Neutral Tones

Hardy’s literary reputation varied throughout his lifetime. His early novels, influenced by Charles Dickens, were popular—but his later novels were bleaker in tone and questioned Victorian sexual morality, the sanctity of marriage, and the benevolence of God. They showed the influence of Charles Darwin and his theories of evolution. Hardy made rural laborers and oppressed women in rural England his main characters, and the pessimism of novels like Jude the Obscure (1895) scandalized Victorian sensibilities. Scholars widely believe that he turned to poetry in the 1890s because of the growing negative reception of his fiction. Many admired his poems for their ability to capture themes of regret and pain, the irrevocable passage of time, and the fragility of humanity.

Hardy’s realism as well as his creative generosity drew many younger writers of the Modernist era to him. Hardy’s understanding of the more difficult aspects of humanity, his embrace of past and present, as well as his hope for a more sympathetic existence appealed to the World War I generation. His ability to use poetic conventions while employing unusual syntax and creating atmospheric tone was lauded. In the early 20th century, significant writers like William Butler Yeats, Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sassoon, Ezra Pound, D.