You know when good literature is lost by when its very realism of chance is lost as well as the cold hard facts of life. The coincidences Thomas Hardy failed to use to save Tess in Tess of the D'Urbervilles makes it more realistic than Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, and Persuasion by Jane Austen. These other novels have the element of coincidence rippling through out themselves to such an extent that it looses the realism brought by chance, as well as the main point that Hardy was trying to portray; that life is a constant struggle. You see, when these elements are taken out of a novel, it becomes difficult to understand the absolute connection of our lives to Hardy's view of the universe.
             First and foremost, Tom Jones is full of coincidental elements. Tom is known to be quite the premisquious individual through out town. In fact he is such a 'player with no care' that he does in fact get caught by the one individual to whom he is trying to show his ultimate love for, Sophie Western. Sophie catches Tom three separate times with three separate women, most of which are not of Tom's best interests either.
             In the beginning of the novel, Tom is shown to be sleeping with Molly; and by the looks of it for quite some time. Sophie catches Tom sleeping with Molly in -0823-35-835-8123-8-2348-0148-03-. After many apologies were said from Tom, finally Tom is forgiven. Most readers would think after the effort that tom had to go through to get Sophie back that he would not repeat the same actions again, but old habits are hard to break.
             Tom is again found out by Sophie to be sleeping with another woman, this time an oddity far stretched by any means of chance and randomness. Tom is in bed with Mrs. Water, who is actually Jenny Jones, who is actually Tom's accused mother. Tom is caught at Upton Inn after Sophie goes out searching for him. Again, the novel portrays...