Contents:
Thomas hardy is to be studied in the context of the Victorian period which shaped his personality and thoughts reflected in his works. Literature is an expression of the personality of the writer, and this personality is moulded by the age in which he lives and writes. This is applied in the case of Thomas hardy who is a Victorian writer and a modern one.
The main body of Thomas Hardy’s fiction belongs to the late Victorian era, when Victorianism was already being challenged by modernism and the intellectual unrest reflected in his works. The Victorian age was a complex one. Burgess points out that this age is a periods of immense literary activity and that it is one of the most difficult period to write about.(180). It revealed a substantial number of contradictory values of faith and doubt, morality and hypocrisy, prosperity and poverty, splendor and squalor, idealism and materialism, progress and decline. A.C Ward thinks the age was “advanced in intellect “,but “immature in emotion”(632).
Victorian period witnessed important developments both in science and democracy. Rapid development of physical science in the Victorian age transformed the material environment of the people both directly as well as indirectly and made itself felt in the literature of the age. Darwin’s Origin of Species and Survival of the Fittest had a great impact on man’s outlook upon life and all intellectual activities. Questions concerning moral and intellectual matters, which had been settled for centuries, were brought into discussion.
The Victorians pretended to be extremely pious and moral; they talked about noble sentiments and lived quite otherwise. They turned a blind eye to the ugly side of life , pretending its nonexistence. Houghton believes that “conformity, moral pretension and evasion – those are the hallmarks of Victorian hypocrisy” (394-395). A look at the thought of the age in which Hardy came to maturity is of great help to our understanding of his novels. Hardy was profoundly affected by the crisis in English intellectual life. When Hardy was twenty years old, Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and a volume entitled Essays and Reviews appeared in print. William Rutland declares ,”It is hardly too much to say that these two books shook England to its centre”(129).
Hardy read the book which impressed him when was seriously considering ordination. He was very much interested in the Bible and in the church, an interest which continued throughout his life. The special significance of Essays and Reviews is that it attacks the stupidity of conventional orthodoxy , and exposes the folly of giving an unreasonable importance to single words which sometimes have doubtful meanings in reference to subjects such as divorce, marriage with a wife’s sister, Divine Rights of kings and Original Sin. The influence of this book is very clear in Hardy’s Jude the Obscure . Sue in Jude is self-educated , radical and skeptical and has different ideas on religion, art and Biblical interpretation. She is a liberated thinker, neopagan. To achieve her personal emancipation, she retains her sexuality. She assert , “ I crave to get back to the life of my infancy and its freedom.” Kathleen Blake says that Sue intends to remain a child , a virgin, so that she can emancipate herself from the misfortune of being born a woman and gain some control over her life . According to Blake, the reason why the independent Sue does so is that she wishes to escape the fate of the Victorian woman, who through matrimony suffered a terrible tyranny at the hands of men.
The fact that Victorian novelists including Hardy published their novels serially in magazines intensifies the force of the readers’ ideals upon their novels. Therefore, the literary men and especially the novelists of the age like Hardy, George Eliot and Charles Dickens were highly conscious of the severe Victorian moral standards and their direct dependence on the readers. Thus, they acted as rigid and strict creators and at the same time as merciless judges of their own characters. Victorian novelists were compelled not to hurt the feelings of their readers. .
Last but not least, the Victorian age is an age that represented a large number of contradictor values. It was full of social and political problems. It produced great philosophers, scientists, poets and great writers such as Dickens, Eliot and Hardy who are still worth reading today and who are still exerting a noticeable influence on modern writers. Burgess says, “It would seem that quite a number of Victorian writers, once regarded as great, are no longer read because they no longer have much to say to us”(178). Thomas hardy proved that he is still a modern writer, simply because we are in the twenty first century reading and doing seminars on one of his last greatest works, namely Jude the Obscure.
Burgess, Anthony English Literature. London :Longman Group Limited.1980.
Houghton, Walter E. The Victorian Frame of Mind . New Haven : Yale U.P.,1957
Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. London: Macmillan&Co.Ltd.,1951
Rutland. R.W. Thomas Hardy A Study of his Writings and their Background. New York: Russell and Russell Inc., 1962.
Ward. A. C. Twentieth-Century English Literature1951-1960. Bombay:B.1. Publication,1986
(prepared by Msallam Kombaz)
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Discuss in good English the reason(s) why the word(s) underlined should be used instead of the words in parentheses. Remember that your explanation should be error-free. Pay special attention to your use of grammar and vocabulary.
In this seminar, I am going to discuss the reason(s) why the word(s) underlined should be used instead of the word(s) in parentheses in a simple and logical way.
1. A: Would you please hand me a sharp knife?
B: Sure. Which (What) one do you want?
A: I'd like that one .Please.
In the first example, we used the word which instead of what because there are many types of knives in front of me and I have to choose one knife out of many. which is selective. e.g.: which of these boys will win the prize.?
2. Gold ( The gold ) is a precious metal.
In the second example, we omitted the definite article the before the word gold because we are talking about gold in general. When the reference of the is generic, it is deleted. e.g.: Dogs bark. (Dogs in general.)
3. The gold (Gold) in Sally's bracelet is 24 karats.
In the third example, we kept the definite article the before the material noun gold because it is post- modified (specified) by the prepositional phrase in Sally’s bracelet. Here the has a specific reference. e.g.: The dogs (of this area )are black.
4. Alfredo's English is getting better. He has learned (learned) a lot of English since he came here.
In the fourth example, the present perfect tense is to be used instead of the simple past, simply because the result of learning English is felt in the present. The use of since is an indicator of the present perfect.
5. Tom doesn't usually (usually doesn't) take the bus to school.
In the fifth example, the adverb of frequency usually comes between the subject and the verb . When the verb is in the negative form, we put it after the auxiliaries don’t and doesn’t .
6. Last night, I started to clean my house at 7:30. I finished at 9:00 . Peter came at 9:30. By the time Peter came , I had already cleaned (have already cleaned) my house.
In the sixth example, The past perfect tense is to be used because we have two actions that happened in the past: the act of coming and the act of finishing cleaning . The one which took place first (finishing cleaning) is to be in the past perfect and the second (the act of coming) is to be in the simple past. e.g. :
I had eaten a sandwich before I came here.
1 2
7. There is (are) a lot of information in an encyclopedia.
In the seventh example, the singular form of be is used instead of are because of the uncountable noun information. e.g. : Water is necessary. Your information is limited.
8. You shouldn't eat too much (many) sugar.
In the eighth example, much is used instead of many because of the word sugar, which is also an uncountable noun. Uncountables are preceded by much .e.g. much rice, much oil and so on.
9. A: Does San Diego have a ( ø ) zoo?
B: Yes. It's famous worldwide.
In the ninth example, the indefinite article a is used because the word zoo , which is a common countable noun. We normally say : a book, a zoo, a car…etc.
10. A: Who bought ( Who did buy) a new coat?
B: Jane. Jane bought a new coat.
In the tenth example who bought is used instead of who did you buy because who is the subject of the verb bought . It is not the object. This is the nominative use of who. e.g. : Who spoke? (nominative to the verb)
Prepared by : M. Msallam Kombaz.
References
Nestfield J.C & Wood F.T Manual of English Grammar & Composition .Wood and Macmillan & Co.Ltd 1964