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Thomas Hardy: the Forms of Tragedy Chapter One 1 THOMAS HARDY: THE FORMS OF TRAGEDY NOTES CHAPTER ONE 1. Robert Schweik's closely argued analyses of various formal features in Hardy's novels constitute a marked exception to modem critics' indiffer­ ence to Hardy's use of structure: "Theme, Character, and Perspective in Hardy's The Return of the Native," PQ 41 (1962): 757-67; "Moral Perspec­ tive in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, " CE 24 (1962): 14-18; "Character and Fate in Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, " NCF 21 (1966): 249-62. Schweik's and my methods and conclusions sometimes differ; but as my chapter on Tess of the d'Urbervilles testifies, his ideas generate further ideas and development. Jean Brooks, Thomas Hardy: The Poetic Structure (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1971), discusses such "poetic" structures as imagery, repetitions, and parallel situations. 2. Albert Guerard, Thomas Hardy: The Novels and Stories (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1949), p. 157. 3. Carl J. Weber, Hardy of Wessex: His Life and Literary Career, 2nd ed. (1st ed., 1940; New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1965), p. 148. 4. Hardy, "The Profitable Reading of Fiction," Forum (New York), March 166 NOTES 167 1888, pp. 57-70; reprinted in Thomas Hardy's Personal Writings: Prefaces, Literary Opinions, and Reminiscences, ed. Harold Orel (Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press, 1966), p. 121. 5. For a longer discussion of Hardy's views of realism and his anti-realistic aesthetics, see Morton Dauwen Zabel, "Hardy in Defense of His Art: The Aesthetic of Incongruity," Craft and Character: Texts, Method, and Voca­ tion in Modern Fiction (New York: Viking, 1957), pp. 70-96; first printed in Southern Review 6 (1940): 125-49. 6. Preface to The Dynasts, pts. 1 and 2, Wessex ed. (London: Macmillan, 1913), vol. 2: verse. 7. Orel, p. 121. 8. Horace De Arte Poetica 40: "He who makes every effort to select his theme aright will be at no loss for choice words or lucid arrangement." From Edward Henry Blakeney, Horace on the Art of Poetry (London, 1928), p. 42; also Orel, p. 272. 9. Orel, pp. 122-23. For an excellent discussion of the functional simplicity of Hardy's style, see Benjamin Sankey, The Ma.ior Novels of Thomas Hardy (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1965), pp. 11-23. 10. Early critics of Hardy as tragedian in these terms are Lionel Johnson, The Art of Thomas Hardy (1894; reprinted, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1923), and Lascelles Abercrombie, Thomas Hardy: A Critical Study (London: Martin Secker, 1912). Critics who have continued in this initial reaction are Carl Weber, esp. in Hardy of Wessex; David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist: An Essay in Criticism (London: Constable, 1943); and Harvey Curtis Web­ ster, On a Darkling Plain: The Art and Thought of Thomas Hardy (Chi­ cago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1947), and his letter to the editors of VS 4 (1960): 90-93. 11. Joseph Warren Beach, The Technique of Thomas Hardy (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1922), pp. 94, 97. 12. For example, though David Cecil has warm admiration for Hardy, he pin­ points Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure as failed tragedies for these reasons (pp. 132-33). See also F. R. Leavis, The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad (lst ed., 1948; London: Chatto & Windus, 196(}), pp. 22-23; Frank Chapman, "Hardy the Novelist," Scru­ tiny 3 (1934): 22-37; Arthur Mizener, "The Novel of Doctrine in the Nine­ teenth Century: Hardy's Jude the Obscure," The Sense of Life-in the Modern Novel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), pp. 55-77. 168 THOMAS HARDY: THE FORMS OF TRAGEDY 13. Krutch, The Modern Temper (New York: Harcourt, 1929), pp. 115-43. 14. Morrell (Kuala Lumpur: Univ. of Malaya Press, 1965). 15. Krutch, p. 138. 16. Ibid., p. 125. 17. William Van O'Connor, Climates of Tragedy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1943), p. 3. 18. Hardy's idea of free will is disputed and probably not possible to define conclusively. But a look at the view of John Stuart Mill, who after Darwin had the strongest lasting influence upon Hardy's ideas and phraseology, is instructive. In the Autobiography Mill compresses his opinion in order to state briefly the formative stages in his life: I perceived, that the word Necessity, as a name for the doctrine of Cause and Effect applied to human action, carried with it a misleading associa­ tion; ... I saw that though our character is formed by circumstances, our own desires can do much to shape those circumstances; and that what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of freewill, is the con­ viction that we have real power over the formation of our own charac­ ter; that