In Hardy’s Novel Fate appears in a great variety of focus - chance and
co-incidence, nature, time, and woman’. Discuss.
A Greek tragic vision of
fatalism looms large in all Hardy’s novels, especially the latter ones. In the
opinion of Bonamy Dobree, “there is no denying, nor any need to deny that the
thread of which the Wessex novels and poems are woven is a dark one of
pessimism.” Hardy perhaps believed in Sophocles’ famous saying that “chance
rolls our lives and future is all unknown.” Hence, David Cecil rightly says, “a
struggle between man on the one hand and on the other hand an omnipotent and
indifferent fate, shows Hardy’s interpretation of human situation.” In the
preface to his famous hovel ‘Tess’, Hardy himself quotes the famous saying of Gloucester
in Shakespeare’s King Lear:
“As
files to the wanton boys, are we to the gods
They kill us for mere sport.”
The
recognition of some other than human forces as operating on man’s affair,
controlling his action and baffling all his attempts to attain fulfillment of
his desire is stressed from the very beginning of Hardy’s novel ‘From the
Madding crowd’. In fact, in the novel, the malignant fate represents itself in
and through the cruel working of chance, co- incidence, natural phenomena, time
and conceited egotism of the fair sex, which in spite of all their trivialities,
have significant bearing on the course of action of the characters.
In the novel, we first find the
working of the malignant fate in Gabriel’s loss of two hundred sheeps. It is,
in fact, a complete unforeseen occurrence. Gabriel was hoping to become an
independent and prosperous shepherd-farmer. But, one night his younger dog
drives two hundred of his sheep over a hill, resulting his hopes of prosperity
being dashed to the ground. Such a joke is also played by the malignant fate to
Fanny’s life. Troy waits for funny in order to marry her at the All Saint
Church, while she, by mistake, goes to another Church called all souls. This
accidental failure mars not only the happiness of Fanny’s life, but the very
life of herself.
