Nature in Minor Novels of Thomas Hardy

Abstract

Hardy combines the most observant eye for minute and humble details in ordinary landscape. There is no book of Hardy that does not abound in nature pictures, some delicately sketched, some composed of broad masses of colour, but all carefully observed by a consummate artist. But their Chief quality lies in their relation to human destinies. Nature and man are constantly engaged in expressing the same thought. Hardy shows in places a wonderful, even uncanny knowledge of the signs and symptoms of Nature. Hardy’s vision of Nature dominates his scene. Nature was to him a symbol of those impersonal forces of Fate with whom he shows mankind as being in conflict.