SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS ANGST IN SELECTED THOMAS HARDY’S POEMS

Hardy found that he could express his atheistic views more frankly in poetry than he could in the more popular forum of his novels.

(Barry Blitt, The New York Times 12)

Thomas Hardy was well known to be a novelist being the writer of popular novels such as: Jude the Obscure, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891). According to critics, these novels received negative responses from readers and perhaps, it is due to this that Hardy resorted to writing poems. Indeed, he triumphed as a novelist likewise as a poet.

Critics have over the years committed themselves to examining the works of Hardy and the movement of his life from a poet to a novelist and back to being a poet. Harvey Geoffrey posits that:

Hardy’s career as a poet is unique. After writing poetry in the 1860s, in the way that any young man with literary ambitions might, he established himself as a major Victorian novelist. When his novel-writing came to an end in 1895, he began a second career as a poet. The bulk of his poetry was thus produced between his fifty-fifth birthday and his death at the age of 87 (the exceptions are a number of poems first drafted in the 1860s: around sixty poems can be dated before 1890, including seven in this selection, though a number of other undated poems undoubtedly use early material).

Irvin is also quick to point out in Thomas Hardy that any “critic can, and often does, see all that is wrong with Hardy’s poetry but whatever it was that makes for his strange greatness is hard to describe”. In the same vein, Jean Brooks suggests in Thomas Hardy: The Poetic Structure, that because Hardy’s “place in literature has always been controversial, constant reassessment is essential to keep the balance between modern and historical perspective.” Virginia Woolf, a visitor to Max Gate, noted some of Hardy’s enduring power as a writer: “Thus it is no mere transcript of life at a certain time and place that Hardy has given us. It is a vision of the world and of man’s lot as they revealed themselves to a powerful imagination, a profound and poetic genius, a gentle and humane soul.” Indeed, we can then conclude that Hardy’s poems are ones which encapsulate the social and religious angst during the period it was written, the poems to be used in this essay include: “God’s Funeral”, “Nature Questioning”, “Drinking Song” and “God’s Forgotten”.

In the first poem under consideration in this essay, from its title we can sense the theme of religious angst: “God’s Funeral” which implies that God is dead and it is time for burial. Thus, this may not mean physical death but a metaphorical death of God in the mind of the people who lived during the Victorian period. According to Dave Nimesh,

Hardy’s relation to Christianity and its texts is a particularly intense one, typical of those late Victorians for whom the ‘death of God’ left a palpable absence — a God shaped hole — which could not simply be a matter of indifference. Poems like ‘The Respectable Burgher on the Higher Criticism’ (22), ‘God’s Funeral’, and the late ‘Drinking Song’ (l71) chronicle the depredations of rationalist criticism and Darwinian science on accepted belief, and reprise Hardy’s own loss of faith around 1865.(56, our emphasis).

In the same light, Adam Kirsch notes that:

Nevertheless, Hardy frequently conceived of and wrote about supernatural forces that control the universe, more through indifference or caprice than any firm will. Also, Hardy showed in his writing some degree of fascination with ghosts and spirits.(89)

In this poem, the persona narrates the existence of God and how God has been seen as the omnipotent God. For instance in stanza VII, the persona observes that:

Framing him jealous, fierce, at first

We gave him justice as the ages rolled

Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,

And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.

This is a typical description of the Christian God who in Exodus 20:5 portrayed himself as a jealous God. Hardy goes far by saying over the years, they have given him justice. This is to show that before the Victorian Period, the people have been so religious and they believe in spiritual things(this is common during the medieval period).

Furthermore, the persona points out that religion and the belief in God is trick and self deceit. Also, that imagination is what they believed in:

And, tricked by our own early dream

And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,

Our making soon our maker did we deem,

And what we had imagined we believed

Moreover, in the following stanza, the persona shows a turn around. In the sense that, he points out that ‘Till, in Time’s stayless stealthy swing/ Uncompromising rude reality”. This indeed, shows the turnaround from the dogmatic belief in religion. In the same stanza, he shows us that the religion is forced on them by the monarch. He points that: “Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning/Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be”. From the themes discussed above, we can see that indeed “God’s Funeral” is equivalent to the religious angst during this period.

