Symbolism in Thomas Hardy

Name: Patel Kavita B.

Symbolism in Thomas Hardy

Analyzing the lives of the protagonists in Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Tales and Novels, the questions arise in our mind that: Is their destiny shaped by a certain determinism lying in the environment? Do their decisions and feelings influence the natural surroundings by means of outward projection? If a mythical and archetypal reading will favour the assumption that the characters’ reactions depend upon the cycles of nature, a psychoanalytical interpretation will focus upon the assumption that natural descriptions are in fact nothing but a representation of the characters’ inner self.

Although apparently in contradiction, the two approaches reveal different faces of the same truth: in Hardy’s tales and novels, nature is not just a mere decorative location; it is profoundly and uniquely bound to the characters’ lives and destinies, sometimes becoming a character in the story.

        Throughout the novel Mayor of Casterbridge , his volatile temper forces him into ruthless competition with Farfrae that strips him of his pride and property, while his insecurities lead him to deceive the one person he learns to truly care about, Elizabeth-Jane. Henchard dies an unremarkable death, slinking off to a humble cottage in the woods, and he stipulates in his will that no one mourn or remember him. There will be no statues in the Casterbridge square, as one might imagine, marking his life and work. Yet Hardy insists that his hero is a worthy man. Henchard’s worth, then—that which makes him a “Man of Character”—lies in his determination to suffer and in his ability to endure great pain. He shoulders the burden of his own mistakes as he sells his family, mismanages his business, and bears the storm of an unlucky fate, especially when the furmity-woman confesses and Newson reappears. The importance of a solid reputation and character is rather obvious given Henchard’s situation, for Henchard has little else besides his name. He arrives in Casterbridge with nothing more than the implements of the hay-trusser’s trade, and though we never learn the circumstances of his ascent to civic leader, such a climb presumably depends upon the worth of one’s name. Throughout the course of the novel, Henchard attempts to earn, or to believe that he has earned his position. He is, however, plagued by a conviction of his own worthlessness, and he places himself in situations that can only result in failure. For instance, he indulges in petty jealousy of Farfrae, which leads to a drawn-out competition in which Henchard loses his position as mayor, his business, and the women he loves.

Hardy manages to create not a photograph of the landscape, but a certain mood of the characters, using different elements of nature: the night, the roads, the birds' songs, the beautiful colours of landscapes.

Here, Stonehenge, a collection of giant stones arranged in acicular form has special connotation for the novel, apart from its purpose to serve as an astrological calendar and a ceremonial place for religious or tribal worship. It draws Hardy's philosophy about the indifference of nature to suffering and it shows man's ephemeral character, civilization and human's vanity. But its main symbolism is that it represents death for the heroine who eventually accepts her 

Destiny, that of a heathen and her rejection by the Christian religion as a sinner. This Temple of the Winds implies the idea of primitive religion, worshipping nature while performing rituals, being older than the centuries. Its symbolic shape and its location in a landscape not disturbed by man, represents both solitude and death, the Stone of Sacrifice: 'vast upward structure, close in his front, rising sheer'.

Tess and Angel stop in Stonehenge after they have traveled a long way and need rest. The stones are still warm from the sun, radiating heat all during the cool night. Tess realizes that her mother's family is from the area, "One of my mother's people was a shepherd hereabouts, now I think of it. And you used to say at Talbothays that I was a heathen. So now I am at home." Angel recognizes that Tess is "lying on an altar" - like a sacrifice to the ancient pagans who used to practice there.

Another important element is nature, which contributes to the final scene: the coming of light is the coming of death, the winds die out, the stones are still and the scene is now ready for the sacrifice: the sky was dense with cloud, some fragment of a moon'.

The physical props are suggested by vegetation and stone. The turf, the grass help her finding her way along to an open loneliness and black solitude, that one could both 'see' and 'feel'. Then, the stone is an obstacle, an interdiction 'rising sheer from the grass'; this shows the eternity of nature versus the Man's ephemeral character, the time immemorial and rituals: Stonehenge. 
All in all, Tess's experience and nature elements present a very important connection, as they contribute to the solemnity and the tragedy of the moment when Tess is hanged. 

Henchard’s past proves no less indomitable. Indeed, he spends the entirety of the novel attempting to right the wrongs of long ago. He succeeds only in making more grievous mistakes, but he never fails to acknowledge that the past cannot be buried or denied. Only Lucetta is guilty of such folly. She dismisses her history with Henchard and the promises that she made to him in order to pursue Farfrae, a decision for which she pays with her reputation and, eventually, her life.

