Thomas Hardy and Religion

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The wellspring of Thomas Hardy and Religion is the recognition that Thomas Hardys two late great novels, Tess of the dUrbervilles and Jude the Obscure, are dominated, respectively, by two religious traditions of nineteenth-century Evangelicalism and Anglo-Catholicism. Placing those movements in their historical context alongside other Victorian religious traditions, the author explores the development of Hardys religious beliefs and ideas up till the 1880s. Evangelicalism in Tess is discussed through an analysis of the principal characters, Angel Clare and his father, Parson Clare, Alec dUrberville and Tess herself, leading to a consideration of why this form of Christianity looms so large in that novel. Not unexpectedly, the reasons for this are linked to Hardys personal and intellectual biography, especially his religious upbringing and experience of and involvement in these religious traditions. This applies to both novels. The sources of Jude the Obscure inHardys life and thought,