THE CRISIS OF "FIN-DE-SIÈCLE" AS REFLECTED IN THOMAS HARDY'S "TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES"

Esteve Julian, Elvira
Herrero Granado, María Dolores (dir.)

Universidad de Zaragoza, FFYL, 2014
Filología Inglesa y Alemana department, Filología Inglesa area

Graduado en Estudios Ingleses

Abstract: The topic of the essay is the analysis of the late Victorian novel by Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The aim of the study is to show how this novel reflects the so-called "fin-de-siècle" crisis that took place in the last decades of the Victorian era and the beginning of the twentieth century. Thomas Hardy was a late Victorian writer, and could therefore be regarded as a transitional figure, because his long career straddled those two different centuries/ periods. The novel under analysis perfecly depicts the transition from an old rural world to a new industrial one. It is also Hardy's critique of the unfair and hypocritical society in which he lived, his attack against Victorian morality, and especially against the division of society into two separate spheres and the consequent double standard of morality that this entailed. The novel also reflects Hardy's fatalistic and pessimistic views about society's future, in keeping with Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy, and Hardy's attacks against the Church as a narrow-minded and unfair institution. It can therefore be concluded that Hardy was a transitional figure who wonderfully reflected all the changes that took place during his lifetime. Not in vain have critics often claimed that his writings wonderfully embody the battle between the old and the new; in a word, the "fin-de-siècle" crisis that was doing away with the old Victorian world, giving way to the uncertainty that modernity was to represent.

Tipo de Trabajo Académico: Trabajo Fin de Grado