An Ecocritical Reading of Thomas Hardys Tess of Durbervilles, Jude the Obscure, and The Mayor of Casterbridge

Reading Hardy’s novels with an eye to nature and its impact on the characters and incidents can be an illuminating process by which the reader’s appreciation of the work would increase. His novels provide a special opportunity for exploring the nature’s influence on human beings. The subject matter might be of interest to those inspecting the psychology of Hardy’s imaginary world of Wessex which is delineated in his works. The purpose of this study is to shed light from a new perspective to Hardy’s novels in order to elucidate the affect of physical and social nature on the destiny and psychology of the characters. For this end, the researcher has used different critical source materials to back up her own reading of Jude the Obscure, Tess of the dUrbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge for exploring the role of nature in shaping human nature, class and gender. Hardy’s strong belief in nature having the upper hand over the lives of the people is detected to be responsible for his well-known pessimism which drives most of his protagonists to their ultimate doom. The close examination of the novels indicated that natural world, i.e. external phenomenon, is beyond the characters’ control and shapes their destiny, leading them to their gloomy and tragic ending.