Abstract
The child is an essential figure in Thomas Hardy's fiction, and Hardy's concept of childhood is intimately related to his vision of life. In the novels of character and environment-Under the Greenwood Tree, Far From the Madding Crowd. The Return of the Native. The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Woodlanders. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure-and in Hardy's poetry, children appear frequently as secondary characters, subtly echoing the haunting thoughts which plague protagonists, and as minor characters, adding texture to pictures of community life. Using children and childlike adults as a symbols of the individual's alienation and isolation from family and community, Hardy associates them with grim humor, irony, and pessimism, departing noticeably from several popular nineteenth century themes associated with children. In plot development, they function as messengers, appearing at crucial points in the narrative to reveal important information to protagonists and to voice the "message" of Christianity. As observers and reporters, they also serve a thematic purpose, illustrating the role of chance and irony in life and the insignificance of the individual. While they lack psychological realization, children provide insight to adults' psyche because they function as parallels, mirror images, and-in Jude the Obscure-as doubles to protagonists. The strongest evidence of their significance in Hardy's fiction, however, is the numerous references to children and childhood which appear throughout these novels. Used as a basis of comparison in similes and metaphors, the child has a rhetorical function in Hardy's art. Although Hardy scholarship and studies of children in literature give little more than cursory treatment to Hardy's child characters, they are significant in his fiction, symbolizing the individual's helplessness and vulnerability in a world governed by indifferent forces. They are also important as transitional figures in British literature because they are typical in some ways of children in Victorian literature and, in other ways, representative of modernism.
Gibson, Joanna Barnett (1989). The significance of the child in selected works of Thomas Hardy. Texas A&M University. Texas A&M University. Libraries. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /DISSERTATIONS -1097200.