Study On The Thought Of Meliorism In Hardy’s “Novels Of Character And Environment”

Thomas Hardy was a great novelist in Victorian era. He was named “Shakespeare in the field of novels” by critics for his creating many distinguished works. Hardy has ever experienced the turn of century, and felt the pessimism of that time clearly with a knee insight and time perception, so he was more of a pessimist in many readers’ eyes. However, influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution and the philosophy of Hartman and Schopenhauer, the compassionate Hardy thought there must be many tragedies during the development of society, but the general trend in development was sound. Only those that were able to adapt to the living environment actively could continue to survive in the tide of evolution.Hardy’s literary thought was mainly involved in “character and environment novels” which concluded his most important novels. The tragedies, the struggle of heroes and heroines and people’s looking forward to a better future in these novels all reflected the meliorism idea of the author.The introduction part mainly talked about the background and value of the thesis, summarized the domestic and foreign researches on Hardy’s novels, and briefly introduced the research contents and methods.Chapter one mainly analyzed the formation of Hardy’s meliorism and its connotation. The evolutionary theory of Darwin and Spenser, Schopenhauer’s and Hartman’s thought of “Immanent Will” laid the foundation for Hardy’s meliorism. Except this, the author’s abundant and different experiences also played very important roles in the formation of his literary idea. As Hardy said, his literary thought was not a single unified theory, but a combination of many elements. The connotation of his meliorism could be summarized as: tragedy was its prelude; survival of the fittest was its rule; social improvement was its goal.Chapter two tried to explain the reflections of meliorism on the characters and their experiences in “character and environment novels”. For Hardy’s meliorism was on the basis of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and Schopenhauer ’ s “Immanent Will”, the analysis in this part focused on natural selection and immanent will and the generalized theory of evolution. The idea of natural selection mainly involved two aspects: survival of the fittest and elimination of the inferior. The willpower thought was reflected in the restriction of collective will to individual will. However, Hardy’s thought on willpower had its positive meaning and he still advocated living for future.Chapter three talked about Hardy’s exploration of the way to realize social improvement. Thomas Hardy was an advocator of meliorism. In his view, the society would get to a higher level, and he also listed three conditions for realizing social improvement: facing tragedies and difficulties in a proper version, striking out of oneself, getting inspiration from some kind of faith. Therefore, this part introduced Hardy’s way to realize social improvement from these conditions. And what people should do was: firstly, exposing the ugly; secondly, being a self-made man; thirdly, getting enlightens and instructions.The conclusion part summarized the dissertation. Hardy thought of human beings and society in his whole life. In his opinion, tragedies were inevitable but impermanent, and what people should do was adapting the environment actively for better development. He integrated his literary ideas into his novels, and tried his best to find out a way to realize the social improvement.