HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H01075 8/25/01 "TRAGEDY OF A LIFE WITHOUT CHRIST ARTICLE" ============================================================================= From: "Jon H." Subject: Found a paper you all might find interesting. Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2001 08:47:47 -0700 Grace in the Arts: THOMAS HARDY: The Tragedy of a Life Without Christ JAMES TOWNSEND, Bible Editor, Cook Communications, Elgin, IL http://www.faithalone.org/journal/1997i/Townsend.html ========== Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 11:30:30 -0700 From: Betty Cortus Subject: HARDY'S APOSTACY?? Dear Members, Have any of you taken a look at this well-written, thoroughy researched, and in my opinion perfectly maddening article? It was recommended by an ex-member of this list. I would be most interested to hear your opinions. >From Another Apostate, Betty Cortus ========== From: "schweik" To: Betty Cortus Subject: Re: HARDY'S APOSTACY?? Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2001 21:34:17 GMT For at least one view of that article, check the TTHA "Links" page for Link A 142, "Tragedy of a Life Without Christ", whose URL is That, of course, represents my view as director of the "Links" pages. I'd appreciate hearing comments or suggestions from any members on my judgment of it. Bob ========== Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 13:40:11 -0400 From: Robert Schweik Subject: RE: Tragedy of a Life Without Christ Web Page Some time ago Betty Cortus posted to the web a URL of a site someone had called her attention to. It was titled "Tragedy of a Life Without Christ," and Betty asked for members' views on it. I responded, but, somehow, my response seems to have go astray (perhaps Divine intervention?) because it never appeared on the TTHA Forum. When I saw Richard Nemesvari's cogent response I realized that mine had somehow gone astray. Hence this brief repeat of what I sent. The "Tragedy of a Life Without Christ" web page has been included in the TTHA "Links" pages for at least two years. Recently it changed its URL and I created a new link to it not long ago. For anyone wishing to glance over my description and evaluation of that site, just point your browser to I'd of course appreciate any comments on my description and evaluation of that site. Bob Robert Schweik schweik@fredonia.edu rschweik@localnet.com ========== Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 00:09:13 -0300 From: "rnemesva@stfx.ca" Organization: St. Francis Xavier UniversitySubject: Re: HARDY'S APOSTACY?? I was going to let this one go by (really, I was), but since Betty has asked for opinions, here goes. I would start by respectfully disagreeing with her evaluation that this essay is "thoroughly researched," although I'm with her completely in her description of the piece as "maddening." I'll come back to its overwhelmingly naive use of the biographical fallacy in a minute, but it is telling that Townsend references Gittings and Seymour-Smith, but not Millgate, thus avoiding the most balanced and carefully researched biography we've got. As well, if he was really interested in his topic, he would have had a look at Timothy Hands' *Thomas Hardy: Distracted Preacher?*(1989), a book which actually does provide a rigorous exploration of the topic of Hardy and religion. Further, Jan Jedrzejewski's equally useful *Thomas Hardy and the Church* was published the year before this essay, and again would have helped the writer avoid some of his more solipsistic declarations. As for the maddening part, let's start with this statement in the fourth paragraph: "Thomas Hardy himself spoke of the 'ache of modernism.' The Christian who has experientially understood that life without Christ is a tragedy should have an ache in his or her *heart* for unbelievers to find the fulfillment that is Christ." Now, I'm fairly used to be condescended to by "believers," but my blood pressure rises when it's *Hardy* who is being treated this way. TH doesn't need this guy, or his putative audience, to have an "ache in their hearts" for him, since I'm somewhat convinced that his vision is at least as valid as theirs. This kind of thing is sprinkled throughout, and would be laughable if it wasn't offensive. How about I try this one: "The agnostic who has intellectually understood that Christians are fooling themselves into accepting a thoroughly unbelievable set of superstitions should have an ache in his or her heart for these poor deluded souls." Neither Hardy nor any serious writer about him would stoop to publishing something like this, which tells us quite a bit about Townsend and what he is doing. And don't even get me started about the his claim that "God's grace is apparent in allowing this agnostic 88 years of life in which he might even trifle with that grace." Yup, that Hardy, what a trifler he was. But of course, this is just about tone. It is Townsend's "arguments" which are really ludicrous. He claims that he has "read 9 of his 14 novels and all of his 947 poems," but doesn't quote a single line from the verse, and certainly nothing from *The Dynasts.