Nature as a mysterious force in the novel The Return of the Native

Abstract

Abstract

Thomas Hardy (2nd June 1840-11th Jan., 1928) holds a position of pre-eminence in the world of letters as a novelist, dramatist and poet and he is said to be the father of literature. He wrote fourteen novels, three volumes of short stories, and several poems. Hardy’s parents played a role of great importance in his life. His mother was the first to incite him with the idea that the universe was indifferent to man’s aspirations and that man stood alone in the face of circumstances. She played a part in making of him a learned and educated man. From her, he inherited a passion of reading. In his first year at school, she gifted him with Dryden’s translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, and a translation of St. Pierre’s sentimental “Paul and Virginia.” Also, Hardy inherited some habits from his father who used to carry a telescope with him wherever he went to take a sweeping view and point out landmarks. His father’s easy-going enjoyment, opposing the purpose‘­ful attitude of his mother, was something Hardy greatly admired. Both filled Hardy’s world with landscape and human dealing, the special blend that was to mark his poems and novels, so that place and emotion combine un‘­forgettably. Besides his parents, Hardy’s emotional relationships to the fair sex, tutors as Horace Moule, his religious background, philosophers and thinkers such as Arthur Schopenhauer, Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin, the scientific theories, the social problems, and the intellectual movement running in his age have helped to form his thought and shape his tragic view of life.