The Application Of Ecocriticism To The Analysis Of Crisis Consciousness In Thomas Hardy’s Novels

Thomas Hardy, the distinguished writer in the Victorian period of England, has been honored as "Shakespeare in the English Literature". His Wessex novels show his keen insight into the society and his strong accusation for the traditional concept as well as the wicked society. With high sense of responsibility, he not only criticizes the natural crisis, social crisis and spiritual crisis which respectively displays the tension between human and nature, people’s plight in social life and confusion in ideology, but also shows his harmonious ecological consciousness. He appeals that mankind should learn to go into nature and get along harmoniously with nature. After close reading of The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the representative works created in the different periods of his novel writing, the author intend to utilize the theory of ecocriticism to explore crisis consciousness shared in the three novels from a new standpoint.This thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter is the introduction of Thomas Hardy, his ecological thoughts and the theory of ecocriticism. In the second chapter, it is a brief review of the previous studies on Hardy’s novels and presents the central argument of this thesis.In the third chapter, the author explores the crisis consciousness in the three novels. The first part analyzes Hardy’s natural ecological view embodied in three novels. In the seventy years of Hardy’s writing career, he describes the magnificent natural world and thinks deeply of the relationship between man and nature. In his eyes, mankind is the child of nature and cannot be isolated from nature, which reveals that he has a deep love and unique understanding of nature. With the development of industrial revolution, the harmonious relationship between human and nature did not exist anymore. Influenced by anthropocentrism, human attempts to transform and dominate nature. However, once the original harmony is destroyed, the relationship between human and nature is alienated and crisis is coming afterwards. In the second and third part of this chapter, this thesis explores Hardy’s acute insight of social ecology and spiritual ecology embodied in the three works. According to the principles of Deep Ecology, richness and diversity of life forms contributes to the realization of these values and also values in themselves and therefore human beings have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs. With realistic approach, Hardy exposes that the harmonious survival condition is destroyed when agricultural machinery is introduced to the northern rural area of England. Industrial civilization not only destroys the harmony of nature, but also ruins humanity and causes painful split of spirit and flesh. The interpersonal relationship of the whole society is unprecedentedly distorted and social ecology becomes morbid. Meanwhile, with the changes of ideology and lifestyle, people have experienced spiritual losses and struggled to survive.Chapter Four is the conclusion that analyzes Hardy’s solutions to natural ecological crisis, social ecological crisis and spiritual ecological crisis. Hardy advocates that man should keep a close and harmonious relationship with nature, which is the effective way to heal crisis. In this part, the author summarizes ecocritism study of the three novels of Hardy, and also presents the value of my study.