* In other words, he is basing his extremely broad analysis on next to nothing of Hardy's canon, which is hardly surprising since his thesis about the "tragedy" of Hardy's life is well in place regardless of evidence. Townsend's wide-mouthed astonishment that Hardy knew scripture inside and out shows that his knowledge of the Victorians is as limited as everything else which has to do with his subject, leaving aside his belief that it was Thomas Hobbes who described nature as "red in tooth and claw," thus depriving poor Tennyson of one of his most famous lines. In attempting to "explain" Hardy's loss of faith, he starts by declaring that "every Hardy biographer would concur" that failed romantic attachments are at the root of his bitterness. Really? I can't think of one who is that simplistic. He then trots out Lois Deacon's exploded theory about Tryphena Sparks, spends a paragraph on Horace Moule's suicide, a short paragraph on Darwin (!), and concludes with the influence of Leslie Stephen. In other word's, he attempts the most shallow of biographical explanations for a complex intellectual process which extended for years. How can someone lose their faith? Must have been some traumatic incident, here's a list of potential candidates. Oh please. Townsend then trots out the old canard that Hardy is looking for someone to "blame" for the fallen world, thus echoing Chesterton and a slew of other contemporary Victorian critics' claim that Hardy is "self-contradictory." After all, if there is no God, what is there to be bitter about? Obviously now is the time to pull out the "President of the Immortals" line from *Tess* to demonstrate that contradiction. That neither Chesterton nor Townsend understand Hardy at all is a given, and that in 1997 writers of their ilk are *still* ignoring the fact that this is an allusion to Aeschylus and not Hardy's own belief indicates their concerted effort to avoid confronting his actual significance. And of course the other thing they ignore in their effort to show Hardy "blaming" God is the all contemporary materialist analysis. Gender and class are irrelevant in their pursuit of Hardy's "philosophy," another example of their refusal to look at what counts in an effort to "pity" the poor author. There are all kinds of additional details which demonstrates that this "essay" is eminently dismissable, but really I'm beginning to feel like I'm squashing a deer fly with a sledgehammer (we've had a bad deer fly season this year). What is someone writing for the *Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society* supposed to do with Thomas Hardy? Townsend attempts to reinforce his readers' uneducated opinion that their "true faith" has never been seriously challenged (the couple of paragraphs in which he explains who Hardy was to a group who have obviously never heard of him are really funny), but his own grasp of the subject is astonishingly shallow, and he has made no serious effort to deepen it. He and his audience can now go to church and say their prayers, safe in the conviction that although there are some poor benighted types who don't accept their belief system, all they deserve is pity (and maybe the flames of hellfire). Since this posting has gone on way too long, let's just leave them in their little self-contented world, and go back to reading the real Hardy, and not this ludicrous caricature. Richard Nemesvari Department of English St. Francis Xavier University rnemesva@stfx.ca ========== Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 13:40:11 -0400 From: Robert Schweik Subject: RE: Tragedy of a Life Without Christ Web Page Some time ago Betty Cortus posted to the web a URL of a site someone had called her attention to. It was titled "Tragedy of a Life Without Christ," and Betty asked for members' views on it. I responded, but, somehow, my response seems to have go astray (perhaps Divine intervention?) because it never appeared on the TTHA Forum. When I saw Richard Nemesvari's cogent response I realized that mine had somehow gone astray. Hence this brief repeat of what I sent. The "Tragedy of a Life Without Christ" web page has been included in the TTHA "Links" pages for at least two years. Recently it changed its URL and I created a new link to it not long ago. For anyone wishing to glance over my description and evaluation of that site, just point your browser to I'd of course appreciate any comments on my description and evaluation of that site. Bob Robert Schweik schweik@fredonia.edu rschweik@localnet.com =========== Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 11:47:10 -0700 From: Betty Cortus Subject: RE: Tragedy of a Life Without Christ Web Page First of all Bob, your message did come to the list yesterday when you originally sent it. If others did not receive it at that time please let me know. I went to the TTHA LINK in question immediately after seeing your posting, and after reading your astute and balanced assessment of the paper, not to mention Richard's confirming remarks, I am currently eating crow about claiming the paper to be well researched. I was taken in briefly by what appeared to be a quite impressive table of biblical allusions in Hardy's works. So much for venting one's spleen prematurely. But thank you Richard for your much more thoughtful response, and your agreement that the paper is indeed maddening. Betty ========== Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 04:26:34 -0300 From: "rnemesva@stfx.ca" Organization: St. Francis Xavier University Subject: Re: Tragedy of a Life Without Christ Web Page Hi Betty, I did not receive Bob's message until late this afternoon, after I had fired off my own response to the Townsend piece. His is a much more measured, and subsequently much less cranky, response than mine, although ultimately we're in agreement about the "worth" of the essay. I'm not sure what caused the delay, but there it is. Richard Nemesvari Department of English St. Francis Xavier University rnemesva@stfx.ca ========== From: "Patrick Roper" > Subject: Re: Tragedy of a Life Without Christ Web Page Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 17:57:18 +0100 I read the above, but will refrain from comment except to highlight one of the ways in which the author bends the truth. His remark about 'A Pair of Blue Eyes' that "Knight's rescue finally comes when Elfride moves away from the scene and removes all of her (extensive Victorian) underwear so as to weave it rapidly into a rescue-rope." would surely imply to a reader unfamiliar with the novel that Elfride was naked, whereas "Elfride had absolutely nothing between her and the weather but her exterior robe or 'costume.' " The passage is unquestionably senuous, but not in the way Townsend implies. Be that as it may, Townsend's article reminded me of something that has been nagging in my mind of late and was reinforced by the following comment I came across: "Thomas Hardy's novels contain many accounts of active Pagan customs, with the climax of 'Tess' (1899), for example, dramatically sited at Stonehenge. Both Kipling and Hardy make their anti-Christian standpoints implicitly, but clearly, in their work." This was in a text called 'Academic Paganism' at: http://www.hogonline.freeuk.com/hogoddess/academic/acadpagan.html I found this an useful and reasonably straightforward summary of the emergence of modern paganism, witchcraft and Wicca. The author makes some other interesting comments. For example: "Poets of the Romantic movement such as Swinburne, also contributed to the continuing Pagan mythos, bringing pantheism back into educated recognition." And: "In 1861 Jakob Bachofen produced his monumental 'Das Mutterrecht' asserting a long lasting period of (primitive) matriarchal Goddess theocracy; his theory influenced scholars such as Henry Morgan, and Friedrich Engels. " I need not remind this list of Hardy's connections with Swinburne and I wonder if he knew of, or had read, Bachofen. In regard to that, I recall his passage in 'Far From The Madding Crowd': " It was a large toad humbly travelling across the path. Oak took it up, thinking it might be better to kill the creature to save it from pain; but finding it uninjured, he placed it again among the grass. He knew what this direct message from the Great Mother meant." There are many 'pagan' references in Hardy, both from Classical and non-Classical sources and he was clearly interested in this topic. Do subscribers think this was just the general interest of an intelligent man, or is it somehow a reflection of a view that there is a great deal more to religion than Christianity? Apropos of which, can anyone suggest how I might get hold of Dipa Maulik's 1990 paper "Thomas Hardy: His Pagan View of Life" (Rabindra Bharati Univ.) It was mentioned on the News from India web page posted by Rosemary Morgan. I have e-mailed the editor of this, but have so far had no response. Maybe someone has a copy I could beg? Patrick Roper ========== Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001 16:21:39 -0400 rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu> Subject: Re: Tragedy of a Life Without Christ Web Page Patrick--try Shanta Dutta (TTHA's "News From India" contact): shanta_dutta16@yahoo.com Shanta sent the listings to me in the first instance and may have an address you can try... Good luck, Rosemari ========== Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 18:56:07 -0400 From: Rosemarie Morgan Subject: Re: HARDY'S APOSTACY?? Bravo Richard and Bob! I enjoyed this maddening interlude hugely! Cheers, Rosemarie ==========