Following Hardy’s wish for universality, we have not restricted our analysis only to those tales and novels which the author has grouped under the heading “Novels of Character and Environment” since we consider the setting represents a vital element in all his literary pieces, the “Romances and Fantasies” and the “Novels of Ingenuity”. Far from being exhaustive, our analysis will focus on a double-layered interpretation of the role and functions of nature in Hardyan prose. On the one hand, we will highlight the mythical and archetypal significance of the relationship between man and nature and on the other hand, we will attempt to illustrate the idea that natural surroundings are designed to mirror the protagonists’ tormented lives. The description of the bitter wintry conditions under which the parish choir assembles no longer reminds us of an idealised pastoral landscape, but more likely of a realistic scenery. The characters’ symbolic names such as Dewy or Leaf add new elements to the analogy man-nature. As leaves in the wind, the protagonists lead an ephemeral life dependent on the cycles of nature. Not surprisingly, Under the Greenwood Tree consists of four parts, each of them entitled as one of the four seasons and describing seasonal episodes as a Christmas supper, a nutting or a honey-taking. In Far from the Madding Crowd, the cycle of seasons is easily traceable if we look at the references to the days celebrating saints: St. Thomas’s Day Purification Day White Monday Lady Day and White Tuesday On the same wavelength, Galea considers that in the first of Hardy’s great tragedies, The Return of the Native, “human experience is an echo of the cycles of nature”. The arrival of autumn is signalled by the Fifth of November bonfires; the role of the Ancient choir of the Greek tragedies is now played by the group of furze-cutters who gather on the heath or at the Silent Woman where they come with the intention of congratulating Wildeve and Thomasin on their assumed marriage which did not actually take place because of a lack of license or more likely because of Wildeve’s reluctance to marry her. Clym Yeobright is expected home for Christmas and his return is viewed as a sign of hope and rebirth, especially for Eustacia who deludes herself into believing that he is the man to take her away from the heath. The reconciliation and marriage of the two couples is possible only in spring since this season is associated with the prospect of a happy ending. Nevertheless, Clym’s determination to remain on the heath and the gradual weakening of his sight will purportedly lead to the inevitable outcome: the death of both Wildeve and Eustacia. The summer is the season of tragic revelations such as Eustacia’s disappointment with Clym and Mrs. Yeobright’s unexpected death on the last hot day of August. The next Fifth of November marks the ending of a tragic cycle, whereas the new spring comes with the Maypole Festivity and brings about Thomasin’s marriage to the faithful Diggory Venn. From a wider perspective, the four cycles of the natural world have been associated by Frye with four narrative patterns out of which the mythos of autumn and the mythos of winter seem to better define Hardy’s novels.

Many Hardyan characters become an embodiment of the tragic hero who has the potential of being superior anddreams of happiness, but will never achieve his goals due to the puzzling complexities of life entrapping him in a pre-determinism inscribed in the natural surroundings. As representatives of Mother Nature, the women in Hardy’s prose are indeed memorable tragic figures, victims of their illusions and of circumstances. Eustacia Vye in The Return of the Native and Tess Durbeyfield in Tess of the D’Urbervilles are perhaps the most powerful women characters ever created by Hardy Included by Giordano among Hardy’s “self-destructive” characters, the mysterious, dark-haired Eustacia Vye is a goddess of the night and of the magnificent Egdon Heath, which she paradoxically hates and rejects, hopelessly dreaming of the glamour of city life. Her irretrievable hybris is her indifference towards the cycles of nature, or the combination of pagan and Christian rituals dominating an ancestral mode of existence. Her hostility to the heath is irrational and foreshadows her damnation and ultimate death as she herself confesses to Wildeve: “Tiss my cross, my shame, and will be my death!”. If the seclusion of the heath leads Eustacia to desperate acts, the isolation and loneliness of the beautiful Vale of Blackmoor could be the reason for Tess’s innocence and her seduction. A microcosm of the world, Hardy’s Wessex is used in this novel to follow Tess in the different stages of her unhappy life. Sîrbulescu advises the potential readers of the novel to “be aware that Tess’s life begins and ends in spring, that she falls in love during the fecund summer months, and that she marries, ominously, in the dead of winter”. The summer richness of the Talbothay’s Farm where Tess meets Angel contrasts with the desolation of Flintcomb-Ash, the farm on which Tess got a job after Angel Clare’s departure. Forced to pay for the sin of a member of her ancient family who once killed a young woman, Tess’s efforts to improve her condition are doomed to failure from the beginning. Even if her gesture to kill Alec is in fact a necessary act to restore the natural order of things and an understandable act of revenge against the man who destroyed her life, Tess’s murder is still a fatal hybris which requires sacrifice and restoration. Rejected by the Christian church, Tess finds shelter in the “heathen temple” of Stonehenge, a symbol of eternal stability and equilibrium, “older than the centuries; older than the D’Urbervilles” (268). The remnant of a very old civilization which worshipped nature by bringing human sacrifices, Stonehenge suggests the insignificance of man in the face of nature and fate as well as the futility of his efforts to fight against Blind Destiny Like Antigone or Iphigenia, Tess disposes of her earthly assets and advises Alec to continue life by marrying her younger sister Liza-Lu and begetting children. Angel’s ritual marriage to his sister-in-law would symbolize his union with Tess, but in a purified, improved version of the world. Her depersonalization and resurrection in spirit is the normal consequence of the miserable life of “a pure woman, faithfully presented.”Similarly to Eustacia or Tess, the male protagonists in The Mayor of Casterbridge or Jude the Obscure are powerful figures engaged in a perpetual struggle with the cruel forces of the universe.

