Impact Of Social Realism In Tess Of The D Urbervilles

A Reflection of Victorian Social Realities in Thomas Hardy’s works: A Study of Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure
Ankita Chahal Lecturer (School cadre)
G.S.S.S. Kundli
Sonipat (Haryana)

Abstract: Literature is an expression of the personality of the writer and that personality is formed and moulded by the times in which he lives. The age in which Thomas Hardy lived and wrote was clearly marked by the great stress and movements in the social and cultural history of England. Hardy has highlighted the major social aspects of Victorian society, which was under the impact of science and an age of transition. His two novels Jude the Obscure (1895) and Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) under our consideration are masterpieces where

To quote Rutland, “The period of Hardy’s mental development came at a time of intellectual upheaval.”(45) Though Hardy was born in the beginning of the Victorian era, by the time he matured and created, Victorianism had broken down and was already being questioned and was yielding place to modernism. This spirit of questioning, this intellectual unrest, is everywhere reflected in the works of Hardy. Almost all the writers of the age show in their creative activity a keen awareness of their social environment and Hardy is no exception. His views were fashioned not only by the movements, revolutions and changes that took place in the nineteenth century but also by his reading of contemporary and ancient literature of his own country as well as of the other countries. The early Victorian era is characterized by an attitude of self-sufficiency and self-complacency because of the great prosperity of the English people during the 19th century. The nation was prospering and growing richer day by day. The emphasis was on faith. The Victorians had certain patterns of morality and decency, which they never dared to challenge. They even followed some old traditions of thought and faith blindly without ever caring to question them. But this sort of attitude prevailed only during the early part of the 19th century whereas during the