our will. by influencing some of our circumstances. can modify our future habits or capabilities of willing. All this was entirely consistent with the doctrine of circumstances, or rather, was that doc­ trine itself, properly understood. From that time I drew, in my own mind, a clear distinction between the doctrine of circumstances. and Fatalism; discarding altogether the misleading word Necessity. The theory, which I now for the first time rightly apprehended, ceased altogether to be discouraging. and besides the relief to my spirits, I no longer suffered under the burthen, so heavy to one who aims at being a reformer in opinions, of thinking one doctrine true, and the contrary doctrine morally beneficial. [Autobiography and Other Writings. ed. Jack Stillinger, Riverside ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), p. 102; my italics] See also "Liberty and Necessity," in The System of Logic. and "Of Individ­ uality," in On Liberty. for further discussions by Mill. Since Hardy was also influenced by less benign observers of the limita­ tions upon human choice, such as Matthew Arnold and Leopardi, one would not expect to find all features of Mill's definition of free will in Hardy's works. Nonetheless, the idea of "circumstances" in Hardy obviously loses some of its bleakness in the context of Mill's definition. Hardy's proud claim that he knew On Liberty "almost by heart" (Later Years. pp. 118-19) needs to be applied to his concept of free will as much as it does to his NOTES 169 independence of thought; see Weber, Hardy of Wessex (1965), p. 41. Un­ like Mill, Hardy did not give up the term, nor even the idea, of Necessity (see Later Years, p. 128), but in his conscious philosophy he also held to a limited free will at least until 1914 (Later Years, pp. 162, 165-66), After 1914, his remarks were more clearly deterministic (Later Years, pp. 271-73). In sum, it is probably wisest to avoid dogmatism about the degree or intensity of Hardy's belief in free will. He claimed to use "impressions" while writing, with no pretension that the totality of his impressions con­ stituted a consistent philosophy. In the context of fiction's plotting and characterization, this leads to de facto free will and meaningful choice between alternatives that can be either well or ill understood by those who face the choice. 19. Henry Alonzo Myers, Tragedy: A View of Life (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1956), 20. Sewall, The Vision of Tragedy (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1959). Murray Krieger, The Tragic Vision: Variations on a Theme in Literary Interpretation (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960), published a year after Sewall's book, underscores the idea that trag­ edy contains precarious tension. Krieger says that the "tragic vision" (of the "abyss," that is, of the "existential absurdity of the moral life" /p. 151), is opposed by the "ethical vision" of an external or society-based moral code. 21. Sewall. p. 81; see also pp. 165-66, n85. 22. See Lionel Abel, "Is There a Tragic Sense of Life'!" Theater 2; reprinted in Moderns on Tragedy, ed. Lionel Abel (New York: Fawcett, 1967), pp. 175-87. Abel says flatly that a tragic writer can have no formal philosophy (p. 186). Ian Gregor, "Hardy's World," ELH 38 (1971): 274-93, explores some techniques of philosophical impressionism based on "a series of seem­ ings." 23. Sewall, p. 129. 24. See Sewall, p. ItO. 25. See Dorothea Krook, Elements of Tragedy (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 35-65. For further discussion of this point and for a denial that affirmation is a necessary effect of tragedy, see Walter Kaufmann, Tragedy and Philosophy (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1969), 26. See John Paterson, "Hardy, Faulkner, and the Prosaics of Tragedy," Cen- 170 THOMAS HARDY: THE FORMS OF TRAGEDY tennial Review of Arts and Sciences 5 (1961): 156-75, for a fuller discussion of stylistic differences that make Hardy's novels more successful as tra­ gedies than Faulkner's. Bonamy Dobree's analysis of the centrality of plot in creating the tragic mode is a broad and theoretic elucidation of Aristotle that substantiates Paterson's more detailed exploration; see-his The Lamp and the Lute (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), p. 31. 27. John Paterson, "The Mayor of Casterbridge as Tragedy," VS 3 (1959): 151-72; Webster's rejoinder is in the letter to the editors, VS 4 (1960): 90- 93. Paterson, "The 'Poetics' of The Return of the Native," MFS 6 (1960): 214-22, uses the same method of analysis in his reading of The Return of the Native as he does in The Mayor of Casterbridge. though he does not label The Return of the Native a tragedy. See also Helen Garwood, Thomas Hardy: An Illustration of the Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Phila­ delphia: John C. Winston, 1911), pp. 41-68.
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