Author(s): Sosyal DeÄiÅikliklerin Sonuçları, Zennure KÃSEMAN
This article aims at discovering the unavoidable outcomes of the social transformation in the process of rapid urbanization in English social life in respect to Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure at the end of the nineteenth century1 . The evaluation will be predominantly about the private practices of social change in respect to the transformation from the rural to urban life. While analyzing these two masterpieces in this context, this article will conduct a contrary approach to what most critics argue about the causes of the failure of Tess of d’Urbervilles in Tess and Jude Fawley in Jude. Whereas the issue of fate plays the key role for the failure of these characters for most critics, in this study, the detriments of their downfall revolve around the social consequences of the transformation from rural to urban life in the 1890s. The general tendency for the analysis of Hardy’s novels in this study is via the evaluation in terms of social determinism which drives men into being the victims of social circumstances. Such a variation end up the emergence of different mental and emotional states of alienation, isolation, anxiety, confusion, insensitiveness, and meaninglessness which can also be correlated with the concept of “anomie” of the sociologist Emile Durkheim. Hence, throughout a social, historical and literary analysis, the focus will be to find out the main reasons for the social unrest.
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