1. Hardy and the Rasa Theory

Hardy and The Rasa Theory

RAMA KANT SHARMA

Rasa is present in every work of literature. It is the psychological study of emotions and it deals with the delight one gets in literature. Indian aestheticians have paid special attention to this aspect of artistic creation. In this book an attempt has been made to explore various Rasas—sentiments—in the novels of Hardy. It may be said that Hardy's novels are very aesthetic in essence. We like them as we like pictures not only because they recall reality to us but because they stir our emotions directly by their individual quality. This study will surely enhance the appreciation of the aesthetic excellence of Hardy's novels. Since no study of Thomas Hardy's novels has so far been made from this standpoint, it is hoped that the present book will be of great interest for the academic community.

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HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

RAMA KANT SHARMA

SARUP & SONS

NEW DELHI

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© RAMA KANT SHARMA

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GRATEFULLY DEDICATED TO

K.K. SHARMA, PH.D., D.LITT.

FORMER PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH

ALLAHABAD UNIVERSITY, ALLAHABAD

CONTENTS

Preface

i

1 Introduction

1

2 The Rasa Theory

18

3 Sentiment of Love—Sringar Rasa

40

4 Sentiment of Humour: Hasya Rasa

62

5 Pathos: Karuna Rasa

73

6 Sentiments of Fear and Fury:

89

Bhayanak and Raudra Rasas

7 Sentiments of Filial Love and Peace:

100

Vatsalya and Santa Rasas

8 Conclusion

116

Bibliography

119

Index

122

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PREFACE

Rasa is present in every work of literature. It is the psychological study of emotions and deals with the delight one gets in literature. Indian aestheticians have paid special attention to this aspect of artistic creation.

In this book an attempt has been made to explore various Rasas—sentiments—in the novels of Hardy. It may be said that Hardy's novels are very aesthetic in essence. We like them as we like pictures not only because they recall reality to us but because they stir our emotions directly by their individual quality. This study will surely enhance the appreciation of the aesthetic excellence of Hardy's novels.

I am greatly indebted to my teacher Dr. Pratibha Tyagi who has given me guidance and inspiration for the work. I am grateful to Dr. Monorma Trikha, formerly Head, Dept. of English, Institute of Advanced Studies, C.C.S. University, Meerut, for her valuable suggestions from time to time.

My thanks are due to the librarians of British Council Library Delhi, Sahitya Academy, Delhi, Meerut College, Meerut, R.G. College, Meerut and above all C.C.S. university, Meerut for providing me the books I needed. I shall be failing in my duty if I do not thank all my friends for their co-operation and lively discussion on the topic. The last but not the least are my parents and my family for the way they provided me an environment to work in freedom from domestic work, and thus enabled me to devote my self heart and soul to my work.

(Rama Kant Sharma)

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

I

Inter-disciplinary approaches to literature have been given a great importance in recent times. New aspects and meanings come to light by a properly directed inter-disciplinary approach. The juxtaposition of views in one literature, with those in the other provides a better perspective to the views in both. One has to be very careful while comparing the literature of two different cultures. There may be some wide differences and some close similarities. There are chances of distortion of the original beauty and the meaning of the literature, if the critic does not have a deep insight in to both the literatures. Such is the case with the study of Western Literature through the Estern aesthetics of Sanskrit literature.

We find many differences as well as similarities between the Western and Sanskrit literature. Drama was conceived first as the best literary from in both the literatures. But there is no conception of tragedy or tragic plays in Sanskrit Literatures as it is in Western literature. But what important is that the aim or the purpose of both the literature is the same. The aim is 'delightful teaching' which has been recognised by the critics and the writers of both the Western and the Sanskrit literature. Western critics talk of delight through the satisfaction of emotions, removing the tensions trom human minds. Plato talks of emotional satisfaction or delight obtained from drama or poetry even though he accepts it unwillingly. Aristotle in a more scientific way talks of the satisfaction of the emotions of pity and fear in his theory of Katharsis. He finds that tragedy provides an emotional relief by removing the excess of these emotions and maintaining a balance in human nature.

According to him Katharsis should be the aim of poetry. Another critic Horace feels that the aim of poetry is either to be beneficial or to delight. Philip Sidney and John Dryden, the great modern critics of English literature lay emphasts on the delightful teaching as the aim of literature.

Bharata and his aesthetic principles reign supreme in Sanskrit Literary criticism. He, Like the Western critics, propounds the theory that 'delightful teaching' should be the aim of literature and he particularly talks about Natak-drama. He postulates the theory of Rasa. He moves a step further then the theory of Katharsis as he talks of the emotional delight. He considers that there are various emotions like Love, Humour and Anger etc. along with the emotions of pity and fear. In fact, without happy emotions there is no place for pity and fear. Rather humour enriches the intensity of pathpos.

Moreover Kathartic theory suffers from a drawback because Aristotle takes its origin mainly from the tragic experience. It is mainly linked up with the purging away of the painful elements pity and fear. The idea of internal relief appears to be the crux of Katharsis. Thus Katharsis is not able to get rid of pathological associations and pathology carried to the realms of literary enjoyment reduces the noblest of arts to the level of a hospital.

Really it can not express the process of true literary enjoyment because there are not just two emotions viz. Pity and fear. There are other emotions also which are as necessary as these two. These emotions may be pleasure giving. Then how can the principle of purgation be extended to those emotions which are pleasurable in themselves ? For example, there is a poem which takes up love as it's theme, here the theory of purgation of Love will sound fantastic.

Aristotle talks about only two emotions that can be universalised. But as we know, there are other emotions which also have the power of universalisation but they have no alloy of pain and disgust in them. To these emotions Indian theorists pay appropriate attention. Katharsis falls short of the status of a perfect aesthetic principle, if it is considered from this point of view. The feelings or emotions according to the Rasa theory, lie as instincts in the heart in shape of Sthayi Bhavas and are evoked unconsciously through literary presentation. The empathy with the emotions of characters when the material layers of selfishness and individuality enveloping the soul are dissipated giving rise to the pure

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

consiousness cause Rasa Ananda i.e., to say the relish of Rasa has nothing to do with pathological associations and purification theory.

T.S. Eliot's 'objective correlative' comes closer to Rasa & realisation or emotional delight. In his essay on Hamlet, Eliot postulates a theory of portrayal of an emotion in literature as a whole. He states:

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative.' In other words a set of objects, a situation and a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion such that when the external facts which must terminate in a sensory experience are given, the emotions is immediately evoked.'

It seems the direct and modern interpretation of Rasa theory.

The whole poetics of the East talks about the emotions to be realised and recaptured by the sympathetic reader. It is also the purpose of the 'objective Correlative' propounded by T.S. Eliot. Thus in brief it can be said that the theory of Rasa is as modern as Objective Correlative. But it is more effective than the objective correlative because this theory has been given in an aphoristic manner and in the way of out line, while the theory of Rasa has been given in detail and more analytical way. Secondly T.S. Eliot lays emphasis on the skill of writer only. He does not take reader or audience in to consideration. On the other hand, if the reader or audience is not responsive, the efforts of the writers will fall flat. Rasa theory gives enough attention to the sympathetic readers and audience. The audience or the readers are very important as the literature is written for their enjoyment. Thus Rasa theory compensates Katharsis and objective correlative.

II

The purpose of the present work is to study Hardy's novels (English literature) through Rasa theory i.e., (Sanskrit literature). In fact the Rasa theory was postulated by Bharata for Natak or drama only. But this theory can be applied to novels also. They are two different branches of literature but they have a close similarity. The novel is the latest and the most popular branch of literature. W.H. Hudson, while comparing drama and literature, writes:

Drama is not a pure literature. It is compound art in which the literary element is bound up with element of stage setting and historic representation etc. The novel is independent of these secondary arts. It is as 'Marian Cowford' praised, a 'Pocket Theatre,' containing within itself not only plot and actors, but also costume, scenery and all the other accessories of dramatic representation. This point has important bearings upon the comparative study of novel and drama.

This is the reason why the novel has become as important as the other branches of literature like poetry and has established itself as the major vehicle of human emotions in the field of literature. Moreover the aim of novel is similar to that of drama, i.e., delight and teaching. Hardy, whose novels are under discussion, says:

The real if unavowed, purpose of fiction is to give pleasure by gratifying the love of uncommon in human experience, mental or corporal; This is done all the more perfectly in proportion as the reader is alluded to believe the personage true and real like himself.

Thus the theory of Rasa, which has been so far applied to drama and poetry, can be applied to novels also. It becomes more easy to apply this theory if the novels have dramatic affect and poetic intensity of emotion like those of Thomas Hardy.

It will be better to point out those aspects of Hardy's life and personality due to which his novels are emotionally appealing to us. For this purpose we shall have to go back to 1840, when he was born in a small thatched cottage in the little hamlet of Higher Bokhampton three miles away from Dorchester. It was a place with natural landscape. There were several quaint looking houses with trees which led up to the cottage and behind it stretched the vast expanse of Egdon and Puddle Town Heath. His father was a skilled violenist and a master mason. This figure of his father finds expression in his novels Under the Greenwood Tree and Pair of Blue Eyes. His mother Jemima Hand had been a cook and she was the person who gave young Thomas Hardy, his interest in books.

His parents had only been married for five months when the baby was born-the mother had a difficult labour and the child at first was thought to be dead. But fortunately for English literature,

the nurse revived him in time. Marry, Henry and Katherine were more three children. The problem of infant mortality finds enough room in his novel Under the Greenwood Tree. Though Hardys belonged to the upper class of village, he was to discover later on in this world outside that they were regarded as peasants. This is one reason why his novels are so full of class consciousness. It may also help to explain why he brooded over the decline of old families in The Wood Landers, and Tess why he created a family which was marked down by fate and unfit for marriage in jude. We know that all his brothers and sisters could not get married.

Little Thomas went on being a fragile child after his dramatic introduction to the world. He was able to turne the violin almost before he could walk when of quite tender years. “Moreover he had several clerical relatives who lived by music. His grand father, father, uncle, brothers, cousin and two sisters had been musicians in various churches over a period covering altogether more than hundred years.”4 The family went regularly to stinsford church. The church was to him a holy place and Hardy immortalised it under the name of Mellstock in his novel Under the Greenwood Tree.

At the age of eight, he was sent to village school of Isaac Last who himself was able man and good teacher of Latin. But Hardy shunned other school boys. He was a very sensitive boy from very beginning. He had a tender heart, responsive to the spectacle of suffering. As a boy he even hated seeing the boughs lopped off from the trees. “He loved being alone and was showing the signs of extreme sensitiveness which was to be torment to him in later life.”5 He has recorded that like his hero Jude Fawley, “He did not wish to grow up… to be a man or to possess things but to remain as he at the same spot and to know no more the people than he already knew.6 He saw two public hangings at this age and he was chilled with horror. One of them was a woman who had killed her lover and it is very likely that this event was in his mind when he wrote Tess. His wife gives the reference to his experience after observing a man hanged:

One summer morning at Bokhampton, he remembered that a man was to be hanged at eight O’clock at Dorchester. He took up his telescope and

hastened to a hill where he looked towards the town. He saw the gallows and the white fustian murderer, the officials in dark clothes. At the moment, the white figure dropped down-wards, glass, merely fell from his hands. He seemed alone on the Health with the hanged man and crept homeward.7

After school, he got a job under John Hicks who was a kind hearted man and himself an old and classical scholar. Here he had a remarkable friend Horace Moule eight years older than Hardy. His father Henry Moule is the original Mr. Angel Clare in Tess. Horace was a brilliant scholar who had however failed to take his degree and suffered badly from depression. He was very kind to young Hardy and introduced him to literary criticism. At twenty one he got a job with Arthur Bloom field. He gives an incident humorous enough of his life in London. He and his boss Bloom field were going to survey a new site for building. Their boots became muddy and they wished to get them polished. Two boot blacks were there but only one was polishing the boots. Bloomfield asked the second why did he not proceed with the brushing like the first “cause he's got not blacking nor brush,” said the first, “What good is he then?” asked Bloomfield.!! “I have cracked my blacking bottle and it goes dry: so I pay him a penny a day to spit for me.”8

It is surprising that a sensitive writer like Hardy had a genuine sense of humour and he could easily have empathy with the lighter a spects of life. He enjoyed village life-its' traditional pleasures harvest celebrations, parties to celebrate marriage and birth etc. He found gaiety in little things. One experience of his boyhood may be mentioned here and it is comical in itself :

This was at church, when listening to the sermon. Some mischievous movement of his mind set him imagining that the vicar was preaching mockingly and he began to trace a humorous twitch in the corners of vicar's mouth, as if he could hardly keep a serious countenance. Vicar seemed to be always tottering on the verge of laughter and thomas could scarcely control his marriment.9

It was as recently as 1966 when a book called Providence and Mr. Hardy, by Lois Deacon and Terry Coleman was published, that the world knew nothing about Hardy's love affair with his cousin Tryphena Sparks. The evidence abut it is very incomplete and almost all comes from the statements of Tryphena's daughter

who died as a very old woman in 1965. We shall probably never know now how deep this relation went, how long it lasted and why it was broken off. What seems certain is that when Hardy went back to Dorchester, he met and fall in love with Tryphena who had been a child when he left for London and now was sixteen. They went for the long walks on the Heath together. At the same time they seem to have become engaged. This relationship reminds us the beginning of his novel Well Beloved.

Tryphena was the youngest daughter of Hardy's mother's sister Maria Sparks. She was a student teacher at a village school in Puddle town where her parents lived and she was hoping to go to a teacher training college afterwards. The few surviving photographs show her to be an attractive girl and Hardy may have left some hints to show, she seemed to him in those days, in his description of the heroine of the Jude The Obscure—Sue Bridehead.

We also know that Tryphena, like Sue Bridehead, must have been a brilliant girl. She impressed the education authorities so much that she was made headmistress at twenty-one. But in 1868, she was removed from Puddle town school. It has been suggested that she was pregnant and that she left home and school afterwards to have Hardy's child. Scholars are trying hard to get the facts but with a little success. There are no clear proofs of that point whether she had Hardy's child. On the other hand, Tryphena's daughter, more than ninety years later, identified the photograph of a little boy in her mother's album as Hardy's son. She said that his name was Randal, that he was delicate and brought up by an uncle and died young. The people who believe upon this story, have suggested that this child may have inspired the extra ordinary figure of Little Father Time in Jude The Obscure.

We do not know why Hardy never married Tryphena, particularly if she was going to have his child. It is very likely that family objected to their marriage because they were first cousins. The only facts we know that Tryphena during the years following 1867, are that, she went to a training college in London where she kept in touch with Hardy. She became the headmistress of a school in Playmouth. There she was married with Charles Gale and she

gave up the job. They had four children and she died in 1890, aged

only thirty eight. Her death had a deep effect on Hardy. While he

was in train on the way to London, he found himself thinking about

Tryphena and composed first few lines of a poem to her, which

he called 'Thoughts for Phena.' It was he said, "a curious instance

of sympathetic telepathy,"10 for Tryphena was dying at the time

and the poem was not finished until Hardy heard about her death.

They had no contact with each other for nearly twenty years. He

went to see the grave at Playmouth and left a wreath there. In the

preface to Jude the Obscure he said that the 'parts of the novel

had been suggested by the death of a woman.'

Opinion has always been divided about this famous novel of

Hardy. It is the story of two cousins who fall in love but each married

the wrong person, as well as the story of a working man who is

excluded from Oxford. Some people still think, that it is one of the

greatest things Hardy ever wrote. Other found it depressing and

a failure. Perhaps, the most painful thing of all was that his wife

(Emma) was against him too and she not only did not understand

the novel, she had gone so far as to try to get it stopped.

We don't exactly know at what step and when Hardy and

Emma began to feel miserable in their marriage but it seems certain

that the things grew much wrong about the time he wrote Jude.

The part of the differences between them may be reflected in the

novel itself. Hardy writes of Jude that "One thing troubled him more

than any other that Sue and himself had mentally travelled in

opposite directions…. events which has enlarged his own views

of life, laws customs and dogmas, had not operated in the same

manner on Sue's' (vi, vii).

At what step he fell in love with Emma, is not known. There

were deep differences between them. The class differences she

took for granted that she should ride every where while he walked.

But they were drawn towards each other by the silkin thread of love.

She writes about the first meeting of Thomas Hardy with her. She

was living with her brother-in-law at Bos Castle. They were hoping

to see an architect to come there to restore the church. Emma

thought him to be an old and dull man. When Hardy came to them,

it was Emma who received him. She writes-

I was immediately arrested by his familiar experience, as if I had seen him in a dream, his slightly different accent, his soft voice, also, I noticed a blue paper sticking out of his pocket…. I thought him much older than he was. He had a beard and rather shabby great coat and had quite a business apearance. Afterwards he seemed younger and by day light especially so… The blue paper proved to be the M.S. of a poem not a plan of church, he informed me to my surprise.

He talked to her about his hopes of becoming a writer. After Desparate Remedies, he wrote a short novel Under the Greenwood Tree. Macmillans very nearly threw it away. He was so depressed that he wrote to Emma that he was going to give up literature. She is often not given the credit which she deserved for her reaction to it. She begged him to go on writing whatever happened. Then Horace Moule advised him not to stop writing. Then Under the Greenwood Tree was published.

He asked his employer for a holiday and went into the country where he wrote most of The Pair of Blue Eyes. When it began to appear in the print, he gave notice to his employer that he would not be coming back and his life as an architect came to a stop. The novel was well received. It was a love story set in Cornwall and the fair haired heroine, Elfride Swancourt was in many ways very much like Emma Gifford. Some critics have gone further to suggest that the young portrait of architect Stephen Smith, who wants to marry Elfride, is a portrait of Hardy himself. Hardy denied it strongly but it is a fact that this novel, like The Poor Man and the Lady and many others which he was to write, is preoccupied with the class consciousness and its’ effect on human relationship. Stephen is turned out by Elfride’s father when he is discovered to be the son of a father who works as a mason in that very town. And for Hardy, though he never admitted, it was having trouble with her family.

Hardy classified A Pair of Blue Eyes, among a group of his works which he called Romance and fantasies to suggest the imaginative nature of the works. It is one of the great books. It has an interest and poetry of its’ own. Hardy was glad to think that it was much admired by Tennyson and other popular poets of the

day. When it came out in the standard three volume edition, Hardy's name appeared on the cover for the first time.

Horace Moule again wrote an encouraging review. Next month, Hardy went to Cambridge to see him and they climbed up the roof of King's College Chapel. Hardy never forgot this meeting,

for it was the last time he saw his friend. In September 1873 Moule committed suicide in his room at Queen's College, by cutting his throat. Over the last few years, he had turned to drink. Probably

he felt that his academic career was a failure and feared he could not go on working. Hardy had cared for Moule deeply. It made him miserable that his talented and good friend should have come to

such an end. Possibly he thought that the university killed him. There are signs that he was thinking of Moule later when he began to write Jude the Obscure. Some people think that Moule is Henry Knight in A Pair of Blue Eyes.

An other great effect on Hardy, as we know is of architecture. For the last four generations, all the Hardys had been Master Masons. He went an architecture for long enough to be sure that

he could have made a success of it. He worked not only on Churches but also on labourers' cottages, school buildings. As a result heroes of A Pair of Blue Eyes and Jude the Obscure are architects and Masons.

He was living at home then writing Far From the Madding Crowd for Cornhil. He always found that the quietness of Dorset and rhythm of life in country side helped him to do good work. The

new novel began to appear in the fresh month of 1874. Story had been so successful that he could at last afford to get married on 17th December 1874.

After a short rest from novel writing he got his nerves back. He and Emma rented a small cottage in Sturminster Newton in the vale of Blackmore. There he settled down to write The Return of

the Native, The two years they spent almost without a break in countryside, were the happiest, they were to know. It was the good period for Hardy and the new novel was best thing he had written yet. It was set on Puddle town Heath which had played so great

a part in his life. His childhood stories, the mummers, the

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

reddleman were interwoven.

Back in London he started to do research in to Napoleonic wars with the ideas of writing a novel about this theme. It was a hard work, but by the end of 1879, he had finished the novel The Trumpet Major, and it was published the following year.

A comet which he saw that year, gave him an idea for the new story about the young man in quiet country village who wants to be an astronomer. In the preface of Two on A Tower, he called this book a slight Romance. He wrote it quickly in about six months and it was published in 1882. It was not one of his greatest novels but he had tried to write a serious story about man’s place in the universe, about achievement and about self sacrifice.

Soon after wards in April 1883 an article on Hardy’s novels appeared in West Minister Review. It was written by Havelock Ellis and it shows a warm appreciation of Hardy’s work:

The English agricultural labourer which few novelists have succeeded in describing, few indeed have opportunity of knowing him. George Eliot who has represented, so much of the lower strata of rural life, has not reached him. At best he is only visible in dim background…. It is difficult to find any where fit company for the quaint and worthy fellowship, so racy on the earth who greet us from the pages of Far From the Madding Crowd and The Return of the Native.12

This article with it’s clear massage that people, who worked on the land, must be respected as human beings in some ways marked the turning point in Hardy’s Career. From now he was to go back to write novels about Dorset and its’ people and he was to do his most creative work, as a novelist. He had decided to settle in Dorchester for the good. He got his own house at Max gate. Mean while he was working on Mayor of Casterbridge, one of the finest of his novels. Almost certainly it turned out well because he was writing about the town, he had known all his life. A good deal of real Dorchester went into Hardy’s portrait of Casterbridge and the hero Micheal Henchard is one of the most vital characters he had ever conceived. Woodlanders was written here. It was his own favourite work altogether not many people agreed with him.

He was now contemplating a more ambitious work than any, he had yet written. In Sept. 1888, he went to look at some of the

houses and lands which his family had owned long before-

"The vale of Blackmoor is almost entirely green, every hedge being studded with trees. On the left you will see to an immense distance including Shaftsbury. The decline and fall of the Hardys much in evidence here about."13

Out of this visit, grew the idea of a story, set in the vale of Blackmoor, which would deal with the decline and fall of ancient families. This he mingled with the memories of a woman whom he had seen hanged, as a boy, for the crime of passion and with his own knowledge about the exploitation of country girls. He began to write Tess of D'urbervilles. In the manuscript the heroine was called Rose Mary Trouble field. Trouble field is the corruption of Turbervilles, a real name of an aristocratic family, which had died out by that time.

It is very clear from everything Hardy said and wrote that this time he was moving to the greater religious thinking and this tendency can be seen still more clearly in his next novel Jude the Obscure. For some years now he had been thinking of writing a story about a young man who failed to go to Oxford and commits suicide, and it is not difficult to feel that this was inspired by the fate of Horace Moule, his dear friend.

In 1859, two books came out which were to have a profound effect on Thomas Hardy; John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and Darwin's Origin of Species. Twenty years later when Hardy went to Darwin's funeral (1892) in Westminster Abbey; Hardy said that he was among the earliest admirers of his work. At that time Hardy was not much famous. Conventional people tended to make fun of Darwin's book, which turned out in the end to be as revolutionary as the theory of Galileo that the Earth moves round the sun.

Darwin had in his researches that certain animals showed slight but quite definite difference from the animals on icelands only a few miles away. Had they been created with these slight differences when God made the world as is written in the religious books ? Darwin came to the conclusion that the surviving species were those which were best adopted to their environment. Darwin's discoveries can be applied to the human beings as well as animals. He did not say, as many people believe that man was descended

from Monkeys but he did think men and monkeys collateral

descendents of one ancestor. It was a theory which shook victorian

christianity to it's foundations. For if life evolved under its' own

laws, if it was not true that Adam and Eve and the animals had

been created just as they were in the Garden of Eden, then there

was no need for God. Darwin could not face publishing his

discoveries for years, when his book finally came out and the storm

broke. Most of the propaganda work for his theories was done by

T.H. Huxley. It was Huxley who invented the word 'Agnostic.' An

'Agnostic' means 'one who does not know' and Huxley maintained

that human beings can not know whether or not God exists. Hardy

met Huxley in London a few times and thought very highly of him,

speaking of him "as a man who united a fearless mind, and warmest

of heart and the most modest of manners."

When Hardy was very young, he became absorbed in the

problem which worried almost all the educated victorians. For

many people, it was an agony to believe that it might be a myth:

Tennyson's great poem In Memoriam (1850), put in to words that

thousands of others were feeling and thinking. How could God be

all powerful and all loving in the face of overwhelming fact of human

suffering ? Fear and death were more real to the voctorians than

perhaps they are to us, at a time when tubercolosis was a killer

disease and about half of all children never grew up. And when

one turned from human world to the animal world, it seemed even

more frightening. Tennyson wrote about the dilemma of one:

Who trusted God was love indeed,

And Love Creations' final law.

Though nature red in tooth and claw,

With revine shricked against the creed.15

This was written earlier than the Origin of Species, but

Darwin's book did still more to weaken the idea that love was the

final law of universe. It seems quite an early that Hardy began to

move away from liberal christianity which Moule Believed in and

towards acceptance of Darwinism and all its' implications. One of

his finest poems 'In a Wood' written in 1887, shows how he saw

even trees 'red in tooth and claw.' He writes that he was tired of

fret and fever of city life and thought that nature would provide him

peace and rest from man's unrest. So he went to nature but there

also be found the same type of struggle for survival and life. Big

trees controlled the growth of small ones. What he thinks here,

can make us able to understand his treatment towards nature

which, according to him is devoid of beneficial power and is only

a soul-less automatic process. No doubt, at some places he

proves the concept of wordsworth that Nature never betrays a

person who loves her. But the idea of struggle dominates his mind.

But having entered in,

Great growths and small,

Show them to men akin-

Combatants all !

Sycamore shoulders Oak,

Bines the slim sapling Yoke,

Ivy spum Halters choke,

Elems stout and tall.16

Hardy is arguing that all life is pervaded by the struggle for

existence. He wrote this poem at about the same time when he

wrote Wood-landers and if we turn to the novel, we find many similar

passages. There is a well known passage which shows Hardy's

frame of mind, which describes what actually happens in the

woods. The trees in chapter XLII are “Wrestling for existence, their

branches disfigured with wounds resulting from their mutual rub-

bings and blows.”17 The animal world shows the same pattern:

Owls that had been catching mice in out houses, rabbits had been eating

the wintergreens in the gardens the stoats that had been sucking the blood

of rabbits.18

Even human beings there, at their worst are no-less ruthless.

We see in this novel how men and women struggle for the

possession of the houses, lands and people and how some of them

fail to survive. Hardy argues in Mayor of Casterbridge that the

greatest of mankind are usually failures in the worldly sense and

successful man is usually as cold blooded as a fish and selfish

as a pig, is other words, something less than human.

This means that there was no room for optimistic assertions

like Brownings ‘God is in His Heaven: all is right with the world.’

