ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes that he was drawn to Thomas Hardy because his pessimism, his skepticism, and his humanistic perspective were very appealing; and he found his arraignment of the cosmic and social orders to be powerful. His tendency to externalize and to confuse personal, social, and existential problems reflected on his own defenses and confusions. The author found Karen Horney's psychological theories to be very helpful in recovering Hardy's intuitive insights and doing justice to his mimetic characterization. Hardy seems to feel that self-effacement ought to work; but, since there is no just God in the heavens, it seldom does. The most favored strategy in Hardy's novels is resignation. The philosophy he attributes to Elizabeth-Jane at the end of The Mayor of Casterbridge is Hardy's advice on how to be. Resignation is often combined with self-effacement, as it is in Elizabeth-Jane, Gabriel Oak, Diggory Venn, Giles Winterborne, and Marty South.
