Both Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Rebecca are texts in which social class proves to be a factor in the relationships between lovers. Tess is born into a low class poor family, which significantly alters the outcome of events in her life....

Hardy’s novels are grounded in a realist portrayal of a society defined by constant advancement. The preceding Enlightenment era developed a sense of shedding traditional values in pursuit of intellectual evolution, and this only accelerated into...

In Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, past events in Tess’s life affect how she views herself and her world, Hardy uses motifs and foreshadowing to express how one’s life is merely a product of fate. Therefore Tess’s experiences are...

The theme of ‘otherness’ is prominent throughout the opening chapters of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Otherness can be interpreted as the exclusion of one party or the act of being dissimilar. This being the case, the opposite to this would...

Throughout the Victorian era people began to question societal norms. This time period is well known for its patriarchal society and the oppression of women through political, economic, social, and religious constructs. However, the role and...

Many religious traditions teach that the world is fallen or corrupt, affected at every turn by man’s sin. However, psychological research shows that people tend to believe that the world is a just place, where people get what they deserve....

Both James Joyce's Eveline and Thomas Hardy's The Son's Veto express the negative effects that service has upon an individual's life. While Joyce uses an intimate obligation, a promise to a dying mother, Hardy's story addresses a wider cultural...

The short story, “The Withered Arm” explores the role of women in society, their submission to men as well as their independence while at all times retaining an understanding of their struggles. The author, Thomas Hardy reflects on the view of...

Through the consistent allusion to fairy tales throughout both The Necklace and The Son’s Veto, de Maupassant and Hardy are able to present the vulnerability and suffering of the characters in an instantly recognisable template, portraying the...

‘A Wife in London’ is an anti-war whereby war is portrayed in an unflattering light. Hardy narrates the death of a soldier who fought in the African Boer War and conveys the devastating consequences this has on the soldier’s family. As such, Hardy...

In the poetry of Thomas Hardy, one can note that the poet conveys a deep sense of sadness. Throughout his poetry, the Going, for instance, Hardy makes use of authorial methods in order to heighten the tragedy, and thus, allow his poems to convey a...

John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” and Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush,” though written nearly a century apart, share many poetic elements that allow readers to effectively draw a surface parallel between the two poems. Though both of these...

Psalm 142, verse 2: “No man cared...” This Biblical verse applies perfectly to “In Tenbris”, a poem written out of despair for the society Hardy in which lived. He expresses his pity and contempt for the materialist citizens and power hungry...

Thomas Hardy wrote “The Shadow on the Stone” after his wife’s death, and the ghost he mentions is his wife’s. The poem focuses on the realities of time and death. The poet’s feelings are complex, which is reflected in the complex rhyme scheme of...

The question of fate is one that has been posed by human beings throughout the ages. Are our lives determined by that which is “bound” to happen, or is it simply by random chance? Thomas Hardy addresses this question in his poem “Hap,” which...

'In my memory / Again and again I see it strangely dark / And vacant of a life but just withdrawn.’

Edward Thomas’s The Chalk Pit suggests a number of ways of considering the correlation between memory and writing. The line is at once visually...

"At an Inn" is a poem written by Thomas Hardy, a composition showcasing Hardy’s longing for another woman who is not his wife, Florence. In this work, Hardy focuses on the misinterpretations of the nature of the two’s relationship from strangers...

The breakdown of a relationship is presented in many ways throughout both ‘Neutral Tones’ by Thomas Hardy and ‘Modern Love’ by George Meredith. For example, they both explore themes of memory, and loss (of love). I will be exploring and comparing...

The poems under study are Neutral Tones ("NT") and I Look Into My Glass ("Glass"). Both poems focus on loss of a different kind: "Glass" expresses the loss of Hardy's youth; "NT" focuses on the death of Hardy's estranged wife, it grieves the loss...

Thomas Gray and Thomas Hardy both explore the treatment of loss in their poems ‘Sonnet on the Death of Mr. Richard West’, ‘Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes’, and ‘The Voice’. Each of these works provide a...

The conflict between humanity and the natural world is one that spans back into an ancient past, perhaps beginning with the myth of Prometheus - punished for granting the gift of fire to mankind. Due to this, it is unsurprising that both modernist...

The poetry of the Victorian novelist Thomas Hardy contains some progressive ideals which challenge negative stereotypes associated with women in the Victorian era; notable here are poems such as ‘A Sunday Morning Tragedy’ and ‘The Newcomer’s Wife’...

Victorian poet Thomas Hardy- having immensely enjoyed a childhood in the idyllic county of Dorset- was a stoic believer in the transformative power of nature which is explored through settings in both ‘Drummer Hodge’, and ‘Afterwards’ as nature is...

In the lyric poem Neutral Tones by Thomas Hardy, the speaker reflects back to a particular moment in their life when they realised that the love had died between them and the person they were in a relationship with. They consider what this moment...