Antidote To The Ache Of Modernism

Hardy criticism has in recent years set aside the questions of his depiction of Wessex and concentrated, instead, on other issues:his portrayal of women, his innovativeness in narrative forms, and his relation to Victorian popular fiction and scholarship. In spite of this, it is currently fashionable to draw geography and literary criticism together. There are some scholars interested in exploring the geographical and spatial value of Hardy's regional novels. Among Hardy's regional novels, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure obviously manifest geographical and spatial meaning. Thomas Hardy makes a keen and genuine description of the natural background, especially road in these two novels. And more importantly, road is closely connected to characters'fate, for, as Victorians, they are always nomads and quests on the road, because Hardy thinks that people has "ache of modernism" in disoriented Victorian world and antidote to it is turning to history in a spatial way. Road is mode of history and the site of characters'practiced place and space production. Hardy's characters'usage of road is the process of their turning to history for help to cure the ache of modernism. Therefore, by analyzing Hardy's recurrent and mythic road which his characters take to fulfill their dreams in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure from the perspective of spatial criticism, this thesis explores Hardy's concern about the problems of the Victorian Age and his antidote to the ache of modernism, which lies in spatially understanding the history. The analysis of spatiality relies on two major conceptions of space:Henri Lefebvre's emphasis on dynamic conceptualization of space and the triangulate production of space and Michel de Certeau's understanding of space as practiced place.Apart from introduction and conclusion, this paper consists of three chapters. Chapter one focuses on road in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. It mainly deals with the three kinds of usages of road by the three main characters. They are Tess's ritualized usage of road, Angel's aesthetic and Alec's exploitive usage of road. Their different usage of road ascribes to their different social class, gender and family background. Nevertheless, they are the same as a nomad. They use roads to fulfill their goals, which are fairly difficult to achieve in Victoria Period. So their roads go ever on and on.Chapter two concentrates on road in Jude the Obscure. Road in this novel does not only refer to the concrete meaning of road, it also means metaphoric road of their life. This chapter deals with Jude's road for academic and social advancements, Sue's road for Hellenistic spirit and Arabella's road for exploitive sensuality. It elaborates on the main characters'quests on the road. But the result of their quests is doomed to failure in Victoria Age. So their roads are not taken.Chapter three analyzes nomad and quest on the road in the two novels. Roads as practiced place, there are two kinds of practiced mobility on the road—nomad and quest. They represent two types of life state of Hardy's Victorians in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure respectively. Characters'mobility in Tess of the D'Urbervilles is a resistance against their respective fate. So their mobility on the road makes them live a nomadic life. And for characters in Jude the Obscure, their mobility is as a pursuit which makes them quest on the road. Hardy's Victorian characters and their settings anticipate the modern sense of alienation and dislocation. Be travelers, Hardy's characters are always on the road. Such a road in Hardy's novels embodies the focal point between a stable Victorian identity undergoing change and an unknown one in transition.