‘God is not in this Heaven: all is wrong with he worl,’ Angel Clare

says in Anguish in Tess.19 Hardy’s generation was coming to feel

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

that the world was frightening, planless and dangerous. Mathew Arnold wrote in his poem Dover Beach :

And we are here as on a darking plane

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fight

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Hardy was in the centre of agnostic tradition when he denied that there was any such thing as Providence. In his novels again and again he gives the message that there is no supernatural force which looks after the innocent, as we find in Tess. In his time most people criticized his novels for their pain and pessimism and many readers still today have the impression that Hardy is a gloomy and depressing writer. As to pessimism, he wants to say-

As to peesimism, my motto is first-correctly diagnose the complaint in this case human ills and ascertain the cause, then set about finding a remedy if one exists. The motto or practise of the optimist is: blind the eyes to the real malady and use empirical panaceas to suppress the symptoms.

He saw the harsh realities of village life. Poverty and the horrible circumstances in which humanity existed. A young man in the need of livelihood, would leave the place to find the bread and butter. He would come, years later, to see his beloved married to another, What people aspired for, never achieved in proper measure, hence there was pain and disappointment. And this pain and disappointment seemed to him to be the outstanding characteristics of human existence.

Responding intensely to the experience of the village life in which he grew up, his imaginative and creative faculty reached the creative stage of development and he conceived the picture of life in these terms. The most important aspect of his personality and writings in his poetic genius, due to which he could portray his experience with the intensity of emotions like that of a poet. And in fact, he set forth in his life not as a novelist but as a poet. He was interested in relating Keats with Dorset and was charmed by Shelley’s ‘Skylark.’ At eleven years of age he could go with his father to fiddle at parties. As he had a deep interest in music, his imagination is intensive, poetic and fresh as the music. His wife writes: “He had aimed at keeping his narratives close to natural life and as near to poetry in their subjects as the conditions would

allow."22

A poet is moved by the momentous and moving in life by its' phases of heightened emotions. Hardy writes that "The poet takes note of nothing that he can not feel emotively."23 He tried to raise the standard of the novel by infusing into it a poetic intensity of emotion, and the grandeur of drama. He could not think that anybody could be a novelist without having poetic talent. He writes after reading Henry James: "It is remarkable that a writer who had no grain of poetry, or humour or spontaneity in his production, yet can be a good novelist."24

This poetic imagination enriches Hardy's novels and provides a greater aesthetic delight to the reader, David Cecil rightly remarks- If a book is a work of art in so far as the imagination inspiring.... No novels are more aesthetic than Hardy's.... Hardy's books are always pictures and we like them as we like pictures for aesthetic reasons, not only because they recall reality to us but because they stir our emotions directly by their own individual quality.25

So far it is established that Hardy's novels can be studied through Rasa Theory which is based on aesthetic delight by satisfying and delighting various emotions along with pity and fear. This study will surely enhance the appreciation of the aesthetic beauty of Hardy's novels.

REFERENCES

1T.S. Eliot, "Hamlet," Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, ed., Frank Kermode (London: Faber & Faber, 1975), p.48.

2W.H. Hudson, "Study of Prose Fiction," An Introduction to English Literature (Ludhiyana: Kalyani Pub., 1978), p.129.

3Florance Emily Hardy, Life of Thomas Hardy (London: Macmillan, 1975), p.150.

4Florence Emily Hardy, Life of Thomas Hardy, p.376.

5Merryn William, A Preface to Hardy (London: Longman, 1976), p.8.

6Life of Thomas Hardy, p.16.

7Ibid., p.28.

8Ibid., p.46.

9Ibid., p.22.

10Ibid., p.224.

11Ibid., p.70.

12Marryn William, A Preface to Hardy, p.30.

13Life of Thomas Hardy, p.214.

14Ibid.; p.122.

15Tennyson, In Memoriam, ed. John D. Jump (London: Dent 1984), p.105.

16Thomas Hardy, Collection of Poems (London: MacMillan, 1954), p.76.

17Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders, p.280.

18Ibid., p.26.

19Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'urbervilles, p.292.

20Mathew Arnold, Dover Beach, LL.35-7.

21Life of Thomas Hardy, p.383.

22Ibid., p.291.

23Ibid., p.342.

24Ibid., p.370.

25David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist (London: Constable Co., 1950), p.43.

CHAPTER II

THE RASA THEORY

I THE CONCEPT OF THE RASA

Of the two theories—Rasa and Dhvani—which developed to become the most prominent factors among the sources of literary criticism, the former dates back to Rig Veda in it's origin while the latter arose in the wake of the theory of Rasa. Though in later works on literary criticism like Kavya Prakasha and Dhanyaloka, Rasa is treated as a sub-heading under Dhvani, there is propriety in considering the concept of Rasa before Dhvani.

Rasa is a sort of bliss which the reader or audience enjoys while reading a poem or a novel or witnessing a play. It has been called ‘Brahmanand-Sahoder,’ because it is compared to the bliss, which a sage enjoys while corresponding to a higher reality that is God-Brahma. The difference between the Rasa and ‘Brahmanand’ it that, while Brahmanand is realised in life and belongs to life, Rasa belongs to literature. It is that transient joy which one experiences while witnessing a play presented on the stage or reading a work of art. Brahmanand is the result of developing a detachment (Rag dwesh-Rahita), to life. Rasa is the result of enjoying a work of literature and during its relish, the spectator's or the reader's consciousness is cut off from the specific relations of the world.

The existence of Rasa dates back to the vedic period. The word Rasa was used in the sense of taste, sap of plant or some times in the sense of milk.1 That prepares the ground for its use by writers in literary criticism from Bharata downward, to signify the aesthetic pleasure. Till the time of Bharata drama and poetry were considered to be related to mere sensory experience. Drama was given the status of Shashstra to establish the highly ethical value of art and aesthetics as against merely a source of mere pleasure and entertainment. Bharata's realistic approach and eventual location of aesthetic process in a psychophysical state is comparable to Aristotle's attempt in the west.

Bharata for the first time posed the fundamental question-

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

what is that essential quality of a work of art, which constitutes its appeal ? It gave a completely new direction to the field of art. His solution lay in the evocation of a subjective state called Rasa.

Dr. K. Krishnamoorthy writes,

"Rasa is a term from dietetics, meaning taste or relish and introduced by Bharata in the field of literary criticism to denote the complex of aesthetic enjoyment. According to his analysis it is a complex involving almost the whole range of psycho-physical responses man is capable of. Literature is stimulus by which multiple and overfleeing moods, feelings and responses are made to fall in to a pattern around the more or less permanent nucleus of an emotion. This organised complex response is termed Rasa."2

This was definately formulated by Bharata in the well known aphorism- "Vibhavanubhava Vyabhichari samyogadrasanispattih."3 Out of the union of determinates (Vibhavas), the consequents (Anubhavas), and the transitory mental status (Vyabhichan bhavas), the birth of Rasa takes place.

Then Bharata discusses in detail what these Vibhavas, Anubhavas and Sanchari bhavas are, and how they help in relishing the rasa by awakening and supporting the dominant emotions (Sthayi bhavas), which are eight in number. These dominant emotions are inherent in mankind and they take the stage of Rasas, supported by the other factors.4 And this enjoyment of Rasa or delight, he made the aim of literature, along with teaching.

Being the earliest systematic exponent of the literary criticism and as the head of Rasa school, Bharata may justly claim the title of the ‘Father’ of Sanskrit Criticism.

There are three main interpreters of Bharata’s Rasa theory. They are Bhatt Lollata, Bhatt Nayak and Sankuk. They gave different theories of Rasa realisation. The first is Bhatt Lollata whose theory is famous as ‘Utpattivad.’ His view is briefly thus when the actors identify themselves with the characters in the play, their Sthai bhava or permanent dominant emotion, supported by their skill in acting, music and dress, attains the state of Rasa.

This Rasa primarily is sustained by the actors on account of their imagining themselves, for the moment, to be those very charac-ters.5 According to this view, it is the actors that exhibit the Rasa and so it is they, who realize it. This theory has a serious set back

20

as it leaves out of all consideration the poet and the audience or the reader. It ignores the question-how do the audience or the readers realise the Rasa or get an emotional delight.

Sri Sankuk criticizes Bhatt Lollata for holding this view and brings a new theory which is named as 'Anumiti-vad.' The main crux of his theory is that the Rasa is relished by readers or audience by anuman or inferently not really. He thinks that without the middle term like vibhava (determinants) or anubhavs (effects of the emotion), there can not be the knowledge of sthayibhava-dominant emotion. He says, skilled actors imitate truly the characters and their experience. In the ordinary world the emotion of the heroes are revealed by

(A) The causes or main springs which excite their emotion;

(B) Visible effects of their feelings; and

(C) Some temporary and other feelings.

When these are represented on the stage, by the superior imitative faculty of the actors, they come to be called by the names-Vibhava, Anubhava and Vyabhicaribhava respectively. When the spectators witness a successful imitation of the characters by actors they forget for the moment the difference between the actors and characters-and 'inferently' experience the emotion of the characters themselves. The experience of the emotion by the audience is but a reflection (Ankur) of the real emotional mood (Sthayibhava), of the characters. This is Rasa. He gives the example of an actor, imitating the character of Rama. The spectator feels "that the actor is Rama or like Rama. Like some one who observes the horse in the picture and considers it to be a real horse, the spectator takes him to be Ram.6

This theory claims a little improvement upon the previous theory laid down by Bhatt Lollata. Sankuk brings the audience or readers into the process of the relisation of Rasa. He says that the characters in real life that is the real Ram and Sita and the audience realise Rasa, not actors. They just imitate the action of the real characters. This is a weakness of this theory. If the actors do not identify themselves with the characters and feel the same emotion as the characters would have felt in their real life, how

can they portray that emotion in its true intensity. The audience will not be able to realise rasa in its fulness if they are unable to do so. Only the actor's dress and action cannot be regarded as the true imitation of the character's emotions. Then how can the spectator realise the same emotion, if the actors do not exhibit the real emotion correctly. And the actors cannot exhibit the emotion correctly unless they themselves feel it. Sankuk says that audience realises the rasa only by inference from the dress and actions of the actors. But how can they have the direct apprihension and realisation of the poetic thrill ?

What happens really is, that the actor by his training and imagination and by his imaginative 'identification' with the character, represents the emotions and actions in real in such a way that they are innocent of imitation. Hence it becomes easy for spectator or reader to have empathy with actors and they apprehend the emotion directly and relish the Rasa.

Bhatt Nayak, the third interpreter, gave a better view than that of these two. His theory is named 'Bhakti-vad' i.e. Rasa is relished in it's true sense not by inference. He further gave the theory of 'sadharni Karan'-'empathy,' because of which reader or spectator relishes the Rasa, while reading or witnessing a work of art. His view is briefly thus-that Rasa is relished, with thrill and pure pleasure through the process of generalisation (Sadharniकरण) i.e. the process of empathy (Bhavkatva-vyapar). The generalisation of empathy (Bhavkatva-vyapar). The generalisation of meaning and emotion comes after the literal meaning (Abibha) i.e. dictionary on scientific meaning in poetry or drama.

He clarifies his view by saying that if Rasa is known or manifested and is present in sympathetic spectator-Sahirdya, then, in Karuna one must experience pain not pleasure.

Bhatt Nayak says that when Rasa is relished there are three things-'Abibha'-literal aspect, 'Bhava'-emotion and generalising aspect and third 'Bhoga'-relishing aspect. He feels that the first aspect is achieved through dialogues, the dramatic representation possesses both the second and the third aspect i.e. emotional aspect and relish. The difficulty in the realisation of the Rasa is

that the spectator or the reader is unable to forget his individuality

or his real self. When the second function of art that is generali-

zation operates this difficulty passes away. Empathy enables the

actors to merge their personality into the personality of the

characters. Then, the reader or the spectator also through this

faculty of empathy loses his own individuality as he merges it with

that of the actors or the characters. There is a oneness of the

characters, the actors and the reader or the spectator. This is what

is meant by ‘Sadharnikaran’ because of which the spectator or the

reader relishes the Rasa or takes delight in witnessing or reading

particular work of art.

In witnessing a play, if the actors do not have empathy with

the characters, it becomes difficult for the spectator to relish the

Rasa or enjoy the play. But in reading a poem or a novel, the reader

does not find actors there, and it becomes easy for him to have

empathy directly with the characters. Therefore he is able to enjoy

the novel or the poem and relish the Rasa.

Dr. Rajkishor Singh finds that Bhatt Nayaka took the base

of his theory from Bharata. He quotes from Bharata and shows

how Bhatt Nayaka took this theory from him and enlarged it. In

very brief Bharata shows how the audience feels or relishes the

Rasa. He says that the emotions of the characters are commu-

nicated to the actors and emotions through them to the spectators

because the emotions are possessed by every human being,

hence they are relished by them.9

Vishvanath also supports the same view. He recognises the

empathy which helps the readers and audience in relishing the

emotions. He uses the word ‘Sadharnikaran’ or the process of

empathy and show that this process is very important if Rasa is

to be relished.10

This process of Sadharnikaran, hints towards the suggestive

power of literature, because of which the readers are able to identify

with the emotions of the characters. Anandverdhan creates a new

milestone in the field of Sanskrit literary criticism by postulating

the new theory of ‘Dhvani–suggestion. He means that word has

different layers of meaning namely-Abidha-literal meaning and

vyangna-suggestive meaning. According to him it is the suggestive power of the word that helps in the sadharņikaran of objects and the communication of the characters’ emotion to the spectators or the readers. He gives the example of Valmiki-the great epic writer-'who was overwhelmed by the spectacle of the dying bird wallowing in a pool of blood and the wailing of the surviving female.

This scene stirred up this emotion of pity and because of empathy he was able to identify himself with two birds. Spontaneously his feelings gave way to melody.11 Anandverdhan divides this suggestion into several parts. He includes the Rasatheory under the subhead of 'Alakṣyakramvyangya Dhavani.' He acknowledges the process of empathy. Besides this he lays emphasis on the suggestive power of the word which evokes different emotions and attitudes in man. This process is too quick to be traced, hence he gives the name-'Alakṣyakram-vyangya Dhvani.' The sentiments-Rasas, are relished by the reader without his being conscious of the transitory feelings-Sanchari bhavas and consiquents or Anubhavas.

Anandverdhan's theory of literal meaning and suggestive meaning can be compared with I.A. Richard's theory of the “Two Uses of Language.” I.A. Richards is a twentieth century critic of English literature. According to him language is capable of two different kinds of uses, viz., the referential use and the emotive use. In the words of Ram Chandra Shukla the 'referential' or 'scientific use' of language is nothing but 'Abhibha' - literary or dictionary meaning and 'emotive use' is the transformation of 'Dhvani'-suggestion.12 I.A. Richards writes-

We may either use the words for the sake of references,… or we may use them for the sake of the attitudes and emotion which ensue.13

An illustration will make this point clear. The word 'snake' in its scientific or literary use means a reptile. But in the expression, “What a snake he is !”, the same word suggests the feelings of contempt occasioned by treachery. In the same say 'come here my honey,' will suggest the sentiment of love and evoke an emotion of love. It is the emotive use of language or the suggestiveness of the words, the poet or literary artist is concerned with,

for his function is to evoke the emotional responses of the readers.

All theories of Anandverdhan and Richards will fall flat, if the readers are not responsive. And the concept of Rasa given by Abinavgupta gives proper attention to readers or audience. His theory is the essence of all the theories given prior to him. His (Abinav Gupta's) theory is famous as 'Abhivyakti-vad' by which he means that the emotions of the audience or the readers, are manifested and realised. His view briefly is that in the sahurdya or responsive audience or readers there are implanted certain vasnas or emotions and there are called in the language of criticism 'Sthayibhava.' When there is valid manifestation of these emotions, through Vibhavas (determinants objects etc.), Anubhavas (consequents), and Vyabhicharibhavs (transitory feelings), on the stage or in readers and developed to such a climax that they are accompanied by a thrill or joy. This pleasure is rasa. In simple words when the readers, through empathy with the characters feel that their own emotions are stirred up and developed to a climax, and that they are free from all limitations of specific relationship, they feel a thrilling pleasure. The nature of this realisation or rasa is pure transcendental, lasting only during the time of realisation.14 Bernays justly writes:

Tragedy excites the emotions of pity and fear—kindred emotions that are in the breast of all men.15

In this way his theory is similar to that of Abhinavgupta because both of them talk about the emotions implanted in the hearts of all the readers.

Thus, there are three levels of this process of empathy. There is author's empathy with his characters, whom he selects from life. At second level, there is empathy between actors and characters of the play. Third level shows empathy between character and audience. In this way the process of Rasa works. But in poem or novel, there are only two levels. First that of author and character, second that of characters and readers.

The last but not the least is the question of propriety. The writers of the East and the West, both, talk of propriety, which is to be maintained in literature. This propriety may be about the

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

language of the work, theme, social atmosphere and culture etc. The culture of East is quite different from that of West, hence the rules of propriety are also different. The propriety of the West can not be the propriety of the East. In Indian Sanskrit literature, Acharya Ksemendra talks about propriety in literature. He writes:

Propriety, which is the very soul of poetry, should be found pervading the word and sentence, the import of composition, the merits…. the surroundings, the family…. the intention and the other essentials of the poetry.16

Ksemendra’s theory of propriety can be compared with that of Horace in his Arts Poetica, or the Art of Poetry where he talks indirectly about propriety in literature:

Should some painter take the fancy to draw the neck of a horse joined to a human head, and to overlay with varicoloured plumage limbs gathered from anywhere and everywhere, making what appeared at the top a beautiful woman to end below as a foul fish, when you were admitted to the spectacle, would you, restrain your laughter.17

What he means is that there should be a propriety, a balance in a literary work, for only then one can enjoy it in a true manner.

II RASA—IT’S INGREDIENTS

Regarding the process of aesthetic realisation, Bharata talks about the ingredients of Rasa, in his well known aphorism,18 which constitutes the embryo of Rasa theory. He states, that Rasa is manifested through the combination of Vibhavas-determinants, Anubhavas-the consequents and the Vyabhicharibhavas-the transitory feelings. He does not refer to Sthayibhava-dominant emotion in this context but does so separately. He says that “just as people enjoy the taste of delicious food prepared with various spices and feel a kind of pleasure, similarly the sympathetic audience or readers enjoy the arousal of their various dominant emotions- through words, gestures and changes in expression and have Rasa-realisation and rasa enjoyment.”19

The Vibhava-determinant is the first factor, which contributes to the aesthetic experience. Bharat says when the characters manifest their emotions through actions and words, then action and words along with them become the medium to evoke the same emotion in the hearts of the readers. These Vibhavas are divided into three: Alamban-object, Asraya-subject and Uddipan-excitant.

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Alamban Vibhava or the object is a person because of whom the Sthayibhava or the dominant emotion is excited or aroused. He may be a hero, a heroine or any body else. He or she is primarily responsible for the stimulation of the Sthayibhava of love or any other emotion, residing in the hearts of others. Actors in a play and characters in a novel may be Alambans for the audience and the readers respectively, one character may be an alamban for another character.

Uddipan Vibhava - the excitement or the exciting cause helps in inflaming emotions already evoked or aroused by Alamban Vibhava. The gestures of the Alamban such as glancing sideways or moving the eyebrows gazing lovingly etc., the season such as spring, the surroundings like pleasure garden, fragnance of flowers or moonlight heighten the intensity of the emotion of love.

Asraya or Subject - is the person whose emotion or sentiment is aroused by Alamban Vibhava and excited by Uddipan Vibhava. The audience and the readers as well as the character in a play or a novel are the subjects of emotions.

ANUBHAVAS-CONSIQUENTS Bharata defines the Anubhava, as the visible effect of the feeling, which follows the stimulation of emotion. Any sort of phsycial movement or activity which follows the arousal of emotion or any manifestation of emotion is Anubhava-the consequent. These are divided into two sub-heads Aangik-physical consequents and Satvikas-psycho-physical consequents. Aangik Anubhavas-physical consequents are the results of the stimulation of emotion. These results or consequents consist of the movements of the parts of body. For example, when humour is aroused, laughing is the physical consequent.

Satvikas are spontaneous psycho-physical consequents, the reddening of the face while some one is angry, will be called Satvika Anubhava-spontaneous psycho-physical consequent. According to Bharata these are eight in number. Stambha-motionlessness is a state when the limbs become motionless due to excessive joy, surprise or fear. Swaid is perspiration on account

of love, fever, exertion or shame. Romancha is the erection of hair

due to joy, surprise, fear or cold, etc. Swar Bhanga—Halting tone—

is the halting of tone or the trembling of voice due to intoxication,

joy, pain or fear. Vaipthu—Trembling—is the shaking of limbs or

of the whole of the body on account of fear, anger, or hardwork.

Vaivarnya is becoming pale or losing the brightness of complex-

ion due to despair, intoxication and anger. Ashru is the shedding

of tears due to anger, sorrow or joy. Pralaya is becoming incapable

of any action. This destruction of mental and physical activity is

caused by excessive joy or sorrow.25

STHAYIBHAVA S-DOMINANT EMOTIONS

As they are dominant and permanent emotions residing in the

hearts of every human being, they are the nuclius of Rasa

realisation. Sthayibhavs have the possibility of being accepted

at length as the ruling passions in diverse situations. Sthayibhavs

themselves have been described Rasas because Rasas originate

from Sthayibhavs.26

According to Bharata the Sthayibhavs or the dominant

emotions are eight in number.27 Rati—Love—is the emotion of

intense love for an object. Hasya—Laughter—is the capacity to

enjoy something comic which every human being possesses.28

Soka—Grief—is pain or sorrow which arises at the loss of a

cherished object, or some calamity and separation from a loved

one. Krodha—Anger—is due to a grave offence to oneself by

others. Utsah—Enthusiasm—is the desire to do something impor-

tant and courageous. Jugupsa—Repulsion—is the an automatic

shrinking or recoiling from loathful objects. Bhaya—Fear—is a

natural instinct in every human breast necessary for self preser-

vation which keeps a person at a distince from dreadful objects,

enemies, etc. Vishmaya—Ashtonishment—is caused by the sight

of extra-ordinary objects.29 Later on Bharata adds Nirvaida—detach-

ment—as one of dominant emotions. Vishvanath also adds tenth

dominant emotion, i.e., Vatsalya—parental feelings.

SANCHARI BHA VAS- TRANSITORY FEELINGS

Sanchari Bhavs are temporary feelings which quickly pass

in and out of a person's heart but do not hinder the main dominant

28

RAMA KANT SHARMA

emotion, in fact they support it. They are subsidiary to the

Sthayibhavas and feed and nourish and intensify them. They

appear and disappear in the midst of the Sthayibhavas as waves

rise and fall in an ocean.

Bharata gives a list of thirty three Sanchari Bhavas: “Indif-

ference, remorse, anxiety or doubt, envy, intoxication, weariness,

indolence, subjection, worry, attachment, rememberance, pa-

tience, abashment or shame, naughty, joy, agitation or impulsive-

ness, petrifaction, pride, despair, curiosity, sleep, epilepsy, dreami-

ness, awakening, indignation, dissimulation or abashment, rash-

ness, wisdom, sickness, delirium, death, fright and conflict in

ideas."30

Thus dominant emotions-Sthayi bhavas, aroused by objects-

Anubhavas, excited by excitants-Uddipanvibhavas, manifested

through physical or movements consequents-Anubhavas, nour-

ished by transitory feelings-Sanchari bhavas are relished by

sympathetic readers or audience as Rasa. The reader is not

conscious of all these ingredients while relishing any sort of

sentiment. He only enjoys the sentiment which emerges in his

heart as spontaneously as a fountain that gives him thrill and

pleasure.

III RASA—IT'S KINDS

SRINGAR RASA—SENTIMENT OF LOVE

Srinagar Rasa-erotic sentiment towers over all the other

sentiments because it is the most important instinct in mankind

from the very beginning of civilisation. Anand-Verdhan considers

this Sringar rasa based on erotic sentiment as the sweetest and

the most delicate of all the rasas.31 Bharata divides this sentiment

into two kinds: Sanyoga Sringar—love in union and Viyoga Sringar—

love in senaration.32

SANYOGA SRINGAR

When the lovers enjoy the company of each other, their very

nearness fills them with great happiness. In Sanyoga Sringar the

lovers are objects-Alamban, of the sentiment of love. Moonlight,

beauty of beloved and gardens are the excitants—Uddipan vibhavas.

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HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

Moving of the eyebrows, side ways glances and kisses are the consiquents—Anubhavas of this sentiment. The Sancharibhavas of this emotion are all the transitory feelings leaving rashness death, indolence and fright.33 The sentiment of love in union is based on the dominant emotion-Sthayibhava-of Rati or love, and manifested through all other ingredients, the dominant emotion of love is relished as sentiment of love in union.34

The lovers are not able to enjoy each other’s company, they crave for each other. In ‘Viyoga Sringar’ they continue to love even during their separation but they are oppressed by grief at their separation. Memories play the role of excitants-Uddipan Vibhavas. The tears etc., are consequents and ‘detachment, anxiety, jealousy exertion, worry, curiosity, sleep, dream awakening, desease, delarium, epilepsy, patrification, attachment, and death are transitory feelings-Sanchari bhavas of Viyoga Srinagar-sentiment of love in separation.35 The dominant emotion is love-rati, which is manifested through all these factors and is relished as Viyoga Srinagar.

HASYA RASA—SENTIMENT OF HUMOUR

Hasya Rasa is based on the Sthayibhava of Hasya—laughter (dominant emotion). The person, who wears funny or incongruous costumes like the motley coat, speaks in a changed voice or performs unnatural or comic actions, of a professional fool, is the object—Alamban—of hasya rasa as the people who see him laugh. The actions of the objects, his or her strange behaviour, unusual and comic dresses are excitants-or Uddipan Vibhavas of hasya rasa. While laughing the narrowing of the eyes, the movements of the lips, the nose and the cheeks etc., are the consequents of the sentiment of humour. The transitory feelings of hasya rasa are sleep, indolence and dissimulation.36

Manifested through all these constituents, the dominant emotion of laughter is relished as Hasya Rasa or as the sentiment of humour.

KARUNA RASA—PATHETIC SENTIMENT

Grief—‘Soka,’—is the dominant emotion, which is developed to the state of Karuna Rasa or pathetic sentiment. The loss of dear

ones, through separation or death are the Alambans-objects which cause grief to mankind. The memory of the departed ones are the excitants of the grief of the character and his suffering, pain and disappointment etc., are the excitants of grief of the audience or the readers, grumbling etc. are the consequents of this emotion. Attachment, epilepsy, disease, remorse, rememberance, despair and worry etc., are the transitory feelings which help the dominant emotion of grief to be relished as pathetic sentiment.37 Vishvanath has also included detachment as one of the transitory feelings but it does not appear proper to the sentiment and both attachment and detachment can not go together.

The primacy of the sentiment of pity or Karuna Rasa has been recognised both in the east and the west. In the western literature tragedy is considered superior to the comedy. In tragedy there is dominance of pity along with fear. In Eastern literature, though there is no conception of tragedy, yet the great writers, like Bhavbhooti, consider the pathetic sentiment to be the supreme sentiment.

