Occasionally the determined fate of the individual is altered by chance, but the human will lose when it challenges necessity.
Novels of Ingenuity
Desperate Remedies (1871) The Hand of Ethelberta (1876) A Laodicean (1881) A Changed Man, The Waiting Supper and Other Tales (1913) (A collection of short stories and novelettes)
Romances and Fantasies
A Pairet Major (1880) Two on a Tower (1882) A Group of Noble Dames (1891) The Well-Beloved (1892-97)
The effects of the pressure of the new, urban, and industrial civilization on the old, rural, and agricultural life of rural England.
Determinism in Hardy’s Novels
Diggory Venn
Egdon Heath
The heath is the ultimate strong mind. Egdon Heath is much more than a place; it is a living being
responding to the whims of nature; it is a mood, casting a spell over all who know it. In the first chapter, Hardy established a somber, darkening mood. He is telling us this is to be a story of strong emotions, midnight calamities, mysterious events; a story of the heath country and how they are affected by this environment. Egdon Heath will have a powerful effect on the characters, moving them to love or hate, to depair or to resignation.