Searching For Hardy's Religious Thoughts From The Characters In His Main Novels

Thomas Hardy is a very important writer who had been living in two centuries. Therefore, there are many studies about him and his works. Among them, the study on Hardy's thoughts and on the relationship between these thoughts and Christianity is an important view point. There is a view that Hardy's thoughts are biased on the favor of the idea of evolution and humanism, and are incompatible with the Christian spirit. Their main arguments are based on "The Dance Under the Greenwood" (1872), "Far From the Maddening Crowd" (1874), "The Return of the Native" (1878), "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (1886) ,"Tess of the D'Urbervilles "(1891)and " Jude the Obscure "(1895), which show the suspect of God, the criticism of the church's dogma and so on. In fact, this is the one-sided interpretation of the Hardy's works. In this paper, the characters in Hardy's main novels will be analyzed so as to study the development process about his religious thoughts and general social thoughts, and then to obtain my own thoughts about Hardy's works and his religious thoughts.The research method is, first of all, finding out the meaning of early Christian, Protestant and humanism, and then searching for the changes and their coincidencement. Early Christian emphasized the devout belief from deep heart, agreed with the rational awareness and freedom, made judgment according to motives, promoted love and forgiveness, and asked people to exercise restraint life. Thus, the common points of the early Christian spirit and the humanism are love, collectivism, equality, sacrifice, responsibility, rational awareness and freedom.Secondly, this paper will analyze the main characters in Hardy'six novels and this is the main part of this paper. The starting point of this study is to analyze what religious thoughts has been showed on the characters.Finally, this paper will analyze the conscience background of Hardy's life and novels, to explore the reason why the religious thoughts are formed and the development process. In the late 19th century, God has become the incarnation of love and fairness of the bourgeois. The relationship between God and people has also changed. The Christian belief has changed from external force into a personal inner spirit. Under this premise, Hardy gave up the belief in God in form. After finding out the bad consequences of humanism and liberalism, Hardy gradually built up a unique thought based on Christianity and humanism.The conclusion is, on the one hand, Hardy attacked the Christian church for the misinterpreting the spirit of the early Christian, and exposed the dirty work of killing and injuring people. On the other hand, Hardy praised the spirit of early Christian. From the angle of humanity, Hardy praised desire and rational awareness, but he thought that the desire should be restrained by the spirit of early Christian, such as love, sacrifice and responsibility. From the angle of guidelines of God, Hardy disseminated the love and rescue from God, and tried to find a way of hope for the human beings.