In the second poem for this analysis, which is titled “Nature Questioning”, we see Thomas Hardy’s intrinsic and highly subjective relationship with nature. This causes him to look to the natural world as a mouthpiece for questions that challenged Victorian social and religious thinking. According to Ria Hope, the poem explores two themes.

The first being the strain that modernity places upon human relationships with nature and the second being the questions of consciousness and human purpose upon this planet that religion could not answer for Hardy. Hardy’s decision to use the voice of nature to explore these themes aims to provide him public, critical and even legal safety in an era which could have viewed this poem as blasphemous.

To drive home this point, Ian Hamilton observes that

when [nature] is at its harshest, bleakest, it’s apparently understood as having these aspects only because we ourselves are compelled to see it as such.’ Hardy’s ability to merge his speakers minds with the mind of the moving forces of nature is something we witness in ‘Nature’s Questioning’, creating a poignant poem foreshadowed with ‘Fornlorn Hope’(24)

In the poem “Nature’s Questioning”, the poem begins with the speaker looking out upon ‘Field, flock and lonely tree’ (2). This has to do nature. Also, Hardy makes an inclusion of personification. These once-silent objects are then personified as ‘children’ (4) with human expressions (5) and an emotional complex. Then, the characterisation of nature as a vulnerable child, scared to utter in the face of the human speaker, poses issues of morality for the reader about the social and religious angst during the Victorian Period:

And on them stirs, in lippings mere

(As if once clear in call,

But now scarce breathed at all) — — (9–11)

That Hardy chooses to bracket lines 10–11 which suggests an intimate and confidential aside meant only for the speaker and the reader, placing both as adult figures who do not want nature, the child, to overhear. The verbs ‘breathed’ (11) and ‘lippings’ (9) offer a raspy and whispered sense of spoken voice, implying that nature is a timid and vulnerable character when around the speaker. Such a strong human characterisation can pose risks to the order which man has taken with nature. On this note, Elisha Cohn comments that:

Hardy’s work reflects nineteenth-century uncertainty about whether animals’ consanguinity with humans, and, more broadly, the biological instability of the human species, should shape ethical thought.’Hardy’s use of anaphora, in which the word ‘or’ is repeated several times in stanzas five and six, reiterates natures adamant yet childlike curiosity. (53)

On the formal part, the poem is a relatively short poem consisting of seven quatrains. Each quatrain follows a regular ‘ABBA’ rhyme scheme, opening and closing each stanza with the same rhyme grants the poem a cyclical sense of rhythm. The second and third lines of each stanza are shorter than the first and fourth and are also indented from the surrounding lines. For instance in the first stanza:

When I look forth at dawning, pool,

Field, flock and lonely tree

all seem to look at me

Like chastened children sitting silent in a school; (2–4)

Of importance is the fact that the last lines of all the stanzas are longer than other lines in each stanza. Also, the poem is written in Iambic. That is a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable. In fact, throughout the poem, the capitalisation of specific nouns draws attention to and dramatizes the speaker’s frustration at God or a ‘Godhead’ (20)

Or come we of an Automation

Unconscious of our pains? . . .

Or are we live remains

Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye not gone

Indeed, Hardy makes nature the mouthpiece for the speaker’s anxieties for the future and unable to provide solace to nature, the reader is then separated from nature and even lead to feel guilty about the treatment of nature within the wider world. Also, the speaker seems to believe in a ‘Godhead’ (20), the speaker is unable to profess unrequited faith in this figure as ‘Earth’s old glooms and pains’ (27) cause him to lose his faith in God’s benevolence. Thus, we can see the reason Hardy most times, write about the religious and social angst of the Victorian period.