As the dominant emotion of Karuna Rasa is a painful one, namely grief, hence it should give pain to readers or audience, not pleasure. Then, how it is the medium of delight in literature, remains a question. Aristotle talks of Cathartic pleasure that we receive as tragic relief and Indian aesthetics talk about delight in Karuna Rasa.

Vishvanath, answering this question, says that there is pleasure in pathetic sentiment as well as in the sentiment of fear and disgust. The spectators or the readers prove this reality by watching a tragedy or reading a tragic novel: No body would see or read tragedy if pain and not pleasure resulted from doing so. Further, when the pain or pleasure giving objects are taken from this world to the sphere of poetry or literature, these painful sensory experiences are raised and elevated by the poet who creates grand tragic effects in painful situations. The result is that readers or audience relish the sentiment and smile in their tears.38

Shelley too says, “Our sweetest songs are those/That tell of saddest thought.” Hardy’s tragedies are very grand. The concep-

tion of delight through tragedy or the satisfaction of this tragic feeling has been interpreted in Western literature on different grounds. Butcher interprates the theory of 'Catharsis' in several ways but the concept of purification and purgation is the basic concept of Aristotle. He writes-

In the process of tragic excitation, these feelings (pity and fear) find relief. As the tragic action progress, when the tumult of mind, first roused, has afterwards subsided, the lower forms of emotion are found to have been transformed into higher and more refind forms, Tragedy, then, does more than the homeo-pathic cure of certain passions-i.e. aesthetic satisfaction to purify and clarify them by passing through medium of art.

What he means is that literature cuts the sharp edges of emotions. By giving them grandeur through artistic elements, moderates them to enjoyable feelings. In the glow of tragic excitation, these feelings are so transformed that the net result is a noble emotional pleasure and satisfaction. There is another reason for this pleasure. The larger part of a man's life is composed of difficulties and miseries. When he witnesses or reads about the sufferings of the characters which they do not deserve he feels a sort of a consolation that he is not the only sufferer in this world.

When he finds the characters suffering more then him, his own miseries and problems appear to be trivial in comparison. As in King Lear Edgar says when he looks at the king who has become mad after he has been rejected by his two daughters:

When we our betters see bearing our woes, We scarcely think our miseries our foes... How light and portable my pain seems now, When that which makes me bend, makes the king bow.

RAUDRA RASA-FURIOUS SENTIMENT

Furious sentiment is a development of its dominant emotion of anger. When a person looks at his enemy or at somebody who is harming others, his anger is aroused. The Alamban or object is therefore the enemy or the person, who awakens anger in one's heart. The actions of the object and his behaviour, etc. are the excitants or the Uddipans of the furious sentiment. The actions which excite anger can be insulting comments, use of force etc.

The consiquents, are the movement of eyebrows in anger,

the quivering of lips, raising of the arms to strike, roaring, praising oneself, awearing and reddening of eyes and face. Extreme anger can land to a direct attack on the object where possible. Arrogance, wrath, agitation, pride, romanch, perspiration etc., are the transitory feelings of the Furious sentiment.41 Helped by these constituents the dominant emotion-anger is relished as Furious sentiment or Raudra Rasa.

VEER RASA-HEROIC SENTIMENT

Heroic sentiment is based on the dominant emotion of enthusiasm-utsah. The objects of heroic sentiment are the enernies during war etc. ‘Danveera’ is a person who gives alms to the poor, ‘Dharmveera’ is a person who believes in doing good work and in righteous heroism and ‘Dayaveer’ is a person who is sympathetic towards the people who are helpless. The actions of all these people are the excitants of heroic sentiment in the hearts of the spectators. Fighting, giving alms, doing good work and helping others are the consiquents of this sentiment. Patience, wisdom, pride and romanch etc. are the transitory feelings of the heroic sentiment. ‘Dan Veera’-who has munificent heroism, ‘Dharmveera’-righteous person ‘Yough veera’-bellicose and ‘Dayaveera’-sympathetic are the four kinds of heroic persons.42

BHAYANAK RASA-SENTIMENT OF FEAR

Sentiment of fear is based upon the dominant emotion of fear. Dreadful and terrible objects are the objects or alamban of the sentiment of fear. The actions of these dreadful objects excite the sentiment of fear in man. Becoming Pale ‘vaivarnya,’ halting tone-‘swar bhanga,’ destruction of the mental and physical activity- ‘pralaya,’ perspiration-‘swaid’ the erection of hair-‘romanch’ and trembling-‘vipthu’ are the consiquents of this sentiment. The transitory feelings of this sentiment are repulsion, agitation, fright, doubt, epilepsy and death etc.43 As the dominant emotion of fear is relished as the sentiment of fear or Bhayanak Rasa, it is manifested through all these consiquents.

VEEBHATSA RASA-SENTIMENT OF DISGUST

Repulsion is the dominant emotion of this sentiment of

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

33

disgust. Stinking flesh, blood and marrow etc., are the objects which awaken the sentiment of disgust and excitants.44 The consiquents of this sentiment are spitting, turning away of the face and closing of eyes etc. Epilepsy, agitation, disease and desire to escape the sight etc., are the transitory feelings of this emotion.

ADBHUT RASA-SENTIMENT OF WONDER

Amazement-Vismaya is the dominant emotion which is developed into the state of the sentiment of wonder. Unexpected and supernatural elements, very grand objects, etc. are the objects of this sentiment. The extra ordinary qualities of the objects and their praise or their description are the excitants of the sentiment of wonder or Adbhut Rasa. Consiquents of wonder are-motionlessness, romanch, halting tone and widening of the eyes. Conflict in thoughts-'Vitark,' agitation, curiousity and joy etc., are the transitory feelings of the sentiment of wonder.45 The dominant emotion of amazement is relished as sentiment of wonder.

SANTA RASA-SENTIMENT OF PEACE

Nirveda-Detachment is the dominant emotion which is developed into the state of the sentiment of peace. The realisation of God, transience of the world including mankind are the objects which awaken the sentiment of peace. The incidents of this moral world, are the excitants of the emotion. Gautam Budha saw a very old man who was even unable to walk properly, a man who was sick, a funeral procession and Sadhu or a holy man having a peaceful expression. When he heard that it was an inevitable fate of every human being his dominant emotions of detachment from the world were excited. Visiting places of pilgrimage, keeping the company of noble men and hearing or giving sermons are its consiquents. The transitory feelings are, detachment, joy, rememberance of the inevitable sorrows of life and wisdom etc.46 Bharata does not include this Santa Rasa or the sentiment of peace along with the eight Rasas but discusses separately. He writes that there is a ninth Rasa namely Santa which is based on the dominant emotion of detachment which gives rise to renunciation.47 He defines the sentiment by saying that, “There is neither pain, nor pleasure nor jealousy, left in the heart. There is only a

sense of brotherhood and equality among all in the sentiment of

peace.48

Critics object to the existence and enjoyment of the sentiment

of peace. They say that if there is neither pain or nor pleasure,

then no one can get pleasure from the sentiment and therefore this

Rasa cannot possibly be relished. But Vishvanatha says that when

he talks of the absence of pain and pleasure, he means that a sort

of pain and pleasure which emerge from worldly objects. Of course

pain is not there but pleasure is there in this sentiment. But this

pleasure is of a higher kind as it arises from the contemplation

of objects which are not of this material and mortal world. That

is the realisation of higher or spiritual truth about life and God. This

sentiment of peace emerges when all the passions or sentiments

associated with this world, are no longer excited or are sepnt. This

is relieved and peaceful state of mind. This peace is elevating and

delightful in itself and so the Santa Rasa can be relished.

VATSALYA RASA—PARENTAL LOVE

Vatsalya Rasa was established by Vishvanath. There is a

reference of this Rasa in Bharata's Natya Shastra. But it was

Vishvanath who established the Vatsalya Rasa. The dominant

emotion of Vatsalya Rasa is a natural love of parents for their

children. Children are it's object or Albanban. The actions of the

children their playing, laughing and jumping their limited knowl-

edge, their way of speaking and their bravery etc., are the excitants

of the parental love or Vatsalya Rasa. The consiquents of this

emotion are, embracing or holding the children, kissing them and

thrill and tears of joy while watching them or thinking about them.

Worry, joy and pride are the transitory feelings of this sentiment.

It can be said that the Rasa tneory is one of the most

prominent theories of literary criticism. As it is based upon the ten

human sentiments which are common to every human being.

These emotions are love, humour, pity, anger, heroism, fear,

disgust, amazement, parental love and peace. As these emotins

are inherent in human beings no literary work can be written if all

these emotions are excluded.

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

35

REFERENCES

'The history of the meaning of Rasa affords an explanation for the literary use of it. In Vadas and Upnishads, the word Rasa refers to five or six meanings at least:- a, the juice of some plant: b, water and milk; c, the sap of grain; d, the sense of savour and taste; e, the sense of the essence or the essential element, for example, Prano hi va anganam rasah; i.e. life breath or vital air is the essence of the limbs. The Rasa is then called a state of bliss, whose soul is full of bliss, he has rasa etc. After this it was used by Druhin Mahatma whom Bharata refers to in his Natyashastra.

2Dr. K. Krishnamoorthy, "Rasa as a Canon of Literary Criticism," Essays in Sanskrit Criticism (Dharwar: Kernatak University: 1964), p.65.

3Bharata, Natya Shastra (Vanarasi: Chauchamba Pub. n.d.), VI, p.228.

4विभावानुभावमुक्तो हृदयङ्ग वसु सामाश्रयः।

संचारिमिसु स्तुसयुक्त स्थायेयवतु रसा भवेत्॥

Bharata, Natya Shastra, VII, Sloka 22, p.437.

5Mammat, Kavya Prakash, ed. Dr. Satya Vrat Singh (Varanasi: Chacuchamba; 1965), p.67.

6"राम एवायम् अर्यमेव रामिति न रामोऽमित्त्योत्तर कलिके बोधे चित्रतुरगादिन्यायेन

रामोऽयामिति प्रतिपत्या ग्राह्ये नटे"

Mammat, Kavya Prakash, ed. S.N. Shastri (Meerut: Sahitya Bhandar, 1977), IV, 123.

7The literal translation of 'Sadharnikaran' is generalisation but, 'empathy' gives a better expression, which means-'Losing ones identity in a work of art' or 'power of sharing another person's faeling'.

Oxford Dictionary (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), p.282.

8ताटस्थ्येन नात्मगतदैन रसः प्रतीतये नोऽपयते नामि-च्यज्यते, आपेतु काव्येनाट्ये

चाभियातो द्वितीयेन विभावादिनसाधरणी कारणात्मना भावकत्व्यापारेण भाव्य मान

सत्वो देक प्रकाशानन्दमय भोगेन भूष्यते इति भट्टनायकः,

Mammat, Kavyaprakash, IV, 126.

9एम्यशसामान्र्य गुणायोगेन रस्ता निष्पध्यन्ते॥

Dr. Rajkishor Singh, Acharya Mammat aur Kavya Prakash (Lucknow: Pub. Centre, 1974), pp.78-9.

10Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, III, 90.

11काव्यस्यात्मा स एवार्थः तथा चादिकवे पुरा

क्रोऽच दम्द वियोगत्थः शौकः श्लोकत्व्य आगतः॥

Anandverdhan, Dhvanyaloka, ed. Nagendra (Varanasi: Gyanmandal, 1962), p.26.

12Anandverdhan, Dhvanyaloka, XXI.

13I.A. Richards, "Two uses of Languages," 20th Century Literary Criticism, ed. David Lodge (London: Longman, 1984), p.112.

14Mammata, Kavya Prakash, IV, 129. 30-33.

Copyrighted material

15Butcher, "Function of Tragedy," Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine

Arts, p.245.

16Dr. Surya Kanta, Ksemendra Studies—Auchitya Vicarca (Poona: Ori-

ental Book Agency, 1954). p.119.

17Horace, Arts Poetica, Trans. James Herry & Sera Catron Smith, ed.

D.K. Chopra Literary Criticism (Meerut: Loyal Book Depot, 1974), p.118.

18विभावानुभावव्यभिचारी संयुगे दसः निष्पत्ति

19यथागुडादिभिर्व्यञ्जनैर्नैरृषि धिमिष खादवदयो

रत्ता निवर्तयन्ते तथा नानाभावों गता अपि स्थायिनोभाव रसमाप्नुवन्ति,

Bharata, Natayasastra, VI, 274.

20रत्युबोधका लोके विमावा: काव्यनाट्ययो:।

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, III, 108.

21आलम्बनस्य चेष्टादय देश कालादयस्तथा,

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, III, 183.

22अनुभाव्यते अननेन वाग्गड सत्व वृत्ती भियन इति,

Bharata, Natya Shastra, VII, 374.

23लोके य कार्यस्य: सोडनुभाव काव्य नाट्ययो:।

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, III, 184.

24स्तम्भ स्वेदौष्ठ रोमाञ्च स्वरमंगोडथवेपथु:

वैवर्ण्य मत्रु प्रलय इत्यष्टो सात्विका स्मृताः॥

Bharata, Natya Shastra, Ch., VI, 11, 22-23, p.223.

25स्तम्भश्चेष्टा प्रतीयातो भयहर्षभयादिभिः..... प्रस अश्रुनेत्रोदभयं वारि क्रोधदुःख

प्रलयः सुख दुखाम्याम चेष्टाज्ञान निराकृति॥

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, 111, 187.

26एवमेव स्थायिनो भावरससंघ्या प्रत्येकते।

Bharata, Natya Shastra, VI, 390.

27रतिहासश्च शोकश्च क्रोधोत्साहो भयं तथा,

जुगुप्सा विस्मयश्चेति स्थायिभाव प्रकीर्तिसः,

Bharata, Natya Shastra, Ch., VI, 11, 17-18, p.221.

28रतिमनोनानु कुलेअर्थे मनस, प्रवजायितम

वागादिवैकृतोचेत्तो विकासो हास इष्यते॥

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, Ch., 111, 11., 175-76.

29इष्टनाशदिगिशचेतोवैकल्य शोक शब्द भाक।

प्रतिकूलेषू तह्नेस्यावखादे: क्रोध इशयते,

विविधेषु पदार्थेषु लोसीमति वर्तिषु

विस्फारसचेतसी मस्तु स विस्मय उदाहत:॥

Bharata, Natya Shastra, Ch., VI, 11., 19-28, p.222.

निवेदरलानिशुडकाड यस्तथाडसूयामदश्रमा

आलस्यंचेव दन्यअच चिन्तामोंह स्मृति क्षति:

ब्रीडा चपलता हर्ष आदेगी जड़तां तथा

गवो विषाद औत्सुक्य निद्रापस्मारएवच

सुप्तदवोधोअमयंशचयें वक्विथ मध्योगता

मति व्याधिरस्तथोन्माद स्तथा मरणमेवच

त्रासश्चेव वितक्रशच विग्लेया व्यभिचारिण:

त्रयसिंतदशंमे भावाः समाश्रयतात्सु नामतः

Bharata, Natya Shastra, ch., VI, 11., 19-28, p.222.

विशोषस्तु श्रृङ्गारेऽ सुकुमारतमो हि असो,

Anandverdhan, Dhvanyaloka, 111, 241.

तस्य देव अधिष्ठाने संयोगो विप्रलम्भश्च,

Bharata, Natya Shastra, VI, 302.

आलम्बनं नायिका खुर्द दक्षिणायायच नायकः

चन्द्र चन्दनरोम्स्त्रुतायु दद्दीपनं मतम्.

भूविक्षेप कटाक्षादिरनुभावः प्रकीर्तितः

त्यकतोग्रयमनमणालस्य जुगुप्सा व्यभिचारिणः॥

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, 111, 227.

स्थायिभियो रति:.....एतेराभिव्यक्तः सृदयविषयो रति

भाव श्रृङगार अपतां अजयतें।

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, 111, 227.

विप्रलम्भकुतस्तु निवेद ग्लानि शंडका सूर्यश्रमचिन्तो

त्सुक्य निद्रासुप्त स्वप्नाविवोधध्यानादापस्मार जाड्यं

मोहमरणादिभि आवेगी निमित्तचय

Bharata, Natya Shastra, VI, 305.

हासो हाहारधैये भावः श्वेताः प्रथम देवत्

विकृता कारवाकदेश्त यमालोक्य हसै ज्जनः

तदत्रालम्बनं प्रादुष्टचेष्टो ददीपनं मतम्

निदालस्यावदितपाथा अत्र स्त्युभीविचारिणः

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, 111, 258.

इष्टनाशदनिष्टाप्तेः करुणारव्यो रसो भवेत्

शोकाटत्रस्थायीभावः रयाच्छोत्त मालम्भने मतम्

तस्य दाहोदकावस्था भवदुद्दापने पुनः॥

अनुभावा दैन्यनिदाभूपात क्रन्दितादयः।

वैवर्णां छ्वासिनि श्वास स्तम्भ प्रलपनिच ॥

निर्देमोहापरमाव्याधिगलानि स्मृति श्रमा:।

विषादणडतो न्माद चिन्ताथा व्याभि चारिण ॥

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, 111, 261-62.

38Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, III, 87.

39Butcher, "Function of Tragedy," Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Arts, pp.250-51.

40Shakespeare, "King Lear," The Works of Williams Shakespeare, ed. Ernest Barker (London: Waverley Book, 1949), p.339.

41 रौद्रः क्रोधरस्थायिभावो रदती रुद्राधिदेवतः

आलम्बनमरितस्स निघृणेयेददीपनं मतम्

मुष्टिप्रहार पातम् विकृतखेदवातारणेश्चदे,

संग्राम संघमाथैरस्पोद्दीप्ति मवेत् प्रोढ

भूवित्रिग्रण्द्रशोचादुसमोटन तर्णना:

आत्मावदानकथन मायुधोक्षेपणानिच

अनुभावास्तथाक्षेप क्रेरसंदर्शनादय:

महोहारमविदयस्तज मावां स्युब्योभिचारण।

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, III, 264.

उत्तमे प्रकृतियीन उत्तसाह स्थायी भावक:

आलम्बनद्वयावस्तु विजेतव्यादिचेष्टा मतं

विजेतव्यादिचेष्टाधस्तस्पोदी पनरूविर्ण

अनुभावास्तु ततः स्यु: सहायान्वेषणादय

रूअचारणस्तु क्षितिमतिगर्वस्मृति तर्क रोमाअचं

स च दानघ्मे युद्धघ्यैाच समानेचशतुथी स्यात् ॥

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, pp.266-70.

भयानको अयस्थायि भासो कालाधिदेवत:

यस्मादुत्ययथते भीतिरतद्वालम्यनं मतं

चेष्टा थोरतरातस्य भेदु द्दीपन पुन:

अनुभावोडत्र वैष्णर्य गदगद स्वरभाषणम

प्रलय स्वेदरोमाअच कमयदिप्रेक्षणादय:

जुगुप्सावेगसंगोह संत्रासग्लानि दीनता

शंका परस्मार सम्मदान्ति मृत्यवाधा व्यभिचारिण॥

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, pp.270-71.

जुगुप्सा स्थायंभवस्तु वीभत्सः कथ्यते रस:

दुर्गन्ध मास रोधिर भेदास्यालम्बनं मतं

सत्रेव कूर्मिपात थमु द्दीपन मुदा धयतं

अनुभावास्त्र वदननेत्रसंडकीचनादय:

मोक्ष पस्मारयेगोऽयाधिश्च मरणाध्या:

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, 111, 272.

अदभुतो विस्मय स्थायीभावो गन्धर्वाद्देवत:

पीत वर्णो वस्तु लोकातिगमालम्बनं मतं

स्तम्भ स्वेदेअथ रोमाअचगदगद स्वर संप्रमा

तथा वैत्राविकासाधा अनुभ्या प्रकोर्तिता:

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, p.273.

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

शान्तः शमस्थायी भावः उत्तम प्रकृतिमताम्

अनित्य वादिनाऽशनपवरतुनी. सारिता तुया

परमात्मास्वरूपं वा तस्यालम्बनाभिप्यते

पुण्याश्रमहरिकेन्द्र........

रोमाञ्चाद्याश्चानुभावस्तथा स्यौर्विभावचरणः निर्वेदहर्षसंमरण मतिर्भूतदगाध्यः

Vishvanath, Sahitya Derpan, p.275.

अथ शान्तो नाम शमस्थायी भावात्मक मोक्ष प्रवर्तकः

Bharata, Natya Shastra, p.350.

न यत्र दुःखं न सुखं न द्वेषो नापि मत्सरः

समः सर्वेषु भूतेषु स शान्तः प्रथितो रसः

Bharata, Natya Shastra, p.361.

CHAPTER III

SENTIMENT OF LOVE—SRINGAR RASA

Love—the noblest frailty of mind is as old as humanity itself.

The literature of the whole world is eloquent of it's supremacy and universality. If Sanskrit literature gives it supreme place among emotions (Ras-Raj), English literature also is a beautiful description of this sentiment. It has been dealt both in ideal and realistic aspects in both the literatures. It is natural therefore, that love should dominate Hardy's scene. Most of his novels are love stories. Love is the dominating force which affects the actions of the characters in his novels. Not only this, he has a wide range of love moods. "Exquisitly, he sounds the different notes in its scale-the peaceful idyllic love of Fancy and Dick, the faithful, unhopeful and enduring love of Gabriel and Marty, Eustacia's searing passion." Indeed it is very natural that love should dominate Hardy's scene. Man cast in a dark and unsatisfying world thirsts for happiness. The happiness promised by love is the most universal symbol of this thirst, that Hardy could have chosen. They hope that love will free them from the heavy burden of this dark and gloomy world. But love is unable to provide happiness to everyone. Therefore, there is both union and separation in love i.e. Sanyoga Sringar and Viyoga Srinagar in Hardy's novels.

SENTIMENT OF LOVE-UNION-SANYOGA SRINGAR

Mayor of Casterbridge is the story of Henchard's success and failure in life but there is also a successful depiction of love in this novel. He shows love between Farfrae and Lucetta, Farfrae and Elizabeth Jane and Henchard and Lucetta. The love between Henchard and Lucetta has been described as, off the scene. She comes to casterbridge to marry Henchard. But when she sees Farfrae, she is instantly attracted towards him. Farfrae too finds Lucetta more sophisticated than Elizabeth Jane. He is charmed by her personality. Lucetta says-

'What has happened to us is very curious'

'Something to think over when we are alone'

'You has not better look at me any longer.'

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

'But look or look not I will see you in my thoughts.'2

After their marriage, on Sundays, as well as on week days,

Farfrae and Lucetta flit about the town like two butterflies—or rather

like a bee and butterfly in a league for company. She seemed to

take no pleasure in going anywhere except in her husband's

company. But she was never tired of watching Donald's face.

Every trifling emotion that her husband showed, as he talked, had

its reflex on her face and limbs.

It is significant to note how often Hardy's plots turn on the

revelation of the past actions coming to light after being kept secret

for sometime. Hardy charges this device with a greater serious-

ness than most of the authors. To the characters past may be

dead; they may have put up their past actions behind them. But

they can not escape their consequences. This happens in Mayor

of Casterbridge, Return of the Native, Pair of Blue Eyes, Far From

the Madding Crowed and Tess. Mostly “these past actions are

connected with love. Love is the predominating motive actuating

his characters.”3 One or twice he presents us wth a hero moved

by desires. For example Jude has an ambition for learning.

Swithin's story becomes a love story and Jude forgets his intel-

lectual ambitions and is absorbed completely in his passion for

Sue. Clym who comes to his native country with a noble aim of

educating the villagers, gives up this aim and is lost in the charm

of Eustacia.

Return of the Native shows a rhomboid of love which has a

tail. There is love between Wildeve and Eustacia, Eustacia and

Clym Yeo-bright, Wildeve and Thomasin and Venn and Thomasin.

But the focus of Hardy is mainly on the love story of clym and

Eustacia. He gives a beautiful scene to show the intense love

between clym and Eustacia. When clym Yeobright comes home

from Paris to spend holidays with his mother, he is attracted

towards Eustacia. Eustacia falls in love with clym as she is

charmed by the glamour of Paris whence he has come. Clym waits

for her on the Heath-

He heard a rustling on his left hand, a cloaked figure with an upturned face,

appeared at the base of the Borrow and Clym descended. In a moment the

figure was in his arms and his lips upon hers.

'My Eustacia...'

'Clym dearest...'

They remained long without a single utterance for no language could reach

the level of their condition.4

The scene is highly suggestive of the sentiment of love.

Words are few, where feeling is deep. The situations change

according to the culture, for example in Sanskrit literature the

moonlight is one of the excitants but here the moonless night is

helping them in their enjoyment of love. Dark night, the peaceful

and lovely atmosphere are inflaming the emotions. "In love's

ecstasy they find an intimation of the happiness that they hope,

will free them from the burden of human lot."5 This feeling gives

sublimity to their love.

Tess Durbyfield is like Marty and Giles because she is happily

adjusted to her environment. A fresh and virginal daughter of

Nature is what she first seems to Angel Clare, when she is working

as a milkmaid at Talbothays Dairy. Hardy emphasizes, in some

marvellous passages that she and Angel Clare lead a kind of life

which is not only precious in itself but essential. They meet

continually, they can not help it. They meet daily in that solemn

and strange interval, the twilight of the morning, in the violet or

the pink dawn. For it is necessary to rise early here. Milking is

done betimes, and before the milking comes skimming, which

begins at a little past three. The spectral half compounded light

which pervades the open meadow, impresses them with a feeling

of isolation as if they were Adam and Eve.

Angel clare is one of the most interesting heroes whome

Hardy had so far attempted to draw. He wishes to use his education

for the honour and glory of man. He comes to live at Talbothays

to study farming. He has taken a step downwards from his own

class by doing this. Like clym, he finds that living close to nature

makes him surprisingly cheerful. He stops thinking of the dairy

workers as the comic, Yokels and begins to like them and respect

them as people. He takes indeed a real delight in their compan-

ionship. The change in his attitudes brought about by working in

the dairy for a while, is responsible for his falling in love with Tess. The love between Angel and Tess is as intense as that of clym and Eustacia. Once when both Tess and Clare milk the cow, Clare jumps from his seat excited by her beauty and Kneels down beside her in her arms.

Tess was completely taken by surprise and she yielded to his embrace with unreflecting inevitableness. Having seen that it was really her lover who had advanced, and no one else, her lips parted and she sank upon him in her momentry joy with something very like as ecstatic joy.6

One important influence on Hardy’s work is Shelly’s concept of love. Both writers had unorthodox views about marriage and some of them are discussed at length in the fourth book of Jude the Obscure, when Sue’s husband, after an agonising private strugle, decides that she would be happier with her lover. He explains his decision to his friend that he found their manner for an extra-ordinary affinity, or sympathy entered into their attachment, which some how took away all the grossness. Their supreme desire is to share each other’s emotions and fancies and dreams. His friends ask whether it was plotonic love. Philotson says that Shelley would be nearer to it.

