In his novel Tess of the D'Ubervilles, as well as in much of his poetry, Thomas Hardy expresses his dissatisfaction, weariness, and an overwhelming sense of injustice at the cruelty of our universal Destiny disappointment and disillusionment. Hardy argues that men's hopes and desires are cruelly thwarted by a powerful combination of omnipotent nature, fate, unforeseen accidents and disasters, and tragic flaws. Although Tess, the heroine of the novel, is fully realized with physical, emotional and mental attributes, desperately trying to be master of herself, she is nevertheless overwhelmed, becoming a victim of circumstance, nature and social hypocrisy. Likewise, Hardy's dark realities penetrate and saturate his poems. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay First, Hardy personifies Nature as the main character of the novel. Instead of allowing Nature's influence to manifest itself only in time and seasonal changes, allowing the reader to feel the plot, Hardy creates a Nature that is not the typical capricious but distant goddess. Instead, it is terribly responsible for influencing and overpowering man. Hardy's nature is not only essential to the subsistence of the entire agricultural countryside, but also the waxing and waning cycles—of weather, time of day, and season—that seem to influence the characters' actions. Every disastrous event seems preordained by Nature's state of mind. Before Prince, the Durbeyfield horse, is killed, Tess's brother marvels at "the strange shapes assumed by the various dark objects against the sky; at this tree which looked like a furious tiger issuing from a den; at the one which resembled the head of a giant" (p. 24). As Abraham marvels at these menacing and disturbing forms, Tess herself becomes intensely aware that "The occasional breath of wind became the sigh of an immense sad soul, coinciding with the universe in space and with history in time" (p . 26). The sigh of this divine and timeless soul reinforces the idea that a sad life is preordained; even less can we exercise our free will. Nature rotates according to seasonal cycles of rebirth and death; thus Tess's action and moods flow from hope to despair. Summer, with its heat and abundance, causes a wave of fertilization not only in Nature, but also in farmers. Everyone is carried away by it: "Among the exuding fat and the warm ferments of the Var Valley, in a season in which the flow of juices could almost be heard under the hiss of fertilization, it was impossible that the most imaginative love did not become passionate. ready breasts that existed there were imbued with the surroundings” (p. 146), Likewise, the love between Tess and Angel becomes passionate and sensual that Nature follows no moral or social law. "Every swing of her breath, every wave of her blood, every beat that sang in her ears, was a voice that joined nature in revolt against her scrupulosity" (p. 175) Tess, try as she might, is drawn into the frenzy of summer. Likewise, Hardy places a poem of lost love and bitter lesson in the cold "neutral tones" of winter that winter day / And the sun was white, as if it were a child of God, / And some leaves lay on the hungry sod; / - They had fallen from the ashes and were gray." The image of nature is brutal, like death. Seasonal death coincides with a spiritual and moral death. The speaker learns "the sharp lessons that love deceives",calling the sun "cursed of God" in its bitterness. The arbitrary power of nature, which does not respect moral or ethical justice, is also condemned. The other girls on the farm, who long for Angel, are also surprised by the summer tide. "The air of the bedroom seemed to throb with the girls' desperate passion. They writhed feverishly under the oppression of an emotion forced upon them by the cruel law of Nature, an emotion they neither expected nor desired" (p. 144). Hardy goes on to call this implacable and inexorable force of Nature torture. But not only is Nature cruel and torturous, it is "shameless", heedless of the chaos of destruction left in its wake. When Tess's baby suddenly falls ill and dies, Hardy provides the reader with a rare commentary: "Thus passed away Grieves the Unwanted that intrusive creature, that bastard gift of Nature shameless that respects no social law; an orphan for whom Eternal Time had only been a matter of days..." (p. 94). Nature takes even the lives of the most innocent and immaculate. Reflecting on the weariness of life, he writes that perhaps the death of Sorrow is for the best. Life is a "battle" that suffocates the hopes and dreams we build for ourselves. Furthermore, Hardy perceives the repetitive and endless cycles of Time, a component of nature a long line only to find that in some old book is written someone just