Study On The "Drifting" Of The Character In Thomas Hardy's Novels

Thomas Hardy (1840--1928) is a famous British novelist and poet in the late nineteenth century and early 20th century. Thomas Hardy has wrote novels for about 30 years.14 novels and 4 short stories have been published all through his life.His novels are very famous , especially away from the Madding Crowd (1874), Return of the Native (1878), Casterbridge Mayor (1886), Tess (1891), Jude the Obscure (1895) and others that are called People and the Environment Novel , so that Hardy becomes a famous novelist in British and in the world.Hardy novels shape a variety of characters: farmers, workers, priests, farmers, soldiers, businessmen, etc, which live at the bottom of society often leave home in order to survive, go to the field for looking for a job and sell their labor force to live. At the same time, they generally read a lot of books through self-study, think advanced, able to recognize the problems of society, look forward freedom, equality and have a little rebellious spirit. However, at that time, institution of marriage, moral tradition, legal system, religious system and so on that can't accept their thought are not advanced enough in British. Usually,they endure phycical and mental torture when they are looking for residence and exploring the Spiritual Home of the human.Hardy uses superb narrative skill to descripte people's drifter. He uses a third-person omniscient narrator, places characters in the "other" status and gazes at every person, so that what the narrator knows is far more than what the figure knows. This increases aloness and artificiality of drifter.In addition, Hardy cleverly use Narrative Time and Space to add universality and immutability of characters wandering .The main body of drifter is civilians in Hardy's novels. From the professional point of view, most of them are farmers and workers that are live at the bottom of society; from the behavior point of view, their physiology and psychology are normal; additionlly, most of them only consider personal happiness.Describing the characters'drifter is important in Hardy's novel. From the Thomas Hardy's novel of view, describing people's drifter is conducive to reflect the real socioty truly and objectively , shape the character at the bottom of society and promote the development of novel plot. From the History of literature of view, Hardy inherits the tradition of descripting characters's drifter in Western literature; additionlly ,combined with various social, philosophical thoughts, Hardy pays more attention to the wandering mind. To some extent, his wroks have effect on the appearance of stream of consciousness Novel, Psychological Novel and so on.