We can get the effect os Shelleyan love on his famous novel ‘The Well Beloved.’ At the same time the conclusion of the novel clearly shows that thomas Hardy knows very well the fate of shelleyan love. Jocelyn Pierston is such a person, who is only a romantic lover and for him love is just like the imaginative figure of any woman. He wonders from place to place in search of his love. For him, love is a spirit, a dream, a frenzy, a conception, an aroma, an epitomized sex, a light of the eyes, a parting of the lips. He is unable to understand his own conception of love.

When he comes home and observes Avice Caro, he feels sure that the migratcry allusive idealisation he called his love whoever since his boy hood had flitted from human shell to human shell, an indefinite number of times, was going to take up her abode in the body of Avice Caro.

Hardy himself narrates the views of Pierston to explain his views about love. It is not a fixed figure but only a feeling that finds incarnations. He has always been faithful to his well beloved but

she has had many embodiments each individuality known as Lucy, Jane, Flora, Evengeline and what not has been mearly a transient condition of her. Whenever he observes the next beautiful lady, the feelings transfer from the previous figure to the present. He never knows where she next would be, whither she would lead him, having herself the instant access to all ranks and classes, to every abode of man. Some times at night he dreams that she is wile weaving daughter of high zeus in person, bent on tormenting him for his sins against her beauty in his art-the implacable aphrodite indeed. He knows that he loves the masquerading creature where he finds her whether with blue eyes, black eyes or brown; whether presenting herself as tall fragile, or plump. She is never in two places at once. She has never been in one place for a long time.

Hardy writes: Essentially she was perhaps of no tangible substance, a spirit a dream, a frenzy, a conception, an aroma, an epitomized sex, a light of the eyes, a parting of the lips. God only knew what she really was. Piersten did not, she was indescribable.7

It is just after a little bit of time Pierston Observes Marcia Bencomb that the incarnation changes the body. To Avice he was engaged but looking at Marcia, he finds her a taller, squarer form than Avice. It was dignified, arresting, that of a very Juno. Nothing more classical he had ever seen. “What a handsome, commanding, imperious face it was quite of a peace with the proud tones of her voice. She was a new type altogether in his experience.”8 Due to heavy rain, Pierston and Marcia have to take shelter under the old boat. There they remain for a long time and here Pierston becomes conscious of the migration of well beloved. This is the fate of Pierston that he remains young up to the age of sixty and is unable to find a well beloved. He remains bechelor and frustrated but can not get married because of his shelleyan or idealistic approach to love.

When he tells his story to Somers, Somers is not astonished. He says to Pierston that such natures are very difficult to be found. He proposes an idea that Pierston may get married only with the woman whose well Beloved flits about as his: ‘I admit that you are in practice as ideal as in theory. I mean, the process will be reversed. Some women whose well beloved flits about as yours does

now, will catch your eyes and you will stick to her like a limpet, while she

follows her Phantom and leaves you to ache as you will.'9

But Pierston knows his curse that will not come to an end easily.

The time passes. He has other incarnations till he becomes a man

of forty years. One day he gets a letter from home town about the

death of Avice Caro. This letter upsets hir., very much. The letter

informs him that Avice married her cousin but died as a widow. Now

she becomes a dominating spirit on his mind. The soul of Avice

haunts his mind. Pierston is sitting in a party but his mind wonders

in the home town. When the hostess asks him about the trouble,

he says about Avice:

The only woman when I never rightly valued, I may almost say ! he added

and therefore the only one I will ever regret !10

Pierston becomes angry with himself but his grief does not

become less. The consciousness of the intrinsic almost radiant

purity of this new sprung affection for a flown spirit, forbids him

to check it. "The flesh was absent altogether, it was love rarefied

and refined to it's highest alter. He had felt nothing like it before."11

He takes up her portrait and feels a deep love for her. He loves

the woman dead as he had never loved her in life. Now the times

of youthful friendship with her, in which he had learnt every note

of her innocent nature, flames up into a yearning and passionate

attachment embittered by regret beyond words. He says to Somers:

She is the only sweet heart I ever slighted, Alfred, he said, because she

is the only one I ought to have cared for that is just the fool, I have always

been.12

The next day finds him in his native town and like Hamlet,

he observes the funeral ceremony of Avice. We can remember

Hardy's love for Tryphena, at whose death Hardy went to her grave

to pay his last tribute. The personal love story has a close similarity

with the scene.

Both Shelly and Hardy believe that love is an affair and affinity

of the mind and spirit which is a great deal more important than

sex. In Shelly the loved object is seen as something radiant, divine

and scarcely human. This is how Jude sees the women he loves.

After shelly had left his wife for Mary Godwin, he suggested that

she could come and live with them as a friend, and in the same

way Sue optimistically hopes that she can go on being friends with

her husband after she has left him. It would be a mistake, though

to think that Hardy necessarily agrees with his theories. His final

conclusion is that Shelleyan characters like Angel Clare and Sue

Bridehead did more harm than good. Shelley's theory of love

leaves out too many things, the fret, the fever, the derision and

desaster. On the other hand Hardy creates the people like Troy,

Arabella and Fitzpiers who are only earthly lovers. The love

between Jude and Arabella has nothing to do with divinity or the

radiance. It is just a passion. Arabella falls in love with Jude when

she sees him. Jude is also attracted by her beauty and they start

meeting each other. Once they go for a walk and hear themselves

talked about as lovers. At this she laughs.

'Are we lovers?' asked Jude.

'You know best.'

'But you can tell?'13

For answer she inclined her head upon his shoulder. Jude took the

hint and encircling her waist with his arms, "pulled her to him and

kissed her."14

Hardy does not show how love manifests itself differently in

different characters as Jane Austen does. He wishes to make us

feel the actual heat and colour of it's flame, to reproduce it's impact

on the heart. Hardy's picture of love is in it's lyrical manner. For

example in the novel Under the Greenwood Tree, the story starts

like a simple theme of music with the tale of tranter's son falling

in love with the village school mistress. "Like several of Hardy's

other heroines she has to choose between the country man and

the more sophisticated man from out side the community and the

fact that she makes in this instance the right choice for her future

husband allows the story to end happily."15 This story can be put

in contrast with the story of the Pair of Blue Eyes or of The Wood

Landers. In these novels, the heroine leaves the simple and

country man hero and prefers the man of city and sophistication.

It becomes their error of judgement and as a result both of the

novels become tragedies. This may be the suggestion of the

novelist also.

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

The heroine of the novel is introduced to readers during a conversation about her pretty boot which the shoe maker has mended. He speaks of her 'as neat a little figure of fun as ever I see and just husband high.' This statement increases Dick's interest and of the readers when the choir joined by the singing boys in white smocks tunes the songs out side of the school, we are eager as Dick to see if the young lady will appear. But it is not until two more hymns are sung, that a light comes on from an upstairs window and Fancy Day wrapped in a white robe with her marvellous rich hair falling about her, looks out to thank the choir. From that dramatic moment Dick's heart is lost to the young woman and the story of his pursuit of her is started. It is a love story which can make people stop and give up their valuable time to see a marriage accomplished in its' pages.

His handling of love theme is specially clever in this novel and Fancy is subtly drawn character. She gives clear indications of Hardy's attitude to women at this stage in his life. One can see in Fancy the first sketches of Hardyish heroine. Fancy is allusive tantalising and flirtatious, not altogether truthful and frank as Dick is. Hardy speakes about 'those beautiful eyes of hers, too refined for a tranter's wife.' But Hardy's views on courtship seem fairly optimistic. At last he makes Fancy refuse the offer of marriage from the vicar, though she is sorely tempted by the thought of what being a vicar's wife will mean-among other things a pony carriage, birds and pleasant society. But this proposal she is going to keep secret from Dick all her life even though the trusting husband believes that they are happy because there is such full confidence between them. Dicks develops during the course of the novel from the carefree youngman who appears singing as he walks round the lanes of Mellstock to the confused but still determined lover and finaly to the newly married man beginning to realise what his responsibilities are goint to be towards his new life.

There is a beautiful example of this lyrical love in the chapter 'Goint Nutting.' Dick in a good mood and fine dress comes to Fancy to ask her to go nutting with him. She is preparing her blue dress to wear it at father's home. She tells Dick that he can wait a little

for her and she will go with him after completing her work. But she

goes on working even after three hours and does not care for his

feelings. He feels hurt and goes out to nut by himself till late in

the evening. While returning home, he finds Fancy, on the way,

waiting for him in a miserable condition. She jumps up when she

recognises Dick. She runs up to him, flings her purse on the grass,

puts her little head against his chest and their begins a narrative

disjointed by such a hysterical weeping as is never surpassed for

intensity in the history of their love.

'O Dick,' she sobbed out, 'where have you been away from me ? O, I have

suffered agony and thought you would never come any more ! O Dick

directly you were gone and I thought I had offended you and I put down

the dress. It is not finished now and I never will finish it. Yes Disk, I don't

care what I wear when you are not by my side... for I do love you so !16

Hearing this Dick forgets everything and then kisses her ten

times over. Then they proceed homewards and she leaning upon

his shoulder and in addition support from his arm round her waist

and singing, "why are you wandering here, I pray ?"17 The readers

enjoy the same sentiment as they identify themselves with the

feelings and ecstatic experience of Disk and Fancy.

Far From the Madding Crowd has close similarities with Under

the Greenwood Tree. Both the novels were written by Hardy in his

young age and both of them are romantic comedies having the

qualities like those of Shakespeare. The novel begins with love

and ends with it. The major love story of the novei, is the love

between Gabriel and Bathsheba. In the first chapter, the hero sees

the heroine and falls in love. It is the faithful, loyal and steady love

of Oak for her. It is a dignified and pure love. He loves truely but

he does not demand like Diggory and Giles. At the same time he

never gives up his high feelings of self respect "He is merely a

skilful farmer, he is also morally stronger and better than most

people."18 Near the beginning of the story he says to Bathsheba,

the rather flighty girl whom he is in love with, that he will do one

thing in his life-one thing certain-that is, love her and long for her

and keep wanting her till he dies. The fire of love burns steadily

in his heart. He comes to the help of Bathsheba in every difficulty.

But he never presses his claim. He waits and waits quietly and

patiently in Miltonic way, “They also serve who stand and wait.” We have a memorable scene of meeting between Oak and Bathsheba, when at one cold night Oak puts more fuel to the burning fire and goes to sleep without opening the holes that serve as ventilators in the hut. He would have died of suffocation if his faithful dog had not barked to draw, Bathsheba’s attention. She opens the door by force and sprinkles the milk upon him (as she had no water) and brings him to senses. He finds himself in her lap. In the state of surprise and confusion he tells her his name and asks her name. She hesitates to speak it. He then asks her to give her hand which she happily does. He is so excited that he leaves it quickly only touching her fingers. Bathsheba, too, for the first time in her life again gives her hand to Oak and says:

‘There that is long enough,’ said she, though without putting it away. ‘But I suppose you are thinking you would like to kiss it ? You may if you want to.’19

Hardy is stirred by what is momentous and moving and picturesque in life by it’s phases of heightened passion and spiritual illuminations. In consequence he presents his theme in a higher emotional key than most novelist do, and conceives it in more imaginative terms. How different is the scene when Bathsheba, walking through the wood at night, knocks against an unknown man and then opening her dark lantern to see who he is, is dazzled by the figure, glittering in scarlet and gold of the stranger Sergeant.

‘Is that a dark lantern you have ?

‘I fancy so,’ said the man.

‘Yes.’

‘If you allow me, I will open it and set you free.’ A hand seized the lantern, the door was opened, the rays burst out from their prison, and Bathsheba beheld her position with astonishment. The man to whom she was hooked was brilliant in brass and scarlet. He was a soldier. His sudden appearance to darkness, what the sound of a trumpet is, to silence… The contrast of this revelation with her anticipations of some sinister figure in sombre garb was so great that it had upon her the effect of a fairy transformation.20

The scene is vividly presented to the eye, but still more vividly does Hardy penetrate beneath the material facts to reveal their

imaginative significance. His sudden appearance.... transformation, are the sentences that infuse the mystery and magic of love in the light of love that germinates in the heart of Bathsheba.

The poetic strain in his description of love scenes is of ramantic types. The same type of scene we get when Troy in order to woo Bathsheba, shows her the regimental drill, how he takes her into a remote fern filled hollow. On the heath he tells her to stand very still he he draws his sword and in a moment she finds herself in a whirl of flashing blades that seemed likely every second to pierce her to the heart. Troy is to take her, as it were by sword in another sense he does pierce her heart with a fatal wound of love.

The love stories of Two on a Tower and A Pair of Blue Eyes are drawn in a sharper outline, coloured in a higher key, pure ethereal and lyrical in which the background is less human more imaginative. For those novels his personal experiences help him a lot.

When Hardy was thinking his latin would make an upward way for him, into holy orders, another path and nearer one was opened. In 1856, his father had some conference with John Hicks, the ecclesiastical architect and the boy became Hick's pupil leaving the old British school at Dorchester with his usual good will. Within a short time in his new employment, he prepared note book of diagrams and structure. This phase of his life helps him in the creation of Stephen in the novel A Pair of Blue Eyes.

For the benefit of this novel, he received a letter from his employer dated February 11th, 1870, asking him to "go in to Cornwall for me and to take a plan and particulars of a church I am about to rebuild there."21 Accordingly he made his way to St. Juliot near Boscastle, and was received at the Rectory by a young lady, the sister in law of the Rector. Her name was Emma Lavinia Gifford. The reason why she was there was principally her busy share in the church affairs. She among others was deeply interested before hand in the visit of the architect to their remote village and when this stranger came, she was surprised but not displeased like Elfride to see Stephen. Hardy fell in love with her and they

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

were married in September 1874. It has been assumed that in that

marriage, the attitude she favoured was, that of the lady towards

the poorman. But to reject such ideas she herself writes:

"We grew much interested in each other. I found him a perfectly new subject

of study and delight and he found a 'mine' in me, he said."22

The romantic beauty and remoteness of that place gave birth

to the love in the novel in A Pair of Blue Eyes. Elfride is happy

to find him as beautiful and handsome as herself. Elfride SwanCourt

is a girl whose emotions lay very near the surface. Hardy compares

her to Miranda and her purity who has never seen a man and has

not bestowed her interest on a mortal.

Their love blooms quickly and they roam like the love birds.

Elfride on horse and Stephen walking beside her. She sings the

song 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' just to provoke Stephen. Elfride

asks him to kiss her hand if he wishes. He expresses by a look

that to kiss a hand through glove is not a great treat in the

circumstances. Then she says that she will take her glove of:

'Ah you don't want to kiss it, and you shall not now !'

'If I do not, may I never kiss again you sever Elfride ! You know I think more

of you than I can tell; that you are my queen. I would die for you Elfride !'

A rapid red again filled her cheeks and she looked at him meditatively, what

a proud moment it was for Elfride then ! She was ruling a heart with absolute

despotism for the first time in her life.23

Two On A Tower as Hardy says is a slightly built romance

and belongs to the second grade group of his novels. Even then

it has the same intensity of passion as we find in his other great

books like Return of the Native and Far From The Madding Crowd.

Readers should remember the scene from the novel Far From The

Madding Crowd, when Bathsheba encounters Troy first time at

night in the shaded light of lantern. The impression which she had

can be compared to the effect on ladyConstantine, when she first

observes Swithin. But like Troy he is not a man who deserts the

life of Bathsheba. Swithin's sublime innocence of such thoughts

concerning his own material thought is most frequently asserted

and strongly believed. The effect of science is demonstrated by

the purity of his eyes and this adds attractiveness to his physical

attraction. She is over-powered so much by him that she does not

know what she is doing:

What whim agitation or attraction prompted the impulse, no body knows, but she took the scissors and bending over the sleeping youth, cut off one of the curls. rather crooks.... hastened through the door and descended the staircase.

It is the alchemy of love which transforms an abstracted astronomer into an eager lover.

VIYOGA SRINGAR-LOVE IN SEPARATION :

When lovers are separated, they becomes desirous for each other's company. They becomes gloomy or dreamy. They loose all their vitality and charm in life. The only wish, that they have is, to meet their lovers. But in the world their desires are not fulfilled. Rather, love, which is symbol of joy and happiness, becomes the cause for their destruction. Most of lovers in the novels of Hardy are not able to enjoy love in Union permanently. Love is a blind untamable power holding the mind and soul of people and dragging them to their grave. They are keeping this desire of everlasting love in their heart. They may face life easily, even if they do not enjoy it. But this tempest sweeps them off their feet, only to fling them down again, broken and despairing. Even in the Trumpet Major or Far From the Madding Crowd, when love does have a happy union, it has the shadow of grief. It is not a sunshine happiness that closes the drama of Bathsheba and Gabriel. Anne and Bob-Loveday enjoy the love but at the cost of John-the noblest of the three. Under the Greenwood Tree is the only novel of Hardy where love story results into a happy union but this novel is the light weight among his master pieces.

It is only the love of clym and Eustacia which is focus of Hardy. They love each other with great intensity. A girl like Eustacia does not have any moral code about love. She at first loves wildeve. This love is her past time only. For the first time in her life, she falls in love with clym genuinely. Clym also loves her to the utmost. It starts from the very beginning of the novel when Clym is about to return to his native land. The glamour of city life adds attraction to Clym's personality. She goes out side the village to see him. Clym while coming, wishes her good night. This makes her long for clym's company. She dreams that she

and Clym are dancing together. When he is about to kiss her, the dream is broken and she cries, “It was meant for Yeobright.”25

“When the plot rises to its crises, Hardy's visualising power burns all the brigter.”26 His technique is that of a modern director of films. We watch the story and feel the emotion. Sometimes he makes his emotion more intense through action than througn narration. The feelings come to us through suggestion. For example, we can take the great scene between husband and wife which is turning point of action in the novel. Hardy wises to indicate that although clym Yeobright has broken—so he thinks - finally with Eustacia, he is still passionately in love with her:

She hastily dressed herself, Yeobright moodily walking up and down the room, the whole of the time. At last her things were on. Her little hands quivered so violently as she held them to her chin to fasten her bonnet that she could not tie the strings and after a few moments she relinquished the attempt. Seeing this he moved forward and said, 'Let me tie them.'

She assented in silence and lifted her chin. For once at least in her life, she was totally oblivious of the charm of her attitude. But he was not and he turned his eyes that he might not be tempted to softness.27

It is not the dialogue that makes the scene so moving. The dialogue as a matter of fact is inempressive. But the readers relish every bit of emotion. Every moment, every gesture of Clym and Eustakia like the quivering of her hands, his spontaneous movement forward and the way he turns his eyes aside lest her charm should make him weak. The complete scene is suggestive of high intense emotion of love in separation.

Angel Clare sends Tess home in a carriage as he decides to live separate from her. He thinks that she is impure. But love in heart never dies. When she is going in a carriage, he feels that Tess would look at him but she does not and he is bitterly disappointed. Tess can not look at him because she is lost in the thoughts of suffering.

The fly moved creeping up a hill, and Clare watched it go with unpremediated hope that Tess would look out to the window for one moment. But she never thought of doing would not have ventured to do, lying in half dead faint inside. Thus he.... in the anguish of his heart quoted a line from the poet with peculiar amendation of his own ‘God is not in his heaven. All is wrong with the world.’28

The love story of Farfrae and Elizabeth Jane finds the union but passes from gulfs and separation. Farfrae is gentle and all Casterbridge folk love him. Henchard does not like it and becomes jealous of Farfrae. One day Farfrae arranges a dance programme where he and Elizabeth Jane dance together. Henchard becomes angry with Farfrae and tells him to leave his employment. The prospect of Farfrae leaving Casterbridge is so melancholic that Elizabeth Jane breaths a sigh letting it off in fragments that Farfrae who is walking at her side may not hear her. When Farfrae says, 'I hope you Casterbridge folk will not forget me if I go; Elizabeth earnestly says, 'That I am sure we will not I wish you would not go at all.' She picks up a chit in Farfrae's writing from the garden. On the chit 'Dear Sir' was written. Writing on a loose slip 'Elizabeth Jane,' She lays the latter over the word 'Sir' making it 'Dear Elizabeth Jane.' A quick red runs up her face and tearing the slip away are excitants of her love.

Mentally Jude is attached to Sue. But Arabella loves Jude. This love is based on physical charms. When Arabella is not with him, it becomes difficult for Jude to pass even six days before he can see Arabella again. As he walks on the road where he had walked with Arabella, the day before, he longs for her company and love burns in his heart:

He was on the spot where he had given her the first kiss.... Jude looked on the ground and sighed. He looked closely and could just discern in the damp dust the imprints of their feet, as they had stood, locked in each others arms . She was not there now, and the embroidary upon the imagination upon a stuff of nature so depicted her past presence that a void was in his heart which nothing could fill.

"Hardy invents scenes which of their very nature stir the imagination." Not only does he describes the event graphically, the situation, imaginatively conceived is in it self arresting and exciting. The same type of episode is in The Trumpet Major, when Bob in order to win back Anne makes her a little harp and hangs it at the mill. When the breeze blows, it piays upon it strings through the autumn night, touching her heart to a wistful sadness-

Every night after this, during the moumful gales of autumn. the strange

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55

mixed music of water, wind and strings met her ear... allowed her emotions

to flow out yet a little further in the old direction... The music so mingled with

her dreams as to wake her, it seemed so rhythmically set itself to the words.

Remember me ! Think of me.32

After looking Fancy at school Dick is completely lost in her

thoughts. He remains there and all his friends go away to sing

happy Christmas to the villagers. Then they come to know that

Dick is not among them. His grand father is afraid of some fatal

tragedy. His father remarks that there is sure to be some reason

for it. He asks his friends if they have noticed any sign of a woman

in his mind. They start the search and reach the school house.

A light is burning in the bedroom, leaning motionless against a

beech tree, was the lost man, his arms folded, his head thrown

back, his eyes fixed upon the illuminated lattice. When his father

questions him, his body flows into a movement and his head is

seen to turn east and west in the gloom as if endeavouring to get

some power to answer the question.

After reaching home he sleeps but his sleeps were disturbed

and slight, an exhaustive variation upon the incidents that had

passed that night in connection with the school window going on

in his brain every time.

In the morning, he goes upstairs, down stairs, out of door,

he can not refrain from an unseen renewal in imagination. He looks

at the daylight shadows of a yellow hew dancing with the firelight

shadows of a blue, on the white washed chimney corner but a glory

has passed that had been of yore. He goes on thinking about Fancy

and his relationship with her. The author seems to have a little pity

for Dick. The tranter defines his son’s love as a ‘zickness’ shyness

belongs to it. He is just like Stephen Smith of A Pair of Blue Eyes

or Swithin of Two on a Tower. He is also a young boy who does

not have any experience of talking to a girl. While talking to Elfride,

Stephen is shy and is unable to talk to her. In the same way Dick

hesitates to see her face to face. He makes plans to visit her with

the help of her handkerchief and goes to her house with great effort

and after pondering over it for a long time, he finds himself unable

in this process. Not being an experienced lover indeed - never

before having been engaged in the practice of love making at all

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except in a small school boy way, can not take advantage of the situation and comes out. It after words costs him so many bitter moments and a sleepless night.

The love story of Elfride and Stephen, like the love stories of Giles and Grace and abriel and Bathsheba, becomes the traditional love story of class prejudices. Hardy selected the location of castle Boterel to show the imperfect dreams of country life and passions. The father of Elfride who is fond of linking Stephen with the respected family of Smiths, never objected to the company of the lovers. The same man becomes against their relationship when he comes to know that Stephen is the son of the village mason. In fact he himself never gave time to Smith to tell his reality. Like Mr. Malbury he thinks them as his puppets who can dance any way he likes. Mr. Malbury somehow gets success at the cost of Gile's life but Swancourt does not. Poor Elfride has to play as her father wishes and at last she pays for it in the shape of her death. She can never forget her first love. She always feels that she has committed a sin against Stephen. She tries her hard to persuade her father to let them marry:

'Certainly not !' he replied.

'No, no, no; do not say it !'

'F' oh ! A fine story, it is not enough that I have been deluded by having him here, the son of my village peasants but now I am to make him my son-in-law ! Heavens above us, are you mad Elfride- ... 'You insult me, papa ! she burst out. 'You do, you do ! He is my own Stephen, he is !'33 Deserting Stephen and deserted by Knight poor girl dies as the wife of third man whom she would not have thought to be her husband even in dream. It is only love that changes rather diestroys a promising and young physicist to produce a common place. Love has its effect in one short night. Next, Morning he is so fascinated that he wants to run off at once to Lady Constantine and say, 'I love thee true.'

The intensity of Lady Constantine's love becomes clear when she comes to know about the sickness of Swithin. An old woman tells her that Swithin is dying, she leaves the old woman and with a breaking heart creeps along the road. Tears brim as she walks and by the time the old woman is out of sight, sobs burst forth

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tumultuously:

'I am too fond of him !' She moaned, 'but I can not 'help it. and I do not care if it is wrong—I do not care.'31

When the doctor tells her about the worse condition of Swithin, scarcely not knowing what she is doing. lady Constentine runs back to swithin's side flings herself on the bed, and in the great love and sorrow kisses him. The astronomer is there, and the love story is there, but there is no marriage. Hardy himself writes at "the out come of a wish to set the emotional history of two infinitestimal lives against the stupendous background of the stellar universe.35 It is only too much joy of love that Kills Lady constantine. She is satisfied to know that Swithin loves her. That is enough reward for her waiting and struggling with the society and her conscience. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

The usurpation of love is repeated by Hardy in the novel The Woodlanders. The father of Grace, Mr. Malbury usurps the love of Giles' father. He is also the helping hand in the next usurpation of Giles' love. Though Mr. Malbury feels for a long time that he should repay Giles by marrying his daughter with him. Poor fellow lives in dreams and his love is usurped by Fitzpiers. Mr. Malbury awakes the temptation in the heart of Grace who otherwise feels herself bound to Giles. The temptation works and Giles is deserted.

Hardy writes about this novel: "On taking up The Woodlanders and reading it after many years I think, I like it as a story best of all."36 One is tempted to agree with him when one comes back to this beautiful and more tense and more neglected novel.

The Woodlanders was written ten years after The Return of Native but the tone is more solemn and more resigned. There is no body in the woodland community at all like Clym Yeobright. Mr. Fitzpiers is very clever and learned young doctor whose light Grace watches in the fascination. But he has no idealistic dreams. He is a cold hearted philanderer. Unfortunately Giles loses his dwelling place and consequently he loses his Grace. Marty, modest by nature and sublime in love writes these lines on the wall of Giles' house:

O Giles, you have lost your dwelling place, And therefore Giles, you will lose your Grace.37

Giles and Marty are not merely figures in the landscape. They actually create the landscape. He and Marty have the instinctive love, like many of the Shakespearean heroines Marty never expresses her love to Giles. We know this truth from Marty after the death of Giles. Grace says to her that Giles ought to have married her and nobody else in the world. Marty shakes her head: 'In all our outdoor days and years together, ma'am,' she replied, 'the one thing that he never spoke to me, was Love; nor I to him.'38

She dedicates her life to him, rather merges her existence in his. She never thinks of second man but Giles in her life even in dreams. Really for Grace we forget Marty. But she stands as grand and gloomy as the Oak tree and always sacrificing herself for her lover who does the same for Grace and never complains. Rather his behaviour with Grace when he is dying outside in rain, increases his greatness in the eyes of Marty since she is the only woman who knew this secret from the very beginning. In fact they are natural born lovers. Grace who is morally bound to Giles forgets him but Marty does not. She is bound with him spiritually. In spite of being a girl of no attractive personality she becomes superior to Grace and to many other heroines of Hardy. Giles and Grace have strong comparison with Gabriel Oak but unlike Oak they do not find fulfilment of their love.

