Week 2: Introduction to the Novelist and the First Novel, Tess of the D'urbervilles

Thomas Hardy:

                        Thomas Hardy was a famous English novelist poet and short story teller. He wrote 53 short stories and nine novels. Hardy united modern and Victorean world with his heretic thoughts and ideas. Like Dickens he was annalist of his contemporary society. He portrayed rural England, its poverty stricken and innocent peasant world. His novels reflect sad or tragic vision of life. By some critics Hardy was considered as a pessimist while postmodern critics regarded him as a meliorist. Meliorism is a belief that world can be made better by human efforts. His novels can be divided into three groups. Novel of character and environment, romance and fantasies and novels of ingenuity. His novels have certain characteristics. Role of fate and chance is prominent in his works. His characters are helpless victims in his creation. He believes that chance, destiny and circumstances can change man’s life and chance is everything.