discuss the hardy's tragic vision of life as depicted in the mayor of casterbridge
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
With the hope of addressing not only those of English language and
literature departments, but also those aligned to the idea of clarifying
views of man’s existence on the earth planet, I can say that Hardy sees life
as a tragedy. According to his vision, the origin of tragedy for Hardy lies
everywhere; in the character, in the physical world and in society.
Hardy experiments with Aristotelian and Shakespearean tragic models
in the novel form so as to convey the tragic possibilities of the actual life
of his age, helping him to develop the modern tragic novel and to
universalize the tragic suffering of the common man.
The three tragic novels examined in this book (of Hardy’s fourteen
novels in total), The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles and
Jude the Obscure, have many elements in common which display how
Hardy’s tragic vision helped him to contribute to the development of the
modern tragic novel as well as portray, in a powerful and convincing
manner, man’s tragic suffering in an indifferent universe.
With regard to the nature of the incidents and circumstances
represented in the three tragic novels, it is clear that the manner in which
the protagonists Henchard, Tess and Jude, and partly Sue, battle against
external forces determines the type of their tragedies. The roles of the
tragic protagonists in the development of their own stories have a direct
link with the way they use their free will. For instance, Henchard in The
Mayor of Casterbridge has enough freedom and power to use his free will
against outward forces, but his own personal weaknesses blind him and
prompt him to mistreat people as well as his physical and social
environment, generating the overall unity of his own tragedy. That is why
we define The Mayor of Casterbridge as a tragedy of character. As for
Tess’s situation, she is given enough freedom to use her own free will.
However, chance and outward social and physical forces lead her to
inevitable circumstances in which she struggles to create happiness and
defend herself against them. The inevitability of the chain of events which
hurt her throughout the novel defines her tragedy as one of circumstance.
In Jude the Obscure, as in The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the
d’Urbervilles, the protagonists are given limited freedom to use their free
will. Whenever Jude and Sue struggle to realize what is right for them,
they find that it is wrong for society, and thus they find themselves at war
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with their surroundings. The battle between the characters and the
established social laws generates the basic tragic force which destroys
them, so we can regard Jude the Obscure as a tragedy brought on by the
moral outlook of Victorian society.
Hardy experiments with the traditional tragic model in many of his
early novels. However, The Mayor of Casterbridge is regarded as Hardy’s
most ambitious and successful effort in traditional tragedy, and his later
novels Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure branch out in
regards to both theme and technique. In The Mayor of Casterbridge,
Hardy sees the seed of tragedy in character itself, having inherent volcanic
and aggressive qualities which blind him and consequently make his fall
inevitable. The decline of the tragic protagonist and his rise in personal
stature and insight remind us of Oedipus’s fall and rise. With all his
personal qualities, Henchard represents the characteristics of his
agricultural society. As in most of his tragic novels, and so in The Mayor
of Casterbridge, Hardy makes use of traditional technical concepts such as
tragic error (“hamartia”), reversals (“peripetiea”), recognition (“anagnorisis”)
and the three unities.
In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, tragedy pivots on the clash between a
female protagonist and her external physical and social circumstances.
Here, Hardy sees outward circumstances as the real basis of tragedy. In
Tess’s tragedy, the labouring classes and their social institutions are also
introduced as tragic forces.
In his last tragic novel, Jude the Obscure, Hardy focuses on the
conflict between the individual and society. Here, there is very little of the
interest Hardy commonly shows for agricultural life. Instead, he
concentrates on an ambitious young working man and an intellectual, cold
and neurotic young girl. They struggle to realize their ambitions and to
lead a life of their own, but find themselves at odds with the social system,
and they fail at every stage of this struggle, resulting in Sue’s capitulation
and Jude’s death from despair. Hardy deals with more variety of technical
and thematical qualities here than he does in the rest of his tragic novels.
Thomas Hardy stands between the Victorian and Modern ages in the same manner as between the James and the renaissance era like Milton towers up. He blends the Victorian's narrative interest with contemporary artistic form and methodology to portray a tragic vision of life in all his novels. His profoundly pessimistic attitude to life and the ineffectiveness of man's lives binds him to old Greek and contemporary tragedians.
Explanation:
- The definition of Hardy's disaster is somewhat distinct from the moral viewpoint used in Greek tragic incidents. He felt that everywhere human life is a condition in which much has to be suffered and little pleasure; as Elizabeth-Jane at the end of the novel realises, "Happiness is but an occasional episode in a general drama of pain". Hardy called Fate the 'immanent power,' which governs every occurrence and determines any individual's path of existence. This is why we consider in his plays, counter to the desires and expectations of his characters, an universal power
- The Greeks treated Destiny as more or less a fair force over man and a shield in the possession of an uniform Providence. The motivation and relentless strength to conquer unwelcome circumstances is Henchard, one of the strongest and most influential character ever made . While challenging, he is a legacy of the old agriculture world that is experiencing an industrialization transformation. Michael Henchard begins as a hay trusser and moves up to the rank of mayor of Casterbridge. But fate takes him down and he lives like a poor guy in the wind-swept plains of Egdon Heath
- Henchard can not be criticized for his impulsive actions (With destiny playing a trick) or for everything he does, besides the offense he perpetrated in a drunken rage years ago – he sold his wife to a sailor years ago. At the outset, he persists with the dark feeling, "Nothing, nothing to come and nothing to wait for." The end is to demonstrate man's dignity to his helpless resentment in the universe's face, for all his nullity under the blotting hand of time
- Hardy's a writer with several talents, his plays reflect about people's place in the world. In comparison to the supreme state of life, he considers human beings as more members of a species than as individuals.