Tragic Richness in the Major Novels of Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy is a poet, short story writer and novelist of eminence. He has freely adopted ideas from classical drama, Christian tragic element and Shakespearean tragedy and framed his own tragic pattern. He has explored the depth of silent sorrow and suffering in all his great tragedies. His heroes and heroines are all star-crossed souls, struggling against the powerful cosmic forces. Henchard, Giles Winterborne, Clym, Eustacia Vye, Tess, Jude, Sue and the other characters of Hardy meet with an end that is tragic or miserable. For them, happiness is an interlude in the general drama of pain. It is seen that the wrong choices and temperamental differences led to tragic gloom in love and marriage. The elements of chance, fate or coincidence also play a vital role in creating tragedy. To him, life is a struggle between man and impersonal forces and life is a fruitless effort of man. This tragic content in his major novels, which is considered as an important aspect of his novels by many critics, has been investigated and explored from a critical perspective in the present article.