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“I Am the Family Face”: Darwinism, Heredity, and Atavism in Thomas Hardy’s Novels
QI Jun-jie
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2019.08.003
Department of Etudes Anglaises, University of Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, Paris, France
19th-century scientific breakthroughs and developments exerted huge influence upon Thomas Hardy’s literary work, among which Darwinian discourses as well as issues of heredity and degeneration have attracted considerable critical attention. These scientific discourses can find their literary echoes in Hardy’s novels. Hardy’s characters are trapped by biological determinism and are therefore deprived of freewill, a devastating element which contributes to Hardy’s tragic vision. In Hardy’s early novels, Darwinism and other scientific issues are dealt with in a discursive manner, as is the case in A Pair of Blue Eyes; it is only in his late novels, especially in Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, that Hardy finally succeeds in incorporating Darwinian and hereditary discourses into his literary and philosophical conception and design. Thus to use a Darwinian term, this paper investigates the evolutionary process in which Hardy grows gradually adept in his artistic attempt to fuse the contemporary scientific discourses with his literary imagination, as well as in using scientific issues to mediate between authorial intention and critical expectation.
Darwinism, heredity, pedigree, atavism, pathology
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