It will be better to end this Chapter with one of optimistic novels of Hardy i.e., Far from the Madding Crowd. The faithful love of Gabriel Oak passing from various obstacles finds at last union with his beloved. The most striking quality of Gabriel Oak is his loyalty and devotion to Bathsheba. He is dependable and solid as the Oak tree whose name he bears. He is a silent and undemonstrative lover who neither knows how to flatter a woman nor the art of pleading his love. It may have been observed that there is no single path for getting out of love as there is far getting in separate which was the means that chance offered to Gabriel Oak by Bathsheba's appearance. Love effects much people of certain humours and they are apt to idealise the removed object with

others-notable those affections which are placed and regular. Oak belongs to the even tempered humanity. He feels a secret passion for Bathsheba in his heart to be burning with a fine flame. He reaches a pitch of existence. He never could have anticipated a short time before. He likes saying 'Bathsheba' as a private enjoyment instead of whistling, turns over his taste to Black hair though he had sworn by brown ever since he was a boy. Hardy writes-

Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a direction into support the power of which should be and happily often is in the direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants. Oak began now to see light in this direction and said himself, "I shall make her my wife or upon my soul I shall be good for nothing."39

He continues to watch through the hedge for her regular coming and his sentiments towards her are deepened without any corresponding effect produced upon her.

The love of Gabriel is deep but not so intense as is the love of Bathsheba for Troy. Troy belongs to the group of Fitzpiers and Wildeve. He possesses a charming personality and Bathsheba finds it difficult to resist herself. He is wel! educated. He speaks fluently. He is dashing and skillful swardsman. He is handsome and smart. When he observes Bathsheba, he shows his love for her. It is noticable that Bathsheba for the first time loses her restraint and loves him to the extent of madness. Bathsheba loves Troy in the way that only self reliant women love when they abandon self reliance. A strong woman throws away her strength to show and throw. Gabriel Oak tries to advise her that she should not believe young Troy. Bathsheba is angry with him and comes home. There she finds her servants talking against Troy. She wishes that Liddy should praise Troy. But Liddy also tells her the view of the people and she is too excited to bear her words and bursts out:

'I love him to the very distraction and misery and agony ! Come closer - closer.... He is not bad at ail... My poor life and heart how weak I am ! She moaned in a relaxed, desultory way, heedless of Liddy's presence,' O, how I wish I had never seen him ! Loving is misery for women always.'40

Her love is full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Mainly

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RAMA KANT SHARMA

it is based on the appearance rather than reality as is the case

with Gabriel Oak. He is the worthy man like Dick who gets the

reward of love. Such examples are rare in the love stories of Hardy

who knows that "every sort of human being responds to the call

of love in every sort of circumstances."41 It is one of the main

factors that make the readers enjoy his novels.

REFERENCES

'David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, p.108.

2The Mayor of Casterbridge, p.233.

3David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, pp.29-30.

4The Return of the Native, p.203.

5Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, p.30.

6Tess, p.183.

7Thomas Hardy, Well Beloved (London: Macmillan, 1958), p.15.

8Ibid., p.39.

9Well Beloved, p.79.

10Ibid., p.111.

11Ibid., p.114.

12Ibid.

13Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, p.182.

14Ibid., p.183.

15Thomas Hardy, "Introduction", Under the Greenwood Tree, ed., Anna

Winch Combe (Delhi: Macmillan, 1979), p.16.

16Under the Greenwood Tree, pp.185-87.

17This is said to have been on of Hardy's mother's favourite tunes. F.E.

Hardy, "Birth and Boyhood," Life of Thomas Hardy, p.14.

18Marryn Williams, A Preface to Hardy, p.98.

19Far from the Madding Crowd, p.33.

20Ibid., p.167.

21Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy (London: Macmillan, 1951), p.31.

22Ibid., p.32.

23A Pair of Blue Eyes, p.43.

24Ibid., p.

25Return of the Native, pp.125-26.

26David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, p.57.

27Return of the Native, p.339.

28Tess, p.292.

29The Mayer of Casterbridge, p.108.

30Jude the Obscure, p.92.

31David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, p.61.

32The Trumpet Major, p.189.

33A Pair of Blue Eyes, pp.63-5.

34Two on a Tower, p.77.

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61

35Wide the Preface, Two on a Tower.

36Marryn Williams, A Preface to Hardy, p.102.

37The Woodlanders, p.106.

38Ibid., p.307.

39Far from the Madding Crowd, p.36.

40Ibid., p.202.

41David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, p.30.

CHAPTER IV

HASYA RASA: SENTIMENT OF HUMOUR

Comic sentiment is as important for life as tragic sentiment.

It prepares human beings to face tragic events in life. In tragedy it has two functions-first it intensifies the effect of tragedy and secondly it relieves the mind of the readers from tragic tension for a while and so it is called comic relief. According to Abercrombie, "Next to the tragedy of his work, humour is the first characteristic which appeals to the readers of Hardy’s books."1 One may doubt finding humour in Hardy’s work, so grand and gloomy he is. But humour is there and in good measure. It is able to perform both the functions, it should in a tragedy.

One thing notable about Hardy’s humour is that it is not sophisticated. It is restic and traditional. "It is caught up with joy from the lips of villagers them - selves."2 Mostly the rustics provide humour in his novels as all the major characters with the exception of Elizabeth Jane, have no sense of humour. They are all single minded in their determination of achieving the goal in life. For example Henchard and Susan are remarried. There is a group of persons, the rustics, who talk about the event and their dialogues amuse the readers. Christopher Coney asks Mother Cuxsom - a widow:

'Well mother, how is this ? Here is Mrs. Newson, a mere skellinton, has got another husband to keep her while the woman of your tonage have not.'

'I have not, not another to beat me and I will lay my life. I am as respectable born as she.'

'True, your mother as a way good woman, I can mind her being rewarded by the agricultural society for having the greatest number of healthy children.'3

The type of life and the character to which people are brought up is the only type which they understand instinctively. Most people are intensely receptive to the experience o :ly when they are young. It is, that impression pierces down to that deepest level of mind where the seeds of creativity germinate. First twenty years of Hardy’s life were spent between the village of Bokhampton which was his home and the neighbouring town of Dorchester. Along with

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63

the drama of pain it had it's high relief too. The people had the traditionally inherited mode of pleasures. They celebrated the harvests, christmas and enjoyed birth and marriage. They lived and talked in the rustic elemental way. When their sentiments were sharp and tragic at one time, they also enjoyed and laughed at the simple objects of humour and homely joys. David Cecil writes-

He (Hardy) does not makes us laugh by the brilliant penetration with which he exposes his character's follies, his are the jokes and anacdotes that enliven the evenings in cottages and villages inns and like their's his primary aim is simply to make us laugh. The mood which inspires them is simple, the country man's genial enjoyment and slow relish tor the absurd for its' own sake…. We are made to laugh at the immortal butts of village life gerrulous, reminiscent old grand fathers coward sons, hen pecked husbands and ludicurous timid simpletons….4

Christian cantle and his father Gandfer cantle in Return of the Native are typical comic characters. The fear and gloom of Christian, a young man, are sharply contrasted with the continuous dancing of his father in his old age. Therefore both christian and his father are brought in to relief as comic characters. Christian is so afraid of ghosts that he asks Timothy Fairway not to tell him about them as he says:

'It will make my skin crowl when I think of it in bed alone.'

'When he perceives a shadow coming towards him, he says, 'ought not we run home as hard as possible, not run away from one another close, together I mean.'5

The talk of the rustics is not only informative but interesting and amusing. Even when they talk about serious matters, their manner of talking is such that it brings a smile to our lips. Christian talks about his birth at the time when there was no moon, and also of his fear of the ghost very seriously that it has a comic effect upon the readers. Grandfer Cantle, though very old, (Seventy one years), is full of high spirits. He has a zest for life, being fond of singing and dancing and not averse to drinking. The becoming sight of the bonefire and its' warmth breeds in him a cheerfulness which soon amounts to delight. With his stick in his hand he begins to jig with others. "Grandfer and his stick jigs in the form a three leged object among the rest."6

The readers are greatly amused by the vanity and egoism of

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Grandfer. He brags about the time when he used to be a soldier. Speaking to his son, he says, "Really all the soldiering and smartness in the world in the father seems to count for nothing in forming the nature of the son,"7 meaning that his son has not inherited the boldness of spirit. He says that if he was not prevented by the fear of physical infirmities, he would have set out to see the world again, "But seventy one though nothing at home is a high figure for a rover."8 Boasting of his stemina he says that even if he had been stung by ten adders, he would not have lost a single day's work. "Such is my spirit when I am on my mottle. But perhaps it is natural in a man trained for war."9

The same type of comical characters we have in the novel The Trumpet Major. There are two characters that provide humour in the story. They are uncle Benjy and his nephew Festus Derriman. If uncle is a great miser and does not want to spend a single penny, his nephew is in the hope of acquiring his wealth after uncle's death. These people produce humour by their behaviour and actions. Benjy is afraid of his nephew and he pretends to be sick whenever the nephew is at home. His departure adds happiness to his uncle. He shows extra-ordinary activities, jumps up quickly, without his stick, at the same time opening and shutting his mouth like a thirsty frog, which is his way of expressing mirth. He runs up stairs as quick as an old squirrel.

In his childhood Festus had made himself famous by his pleasant habit of pouncing upon children, smaller and poorer than himself and knocking their birds nests out of their hands but his conduct became singularly the reverse of aggressive, the moment the little boy's mother ran out to him brandishing brooms, frying pans and what ever they could lay hands on by way of weapons. Then he hid behind bushes, under faggots or in pits till they had gone away. He had brought more vulgar exclamations upon the tongues of respectable parents, in his native parish than any other boy of his time. When other youngsters snow balled him, he ran in the place of shelter, where he kneeled snow balls of his own with a stone inside and used these missiles. When he got fearfully beaten by the boys of his own age, he would roar most lustily but

fight on in the midst of his tears, blood and cries.

Both of them excite the laughter of the readers by a comic situation. Uncle Benjy goes to pass his time for some rest. Festus comes to the place in his absence and with his friends makes a party of dancing and drinking. He wastes the costly candles and the best wine of his uncle without caring. In the mean time by chance uncle Benjy comes there and is shocked very much to find Festus there. He cries and weeps loudly to see the wastage of wine and candles. Uncle Benjy requests Trumpet Major and Anne to hide and cry ‘Man a-lost ! Man a-lost,’ and hides himself behind the corner of the building. Hearing the cry Festus and his friends come out and they find major and Anne there. Meanwhile uncle slips into the house and bolts the door. Festus and his friends return to take their caps, are astonished to find the door closed, then old man’s head appears at the upper window and he says vawning:

‘Fie, fie upon ye all for making such a hallabaloo at a weak old man’s door. What is in ye to rouse honest folks at this time of night.’

‘Hang me-why- it is uncle Benjy ! How how-how ! said, Festus, “Nunc without why how the devil is this ! It is I - Festus - wanting to come in.’

‘O No, no, no, my cleverman whoever you be !’ said uncle Benjy in the tune of incredulous integrity.” My nephew, dear boy, is miles away at quarters and sound asleep by this time as becomes a good soldier. That story won’t do tonight my man, not at all.’10

So Festus has to spend the night at the barn and uncle does not open the gate. “The profoundest humour of Hardy is to be found in those scenes where the rustics provide their chorus function. The quality of their commentry is characterised by wit and humour and…. its fund of information.”11

In the country world, stays a canon of his work, of life, of beauty and of merit. This country side lives not only on farming, building, wearing and brewing only but on plenty of marry occasions, dancing and music making. There goes through all that moving frieze of the old and young spirit of humour, which some observers of country life miss through habitual sorrows or high themes of their own. Hardy, however his latter experience and accumulation of evidences on destiny effected what he wrote,

never lost in himself the ready innocent cheerfulness, which was inherent in his nature. In the world in which he lived as a young man and again in his age he was locally celebrated not only he was famous but as a man who was abounded in anacdotes mainly of amusing kind. “Indeed country world was his greatest education.”12

The Romantic story of novel Far From The Madding Crowd is one of such rural but sentimental anacdote. Not only there are rustics, but the hero of the novel Gabriel Oak is the product of same innocent cheerfulness. He suffers but he remains calm and cool headed always. His physical description and his special habits bring smile on the lips of the readers:

When farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an important distance of his ears, eyes were reduced to chink.”13

Mr. Oak carries a watch about him and that may be called a small silver clock. In other words it may be called a watch as to shape and intention and small clock as to size. It is several years older than Oak’s grandfather. It has the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of it's hands also occasionally slips round on the pivot and thus though the minutes are told with precision nobody can be quite certain of the hour they belong to:

The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the other two defects by constant comparisons with the observation of sun and stars and by pressing his face close to the glass of his neighbour's windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the green faced time keepers within.14

The watch is pulled out by throwing his body to one side compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of rudy flesh on account of exertion and drawing up the watch by its chain like a bucket from the well. Hardy is able to give detailed description because:

The poetic strain which was intrinsic to the imaginative process gives him a delight in speech so that his humour has a literary quality denied to more sophisticated level.15

There are rustic characters like Joseph poorgrass, Jon Coggan, The Maltster and Henry Fray etc. These Rustic characters have

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unusual habits and by their dialogues provide humour. There is Leban Tall who is better known as Susan Tall’s husbands, so much dominated he is by his wife. Henery Fray is there and he is always and greatly concerned with the spelling of his name and he spells it as H-E-N-E-R-Y. He thinks that this spelling adds distinction to his character.

The most amusing anacdote is given by Hardy about Joseph Poorgrass. He is fond of drinking and becomes the victim of multiplying eyes. He is shy and nervous. He himself says that he does not have the courage to look at the face of Bathsheba. When he does look at her, he is all blushes. Jon Coggan tells that he is the fearfullest man. He tells the story as he was coming along in the middle of the might, much off afeared and not able to find his way out of the wood. He cried, “Man-a-lost ! Man-a-lost ! Joseph heard the owl crying, “Whoo-Whoo-Whoo !” and Joseph answered, “Joseph Poorgrass of weather-bury sir !”

No, no, now - that is too much, I did not say sir and I never said sir to the bird, knew very well that no gentleman would be hollering there at that time of night.’ Joseph Poorgrass of weatherbury that is every word, I said.16 Coggan tells another story of Josephs in opening the gate. Joseph thinks that there is the devil’s hand in it and so, he knelt before the gate in an attitude of prayers to drive away the devil. Joseph confirms the story and elaborates it that kneeling before the gate, he said the lords prayer, the Ten Commandments and at last the gate opens.

Sometimes even without the use of spoken words the situation becomes amusing in itself as we find in the description of Maltster family in Far from the Madding Crowd, the rustic character in Under the Greenwood Tree and a simple scene of Tess’ family in Tess. Just as in Tess, Tess’ father is in the ale house. Tess’ mother goes to fetch him home, but stays back with him. Then little Abraham goes but he too keeps playing there. At last Tess has to go herself to fetch her parents. The scene of their departure as described by Hardy is comical enough:

They went home together, Tess holding one arm of her father and Mrs. Durby Field the other… he was sufficiently unsteady to incline the row of three at one moment as if they were marching to London and at another

they were marching to Bath, which produced a comical effect.17

The family of Maltster is another source of humour and fun.

The Malster warren smallbury is a very old man more than a hundred years. His son is a ‘Young man of sixty five’ with a some bald head and one tooth in the left centre of upper Jaw which makes much of itself like a mile stone in a bank. And his grandson is a ‘Young boy of forty five’ who manifests a peculiarity of possessing a cheerful soul in a gloomy body.

To speak him as a pessimistic writer would be misleading because inadequate. He does not preach pessimism. He has the saving grace of having no ‘ism’ to support or to examplify.18 Life, movement humour and the end less play of the forces of nature afford him, more than he reveals the insoluble mystery of existence. Another book on Thomas Hardy was published in 1894, the work of Annie Macdonel and though she admitted that she can not pretend any finality in her criticism, Hardy might have specially commissioned her to say for him:

“Not that he has posed as a philosopher or even as poet…. story teller, picture maker, humorist, it is the entertainment he offers us.”19

In July 1871, Hardy had placed a marginal note in Macbeth against two lines:

Things at their worst will cease, or else climb upwards,

To what they were before.20

This is generally an optimistic note and sure that expresses his mood at that time. Later that summer when he was writing Under the Greenwood Tree he must surely have felt that to climb upward had begun, for the novel seems to have been produced by a relatively happy man. Quite contrary to that who wrote the serious tragedies like Tess and Jude. There is great deal of humour in the novel. In the conversation of the rustics, he seems to be laughing with the characters than at them. We can note the gentle humour arising from the talks about the out going parson Grinham;

Ah, Mr. Grinham was a man... he never troubled us with a visit from years’ end to the years’ end ….And there is this man never letting us have a bit of peace; but keeping on about being good and upright till it is carried to such a pitch as I never see

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the like afore nor since.21

The novel presents before us the pastoral love of Dick and Fancy on one hand and the amusing picture of the country choir on the other. The novel is interesting because of the insight, it gives into Hardy’s own character. Hardy has made these singers and these players almost legendry characters. They are much more than a chorus commenting upon the actions of the other people in the book. They are important actors in the novel and have a greatness of their own. Hardy repeats their names like a chant. Perhaps the most rugged of all of them is Grand-father William, likened to the Greenwood tree itself as Hardy describes him standing nobly in the light of the setting sun which gives him a Titanic shadow at least thirty feet in length, stretching away to the east in outlines of imposing magnitude, his head finally terminating upon the trunk of a grand old Oak tree. These characters provide humour by their strange personalities and behaviour. He introduces Robert Penny and Thomas Leaf in the amusing way:

The next was Robert Penny, boot and shoe maker, a little man moving on with his back very hollow and his face fixed on north east quarter of the heavens before him, so that the lower waist coat buttons came first then the remainder of his figure… Finally came a weak lath like form trotting and stumbling along with one shoulder forward and his head inclined to the left, his arms dangling marvellously in the wind as if they were empty sleeves.22

Once again when the choir comes to the house of Dewys, Mrs. Dewy welcomes every one with formality. She asks Thomas Leaf to settle comfortable. The way he expresses his happiness, is quite amusing.

‘Hee-hee-ay !’ replied thomas Leaf letting his mouth continue to smile for sometime after his mind and done smiling and his teeth remained in view as the most conspicuous members of the body.23

The physical appearance and action of Thomas Leaf provides humour. The same group becomes the laughing stock when it goes to Parson Maybold to request him to let them remain in the church till the next christmas. Here the readers get the humour of situation. Reuben continues to advance closer to Mr. Maybold and the parson tries to retreat a little on the contrary. In this process Reuben’s waist coat buttons almost rub against the Vicar’s.

frequent advancing and retreat at last jam Mr. Maybold between

his easy chair and edge of the table on which Maybold has left

the pen with the nib overhanging. At the last vicar's coat tails come

in contact with the pen and down it rolls, at first against the back

of the chair thence turning as somersault into the seat thence

falling to the floor with a rattle.

The vicar stops for his pen and the tranter wishing to show

his respect, stoops also. Maybold speaks to him from under the

table and Tranter from under the chair. Reuben secures the pen

and they come back to their normal positions. The members of

the choir standing outside, feel their curiosity higher and higher

as the minutes pass. The conviction that the movement of the

chairs, can only be caused by the catastrophe of a bloody fight

beginning, overpowers all other considerations. They advance to

the door. Maybold raises his face after the stooping, he beholds

glaring through the door, Mr. Penny in full length portraiture, Mail's

face and shoulders, above Mr. Penny's head, Spink's forehead and

eyes over Mail's crown and a fractional part of Bowman's coun-

tenance under Spink's arms-crescent shaped portions of other

heads and faces being visible behind these the whole dozen and

odd eyes with eager inquiry.44

Hardy's ccomedy turns on the genial farcical huinour of the

village life. David Cecil says:

Rich tragments of rusticity they are, as entertaining as any other classical

characters of Fielding and Goldsmith.45

Such characters in tragedies of Hardy, not only increase the tragic

intensity but they also provide comic relief. The same type of

character we find in his tragedy A Pair of Blue Eyes. Stephen Smith

is going to castle Botterel and he is talking to the driver of the Coach.

Like a common villager the driver adds facts and fiction in his story.

He tells about Lord Luxellian and king Charles the second. King

Charles changed clothes with lord Luxellian and asked him to meet

him at court. There he would reward him. After sometime Lord

Luxellian knocked at the King's door and asked if the King Charles

was in. The people said that there is only Charles the Third. A young

boy came with a crown on his head and said, "My name is Charles

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

the Third."

Stephen says that there must be a mistake because he does not recollect anything in the history like Charles the Third. The driver says that he is telling a true story and the king rewarded Lord Luxellian. Everything went on well till some time after when he got into a most terrible row with king Charles the Fourth-Now Stephen says:

'I can not stand Charles the Fourth. Upon my words, that is too much'

'Why ? There was George the Fourth, was not there ?'

'Certainly'

'Well Charles be as common as George.'

We can find a difference between the comic characters of Hardy and those of other writers. In real life Hardy finds and every body finds individuals who grow to a great age in their haunts and are known for one or two invariables sayings and doings. In life any character who is serious can also talk lightly and be the source of humour. He does not label his characters as only comic ones. A person can not be completely comic or of a serious nature. For example William worm on whom the task of providing amusement falls so much, is also capable of knowing himself and his limitations as he says, "I'll be a poor wambling marı." The readers very easily form the same opinion of him and are able to identify with him.

Hardy like all the Romantics, was very much effected by Elizabethan age and particularly Shakespeare. Some time he quotes from the plays of Shakespeare and borrows title of his dramas. All this shows his love for poetry and poetic imagination. His mode of conveying the humour is also Elizabethan. It has some whimsical fancy. Now and then there is a touch of grave-diggers in 'Hamlet' about it- of the Elizabethan taste for the macabre "Hardy's sense of the irony of human destiny enables him to get a good deal of hearty fun out of coffins and funerals." The same type of example we find in A Pair of Blue Eyes:

'Ah, poor Lord George !' he continued, looking contemplatively at the huge coffin, 'he and I were as bitter enemies once as they could be when one is a lord and the other is a mortalman. Poor fellow ....Yes, I rather liked him sometime. But once now and then, when I looked at his towering height,

I'd think in my inside, what a weight you will be my lord for our arms to Lower under the aisle of Endelstow Church some day.45

Humour of this kind is as much an expression of the creative spirit as poetry. To make a joke of something means to alter it, not just to leave it as it is. It is not odd that so imaginative a talent as Hardy's should be humorours. Like the silver line which enriches the beauty of clouds, his humour enriches the beauty, tragic intensity and the emotional appeal of his work.

REFERENCES

1Abercrombie, Thomas Hardy (New york: Russel & Russel, 1964), p.43.

2H.C. Duffin, Thomas Hardy, p.144.

3The Mayor of Casterbridge, p.82.

4David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, pp.94-5.

5Ibid., pp.33-4.

6The Return of the Native, p.38.

7Ibid., p.408.

8Ibid., p.409.

9Ibid., p.305.

10Hardy, The Trumpet Major, pp.79-80.

11Duffin, Thomas Hardy, p.149.

12Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy, p.11.

13Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, p.15.

14Far from the Madding Crowd, p.16.

15David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, p.85.

16Far from the Madding Crowd, p.68.

17Tess, p.50.

18Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy, p.81.

19Annie Macdonell, Quoted by Edmund Blunden in Thomas Hardy, p.83.

20Shakespeare, Macbeth, IV, ii, 11, 29-30 (These lines show the hope of Ross for Lady macduff and her son).

21Under the Greenwood Tree, pp.105-106,

22Under the Greenwood Tree, p.39.

23Ibid., p.44.

24Under the Greenwood Tree, pp.120-22.

25David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, p.92.

26Pair of Blue Eyes, p.45.

27David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, p.95.

28A Pair of Blue Eyes, p.200.

CHAPTER V

PATHOS: KARUNA RASA

To sorrow

I bade good morrow,

And thought to leave her away behind,

But cheerly cheerly,

She loves me dearly,

She is so constant to me, and so kind.

I could deceive her,

And so leave her,

But ah! She is no constant and so kind.'1

There are the lines given by Thomas Hardy before the novel

The Return of the Native begins. Karuna Rasa plays a major role

in the sorry scheme of human existence in Hardy’s novel. As a

man of literature he has always shown an inclination towards

pathos. Unexpected happenings which are tragic, the vicissitudes

of life, suffering, death, pain and disappointment are the main

springs of this tragic feeling. Hardy’s subject is human life. But

human life can be looked at from various aspects and in many

relations. Mankind’s predicament in the universe becomes the

theme of his work. As seen by him, it is a tragic theme. The world

in which he lived in, had plenty of tragedy in the life of wassex

labourer with its’ poverty and passions.

Despondent and ignorant, exposed alike to be appressions

of social system and caprise of the weather at any moment of their

existence, the people among whome Hardy was brought up were

made conscious of man’s helplessness in the face of circum-

stances. Since the world he looked at seemed full of pain and

disappointment, he wrote-

Happiness is an occasional episode in the general drama of pain.2

At the beginning of this novel, wife of Henchard excites pityof

the readers. As Michael Henchard who is drunk sells his wife susan

like Gypsies sell their animals, she in desperation tries to stop him

but in vain. Her grief awakens the same dominant emotion in the

heart of the readers and it in excited by her words and miserable

condition to be transformed into pathetic sentiment. She goes out

of the tent weeping and sobbing bitterly.

Mike I have lived with thee a couple of years and had nothing but temper:

Now I am no more to you. I will try my luck else where. It will be better for

me and Elizabeth Jane.3

"The business of a poet and a novelist is to show the sorriness

underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the

sorriest things."4 Indeed it is significant that Hardy as a rule

emphasises the fact that even those characters, the world would

call wicked are so much the creatures of circumstances that they

are far more to be pitied than to be blamed. Henchard for instance

on the face of it faulty enough-violent-vindictive-untamed from that

first chapter in which he sells his wife at the fair, till the end of

story when he deliberately conceals from Elizabeth Jane, the news

of her father's arrival, lest she should wish to leave him, he acts

in such a way as to justify the oid fashioned orthodox moralist in

condemning him as the architect of his own misfortunes. But Hardy

does not look at him in this way.