like me, and know that I will only play his part; making me sad, that's all. The best thing is not to remember that your past nature and actions have been just like thousands and thousands, and that your future life and actions will be like thousands and thousands"" (p. 125) Hardy expresses despair and resignation to the idea, using strange coincidences and parallels in his novel to illustrate the repetition of all events. For example, long ago, the Stoke d'Uberville came from barbarians who raided and dominated the truth and the noble. d'Ubervilles, now reduced to mere Durbeyfields Similarly, now Alec d'Uberville, described as having "barbaric" traits, quickly gives Tess "the kiss of mastery". Years later, when they reunite, Alec exclaims, "Remember, my lady, I was your master once! I will be your master again!" (p. 326). Even more chilling are the suggestions that Tess is predestined to be a killer. At the beginning of the story, when Prince dies, "Her [Tess's] face was dry and pale, as if she regarded herself in the light of a murderer" (p. 29). Throughout the book we read allusions to the legend of the Uberville carriage, where the woman kills her kidnapper. Hardy has a strong sense of the accidental, the casual catastrophe and the too late. The mainstay of their agricultural existence, the horse prince of Durbeyfield is killed before Tess's encounter with Tess's fellow milkmaids who commit suicide or become alcoholics after Tess's marriage to Angel Tess rushes home to the news that her mother is ill , but his father suddenly dies, leaving the family penniless. Angel returns too late. (The list is endless) Lethal combinations of such events lead to decline and precipitate catastrophe. In his poem "Hap", Hardy states that if he knew that a god's profit is his suffering, he would at least have reason to refuse, denying: "But it is not so. How come joy lies slain, / And why it makes the best hope every sown? / - Does grave chance thwart the sun and rain, and the time of joy dices a moan? / These blind doomsayers had promptly sown / Bliss upon my pilgrimage as sorrow." Hardy feels so strongly that the life is condemned who prefers death rather than life. Tess constantly wishes for death and contemplates suicide. "There was yet anotherappointment? that of his own death, when all this charm would disappear; a day that lay hidden and invisible among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she passed over it each year, but no less surely there. When did it happen?" (p. 97) But more often than not, the thought of death is active rather than passive. After being abandoned by the Angel, she wishes death would come now: "I wish it were now." (p. . 273), and seriously considers hanging himself after Angel's refusal. In his poem, "To an Unborn Pauper Child" Hardy tells the child: "Do not breathe, hidden heart: cease in silence, / And though your hour of birth .invites you, / Sleep the long sleep (that sounds like Hamlet, doesn't it?) / Doomsters pile up / Troubles and swarm here around us, and the wraiths of time turn our songs to fear. "The peace of sleep surely surpasses the pleasures of life, few and far between. Hardy refers to Nature, Time and Destiny in original and dark ways: Doomsters, Wraiths, even Sportsmen (in another poem), illustrating the ways in which they control our lives. The fault, however, lies with the humans. Tess, though divine in form and consciousness, has her own "tragic flaw" of passionate impulse, which contributes to her downfall and indecisive, sometimes a "vessel of emotion," which Hardy attributes to the "slight incautiousness of character inherited from her race" (p. 89), Tess is angry at his advances "a sometimes", content "sometimes there is at least a temporary". and partial acquiescence: "Tess eats in a half-satisfied and half-reluctant state whatever Uberville offers her" (p. 36). This indecision and hesitation uselessly prolong the relationship. Furthermore, there is the same duality in how Tess treats her child, varying between a "grim indifference that was almost antipathy" and a "passion strangely combined with contempt". Tess prolongs the setting of the wedding date, unable to end the affair, but tormented by guilt over the episode with Alec. In "Tess' Lament," Tess says, "And I was the one who did it all, who did it all; I was the one who dropped the shot." It is this internal conflict that drives her to confess her past to Angel and her simultaneous fear of rejection that leads to their separation. In two episodes, Tess has ample opportunity to tell Angel, but she can't. His first excuse is boring. Pushed into subterfuge, she stammered, "Your father is a parish priest and your mother wouldn't want you to marry like me." She will want you to marry a lady" (p. 