In addition is the third poem which is titled “Drinking Song”. Indeed, from the structure of the poem, we can see that it is a lyric poem composed basically like a song. We can see stanza and then chorus. The poem comes alive with a reference to Thales of Miletus:

Once on a time when thought began

Lived Thales: he

Was said to see

Vast truths that mortals seldom can;

It seems without

Indeed, it is a reference to the old classical age. The philosophers who did not believe in God but did wonders. Thales of Miletus is widely known for his postulation that is, water is the source of the earth. They propounded theories that outlived them and till today, their works still live. The poem also shows that: “But still we held, as Time flew by / And wit increased, and to buttress this, Hardy makes reference to Darwin’s Theory of evolution:

Next this strange message Darwin brings,
(Though saying his say
In a quiet way);
We all are one with creeping things;
And apes and men
Blood-brethren,
And likewise reptile forms with stings

This in fact shows the religious anxiety and the social angst during this period because it is the publication of Charles Darwin’s book that gave rise to the disbelief of some people in the myth of creation. Hence, the publication becomes the fight between creation and evolution theory. Whereas the former is about God and the latter by Darwin.

In addition to this, Hardy tries to prove some religious fact as baseless. For instance is the birth of Jesus Christ by Virgin Mary. He points out in this poem that when the philosophy of Darwin which created a discrepancy in the religious setting, then another challenge came:

And when this philosoph had done
Came Doctor Cheyne:
Speaking plain he
Proved no virgin bore a son.
“ Such tale, indeed,
Helps not our creed,”
He said. “ A tale long known to none.”

The claim of this doctor challenge the Christian mythology that Jesus, the saviour of the world as he is called by the Christians was born miraculously by a virgin Mary. However, according to the law of medicine no virgin can give birth. Indeed, these claims suffice during the Victorian period.

The last poem to be considered in this essay is “God’s Forgotten”. From the title of the poem, we can get a clue that the poem has theme of religious and social angst. On this note therefore, it is important to reiterate the point that Hardy was an agnostic who believes in nothing can be known about God except material things. In this poem, Hardy seems to make a kind of interview between him and “the Lord Most High” as he is being send by the sons of Earth, to win/some answer to their cry.” The interview in this poem reveals the forgetting of God to His creation of the earth and human beings: “The earth , sayest thou?the Human race?/ By me created? Sad its lot? /Nay: I have no remembrance of such place/: Such world I fashioned not.”-(5–8).

Indeed, this poem shows the anxiety in the religious as well as the social affair of the period. Hence, Hardy in this poem mirrors the society he lived.

CONCLUSION

What we have done in this essay is to examine the social and religious angst during the late Victorian period using four of Thomas Hardy’s poems namely “God’s Funeral”, Natural Questioning “Drinking Song” and “God’s Forgotten”. Indeed, literature is a mirror of the society; it therefore comes as no surprise that Hardy in these poems portray the social and religious angst during the late Victorian period. What is important to note in this essay is that the Victorian period birthed and witnessed numerous events which led to the declining in the religion and societal morality.

WORKS CITED

Abrams, M. Howard. A Glossary of literary terms, Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth, 2005.

Aronowitz, B. et al. English Literature with World Masterpieces. USA: Glencoe/McGraw-Hil Educational Division, 1884. Print

Cohn, Elisha, ‘No insignificant creature’: Thomas Hardy’s Ethical Turn (2010), <http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1525/ncl.2010.64.4.494.pdf> [accessed 3 March 2017]

Coosse, Edmund. “Mr. Hardy’s Lyrical poems.” In Thomas Hardy: the Critical Heritage. R.G.Cox(ed.)London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970

Hamilton, Ian, ed., The Oxford companion to twentieth-century poetry in English (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)

Hardy, Thomas. The Complete Poems. Ed. James Gibson. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Harvey, Geoffrey. The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy. London: Routledge, 2003.

https://www.academia.edu/11659383/Poetry_as_Pagan_Pilgrimage_the_Animative_Impulse_of_Thomas_Hardy_s_Verse accessed on 14/09/18

Paulin, Tom. Thomas Hardy: The Poetry of Perception. Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975.