Henchard, as Hardy sees him, is a pathetic figure, born with

an unfortunate disposition but genuinely longing to do right. He is

always tortured by remorse when he does wrong and he is always

defeated by some unlucky stroke of fate. One can listen to the

burning breathing eloquence of Henchard at a crisis in his fortunes

when he talks to Elizabeth Jane;

'Don't ye distress yourself on my account. I would not wish it, at such a

time too, as this. I have done wrong in coming to ye - I see my error. But

it is only for once, so forgive it. I'll never trouble ye again, Elizabeth Jane -

no to my dying day Good night, Good bye !'5

Henchard's death is very pathetic but it is grand in it's pathos.

This is the source of tragic pleasure, which readers derive from

literature. Henchard who has once been the Mayor of the town,

it left alone to die. Except for Abel, a faithful servant, nobody loves

him. Farfrae is not his friend. Elizabeth Jane is cold towards him

and neglects him. Deserted Henchard goes out of the village and

dies of a broken heart. Abel reports his death to Elizabeth Jane

and Farfrae, "Yes, Ma'am, he is gone... you see Ma'am he could

not eat - no appetite at all - and he got weaker, and today he died."6

He gives Henchard's will to Donald and Donald reads:

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

That Elizabeth Jane Farfrae be not told of my death or made to grieve on account of me....

"& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell.

"& that nobody is wished to see my dead body.

& that no mourners walk behind at my funeral.

"& that no man remember me..."7

Elizabeth Jane is deeply moves at the bitterness, she finds behind these words. Henchard's miserable condition awakes grief in the hearts of Farfrae and Elizabeth Jane. This emotion is supported by Henchard's former kindness to Abel's mother. The pity in the hearts of Farfrae and Jane is communicated to the readers by the art of the novelist.

Realistic truth and imaginative power here unite Hardy to achieve their most tremendous effect. The plain words are perfectly in character, just what an educated farmer like Henchard could write. But Hardy has managed to charge them with all the emotional grandeur of great tragedy.8

Hardy says that he was living in a world where nothing bears out it's promise into practise. Differing natures find their tongue in the presence of different spectacles. Some nature become vocal by tragedy and some by comedy and it seems to him that to which aspect of life a writer's instinct, the more readily responds, he should allow to respond and Hardy's was a nature which became vocal in the presence of tragedy rather than comedy. As he finds the plenty of tragedy in the village life, his chorus characters also share the great sentiment of pathos. No doubt, whymsical they may be but theyalso are the representative of universal human feelings like pity and sympathy.

Rich fragments of rusticity they are as entertaining as any of the classic characters of Fielding and Goldsmith. But unlike their's and like Shakespeare's they can also arouse serious emotions.9

For example the description of Mrs. Henchard's funeral has pathos and eloquence. And like Shakespeare, Hardy proves the poet's power of universalising the particular. The passage has a significance transcending the situation it describes. Every word spoken by the chorus characters becomes the symbol of lcnging lingering look behind for common humanity. "Why should death rob life O'fourpence?" This is a timeless proverbial quality. We forget Soloman longways and seem to be listening to the voice of all

humble humanity as, from the wisedom of its hard work day experience, it makes un-illusioned it's comment on the mystery of death.

Like Henchard Eustacia too - the gorgeous tragic Eustacia of The Return of the Native is to be pitied. What disolation does she bring on all around her in her unscrupulous fight for happiness !

Yet Hardy does not represent her as hateful. An exotic orchid, planted by chance in the unfriend northern moorland of Egdon, who can condemn her for snatching at every chance to achieve the sort of life in which alone her nature can find fulfilment ?

She has no wish to make other people unhappy; only forced by the pressure of her nature towards the sunlight, she brushes aside anything that impeds her way.

It is his emotional force which makes him able to rise to the heights of tragic feelings required to do justice to his tragic themes. This is why he is most convincing in the scenes of death or catastrophe, why his characters live most and vividly at the grand and desparate crises of their fortunes.10

Hardy's great characters are greatest in their most tragic moments. Tess, forsaken by Angel, Marty, Keeping her lonely vigil over Gile's grave, Clym gazing down at the dead wife who can never now hear his words of forgiveness and Mrs. Yeogright, dying, she thinks repudiated by her only son, alone on the Health beneath the pitiless August sun.

Mrs. Yeobright goes to visit her son, travelling a long distance across the Heath but Eustacia is unable to open the door for her. She turns back towards her home but she is unable to walk due to weakness and because she is broken hearted and dejected. A village boy Johnny Nunsuch meets her on the way.

We are reminded of king lear when she says for Eustacia," I would not have done it against a neighbour's cat on such a fiery day as this."11

Her face becomes white and as she walks she has to blow hard to force herself to move as both intense grief and tired ness weigh her down. She is so thirsty that seeing a heron in the sky she wishes to fly like it and go to the pool whence it was coming after drinking water with wet wings.

She sits under the tree when Johnny, the boy asks her, "What shall I tell mother?" Mrs. Yeobright answers, "tell her you have seen a broken hearted woman, cast

of by her own son. "12

Here Mrs. Yeobright is the object who awakens the dominant emotions of grief in the heart of the readers. The long breath she takes, her whole face and her bowed head are the consiquents of her tragic condition and some as excitants for the emotion of readers. Chinta - Worry, Dainya - Subjection and dispair are the transitory feelings which give birth to pathetic sentiment.

The novels of Hardy turn on the conflict between rural circumstance and the aspiration cherished by those confined in them, towards a more refined existence-Jude longs to satisfy his desire for learning. Eustaca Vye yearns for the colour and luxury of life in Paris. Fancy hesitates to marry her rustic sweet heart because of glimpse of the great world has made their taste festidious. The romantic and ambitious approach to life and then realisation of the harsh realities makes them melancholic and to take those steps, due to which they suffer and end miserably.

This disposition to melancholic view was confirmed and increased by the age in which Hardy lived. It was a disturbing age for a sensitive mind for it was an age of transition. The industrial revolution was in the process of destroying the old agricultural England. The old ties which had united the small communities of the past were breaking bit by bit. So many social systems were giving place to new ones.

For example his novel Under the Greenwood Tree is not entirely a picture of golden age. There are references to the darker aspects of victorian rural England. There is a second theme, of no less, importance, that deals with the fate of village choir, whose strong orchestra has played at church service for many years but it is finally replaced by the new organ. Through out the novel the deeper notes to be heard and the contest between choir and organ may be seen to be the symbolic of greater issues, of the contest between the old ways and the new that so often creates tensions in Hardy's writings but the choir loses its' battlw with the feeling of sadness that creeps even in this light hearted book.13 We adrnire the ways of the choir to die in a heroic way and it can be seen when they talk to parson Mr. Maybold.

"All we thought was that for us old ancient singers to be chocked off quiet at no time in particular, as now, in the Sundays after Easter, would seem rather mean in the eyes of other parishes, sir. But if we fell glorious with a bit of flourish after Christmas, we should have a respectable end, and not dwindle away at some name less paltry second Sunday after or Sunday next before something, that's got no name of his own."14

Dick and Fancy seem likely to have a comfortable future for it is always so when a couple is exactly in tune with one another as Dick and she. But grandfather James adds darkly, "when they be not too poor to have time to sing,' thinking of other less fortunate couples. In this book Hardy shows the compassion and tenderness for the underdogs for the poorer, more gullible members of the society, which is the characteristic of his writings. We get other pictures of rural problems of that time we learn about infant mortality rate in Thomas Leaf's family. He is very sorry to remember his brother Jim who died very young and he says about his mother:

She had twelve regular one after another and they all except myself died very young, either before they was born or just after words.15

I never see such a melancholy family as that afore in my life, said Reuben, Thus is leaf's mother, pour woman ! Every morning I see her eyes mourning out through pains of glass like a pot sick winder flower.16

A similar but more pathetic scene can be cited for example relating to the death of children in Jude the Obscure, when all the children of Jude and Sue die. The shock of death is too difficult for sue to bear, she suffers from fits of sorrow and weeps and cries:

'O my babies, my babies.' She looks at the clothes of the children and sobbs, 'O, O, my babies they had done no harm why should they have been taken away and not?'

Hardy's mother hoped at one time to obtain for him a presentation to christ's Hospital, London about the year 1848 but the governer died and the opportunity was lost. Had it chanced otherwise, we should have seen in all likelihood a great classical scholar and an eminent divine named Thomas Hardy. In his village, he was set to work on a usual simple plan and with school books of ancient style, his mother gave him the useful copy of Dryden's Virgil. Ahead of him in a way only to be fully perceived by those who went to rural schools before the world changed its mind, there

shone a misty dream of learning’s attainments, of advancements

of academic institutions but Hardy like Romantics and like his

heroes of the novels was to be defrauded of that even in it’s plainer

realities and to notice the difference throughout his life. Jude is

the same student who goes to city in the search of golden dream

and education but comes to a tragic end. “In 1887 or 1888 Hardy

had noted the possibility of an imagined student’s tragedy and by

1894 he brought this plan in the shape of Jude the Obscure.

Hardy’s Christminster was essentially a vision a city of youth

and dream, which he surely in his boyhood had beheld in the

summer clouds like Keats indiscoverable “little town by river or

sea shore or mountain built with peaceful citadel.” For practical

purposes Jude could not walk the clouds of heavenly Christminster

like Hardy’s personal observation of Oxford. The readers were

effected by a more extensive aspects by a painful portrayal of man

caught in the thorns of life, trapped in the pits of dangerous dreams

and false marriage and altogether sent here below to accumulate

bitter disasters about him. “Everyone,” wrote the novelist who

called herself John Oliver Hobbes, on November 26th, 1895, is

jumping on Hardy’s last book. It is much fine in reality and a work

of literary, philosophic value then Tess but the subject is, of course

very painful.”

So we come to consider the element of pity in his perhaps

most painful novel Tess which is grand as well as pathetic. Tess

is an indictment of Providence - a parable whose moral is that it

is not possible to justify the ways of God to men. “The heroine

is the most pathetic of Hardy’s all creations.” While the serial

publication was going on, Hardy received a great many letters

appealing for a happy ending, but as he saw the matter, to meet

his correspondent’s wishes was impossible for him. He took the

risk of driving the people away from him and his book. Hardy

rejoiced a little sadly to witness that the people did not at all shun

the bitter drought so rarely offered within his recollection.

Mr. Alec D’urbervilles forces her to become his mistress.

When Angel comes in the search of Tess, she is unable to go with

him and therefore weeps bitterly as she suffers from the pain of

80

not being able to go with her beloved husband. Her land owner hears

"one syllable continually repeated in a low note of mourning as if

it came from a soul bound to some Ixonian wheel:

'O—O—O !'

Then a silence, then a heavy sigh and again,

'O—O—O !'

She weeps bitterly and her lips bleed from the clench of her teeth upon

them.22

According to Saturday Review:

Few people would deny the terrible dearness of this tale, which except

during a few hours spent with the cows, has not a gleam of sunshine

anywhere.23

Questioned further about the book Hardy admitted that he was

sorry not to have been able to rescue Tess at the last, as so many

had hoped, but so it had to be. He must have felt in a pain to bring

her to so fearful an end. Hardy said, "Yes. Such dreams are we

made of."24 Through the lips of Tess comes the voice of a middle

aged novelist, brooding in gloomy mood on the riddle of the painful

Earth. - Tess, a country girl of eighteen is riding with her little

brother on the waggon under the stars:

'Did you say the stars were worlds Tess?'

asks the child.

'Yes.'

'All like ours?'

'I don't know but I think so.'

'Most of them seem splended and sound - a few belighted.'

'Which do we live on? the splended one or the blighted?'

'A blighted one.'25

Hardy must have been unusually grateful for the opening

notes of H.W. Massigham's salute in the Daily Chronicle. He

writes:

The new novel is as pitiful and tragic in it's intensity as the old Greeks

dramas. Not Aeschylus himself nor any of his brotheren who so rigidly

illustrated the doctrine of fate could have woven a web that should more

completely enmesh a human soul than Mr. Hardy has done in the case of

his heroine Tess.26

It grows darker, the firelight shining over the room. The two

biggest of the younger children have gone out with their mother,

the four smallest, their ages ranging from three and half years to

eleven all in black frocks are gathered round the hearth babbling their little subjects. Tess at length joined them without lighting a candle.

Tess told them that it was the last night that they would sleep there in the house where they were born. They all became silent, with the impressibility of their age, they were ready to burst into tears at the picture of finality, she had conjured up, though all the day hither to they had been rejoicing in the idea of a new place. Tess changed the subject.

'Sing to me dears,' she said.

'What shall we sing?'

'Anything you know, I don't mind.'27

There was a momentary pause; it was broken first, by one little tentative note, then a second voice strengthened it and a third and a fourth chimed in unison with words they had learnt at the Sunday school:

Here we suffer grief and pain,

Here we meet to part again,

In Heaven we part no more.28

Tess turned from them and went to the window again. Darkness had now fallen without, but she put her face to the pane as though to peer into gloom. "It was really to hide her tears."29

Hardy never shrinks to show that it is no good pretending that pain does not exist or does not matter:

Pain has been and pain is, no new sort of morals in Nature can remove pain from the past and make it pleasure for those who are its' infallible estimators - the bearers there of. And no injustice however slight can be atoned by her future generosity, however ample, so long we consider Nature to be, or to stand for unlimited power.30

Hardy always remains in the search of raising the standard of novel by enriching it with the poetic intensity of emotion. Like a poet he takes note of nothing that he can not feel emotively.31

Equally evocative is the description of dying Fanny's last journey through the winter's night to the gates of Casterbridge work house. In the beginning Fanny loves Troy and dedicates her life to him. On the other hand Troy deserts her when he observes Bathsheba. Fanny goes in the search of Troy and she has to give up her jobs. Gabriel finds her in a cold winter night standing under a tree without

proper clothes. Gabriel, because of her pitiable condition and sympathy gives some money to her and she thanks him. She is shivering with cold and

She extended her hands and Gabriel his. Gabriel’s fingers alighted on the young woman’s wrist. It was beating with the throb of tragic intensity.32

Our sympathy is deepened because of her struggle against fate and her endurance. With the power of visualisation Hardy sketches the intense picture of that painful scene. How she drags herself along by telling herself that each mile stone in turn, is the end of her journey; how reaching it she rests a moment and then struggles on till she collapses. Then she catches the glimpses of hope by finding a dog and half leaning upon it, is pulled to her final destination. The people at work house open the door and find her prone on the doorstep. They carry her in and stone the dog away.

The journey through the twilight, huddled on dogs back is unforgettable and how extraordinarily does it convey her complete weakness and pain. Not a human being is there to pity her and by the final irony of human fate, the dumb creature (dog) who was her only saviour is turned with blows from the door."33

The incident becomes so moving because of the artistic skill shown by the writer in describing the event. He tells it with restraint. He shows the courage of Fanny. It increases the pathetic feeling of the readers who feel her death as a cruel end of a brave girl like Fanny. She does not deserve to have such a miserable death. Troy’s remorse at her death is conveyed by a similar master hand. With a fuitile gesture of penitence he stays up half the night planting flower on her grave by a light of a lantern. But when he has gone to bed, the storm breaks and the rain washes all the plants away. No straight comment by the author seems necessary to heighten the effect of tragic situation.

The miserable death of Fanny can be compared to the tragic end of Mrs. Jeth way in the novel Pair of Blue Eyes, one of the first grade tragedies written by Hardy. He chooses a remote area to present the story as he himself says in his preface to the novel:

The shore and country about Castle Botarel is the place where in I have Ventured to erect my theatre for these imperfect dramas of country life and passions.34

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

The melancholic disposition of Hardy’s nature is proved very beautifully in the novel by the author. He selects the suitable motto for the book and wants to imply like Keats that melancholy dwells with beauty. These lines tell in short, the gragic story of Elfride’s life:

A violet in the youth of primy nature/Forward not permanent, Sweet not lasting/The perfume and suppliance of a minute. No more.35

This violet i.e. the heroine of the novel Elfride suffers from a deep spiritual anguish like the heroines of Trumpet Major, Return of the Native and Under the Greenwood Tree. She tried to choose the person whom she thinks a better than the person she loves. The right selection of the husband by Fancy makes the novel a happy comedy. But when Elfride selects Mr. Knight instead of Stephen, she always suffers from a guilty conscience that she has committed a sin against Stephen Smith. Her father advises her to marry Knight because Smith is lower than the social standard of Elfride. Edmund Blunden observes in this regard:

Hardy in a Pair of Blue Eyes begins to work in a cause that moves him most strongly - the boy Smith is not of the social rank of Elfride and their lies the foundation of tragedy.36

In the light of Knight’s advanced life she forgets to meet Stephen in the church. Then after, she remembers the time. The hour of appointment comes with it a crisis and with the crisis a collapse. “God forgive - I can not meet Stephen !” Her father praises her as a good girl in obeying him at last-

‘Do not call me ‘good’ papa,’ she said bitterly. ‘Your do not know and the less said about somethings the better. Remember Mr. Knight knows nothing about the other. O, how wrong it all is ! I do not know what I am coming to…. I have pleased my family. But I am not good,’ O no, I am very far from that.’37

The death of Mrs. Jethway as we referred above, is one of the pitiful scenes. Like Mrs. Yeobright she loved her son Felix very much who died of consumption and for the love of Elfride as she thinks. She becomes lonely, desoiate and miserable woman. She comes to the church which was to be deplaced by the labourer falls upon her and she remains buried in the dust and stones for some time. Knight comes there and ironically her dead body is put

upon the tomb of her son. His feelings for the poor lady is increased when he reads her letter:

I soon hope to be beyond the reach of either blame or praise. But before removing me God has put it in my power to avenge the death of my son.35

Knight’s heart is moved with sympathy and his own fortunes seem some strange way to be enterwoven with those of Jethway’s family. It seems that the curse of Mrs. Jethway hangs upon the life of Elfride and she dies miserably as a result.

Woodlanders is a Sophoclean tragedy according to Thomas Hardy. The location of this novel is one of those sequestered spots outsides the gates of the world where may usually be found more maditation than action and more listlessness than maditation, where reasoning proceeds on narrow premises and results in inferences wildly imaginative; yet where from time to time grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean are enacted in the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and closely knit interdependence of the lives therein. This place is the Little Hintock where we see the great tragedy of Giles and Marty.

The little world is dominated by Dr. Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond who are rich and cultivated upper class people and usurp the rights of poor rustics. They have no difficulty in taking away anything they want from the ordinary people, who work in the woods, like Marty and Giles. Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond like not to live in the woods. Mrs. Charmond can pull down houses and trees at her pleasure, without really wanting to harm wood land workers. She is the force of destroying the relationship and property of people. Creedle says to Giles, the real hero of novel -

Ah, master…. you have lost a hundred load of Timber well seasoned; you have lost five hundred pound in good money; you have lost the stone windered house that is big enough to hold a dozen families; you have lost your share of half a dozen good wagon and their horses - all lost - through your letting slip she that was once your own.39

This novel involves the question of matrimonial divergence, the immortal puzzle-given the man and woman how to find a basis for their relation. Mrs. Charmond has turned down the house of Giles. Giles loses house and as a result he has to lose grace. He is also not thought good enough for a girl who has been educated

by her father. “Learning is better than house and property”40 but in this novel all three go together. The property is gone, the house is gone and the educated beloved is gone. It is not only the tragedy of Giles but it is also of Marty South. Giles and Marty understand the nature and feelings of nature. In a famous passage, Marty says that the young trees sigh because they are very sorry to begin life in earnest, just as they themselves are. She is right because life is intensely hard even tragic for them. Unlike Gebrial Oak and Diggory Venn whom he strongly resembles in some ways, Giles cannot find fulfilment in the world of this novel. He sacrifices himself for Grace and dies to be forgotten by her exactly after eight months. She goes of to the midlands with her husband as we can suppose that they will lead more or less happy married life and we are left with painful memory of Gile’s goodness and tears which are shed by Marty on Gile’s grave.

More beautiful because more touching and poignant is the close of Trumpet Major. John Love day is the unselfish lover like Gebrial Oak and Diggory Venn But his miseries are greater than Oak and Diggory because he does not get the reward of his patience. He unselfishly recognises that Anne loves his brother more than himself. Concealing his broken heart under a smile he goes on to war:

The candle, held by his father, shed it’s wavering lights on John’s face and uniform as with a farewell smile, he turned on the door stone, backed by the black night, and in another moment, he had plunged into darkness, the ring of his smart step dying away on the bridge as he joined his companions in-arms and went away to blow his trumpet till silenced for over on one of the blody battle fields of Spain.41

These quiet sentences at once bring out the pathetic tragedy of John’s fruitless love. The way he, goes with a smile of farewell makes his character more pathetic, while the mere mention of bugle sets the passage trembling in to a music that we bear in our hearts long after it is heard, it is heard no more.

I doubt whether any body has escaped the final sense of disappointment concerning the novel Two on a Tower. A more important announcement to the imagination or the epic sense could hardly be made than the title Two on a Tower. When he supplied

the preface thirteen year after the publication.42 Hardy certainly defined this book as 'slightly built romance,' but went on to speak of it more abstractedly,' as the out come of a wish to set the emotional history of two infinitesimal lives against the stupendous background of the steller universes and to impart the readers the sentiment that of these contrasting magnitudes the smaller might be greater to them as men."43 The astronomer is there and the love story is there but there is no happy marriage so long as Swithin and Vivetle meet at all, with the proper allowance of difficulties and exaltations and misfortunes even with an ivied tower as part of their romance, the book is of a great status.

However, the pages must speak for themselves, so Hardy says that some few readers will take a serious view. They will be reminded by this imperfect story, in a manner not unprofitable to the growth of social sympathies, of the pathos, misery, long suffering and divine tenderness which in real life frequently as Vivette for a lover several years her junior. The realisation of the fact and the social proprities are the cause because of which she suffers spiritually. Her passions which she finds uncontrollable tear her personality into pieces. She does her best to eradicate those impulses towards Swithin, which were inconsistent with her position as the wife of an absent man. Arived at the point of exquisit misery through this heroic intension Lady constantine's tears moisten the prayer book upon which her forehead is bowed. She hears her feverish throb against the desk. She firmly believes the wearing impulses of that heart will put an end to her sad life. But the memory of Swithin comes to her:

'Dear my love, press thy hand to my breast and tell. If thou tracest the Knock in that narrow cell, a carpenter dwells there, cunning, is he, And slyly he is shaping a coffin for me.'44

Her suffering and miseries make her a pathetic figure who is with herself at war. Astronomy makes an attractive side show bringing joys and sufferings in the life of Vivette. What the critic says seems true: "No English novelist has produced something at once more truly tragic and opposite to the mystery of man than the various well contrived thrillers. Which he could not have written

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

at all on the moon, mass and modern politics."45

So painful is never so sweet. One can say that popularity and

fame of Hardy are everlasting because of his tragic grandeur, and

his tragedies are true to the dictum contaimed in the following lines

of Shelley:

Our sweetest songs are those,

That tell of saddest thoughts.

REFERENCES

1The Return of the Native, Before Introduction.

2The Mayor of Casterbridge, p.232.

3Ibid., p.10.

4Florence Emily Hardy, "Illness, Novels and Italy," Life of Thomas Hardy,

p.171.

5The Mayor of Casterbridge, p.324.

6Ibid., p.330.

7The Mayor of Casterbridge, p.331.

8David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, p.109.

9Ibid., p.92.

10Ibid., p.108.

11The Return of the Native, p.295.

12Ibid., p.296.

13Under the Greenwood Tree, Ed., Anna Winch Combe (London: Macmillan,

1975), Introduction, p.16.

14Ibid., p.119.

15Under the Greenwood Tree, p.111.

16Ibid.

17Jude the Obscure, p.413.

18Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy (London: Macmillan, 1951), p.83.

19Keats, "Ode to Grecian Urn."

20Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy, p.86.

21David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, p.132.

22Tess of the D'urbervilles, p.427.

23Quoted by Edmund Blunden in Thomas Hardy, p.71.

24Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy, p.79.

25Tess of the D'urbervilles, pp.34-5.

26Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy, p.72.

27Tess, p.460.

28Ibid., pp. 460-61.

29Ibid., p.461.

30F.E. Hardy, Life of Thomas Hardy, p.315.

31Ibid., p.342.

32Far from the Madding Crowd, p.61.

33Ibid., pp.270-71.

34Hardy, "Preface", A Pair of Blue Eyes (Delhi: Surjeet Publication, 1988).

35Hardy takes these line from Hamlet. This shows how much he finds

himself closer to Shakespeare.

36Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy, p.190.

37A Pair of Blue Eyes, p 206.

38Ibid., p.267.

39Woodlanders, p.167.

40Compare the lines

"When land is gone and money is spent,

Then learning is most ecellent."

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (London: Thomas Nelson, n.d.), p.77.

41Trumpet Major, p.372.

42The first edition of the novel was published in 1882 in three volumes.

"Preface," Two on a Tower (London: MacMillan, 1952).

43Ibid., p.2.

44Two on a Tower, p.85.

45Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy, p.208.

CHAPTER VI

SENTIMENTS OF FEAR AND FURY: BHAYANAK AND RAUDRA RASAS

A. SENTIMENT OF FEAR

When we talk of tragedy, we also remember the function of tragedy. Tragedy, provides a kind of Katharsis i.e., the purification of the emotions of pity and fear. Pity and fear are strictly correlated feelings. Fear, Aristotle defines to be "a species of pain or disturbance arising from an impression of impending evil which is destructive or painful in it's nature."1 Moreover the evil is near, not remote and the person threatened, are ourselves. Similarly pity is a "sort of pain at an evident evil of a destructive or painful kind in the case of somebody who does not deserve it."2 Pity however turns into fear when the object is so nearly related to us that the suffering seems to be or own."3 We see that in the psychological analysis fear is the primary emotion from which pity derives it's meaning. It springs from the feeling that the similar suffering may happen to ourselves. The Aristotelian idea simply is that we would fear for ourselves if we were in the position of him who is the subject of our pity. The emotion of fear is profoundly altered when it is transfered from the real to the imaginative world. It is no longer the direct apprehension of misfortune impending over our own life. It is not caused by actual approach of danger. "It is the sympathetic shudder we feel for a person whose character in it's essentials resembles our own."4

The tragic fear, though modified in passing under the conditions of art, is not any languid emotion. It differs indeed from the crushing apprehension of personal disaster. In reading and witnessing any work of art we are not possessed with a fear that we may be placed under the circumstances to those of characters or to be taken by the same calamities yet a thrill runs through us a shudder of horror. The feelings are immediate and unreflective. The tension of mind, the agonised expectation, with which we await

the impending catastrophe springs from our sympathy with the hero in whose existence we have for the time merged our own.

