ABSTRACT
The unresolved inconsistency of arraigning the universe and society as separate causes for the same offense and the irreconcilable views of tragedy as either man against the universe or man against society exemplified in the novels. The Woodlanders to Jude would lead one to think so—as would the isolation of the passage itself. The interpretation of life they introduced minor deviations from this central theory: in moods of despair they even go so far as to deny the possibility of consciousness informing the Will. There is a neutral region in poetry—of sensation, of love, and of death—that is affected greatly by the author’s ability to communicate what he sees and feels beautifully, often not at all by his philosophy. The philosophy, obviously enough, is the same that appears in the shorter philosophic poems, the same world view Hardy had arrived at in the year in which Jude was published.
