Thomas Hardy  Victorian

Info

- mission to disillusion the world (Horton 656)

- Anglican => agnostic (656)

- pessimistic novels and poems show eroding effect of Victorian rationalism on religious faith (656)

Works

- Far from the Madding Crowd - first successful novel

- The Return of the Native

- The Mayor of Casterbridge

- Tess of the D'Urbervilles

- Jude the Obscure

- "The Darkling Thrush" - lingering pain of rejecting Christianity

- "The Respectable Burgher" - identifies major cause of his religious unbelief and indifference: skepticism within the church

- The Three Strangers - belief in blind circumstance and conviction of higher morality of the natural conscience than of institutional law (656-659)

Citation

Horton, Ronald A. British Literature for Christian Schools. Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 1992.