At the same time, we must remember that we are applying Rasa theory that talks about the pleasure achieved from this sentiment. On the other hand the theory of Aristotle deals with the purification or removing, the excess of such emotions. Can we think that we go to theatre of movie to shed tears or to be afraid. Human mind has a hidden curiosity to observe such type of emotional scenes. These sentiments provide a sort of thrilling pleasure that we can get in literature without harm. The people of Renaissance had a strong love for curiosity and strangeness. As a result Shakespeare introduced ghosts, witches and sprits in his dramas. His main aim behind this element was not to make people afraid, but to give them entertainment. Hardy also has written that the aim of the writer is to delight the readers by gratifying the love of uncommon in human experience. That is why he introduces such scenes in this novels.

The tragedies of Hardy present such scenes of fear that may cause suspense, thrill and awe to the readers. Hardyan figures, even beckoning to new watchers, will lead them on through the windings and crossings of his narrations, no matter how artificial it may be or seem to be at one point or another. He may sometime shape their course through improbabilities, he may slow it down with something of a tediousness in the disclosure of a situation, but it would be strange if one did not desire to go with them and follow out to the end what happens to them. Moreover, they are seen from time to time as the participants in the scenes of crisis. "Some of these scenes are extra-ordinary in their wild force... and give us the feeling of looking in through some chink at a happening quite beyond our experience and terribly real."5

The efforts of Hardy to contrive the scenes of fear and wonder for readers and still for the continuation of suspense, may often be called a dramatic quality. We can reproduce a scene from the novel The Return of the Native. When Eustacia Vye is standing in the night storm on lonely Black barrow, herself in commotion and profoundly shadows, longing for the benediction of Heaven,

one light is seen in the blackness. It is the light from the cottage of a poor woman, who at least should be no agent of blackness. But when we are allowed to see the interior which that light commands in all it's detail, the ray is identified as that of a haunting and in a way inescapable malignity. Susan Nunsuch, bewitched herself with the persuation that Eustacia means mischief to her boy and can set it working from her dark paths, is found ceremonially melting a curious elaborate wax image of Eustacia in order to bring upon her powerlessness atrophy and annihilation. The novelist proceeds this with his allusion to superstition, but as the work goes on with minute exactness and singleness, the night side of nature involves the imagination. Just as the binder of spell is described as accompanying her inspired activity with a murmur of words so the prose of the master acquires an incantatory and hypnotic insistency. It is some burring and whirring of a thing in a hateful dream of ghost. From her basket, the woman takes a paper of pins of the old long and yellow sort. There she begins to thrust in to the image in all directions. Probably as many as fifty are thus inserted, some in the head of wax model, some into the shoulders, some into the trunk, some upward through the soles of the feet till the figure is completely permeated with pins, she takes a few pieces of turf into the fire which brightens:

She hold it in the heat and watched it as it began to waste slowly away. And while she stood thus engaged there came from her lips a murmur of words. It was a strange jargon the Lord's prayer repeated backwords.... As the wax dropped curling its' tongue round the figure ate still further into its' substance. A pin occasionally dropped with the wax and the embers heated it red as it lay.6

Commenting on it, Edmund Blunden affirms: Nothing in the old Ballads with their familiar ghosts is more decisive than that, which is it were a gargoyle noticed in it's stupid solidity in the edifice of the tragedy, causing nothing, yet a piece with what is being caused.7

Hardy Conveys a similar sense of impending doom in his another novel Tess. We remember the incident on her honeymoon at the mill, the night after her disastrous confession. She is laying in the wakeful misery. She thinks that Angel is asleep in the next room. But he appears, walking in his sleep, picks her up, carries

her over the narrow plank that spans the racing mill stream. She longs that they both may fall and drawn together. Angel takes her to the ruined priory, lays her down in an open stone coffin. And then still asleep, picks her up and carries her back once more, the mere conception of the scene has the wild imaginative poetry of Webster. But it also suggests that the super human force of destiny is compelling her towards her death as we find in the previous story of Eustacia Vye. David Cecil writes-

For the best parallel we must leave fiction and go back to drama to the sleep walking scene in Macbeth or the Echo scene in The Duchess of Malfi.8 Then there is the scene in The Mayor of Casterbridge when Henchard wanders on the bridge of the river, wondering whether he shall kill himself and then gazing into the water in the twilight he sees with a thrill of horror his own drown body floating on the waves. In reality, it is the effigy of him which his enemies have been parading through the town and have now thrown away. But for the time, he takes it as a supernatural omen. He feels that he is under a supernatural curse he cannot escape. The story unfolds before the writer a passive spectator, as it unfolds itself before us. He conceives his story so imaginatively, its’ inspiring sentiment colours the whole creative process. “This is the gift of a dramatic poet. It is very rare to find it in a novelist.”9

A sort of nemesis seems to hang upon Elfride from the very beginning of her love with Stephen. The son of Mrs. Jethway loved Elfride. She was conscious of it but she, as she says, did not respond to him. In frustration he suffers from consumption and dies on the very day when Stephen arrives as a second man in the life of Elfride. Ironically, a feeling of fear is aroused when both of them sit on the grave of Felix Jethway and Elfride confesses to Smith that they are sitting on the grave of her former love. Stephen is stunned and sorry to find another man before him. First time in love Stephen’s faith in her, suffers from a shock.

After the departure of Stephen, third man comes there, that is Mr. Knight. He loves Elfride. But the Haunting Shadow of Mrs. Jethway is present there. In the church Elfride to talking to Knight. Her eyes are arrested by the shape of a woman in the west gallery.

It is the bleak barren countenance of Mrs. Jethway who is sitting in the gallery to see the tomb of her son. Her face now bends towards Elfride with a hard and bitter expression that the solemnity of the place raises to a tragic dignity, it does not intrinsically possess. She shudders as she wonders if Mrs. Jethway were cursing her. She weeps as if her heart would break.

The events as they pass before us seem almost as if we were directly concerned. We are brought into a mood in which we feel that we are also liable to suffering. In the study of another's misfortunes, in the shocks and blows of circumstance, we read the impending doom of humanity. The same thing happens, we find Stephen back to the place after a long time. Having sent her the information he waits for her near the church. There he finds a woman, completely enveloped. Stephen asks her who she is ? She says:

'Never mind who I am !' answered a weak whisper from the enveloping folds. 'What I am, may she be ! Perhaps I knew well-ah, so well ! a youth whose place you took and he there now takes yours, will you let her break your heart and bring to an untimely grave, as she did the one before you ?' ...My heart is desolate. May hers be so that brought trouble on me !'10

Stephen shattered in spirit is sick to his heart's centre. It fills his heart and wrings his body and soul.

One can find another scene like those of Tess and Macbeth when Elfride murmurs while observing a dream on the dack of boat. Sure, now she has a strong consciousness of the sin committed against the son of Mr. Jethway. She is sleeping in the lap of knight. In the dram she observes Mrs. Jethway. She moans and turns herself restlessly. Her murmuring becomes clear:

'...don't tell him-he will not love me- ...I did not mean any disgrace indeed I did not, so don't tell him.... And he says he will not love a kissed woman.... And if you tell him he will go away and I shall die. I pray have mercy-O !'11

The moment of crisis in the story is summed in the scene when knight is clinging to the face of the Cliff without a Name. He is in imminent danger of death and uncertain whether Elfride will be able to bring help in time to save him. We can find Hardy creating a thrilling and intolerable suspense in various ways. Death appears to him improbable because, it had never visited him before. Knight

could not think of future. He could look sternly at nature's

treacherous attempt to put an end to him.

The world to some extent turned upside down for him. Rain ascended

from below. Beneath his feet was aerial space and the unknown, above him

was the firm, familiar ground, and upon it all that he loved best.

Pitiless nature had then two voices, and two only. The nearer was

the voice of the wind in his ears…. The second and distant was the moan

of that unplummeted ocean below and afar rubbing its' restless flank against

the Cliff without a Name.12

"The vividness with which the imagination pictures unrealised

calamity produces the same intensity of emotion as if the danger

were at hand."13 We are thrilled with awe at the greatness of the

issues thus unfolded. The poet in Hardy enables him to rise to a

great emotional expression. His conceptions are so intensely

imaginative that his words go beyond his logical meaning to

suggest all the overtones of the mood.

B. FURIOUS SENTIMENT

Furious Sentiment or Wrath is based on the dominant emotion

of anger. The feelings are stimulated when some one feels insulted

or hurt by the behaviour of others. We can easily remember King

Lear as the tragedy due to wrath. There are examples in Hardy's

novels, where characters show this sentiment.

The Mayor of Casterbridge is the story of a man of character.

Henchard is the hero of this novel and he is fine example of this

sentiment. Anger is inherent in him. When ever he finds fault with

the things, he easily gets angry. He has been kind to Abel's mother

in winter season. But he does not like indiscipline at any rate.

Henchard warns him many times to come to work in time.

Poor Abel as he was called had a habit of oversleeping himself

and coming late to the work. His anxious will was to be among

the earliest; but if his friends forgot to pull the string that was

always tied round his toe and left hanging out the window for that

purpose, his wiil was as wind. He did not arrive in time. For two

mornings in the week he had kept the other waiting nearly an hour.

It now remained to be seen what would happen tomorrow.

Six O'clock struck and there was no Abel. At half past six

Henchard entered the yard, the waggon was horsed that Abel was to accompany and the other man had been waiting twenty minutes. Then Henchard swore that this was the last time, "That if he were behind once more, by God he would come and drag him out of bed."14 Abel grumbles but Henchard roars: 'I do not want to hear it, tomorrow the waggons must start at four and if you are not here, stand clear. I'll mortify thy flash for thee.'15

Next day Henchard finds Abel missing and he feels his pride hurt. He asks, 'Where is Abel? Not come after all I have said ? Now I will carry out my words by my blessed fathers.' "16 Henchard enters Abel's house and shouts so loudly that Abel starts up instantly and beholding Henchard over him, is terribly afraid: 'Out of bed, sir, and off to the granary or you leave my employ today ! It is to teach you a lesson. March on; Never mind your breaches.'17

The unhappy Abel throws on his sleeve waist coat and manages to get into his boots at the bottom of the stairs. Abel then staggers on down Back Street. Henchard walks sternly behind. Henchard suffers a heavy loss due to the fickle weather. He was to sell all his corn at a very low price as the sun shines very brilliantly, making the price of corn come down. But his pride is stung when Farfrae shows his sympathy for him. While returning from Casterbridge Bank he encounters Jopp. The transactions just completed within the bank have added fever to the original sting of Farfrae's sympathy. So when Jopp wipes his forehead and says, "A fine hot day."

You can wipe and wipe and say 'A fine hot day' 'Can ye; cries Henchard in a savage underline, imprisoning Jopp betwen himself and the bank wall, 'If it had not been for your blasted advice, it might have been a fine day enough.'18

One of the most popular scenes of Henchard's anger takes place when he fights with Donald Farfrae. Henchard loses all his position and Farfrae becomes The Mayor of Casterbridge. The royal family passes through Casterbridge. Henchard comes before the procession before any one can prevent him. He unrolls his private flag to the royal family. Forfrae comes out and seizes Henchard by the shoulder, drags him back and tells him roughly to be off. Henchard's eyes meet his, and Farfrae observes the

fierce light in them despite his excitement and irritation. Henchard

goes away from there.

Henchard very soon gets a chance. we works on the top floor

of corn stores. There is a depth of thirty or forty feet to the ground.

Farfrae comes up there and Henchard closes the stair way. Now

Farfrae observes that one of Henchard’s arms is bound to his side.

Farfrae asks about the matter and Henchard reminds him the

event. Farfrae says:

‘You insulted Royalty, Henchard, and it was my duty as the chief magistrate,

to stop you.’

‘Royalty be damned,’ said Henchard, ‘I am as loyal as you, come to that.’

Henchard challenges him to fight by throwing the other down

on the earth and tells him that as the strongest man he has tied

one arm to take no advantage of him. There is no way for Farfrae

but to accept the challenge. After a long fight Henchard thrusts

him towards the door till Farfrae’s fair head is hanging over the

window sill and his arm dangling down the outside wall.

‘Now,’ said Henchard between his gasps, ‘this is the end what you began

this morning. Your life is in my hands.’

In the novel The Return of the Native, we get a beautiful

example of this sentiment. Clym Yeobright is a man of calm mind

normally but he loses self control under pressure of wrath. Mother

of Clym, Mrs. Yeobright comes to meet Clym after a long time.

Eustacia has already quarrelled with her mother-in-law. She has

Wildeve with her in the back yard of the house and clym is sleeping

in the front room. When Mrs. Yeobright knocks at the door,

Eustacia looks out and finding Mrs. Yeobright thinks to avoid the

encounter. She hopes that clym will open the door but clym

remains sleeping. Broken hearted Mrs. Yeobright returns from

there. Johnny meets her on the Heath. Mrs. Yeobright tells him

the whole story and dies of snake bite on the Heath. After the day

he thinks to see his mother and goes to her house. On the way

Johnny, tells him about his mother’s death. He now realises that

it is his wife Eustacia who is the cause of his mother’s death. He

is therefore blind with anger when he comes to Eustacia. He

shouts:

‘The day I mean,’ said Yeobright, his voice growing louder and louder, ‘was

the day. You shut the door against my mother and killed her. O, it is too much-too bad; tell me, tell me: do you hear ?' he cried rushing upto her and seizing her by loose folds of her sleeve...'

'Tell me the particuiars of my mother's death,' he said in a hard whisper, 'O - I'll - I'll --'.

'You shut the door you looked out of the window upon her - you had a man with you - you sent her away to die. I will not touch you - stand away from me and confess every word.'21

One is reminded of Othello and Desdimona in Othello when Othello shouts at Desdimona to tell him the name of her lover. Though Eustacia is not so innocent as Desdimona is, but the scene is grand in itself.

Hardy tells us that Bathsheba has an impulsive nature under a deliberative aspect. She often performs the most rash actions with a manner of extreme thoughtfulness. She calls herself too independent minded. Her workmen hint about her to be too head strong. She makes no attempt to control herself. She loves Troy without caring of his nature. She has also outbursts of temper. Twice she grows furious while talking to Gabriel. She also severely rebuked her working woman-Liddy, whome she overhears speaking ill to Troy. She storms and shouts at them.

All this infatuation, Gabriel observes. He is troubled to see that Bathsheba is getting into the toils. He decides to speak to his mistress about it. At first he talks about Bold wood and Bathsheba refuses her relations with him. Now he comes to the point and sighs, " 'I wish you had never met that young Sergeant Troy miss.' "22

But she is not ready to hear any word against Troy and says forcefully that Sergeant Troy is an educated man and quite worthy of any woman. He is well born. Oak is grieved to find how entirely she trusts him. He requests her to consider before it is too late-how safe she would be in his hands. At this she becomes very angry and says:

'I wish you to go elsewhere, she commanded, a paleness of face invisible to the eyes being suggested by the trembling words, Do not remain on this farm any longer. I do not want you - I beg you to go !'

'That is nonsense,' said Oak Calmly. 'This is the second time you have pretended to dismiss me, and what is the use of it?'

'Pretended! You shall go, sir, your lecturing, I will not hear. I am mistress here.'23

After letting her anger on Gabriel Oak and having a love meeting with Troy, she comes home. She writes a letter to Boldwood that she has decided not to marry him. To get the letter posted, she goes to the kitchen of find some servant. Here she over hears her servants talking about Sergeant Troy and possible marriage with him. She bursts upon them-

'I forbid you to suppose such things. Everybody knows how much I hate him -Yes!,' repeated the froward young person, hatehim.'24

Hearing this all the women are afraid and they try to agree with their mistress. Liddy and Marryann both say in humble manner that they also hate him. But says Bathsheba excitedly-

'Maryann - O you perjured woman! How can you speak that wicked story.... How dare you to my face. Mind this, if any of you say a word against him, you will be dismissed instantly.'25

She flings the letter and surges back into the parlour with a big heart and tearful eyes. Liddy follows her and speaks the disapproval of him. Bathsheba again bursts out:

'Mind this, Lydia small bury, if you repeat any single word of what I have said to you inside this closed door, I will never trust you, or love you, or have you with me a moment longer-not a moment.'26

Lydia, in spite of being a servant is hurt by the absurd and insulting behaviour of her mistress. She has her own dignity and self respect. It is noteworthy to see how she reacts to her mistress. She is angry and agonised.

'I don't want to repeat any thing, said Liddy, with womanly dignity of diminutive order, But I do not wish to stay with you.... I do not see that I deserve to be put upon and stormed at for nothing, concluded the small woman bigly.'27

Most of Hardy's novels present before us the class consciousness. Certainly it is due to personal experience. Generally it is lady that belongs to higher class than that of the man. This is the conflict in the novel 'A Pair of Blue Eyes.' Stephen Smith belongs to the family of master mason while the father of Elfride is a rector. At first Mr. Swancourt knows nothing about Stephen's parents and he allows Elfride to meet Stephen. John Smith father of Stephen, lives in that village. An accident takes place with John Smith and Stephen can not help thinking and telling about his father

and his profession. He becomes angry with Stephen. Even the

chapter bears the title 'Her father did Fume,' Mr. Swan Court's

prejudices are too strong for his generosity. He orders Elfride not

to have any relation with Stephen. She appeals to her father, whose

feelings were little touched by this appeal and he is annoyed when

she requests to let thern be engaged.

'Certainly not!' he replied. He pronounced the inhibition lengthily and

sonorously, so that the 'not' sounded like 'n-o-o-o-o-t! ....'You may argue

all night, and prove what you will; I'll stick to my words.'28

Certainly this wrath of father is the root cause of Elfride's tragedy.

First lover, she has to reject, second rejects her and she dies as

the wife of third man whome she loves not.

REFERENCES

1S.H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, p.256.

2Ibid.

3Ibid.

4Ibid., pp.258-59.

5Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy, p.214.

6The Return of the Native, p.366.

7Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy, p.215.

8David Cecil, Hardy the Novelist, p.65.

9Ibid., p.64.

10A Pair of Blue Eyes, p.194.

11Ibid., p.237.

12Ibid., p.173.

13S.H. Butcher, Aristotles, Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, p.262.

14The Mayor of Casterbridge, pp.95-96.

15Ibid., p.96.

16Ibid.

17Ibid.

18Ibid., p.187.

19Ibid., p.269.

20Ibid., p.271.

21The Return of the Native, p.345.

22Far from the Madding Crowd, p.196.

23Ibid., pp.196-97.

24Ibid., p.201.

25Ibid.

26Ibid., pp.202-03.

27Ibid., p.203.

28A Pair of Blue Eyes, pp.63-5.

CHAPTER VII

SENTIMENTS OF FILIAL LOVE AND PEACE: VATSALYA AND SANTA RASAS

A. FILIAL SENTIMENT

Parents have inborn love for their children. They are delighted by the happiness of their children and are sad whenever they find them in tightcorners. In literature one finds the beautiful examples of such emotional aspects of life.

Here we can make a comparison between English and Sanskrit literature. In our Sanskrit literature, a great importance is given to children. Loving parents and innocent children can be seen in the great works like Abhijnan Shakuntalam and Uttar Ram Charitam. Kalidas is the greatest poet of Sanskrit literature and he gives beautiful description of filial love in the seventh act of his play. Moreover he increases the effect by showing it as a God gift. King Dushyanta does not know about his child at all. He goes to the Ashram of Rishi Marich. There he finds a young boy who wants to play with cub, that is drinking milk of its' mother. When the king observes the boy, unconsciously he feels a great pleasure and affection for that child. He, as a surprise to the maids of the ashram, ties the Raksha sutra with his arm again. The maids tell him the secret of Sutra and king being too much happy picks up the child Bharata in his lap and embraces him. The aim of another work Kumar Sambhava is also the Origin of a Child. Another great poet Bhavbhooti who says about the dominance of Karuna Rasa or pathos, gives a beautiful description of this sentiment in his play Uttar Ram Chartam. In sixth act of the play Lord Rama comes to the Ashram of Valmiki. Like Dushyanta he does not know anything about Lova and Kusha whom he finds in the ashram. But looking at two young children, he is over powered by the filial love. He calls the children and embraces them. This embrace gives him a great joy and soothing effect. He feels as if his whole personality has come out in the shapes of these two children.

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

In English literature we don't have much expression of this sentiment. It is rare to find such love in the last plays of Shakespeare or in the poems of Wordsworth. Even in the novels if we have description of childhood as in David Copperfield, it is painful. It is really a great joy for Indians to find this soft sentiment in the novels of Hardy. No doubt it is mainly in his rustic back ground novels. But it is there and in a touching manner.

When Hardy describes this type of filial love in his novels, one is reminded of writer's child hood that he passed in the village with his parents. We know about Hardy's early life from his biography written by Emily Florence Hardy. We come to know that Hardy was a great admirer of his mother Jemima Hardy and father Hardy. Hardys were four children, Thomas, Mary, Henry and Kate. The last two survived the author. Hardy remembers his mother in a poem “On the Roman Road,” across his native heath:

Up rises there A mother's from upon my Ken, Guiding my infant steps as when we walked the ancient through fare The Roman road.'1

There is a poem “The self Unseeing” and it describes Hardy's return in later life to Bokhampton, the home of his childhood: Child like I danced in a dream, Blessing emblazoned that day, Every thing glowed with a gleam Yet we were looking away.2

There is much in this poem to remind us of Under the Greenwood Tree. Yet after reading the novel, it can scarcely be said that Hardy was 'Looking away,' since he has recreated here so vividly his boyhood home. At the tranter's house, Reuben Dewy, his wife and four young children along with two grand fathers, give us the real Hardy's house, where most of this novel was written and which was Hardy's home for thirty four years. Like a dream he presents the innocent activities of children that attract the parents and readers of this novel as well.

In the novel, Mrs. Dewy has four children - Susan, Jim, Bessy and Charley graduating uniformly though at wide stages from the

age of sixteen to that of four years - the eldest of the series being separated from Dick.

Hardy presents the scene of christmas time and the activity of children. Some circumstance has apparently caused much grief to Charley, just before the entry of the choir and he has taken up a small looking glass, holding it before his face to learn how the human countenance appears when engaged in crying. This survey leads him to pause at various points in each wail that were more than ordinarily striking, for a through appreciation of the general effect. Bessy is leaning against the chair and glacing under the plaits about the waist of this frock, she wears to notice the original unfaded pattern of the material as there preserved, her face bearing an expression or regret that the brightness has passed away from the visible portions.

The tap of the barrel goes in when Reuben tries to open it. The cider immediately spreads over Reuben's hands, knees and leggings and in to the eyes and nack of charley, who having temporarily put off his grief under pressure of more interesting preceedings is squating down and blinking near his father. Tranter asks for the help of his followers to stop the splitting of Cider, by putting the thumb upon the hole, speaks Charley:

''Idd it cold inthide tahole?'3

Hearing these words Mrs. Dewy admires her son and exclaims: What wonderful odd and ends that chiel has in his head to be sure ! I lay a wager that he thinks more about how it is ir.side that barrel than all the other parts of the world put together.4

The same but a little serious sentiment is enjoyed by the readers when they find Fancy giving up the food and every other normal activity because her father has refused the claim of Dick. Her father Geoffrey Day is very conscious of the class-distinction and he wishes that his daughter should marry Mr. Shiner since he is a rich man. At the same time Fancy is only one daughter and he loves her very much. When he comes to know about Fancy and her condition, he is very much disturbed. He observes his only child Fancy not only in bed, but looking down very pale. She indirectly tells him about the reason and he says:

'Well you know Fancy, I do it for the best and he is not good enough

for thee. Well Fancy, I can not my only chiel die and if you can not live without

him, I must have him, I suppose.'

'O, I do not want him like that, all against your will and everything so

disobedient,' sighed the invalid.

'No, no, it is not against my will. My wish is, now I see how it is hurten

thee to live without him, he shall marry thee as soon as we have considered

a little.... There, never cry my little maid !'5

The love of father for his daughter becomes very touching

when he is moved by the innocence and pathetic condition of his

daughter. When father is agree with the children, the novel turns

in to comedy while the objection of parents in the marriage of

children become the cause of tragedy. Such is the case in the novel

A Pair of Blue Eyes. Still we can find the filial love between father

Mr. Swancourt and daughter Elfride. Elfride is a girl of very tender

nature. She loves her father and serves her father when he is

suffering from gout. She also loves two little children of Lord

Luxellian. Those two girls call her 'little Mamma' and are very fond

of her. Their love for one-another is really noticable and later in

the life it becomes ironically true. She becomes their step mother

and loves them. She likes them and bestows upon them the filial

love. When Lord Luxellian asks Mr. Swancourt to fetch some

documents from his house, Elfride goes there with her father and

Stephen. Seeing Elfride, little girls chirp like birds. Hardy gives a

beautiful description of their tender affection for Elfride. Their eyes

sparkle, their hair swing about and around and their red mouths,

laugh with unalloyed gladness. One says:

'Ah, Miss Swan Court: dearest Elfie ! We heard you. Are you going

to stay here ? You are our little mamma, are you not ? our big mamma is

gone to London.'

'Let me tis you,' said the other, in appearance very much like the

first, but to a smaller pattern.6

Their pink cheeks and yellow hair speedily intermingle with

the folds of Elfride's dress. She then, bows down and tenderly

embraces them both. They run after Elfride looking upon her as

a nice large speciman of their own tribe than as a grown up eider.

It has now become an established rule that whenever she meets

them, indoors or out of doors, weekdays or Sundays - they are to

be severally pressed against her face and bosom for a long time

and otherwise make much of on the delightful system of noise and carcess to which unpractised girls occasionally abandon themselves They are very sorry to say that their mother does not love them so much. The style of expressing their feelings touch the hearts of the readers.

'I wish you lived here, Miss Swan Court; piped one like a melancholy bullfinch.

'So do I,' piped the other like a rather more melancholy bullfinch.

'Mamma can not play with us so nicely as you do. I do not think she ever learnt playing when she was little. When shall we come to see you ?'

'As soon as you like dears. As soon as we can get Mamma's permission, you shall come and stay as long as you like. Good-bye.'17

The family of Tess and her brothers and sisters is very large.

The mother of Tess, still beams something of freshness and even the prettiness of her youth. She does not care for the large number of children and is fond of her children. No ditty floats in to Black moor Vale from the outer world but Tess's mother catches up it's notation in a week. Joan Durbey-field is also a passionate lover of tunes. So one can often find Mrs. Durbeyfield rocking the cradle of youngest child while doing her domestic work and singing any one of tunes that comes on her lips. Here one can easily compare, this scene with any cradle song of India where mother often sing such type of songs. The present scene takes place when Tess returns home and finds her mother washing the clothes and rocking the cradle.

