth century
Most of Hardy’s novels are tragedies, or they reveal the cosmic
indifference or malevolent ironies which life has in store for everyone,
particularly for those unable to curb the demands of their own natures.
His last two major novels were Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude
the Obscure (1895). Tess is a deeply pessimistic novel, revealing how an
intelligent and sensitive girl can be driven to her death by a society which
is narrow in morality and in spirit. Jude the Obscure has another central
character, Jude Fawley, whose sensual nature cannot be accommodated
by a rigid and inflexible social system. The novel has been seen by many
as Hardy’s most direct attack on Victorian chains of class-consciousness
and social convention. Both Tess and Jude are ambitious and articulate
working-class people whose lives cannot be properly fulfilled. Tess is a
modern version of ‘the ruined maid’ (a ballad of the same title is used in
the novel). Hardy brings together such traditional forms and concepts,
sets them in a literary context which goes back to Greek tragedy, and
brings out issues which are highly relevant to his own day.
Hardy’s vision has been called tragic, and the fate of many of his
characters is indeed bleak. Henchard in The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)
rises to power, then brings about his own fall in a manner that recalls
the classical forms of tragic drama. But his intention is also social. Tess,
‘a pure woman’, as the subtitle of the novel calls her, is the victim of a
hypocritical sexual morality. She finally kills Alec, the man who caused
her disgrace. But then society punishes her for that crime too.
Jude Fawley’s ‘crime’ is to want an education. The university town
of Christminster is always just beyond his reach. Poverty, marriage
and family combine to keep him from his ambition. In one of the
most tragic scenes, his children are all found dead one morning, with
a note left by his son: ‘Done because we are too menny.’ Jude tries to
comfort their mother Sue, saying:
It was in his nature to do it. The doctor says there are such boys
springing up amongst us – boys of a sort unknown in the last
generation – the outcome of new views of life. They seem to see
all its terrors before they are old enough to have staying power
to resist them. He says it is the beginning of the coming universal
wish not to live.
This is a savage attack on the restrictions of late Victorian society.