The light that never was : some aspects of landscape in Thomas Hardy's later novels

Abstract

This dissertation explores some of the aspects of landscape and environment in the fiction of Thomas Hardy, with reference to his later works. The primary texts that will be referred to are: 1. The Return of the Native [1878] 2. The Woodlanders [1887] 3. Tess of the d'Urbervilles [1891] 4. Jude the Obscure [1896] The dissertation will attempt to demonstrate the great importance of landscape within each of the novels, and how characters are either integral to the landscape, enduring the struggle to survive and finding some degree of inner harmony and/or peace, or else outsiders, succumbing to a deterministic Fate, through their failure to understand and interact with their environment. The characters' ability to survive often depends upon the degree of identification with their surroundings. The 'landscape' encompasses both the rustic and urban frameworks, i. e. 'naturescape' and 'cityscape'; rural phenomena and Gothic architecture. The way in which Hardy uses them 'to give substance and coherence to his themes' [Ian Gregor] is considered. Hardy's Wessex is traced across Wetherbury, Egdon Heath, Little Hintock, Marlatt, Christminster and even Stonehenge, in an effort to demonstrate how Hardy's fiction is often constructed in terms of place', [e. g. in 'Jude the Obscure], how the landscape becomes protagonistic, a dramatic presence and chief character [e. g. Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native], or how landscape can be synonymous with 'mood', as in The Woodlanders, this last reminding us that, besides being a novelist, Thomas Hardy was very obviously a poet. In his novels, we often find passages 'where the poet subdues the novelist' [Graham Greene]. A. E. Dyson says that 'Hardy gives the kind of attention to tone and texture which is usually given to a poem rather than a novel'.