Tess of the DUrbervilles

             Thomas Hardy was considered a fatalist. Fatalism is a view of life which insists that all action everywhere is controlled by nature of things or by a power superior to things. It grants the existence of Fate, a great impersonal, primitive force, existing from all eternity, absolutely independent of human wills, superior even to any god whom humanity may have invented. The power of Fate is embracing and is more difficult to understand than the gods themselves.
             The scientific parallel of fatalism is determinism. It acknowledges, just as fatalism, that man's struggle against the Will behind things, is of no avail, but does decree that the laws of cause and effect must not suspend operation. Determinism seeks to explain conditions which fatalism is content to describe. The use of fatalism for furthering the plot was a technique used by many Victorian authors, but with Thomas Hardy it became something more than a mere device. Due to his fatalistic outlook of life, Hardy presents the character of Tess as having a variety of forces working against her efforts to control her destiny. Fate approaches Tess in a great variety of forms. Fate is present through chance and coincidence, and the manisfestations of nature, time, and woman.
             The fundamental basis of Thomas Hardy's fatalism is seen embodied in his youthful actions and the very first works he wrote, and there is evidently a gradual development up to the day of his death. He had a fatalistic outlook throughout his whole life. In fact, even his birth seemed to be caused by a mere twist of fate. When Hardy was born, the attending surgeon pronounced him dead. He was thrown aside until Fate stepped in and summoned a nurse to realize that Hardy was in fact alive. Probably stemming from this, never in Hardy's whole life did he look upon existence as being much worth while. He felt that his stoically born life was a record of unhappiness. He believed that F...

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Tess of the DUrbervilles. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 21:48, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/42242.html