168). The second excuse reveals his Uberville heritage, but nothing else. "She didn't say that. At the last moment her courage had failed her, she feared her guilt for not having told him before; and his instinct for self-preservation was stronger than his candor" (p. 186). He lies once and that is enough. When Tess writes Angel a confessional letter, circumstances prevent him from receiving it, but he knows there is still time to tell him. She makes it easy for herself by catching him at a time when he naturally urges to postpone the confession. Tess understandably fails to tell Angel is a painfully difficult choice to make but it will result in misery and violence in her poem "The flirt and after" with "Of two sinners In the end one pays the penalty The woman, women always do!" In true Hamlet form, Hardy raises another question of illusion vs reality. Not only the characters are affected outside world, their hopes, dreams and ideas lead to misjudgments and misunderstandings. Tess increases her own suffering by elevating Angel to the realm of a god. "She loved him so passionately, and he was so divine in her eyes; and being, although inexperienced,instinctively refined, her nature required his tutelary guidance (p. 178). Indeed, Angel's tragic flaw is his hypocrisy, yet Tess doesn't look at all the facts. "He was all that was good that could be known, all that a guide, a philosopher and a friend should know. He thought that every contour line of his person was the perfection of male beauty, his soul the soul of a saint , his intellect that of a seer as if he saw something immortal before him" (p. 189) Likewise, Angel's love is not so emotionally passionate as it is spiritual (his name), calling Tess Artemis and Demeter . "[Angel] could love desperately, but with a love particularly inclined towards the imaginative and ethereal." Angel falls in love with the thought of Tess, but he doesn't love her as a whole person. Hardy is anti-modern and, although Nature is cruel, it provokes our emotions, unlike the deadly influence of machines. The machines in the field are described as dehumanizing, with powerful images of hell. “The isolation of his manner and color gave him [the Machinist] the appearance of a creature of Tophet (hell) who served fire and smoke in the service of his Plutonic master.” (p. 319). Machines drain life, deaden emotions and isolate people from each other, unlike Nature, which can certainly be described as vibrant and ever-evolving. Hardy, furthermore, uses irony to describe "the process, jokingly designated by statisticians as 'the tendency of the rural population towards large cities,' being in reality the tendency of water to flow uphill when forced by machinery" (p . 346). In The Milkmaid, Hardy uses the train as a symbol of industrialism. “It is that train that passes, / whose alien hum offends the ears of its country, the trains screech until they tear their ears.” But in "The Mother Mourns" Hardy personifies Mother Nature, asking why she gave the power to man to pursue his crazy creations. “For I have loosened my ancient control here / To mechanize heavenward deems its soul-shell inept – / My most artful achievement – ​​/ Condemns me for fitful inventions / Untimely and senseless” Both Angel and Alec have “feelings that could almost have been called those of the era, the pain of modernism, the advanced ideas are actually largely but the latest fashion in defining a more accurate expression, with words ending in logia and ism, of sensations that men and women have vaguely grasped for centuries" (p. 123). This "pain of modernism" separates Angel's reason from his emotions and explains his hypocrisy. Angel himself feels free from social barriers and stupidity "He has spent years and years in discontinuous studies, undertakings and meditations; he has begun to show a remarkable indifference towards social forms and observances. The material distinctions of rank and wealth have increasingly despised" (p. 115) Yet, after Tess forgives him for the same crime, he cries out in revulsion: "O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one person now; can forgiveness meet such grotesque prestidigitation as that!" (p. 224) Suddenly, his mind blocks his emotions (because, in fact, he still loves Tess) and represses them until it is too late. "there lay hidden a hard deposit of logic, like a vein of metal in soft loam, had blocked his acceptance of the Church; it had blocked his acceptance of Tess (p. 237). "For all his attempted independence of judgment this progress and well-intentioned young man, an exemplary product of the last twenty-five years, was still the slave of custom and convention when, surprised again in his early teachings in considering what Tess was not, he neglected!"