Space In Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Novels

Thomas Hardy(1840-1928)is regarded as one of the greatest novelists and poets in English literature.His famous Wessex novels are his representative masterpieces.From the perspective of spatial criticism,this paper combines the description of Hardy’s hometown-Dorset and his four novels Far from the Madding Crowd,The Return of the Native,The Mayor of Casterbridge and Jude the Obscure,systematically elaborates Wessex constructed by Hardy and modernity reflected by the Wessex space.From the perspective of spatial criticism,this paper divides Wessex into rural space and urban space horizontally,and explores natural architectural space and social space of both rural and urban areas.Besides,the whole image of both rural and urban space is compared with each other vertically,which aims to analyze the social progress brought by modern industrial civilization and the destruction of agricultural civilization.Rural space is dominated by the patriarchy,which represents a space characterized by roundness of natural space and patriarchal system of production relation,such as Weatherbury in Far from the Madding Crowd and Edgon in The Return of the Native.Urban space is the representative of capitalism,characterized by the hierarchy of architectural space and the capitalist production relation,such as Casterbridge in The Mayor of Casterbridge and Christminster in Jude the Obscure.With the advancement of modern civilization,the capitalist production relations gradually disintegrated traditional patriarchal system,and the idyllic scenery in rural space has disappeared;the race for power in urban space increased the sense of alienation and loneliness of the peasantry.In addition,the innovation of modern transportation has gradually strengthened the spatial mobility between urban and rural space,and more and more peasants become wanderers.In the context of the era of modernity,this article probes into the relationship between urban and rural space and the destiny of peasantry in different space,which provides a new perspective for the study of Hardy’s Wessex novels.