Graduate Program

English

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

2006

Thesis Director

Richard Sylvia

Thesis Committee Member

Dagni Bredesen

Thesis Committee Member

Christopher Hanlon

Abstract

Thomas Hardy creates in his fiction a world that demands love lead to failure. His hero and heroine are tragic nearly without exception, as if desire were not just a burden, but a catalyst for disaster. Perhaps this is due to the period in which Hardy was living, and his need to reconcile his memories of an idyllic past with the dramatic social and econonomic changes contemporary to his period of novel-writing. Perhaps he is trying to discover a new model of living-one that will not be trapped by human desires. He has created a figure, one I refer to as the "boundary-crosser," who acts as a prototype for life in a rapidly changing world, who doesn't fall prey to human desire. The boundary-crosser appears in Hardy's middle novels, within the characters Elizabeth-Jane, Diggory Venn, and Marty South. In all iterations of the boundary-crosser, one finds several shared characteristics: liminality, a deep connection to the environment, manipulation of chance, significant sacrifice, and a trickster-like existence as the product of myth. This character, due to the above traits, most readily finds success in the world of Hardy's fiction, a world ruled by amorality.

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