Novelist Thomas Hardy

Indeed, Hardy embodies his life in his work in subtle ways, including the imaginative setting of his novels, Wessex, a setting which mirrors his part of the country yet does non do so exactly.

Carpenter predicts out that Hardy did reveal something in his biography that hints at his hidden nature without truly explaining it--indeed, it is non likely that one incident can explain a person's life. He recalled when he was at Brockhampton and remembers one morning that a man was to be hanged that day at Dorchester. He utilize a big brass telescope belonging to his family and locomote to a hill near his house from where he could cope with the town:

The sun behind his back shone straight on the sportsmanlike stone facade of the gaol, and the form of the murderer in white fustian, the executioner and officials in dark clothing and the cluster below being invisible at this distance of some three miles. At the moment of his placing the glass to his eye the white figure dropped downwards, and the faint note of the town clock in love eight (Carpenter 19).

Hardy recalled this incident after m all years, cover that it was important to him. Even as he did so, however, he denied that it had any relevance to his life, though Carpenter only partly agrees:

From an ordinary, practical, common-sense point of view such an event had "nothing to do with" Hardy--it was not his life that was being terminated; nothing was added to his income nor detracted form hi

kindness. This is clear in the fist stanza when he says that he

Wright, Terence. Tell of the D'Urbervilles. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities touch International, 1987.

The intrusion of the macabre into the lives of people seeking to fulfill this identical sort of emotional need can be lay down in several of Hardy's novels. Perhaps the suspension Hardy sawing machine when young inspired the hanging in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. This hanging is not sudden, of course, though the murder that led up to it occurs rather abruptly. The hanging is made more macabre by the fact that it is a woman being hanged and by the nature of the circumstances border the hanging.

The central character of the novel, of course, is Tess, and the story follows her from the age of sixteen until her death. Tess is a young woman of contradictions, and this has extended to the way she is viewed by various readers. Some see her as a victim of her union and of the changes coming over that society in her time, succession others guess her to be responsible for her own fate, tragic though it whitethorn be. She is an innocent girl when first introduced, and she is raped by Alec d'Urberville. This leaves her pregnant, and while in our own time the victim of rape would not be considered responsible for being pregnant under those conditions, in Victorian England Tess would be seen as a fallen woman, as guilty even though she did nothing wrong. This fact therefrom defines her life in a way that is out of her control, making it difficult to see Tess as the master of her own fate. paragon Clare is a hypocritical man who may love Tess, but he abandons her only to evanesce later when he is rueful over what he has done. It is too late by then, and his return is what causes Tess to kill Alec d'Urberville. In the end, though he claims to love Tess, he and her sister, 'Liza-Lu, watch the hanging and then go off together, just as Tess has requested:

Hardy's sensitivity to the feelings of people is evident i
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