The Dyonisian myth is at the centre of Hardy’s novel The Mayor of Casterbridgesince Henchard’s drunkenness tempts him to commit the unforgettable sin of selling his wife Susan and his daughter Elisabeth-Jane to a sailor, Newson, for five guineas. When he is sober again, Henchard is seized by remorse and seeks redemption, making a twentyone-year vow to touch no drink. Settling at Casterbrifge, the hay-trusser initially proves that strong will and determination can change man’s fate. After eighteen years, Henchard becomes a highly respected grain merchant and mayor of the town of Casterbridge.                              

Similarly, the love story of Lady Viviette Constantine in Two on a Tower is the story of her quest for self-discovery, of her struggle between her “id,” the psychological reservoir of one’s instincts and most primitive urges and her “ego” or the conscious self. The former allures her to the younger Swithin St. Cleeve who experiences for her the Oedipus complex or the desire of every male child to sleep with his mother. The latter determines her to obey to the moral rules of society and finally give up Swithin and marry the older bishop. The setting is again a representation of her inner struggle. The Great House she lives in is surrounded by “darkness” and the lovers’ meetings can only take place under the cover of darkness. Reminding us of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, young Swithin asks Lady Constantine to imagine “your mind feeling its way through a heaven of total darkness”, in other words, freeing her unconscious desires or fears. From a psychoanalytical perspective, the symbolism of the setting is further enriched by the reference to the tower, a phallic symbol designating the place where Lady Constantine meets Swithin and secretly plans to marry him. The storm which breaks out when they decide to elope is again a symbol of the intensity of Viviette’s feelings: “a circular hurricane, exceeding in violence any that had preceded it, seized hold upon Rings-Hill Speer at that moment with the determination of a conscious agent”. Egdon Heath, the setting in The Return of the Native, is also a symbol of darkness. As Cohen notices, “Hardy presents human inwardness as materially contiguous with the external surface of the earth” . Hence if the heath is a dark, dangerous place for Eustacia Vye, for Thomasin there were no “demons in the air, and malice in every bush and bough”. The wildness of the powers of nature is once more an indication of the characters’ hesitations or torment. In the final scene of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Stonehenge becomes “a Very Temple of the Winds”, reflecting the characters’ rout and despair. The chromatic element enhances the dramatic atmosphere, gradually grasping the passage from darkness to dawn, in fact Tess’s awakening and the end of her inner quest. The coming of light is the coming of death for the unconscious.

No matter if we resort to a mythical and archetypal reading of the Hardyan prose or to a psychoanalytical interpretation, the analysis will prove a valuable source for the understanding of the symbolism of nature which acquires poetical representation especially throughout his novels. In spite of Hardy’s wish to see his Wessex as a universal setting, we cannot deny the high degree of local specificity, which asks for a deeper insight into the ancient embroidery of myths, archetypes and rituals. On too many occasions nature becomes a mirror of the characters’ inner self so we cannot overlook a possible psychoanalytical interpretation as well. To sum up, even if they ask new questions and set forth new arguments about the role and functions of setting, both approaches help us to reveal some of the reasons for Hardy’s characters’ intrinsic bind to nature.