As usual Mrs. Durbeyfield is balanced on one foot beside the tub, the other being engaged in the aforesaid business of rocking the child. Nick-Knock nick-knock goes the cradle. The cradle rocking and the song ceases simultaneously for a moment and an exclamation on highest vocal pitch takes the place of melody:

God bless thy diamond eyes ! And thy Waxen Cheeks ! And thy cherry mouth ! And thy cubit’s thighs ! And every bit of thy blessed body.5

In the novel Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy shows complex but intense love of Henchard for Elizabeth Jane. In the beginning he sells his wife along with his daughter. Coming to senses, he is remorseful and works hard to make himself the Mayor of the Town. During this time he has lost all hopes of their survival. After twenty

years Susan and Elizabeth return to the same town and Susan recognises him. She sends her daughter Elizabeth-Jane with a

letter to Henchard asking him whether he would wish to see her. Now Elizabeth-Jane sees Henchard in a rough mood. She hesi-

tatingly says to Henchard that she has been sent by Susan Newson to ask whether he would wish to see her. Hearing this

sentence, the tone and manner of Henchard is completely changed. Elizabeth-Jane is surprised to see it and Henchard takes her in

the house. He becomes so much emotional that his voice trembles when he takes the name of his daughter. He is overjoyed to see

her and grows emotional:

'And you are her daughter Elizabeth Jane ?' repeated Henchard. He arose, came close to her and glanced in her face. 'I think,' he said, suddenly turning

with a wet eye, 'You shall take a note from me to your mother. I should like to see her... well I am glad to see you here Elizabeth-Jane very glad.'9

He takes her hand at parting and holds it so warmly that she, who had known so little friendship, is much effected and tears rise

to her aerial-grey eyes. He loves Elizabeth-Jane even after he comes to know that she is not his daughter. He always thirsts for

the love of Elizabeth to love her as his real daughter and that is why he tells lie to Newson about her death.

If the novel above quoted we find the relationship between father and daughter, we can find the filial love between son and

mother in the novel The Return of the Native. Mrs. Yeobright has deep love for her son. She had been entertaining high ambitions

regarding the future of her son whom she loves very much and whom she has brought up with great care and devotion. She is quite

happy at her son having settled down in Paris as a manager of the establishment of a diamond merchant. She is naturally upset

when she learns that clym wishes to give up his job and start a school at Egdon. She ic more sad when she comes to know his

wish to marry Eustacia. She has a quarrel with her son not because she dislikes him but due to her love for him. Talking to Thomasin,

Mrs. Yeobright recalls that Clym had been very good as a little boy, very tender and kind. She has given her best years and best

love to Clym.

Her maternal anxiety about her son's future, both as regards

his occupation and his married life, is understandable. She is only asserting the right which every intelligent mother has. On the wedding day Mrs. Yeobright sits alone in her house filled with grief:

'O, it is a mistake,' she groans, 'And it will rue him some day, and think of me.' '10

In spite of his differences with his mother, Clym is essentially devoted to her. His anguish on finding her in a miserable condition when she has collapsed on the heath is indescribable. Her death almost breaks his heart. He holds himself responsible for the death of his mother. The irony of situation lies in the fact that his mother dies the same day on which he had decided to visit her at her house for a reconciliation. It is significant, also that the first sermon preached by Clym centres round the subjects of a son's devotion to his mother;

'And the king said unto her, Ask on, my mother: for I will not say thee nay.'11

It is only after her death that he seems to under stand that it is she and not Egdon whome he had really loved and for whom he had returned. In his remorse he treats her memory with almost religious devotion. He is at last seen preaching his own private gospel in which maternal adoration plays a large part.

B. SENTIMENT OF PEACE-SANTA RASA:

According to Bharat Muni Santa Rasa is the root of all the Rasas. He says, "All the Rasas emerge from Santa Rasa and after being relished again merge their existence in Santa Rasa."12 A good piece of literature always strikes a peaceful note at it's end and Hardy's novels are true to this quality.

The importance of Santa Rasa was also felt by the Western critics and theorists like Aristotle and dramatists like Milton who sought Cathartic pleasure from tragedy.

We can extend the principle of Cathartic pleasure to all the emotions because all the emotions demand satisfaction. The term catharsis expresses not only a fact of psychology or pathology, but also a principle of art. The original metapher in itself is a guide to the aesthetic significance of the term. When we apply this term to literature, in the process of tragic excitation, emotions find relief and the excess of morbid element is thrown off. The lower forms

of emotions are found to have been transformed into higher and more refined form. The emotions themselves are purged, "Tragedy, then does more than effect the homeopathic cure of certain passions. Its function of this view is not merely an outlet for pity and fear, but to provide for them a distinctly aesthetic satisfaction, to purify and clerify them by passing them through the medium of art."13

Milton follows Aristotelian conception in his classical tragedy Samson Agonistes. When the tragic end of Samson takes place, the audience or readers are not left crushed by the sad happenings of the play but

Of true experience from this great event,

With peace and consolation hath dismissed,

And calm of mind all passions spent.14

For books conceived in an aesthetic way, the end and beginning are very important. Hardy’s ends are memorable as his openings. These scenes have the Swanmusic which vibrates in the memory after it’s fall. In doing so he makes clear the trend of the action which has preceded it. Some time he points a moral too for example one can go through the last lines of his famous novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge:

"Her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given and did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved much more. And being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence the unforeseen when one to whcm such unbroken tranquillity had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in the general drama of pain.15

These stern sentences do not seem at first glance to refer immediately to the drama which has preceded them; that drama is the tragedy of Henchard and his fate was too disastrous adequately to be met even in this sober mood of resignation. But they have a deeper and more significant connection with his story for they reiate it to the general experience of mankind. This is what we must all feel, says Hardy about a world in which such a fate as Henchard’s is possible even if we have been fortunate enough to escape it. The last lines become the universal dictum of peace

and consolation.

When Tess comes to Clare after killing Alec, She knows that she will be imprisoned very soon. But she is happy and has a calm of mind, all tension removed. Even when the soldiers come to capture her, she does not lose this calmness. It is as it should be:

She murmured, ‘Angel, I am glad yes glad: this happiness could not have lasted. It was too much, I have had enough and now I shall not live for you to despise.’16

Hardy ends Tess with the same generalisation. “Justice was done, and the president of Immortals... had ended his sport with Tess.”17

But here Hardy has been too deeply moved by Tess’s agony to detech himself from it in the same way. The words are a dafiant desparate cry against the injustice of the universal plan.

Generally Hardy’s books do not end on a crushing note. He is also the master of dying fall, the Miltonic close in calm of mind, all passion spent, the fading echoing music that when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory. Under the Greenwood Tree presents us such an example. It has a happy ending. All is well. The worthy hero is married to the charming heroine and amid the cheers of their neighbours as they drive off to their own home. The risk about such an end is that it may seem too sweet and sunshining. Hardy with a single stroke cuts off the extra effects and brings it to the normality, rather it is a gentle irony. The happiness of her husband infact is only an illusion. Fancy is not so faithful to Disk as he is towards her. Even the best wives, hints Hardy, keep secrets from their husbands. With sound of nightingale she remembers the proposal of Mr. Maybole and she had almost to the last meditated marrying him:

‘O, it is the nightingale; murmured she, and thought of a secret she would never tell.’18

This passage becomes lighter than the close of his another tragedy The Woodlanders. The sad beautiful tale of wood landers is a harmony in quiet half tones and pale glancing lights. Steeped in a mood of autumnal reverie the dawn breaks, the trees drip, heavy with moisture and all draws to a close in a misty moonlight.

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

Grace is walking home with her husband past the graveyard where Giles lies buried, at the grave itself stands Marty the poor girl who had loved him in vain but who unlike Grace was faithful to him after death. The figure and character of Marty, her love for Giles cuts off extra pain and helps the story to end in sober mood:

Immediately they had dropped down the hill, she entered the churchyard going to a scheduled corner behind the bushes, where rose the unadorned stone that marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne. As this solitary and silent girl stood there in the moonlight a straight slim figure, clothed in plaitless gown, the counters of womanhood so undeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible in her the marks of poverty and toil effected by the misty hour, she touched sublimity at all points, and looked atmost like a human being who had rejected with indifference the attribute of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism. She stooped down and cleared away the withered floweres that Grace and herself had laid there the previous week and put her fresh ones in that place.19

The novel The Return of the Native ends, after all on a cheerful note. However, it may be pointed out that the original conception of the story did not design a marriage between thomasin and Diggary. Diggory was to have retained his isolated and mysterious character to the end, and to have disappeared from the Heath mysteriously. Thomasin was to have remained a widow. But Hardy altered his design in accordance to the public opinion. The reason of this changing was that this novel like others, was published in a serial form.

After the marriage of Thomasin and Diggory, Clym enters the mother’s house and feels her presence in a stonger way than the time when she was alive. The events had borne out the accuracy of her judgement and proved the devotedness of her care. He should have heeded her for Eustacia’s sake even more than for his own. He always feels remorse. As a result on the Sunday after this weeding, exactly at the spot where Eustacia had stood some two years and a half before, now stood Clym. Round him upon the slopes of the Rainbow, a number of Heath-men or women were reclining or sitting. They listened to the words of a man (Clym) in their midst who was preaching. This was the first of a series of moral lectures or Sermons on the mount, which were to be delivered from the same place every Sunday afternoon as long as

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the fine weather lasted. He stated that his discourse to the people would be sometimes secular and sometimes religious. It is note worthy that the first sermon of Clym centres round the subject of a son’s devotion to this mother:

Then she said, ‘I desire one small portion of thee; I pray thee say me not nay. And the king said us to her, Ask on, my mother; for I will not say thee nay.’20

Some believed him and some believed not, some said that his words were common place, others complained of his want of theological doctrine; while others again remarked that it was well enough for a man to take to preaching. Every where he was kindly received, the story of his life had become generally known.

Far from the Madding Crowd can be put next to Under the Greenwood Tree because the former novel has the peaceful happy ending like the later one. The very beginning of the novel gives us the impression of peace and the over all atmosphere is of tranquillity. We are taken out of the city life and, ‘Far from the Madding Crowds’ ignoble strife. The outward showy struggle of city life where people act madly and behave passionately, is not prese :t here. In the study of city life the observer is not able to trace the true emotion. On the other hands people of rural side show and project themselves sharply. In other words Hardy supports the theory of Wordsworth that rural people should be the subject of poetry and that was why Wordsworth’s poetry seemed to him so good as a ‘cure for despair.’21 For example we have the contrasting characters of Gabriel, Troy and Boldwood. Certainly Gabriel and Boldwood are better characters. The book takes us to the peaceful world of nature with which the characters are in tune. The nature gives them a sense of consolation and peace. It is exactly the country rhythm that comes from the elegy of Thomas Gray-

Far from the Madding Crowds ignoble strife.

Their sober wishes never learned to stray,

Along the cool sequestered way of life,

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.22

This sentiment of peace generally comes from the speeches of Gabriel Oak and Bathsheba. Gabriel has a philosophic attitude towards life. When he loses his sheep at first he becomes sad.

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

But again he adopts his peace of mind. He bears the loss with courage and bravery. Stupors, however do not last for ever and farmer Oak recovers from his. It is remarkable to note the sentence he speaks in thankfulness-

'Thank God, I am not married ! What would she have done in the poverty now coming upon me.'23

Disappointment in love does not make his nature disturbed. Though he loves Bathsheba deeply, yet without selfishness and wishes that Boldwood should Marry Bathsheba. When Boldwood is rejected by Bathsheba and is sad, he says to Boldwood-

'I thought my mistress would have married you,' said Gabriel. 'However it is sometimes and nothing happens that we expect,' he added with the repose of a man whom misfortune had improved rather than subdued.24

Oak has a special way to look at the life and to endure things. He meditatively looks upon the horizen of things without any special regard to his own stand point in order. When Fanny is dead, Bathsheba comes to know about the relation of Troy and Fanny. She loses her self control and comes out alone on the road. The outer peace of atmosphere provides her mental peace. She finds Gabriel praying in his room. Like Gabriel she wants to pray. She comes to the coffin of Fanny. She kneels besides the Coffin of Fanny, convers her face with her hands and for a time the room is a silent as a tomb. When she arises, she is with a quieted spirit and the regret for the antogonistic instincts which had seized uponher just before. In her desire to make atonement, she takes flowers and begins laying them around the dead girl's head. She knows no other way of showing kindness to the person departed than by offering her flowers. She forgets time, life, and where she is and what she is doing. In this state of mind she feels a great sort of healing peace and so the readers enjoy the same peaceful state of mind.

The novel can be put next to Under the Greenwood Tree in comparison of peaceful ends. Under the reenwood Tree is more delightful and full of joy than this novel. We are reminded of the miserable end of Fanny and Troy. The story of Boldwood is also full of pathos. But the happy and wished end of the story makes us forget these sad events when Bathsheba agrees to marry

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Gabriel saying that she is his first beloved and he the first lover and more genuine than the other two.

Bathsheba desires that the marriage should be quite simple.

Slowly the close ones of Bathsheba and Gabriel come to know the happy news. All are full of joy. In the fogy moring next day Gabriel and Bathsheba go under two Umbrellas but arm in arm for the first time in their lives. Bathsheba is simply dressed but she looks quite young and beautiful. The Ceremony of marriage is performed in a very short time, attended by Laban Tall Liddy and others. They come home and drink tea in the room, Mark Clark, Caggan, Smallbury and others had arranged for the firing of the cannon and playing of band with music to celebrate the occasion.

They come to offer their wishes to the newly married couple. Oak thanks them and promises to send food and drink for them at Warren's malt-house. The men cheer again and disperse. In this way the novel ends with peace and joy.

A Pair of Blue Eyes provides the same kind of Cathartic relief to the readers. No doubt the main sentiment is intense and painful.

At the same time Hardy shows and gives lesson that the people should adjust themselves with the circumstances. Because he rejects the idea of a God of love, some people accuse him of believing in the opposite, a malignant old gentle man who enjoys tormenting the human race. Hardy always says that he believes in no such things:

In connection with the subject, it may be here recalled in answer to the writers who now and later were fond of charging Hardy with postulating a malignant and fiendish God, that he never held any view of the sort, merely surmising and indifferent and conscious force at the back of things that neither good nor evil knows. His view is shown in the fact in approximate to Einstein's—that neither chance nor purpose governs the universe but necessity.25

The complete humanity and the people are bound to the law of necessity. It is a different matter that in the beginning of the events the people do not understand the scheme of necessity and hence they are shocked to face the horrible events of life. For example Knight and Stephen exchange hot words over the issue of Elfride. Each of them feels that his love is stronger and genuine

than that of other. Then they come to know about her death as

Mrs. Luxellian they tell the story of their own love to other and now

both of them feel that they have killed her:

'Has she broken her heart?' said Henry Knight. 'Can it be that I have killed

her? I was bitter with her Stephen and she had died ! And may God have

no mercy upon me.'

'How can you have killed her more than I?'26

They are discussing about the things they know. So they want

to know the facts and start for Endelstow. Stephen says:

'Let us leave her alone. She is beyond our love, and let her be beyond our

reproach. Since we do not know half the reason that made her so as she

did Stephen how can you say even now that she was not pure and true

in heart? Knight's voice had become mild and gentle as a child's. He went

on: Can we call her ambitious? No circumstance has, as usual, overpowered

her purposes as she was liable to be over thrown in a moment by the

coarse elements of accident.'27

This is only the half realisation of truth or reality and they are

quite calm. Unity tells them more facts about her death and

marriage with Lord Luxellian who loves her very much beyond

every thing and would have died for her as she believes. After the

funeral is over they go down to the vault. They observe the dark

form of a man kneeling on the damp floor, his body flung across

the coffin, his hands clasped and his whole frame seemingly given

up in utter abandonment to grief. He was still young-younger,

perhaps than Knight. He murmurs a prayer half aloud and is quite

unconscious that two others are standing within a few yards of him.

Knight instantly recognises the mourner as Lord Luxellian, the

bereaved husband of Elfride.

They feel themselves to be intruders. Knight presses Stephen's

back and they silently withdraw as they had entered-

'Come away,' he said in a broken voice. 'We have no right to be there.

Another stands before us-nearer to her than we.'28

This is complete awakening of truth in them and consiquently

their emotions are quieted. Readers in the same way feel the relief

and enjoy the sentiment of peace.

Besides intensely patient and strongly living studies in the

open, Hardy in his right way brings us those portraits of humanity

worth and integrity of whom can not soon fail to inspire the

114

RAMA KANT SHARMA

thoughtful. Tess, Farmer Oak, Diggory Venn, Elizabeth Jane and

Clym are not likely to be changed with variations of taste and

interest for some time to come. They are the children of light and

peace. Their ways are involved with much of inglorious and

unprofitable incident, but their honest and fearless natures which

not thrust upon us as examples, take no infaction and claim no

reward. If it is a novelists' privilege to strengthen the heart of his

readers, so then Hardy often is waved aside as one who only

thickens the gloom. But he had made good use of it. He has

honoured the kind of characters who may best meet the shocks

of circumstances apparently more liable to occur to mankind as

the race grows more mechanical minded. They stand for

unostentatious creed of simplicity and endurance. When the world

is burning, they assert in all they are and all they intend the noble

nature which man has offered to the fates. Thus they provide

sentiment of peace and guiding light to the readers.

REFERENCES

1Edmund Blunden, Thomas Hardy, p.8.

2Anna WinchCombe, "Introduction" to Under the Greenwood Tree, p.28.

3Is it cold inside the hole?

4Under the Greenwood Tree, p.47.

5Ibid., pp.205-06.

6A Pair of Blue Eyes, pp.28-9.

7Ibid., p.29.

8Tess, p.20.

9The Mayor of Casterbridge, pp.66-7.

10The Return of the Native, p.225.

11Ibid., p.416.

12Bharata, Natya Shastra, VI, 87, 367.

13S.H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, pp.254-55.

14Milton, Samson Agonists (London: Macmillan, 1958), p.56.

15The Mayor of Casterbridge, p.331.

16Tess, p.443.

17Ibid., p.517.

18Under the Greenwood Tree, p.245.

19The Woodlanders, p.338.

20The Return of the Native, p.416.

21Hardy notes down in his diary that one should read 'Resolution and

Independence,' the Poem written by Wordsworth, Life, p.58.

HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

115

22Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in Country Churchyard,” Four Famous Poems, ed. S.S. Shrivastava (Meerut: Loyal Book Depot, 1978), p.53.

23Far from the Madding Crowd, p.47.

24Ibid., p.260.

25Life of Thomas Hardy, p.337.

26A Pair of Blue Eyes, p.302.

27Ibid., p.305.

28Ibid., p.309.

CHAPTER VIII

CONCLUSION

Characters, theme, style, nature description and the engrossing stories in his novels endear Hardy to his readers. But behind them all, giving grandeur of drama and poetry of them, lies something else- a strong emotional force. At the same time, the emotions are not complex. They are simple and grand. This emotional force enables him to rise to the heights of tragic feeling, apt for his tragic themes. He is also able to transmit the simple rustic joy of his village folk. The sensibility which accepted miseries of life made him also keen responsive to it's joys. There are two elements in any artistic creation-intellect and emotion and Hardy has the second element in highest degree. Sensibility is the product of imagination which provides an aesthetic beauty to Hardy's novels and aesthetic pleasure to his readers.

Because of this aesthetic beauty and emotional intensity of his novels, Hardy can be studied from the point of view of Indian aesthetic theory viz., Rasa theory. It is not improper to apply this theory to Hardy's novels even though the theory had basically dealt with plays. Novels are called pocket theatres and they too, deal with human emotions. The power of visualisation eliminates all differences between novel and drama. The readers derive the same pleasure, when they read a novel, as they would have derived while witnessing a play. So there is no difference in the quality of Rasa which is relished by readers and the audience.

Rasa-theory is a deep psychological study of universal human emotions which become the source of aesthetic delight in literature. Bharata, father of Sanskrit literary criticism, postulated the theory in aphoristic style. This theory was interpreted by many critics. Among them, Bhatt Lollata, Sankuka, Bhatt Nayaka, Anand Verdhana and Abhinave Gupta are important because of their original contribution to the concept. Bhatt Nayaka investigated the theory of "Sadharnikaran"- empathy because of which the emotions and feelings of characters or actors are communi-

cated to the readers or audience directly. Anand Verdhan gave

the theory of “Suggestion,” which helps in communication and

empathy. Abhinav Gupta combined both the theories in one, and

produced the best concept of Rasa realisation. Propriety plays a

major role in the application of Rasa theory to the novels or any

work of literature. Cultural, social and moral properties are taken

in to consideration in the apprehension of Rasa.

A few great critics of Sanskrit Literature viz., Mammata,

Vishvanatha and Jagannath are not dealt with in detail because

they did not give any original concept in detail. No doubt we can

refer to Vishvanatha who established ‘Vatsalya Rasa’ - or filial

sentiment. But he did not tell about the enjoyment of sentiment.

The popularity of Mammata is not due to any original theory

expounded by him - but to the able manner in which all the different

theories are brought together, their inter-relations defined, and

each of them assigned to a proper place. He gives the predomi-

nance to Rasa and Dhvani and establishes their right by a vigorous

refutation to the theory of ‘Inference given by Sankuka. The

creative age in the history of Sanskrit literary criticism comes to

an end with Kavya Prakasha and it has become the model for later

works written by Vishvanatha and Jagannath.

Several ingradients like objects, subjects, excitants, consiquents,

transitory feelings and dominant emotions, play the role of steping

stones in the way of Rasa realisation. Reader is not conscious of

these factors, hence these are called alaukik- higher reality.

Among these ingradients, dominant emotions which are ten in

number can be treated as Rasa- sentiments. These sentiments

are also ten in number viz., love, humour, pathos, anger, heroism,

fear, disgust, wonder, peace anf filial sentiment. They have been

divided in to sub-headings, for example love has been divided in

to love in union and love in separation. We have applied only those

aspects that are practicable on the novels of Hardy.

Hardy’s genius is tragic and he rises to the level of the grand

tragedies of Greeks and of Shakespeare. Naturally, in these

tragedies, the Karuna Rasa or pathetic sentiment is important. But

it does not mean that Hardy is not alive to other sentiments of

human life. One can think of love in the novels of Hardy and there is beautiful portrayal of love. Humour in the novels of Hardy, has been caught up joyfully from the lips of villagers themselves. There is also anger red blooded anger of the characters who feel deeply and have an intensity of emotions. One also finds the tender emotion of filial love in his novels - loving fathers, mothers and aunts. In the end Hardy gives a soothing effect of Catharsis by providing the sentiment of peace of the calmness of mind-when all the passions are spent. In some of the novels, rather in most of tragic novels the sentiment of fear is also present. The artistic description of the painful feelings, makes them able to be relished by the readers in literature without any danger or harm.

As Hardy deals with the basic emotions of human beings, the readers are able to relish the full consummation of sentiments when they read his novels. He is, therefore, able to give his readers - an aesthetic pleasure and he is ranked with great writers of English literature. The study of Hardy’s novels from the point of view of aesthetic theory of Rasa, has revealed that the appeal of his novels is universal without caring of Caste, Creed and Culture.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anandverdhan. Dhvanyaloka. Ed. Dr. Nagendra. Varanasi: Gyan Mandal, 1962.

Abercrombie. Thomas Hardy. New York: Russel & Russell, 1964.

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Bailey, John. An Essay on Hardy. Cambridge: Oxford Press, 1978.

Bharata, Natya Shastra. Ed. Dr. Babu Lal Shukla. Varanasi: Chaukhamba Prakashan, N.D.

Blunden, Edmund. Thomas Hardy. London: Macmillan & Company, 1951.

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Duffin, H.C. Thomas Hardy. Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1963.

Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., N.D.

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__________. Tess of the D'Urbervilles. London: Collins, 1967.

__________. The Mayor of Casterbridge. Ghaziabad: Indian Book Depot, 1980.

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HARDY AND THE RASA THEORY

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Index

A

Abey Westminster, 12

Adam and Eve, 42

Adbhut Rasa Sentiment of wonder, 33

Advice Care, 45

Anubhavas-consequents, 20

Angel Clare, 42

Ashram of Valmiki, 100

Ashram of Rishi Marich, 100

B

Brahmänd Sahoder, 18

Bhukti-Vad, 21

Bhayanak Rasa-Sentiment of Fear, 32

Buddha Gautam, 33

C

Career Hardy's 11

Cecil David, 70

Clare Angel, 6

Concept of the Rasa, 18

Court's Swan Mr., 99

Coffin of Fanny, 111

Coggan Jon, 66

D

Darwin God, 13

Dan Veera, 32

Dewy Mrs. 69, 101

Dryden John, 2

Durbervilles, 79

Durbey Joan, 104

E

Eliot's T.S., 3

Elizabeth, 74-75

Ellis Havelock, 11

English Literature, 118

Eustacia Menchard, 76

F

Filial Sentiment, 100

Fitzpiers Dr. 84

Fray Henry, 66

Funious Sentiment, 94

G

Gifford Emma, 9

God, 12-13

Copyrighted material

Index

Grinham Mr., 68

Gupta Abhinav, 117

H

Hardy Thomes, 4, 12, 68, 73

Hasya Rasa, 29, 62

Haunting Shadow, 92

Henchart Michel, 73

Henry Marry, 5

Huxley T.H.,13

J

Jane Elizabeth, 62

Jethway Mrs. 83-84, 92

Joseph, 66-67

K

Kalidas, 100

Karunas Rasa, 29, 73, 100

Katherine, 5

Krishnamoorthy K. Dr. 19

L

Leaf Thomas, 69

Liddy Laban Tall, 112

Little Father Time in Jude the Obsecure, 7

Lollata, Bhatt, 19

Lord Luxellian, 71, 103, 113

Lord Rama, 100

Love Story of Farfree and Elizabeth, 54

M

Madding Crowd for Cornhil, 10

Malbury Mr., 56

Massigham's. H.W., 80

Marty Angel, 76

Maybold Mr., 77

Maybold Mrs., 69

Mayor of Casterbridge, 11, 14, 94-95

Mill's John Stuart, 12

N

Nayak Bhatt, 19

Newton Sturminster, 10

Nunsuch Johnny, 76

O

Oak Gabriel, 58-59

Oak Mr., 66

Origin of a Child, 100

Origin of Species, 13

P

Parental Love, 34

Pair of Blue Eyes, 9-10, 50,82

Penny's Mr., 70

Pierston Observes Marcia Bencomb, 44

Q

Queen's College, 10

Quite Contrary, 68

124

Hardy and the Rasa Thoery

R

Rasa Theory, 116

Realisation of God, 33

Richards I.A., 23

Rig Veda, 18

Rose Mary Trouble, 12

Rose and Brahmand, 18

S

Sanchari Bhavas of Viyoga

Sringar. 29

Sanchari Bhavas, 27

Santa Rasa, 106

Sanyoga Sringar, 28

Sentiment of Fear, 89

Sentiment of Humour, 29

Sentiment of Peace, 33

Sentiment of Lover, 28

Shakespeare, 75

Sindy Philip., 1

Singh Dr. Rajkishor. 22

Skylank Shell'y,15

Smith Stephen, 83

Sringar Rasa, 28

Sthabihavas-Dominant Eations,

27

Sthayibhave of Hasaya, 29

Shukla Ram Chandra, 23

Swancourt Mr., 98

T

Tess of Durbervilies, 12

Theory of Aristotle, 90

Theory of Galileo, 12

Theory of Katharsis, 2

Trensistory Feelings, 27

U

Union Sanyoga Sringar, 40

Utpattivad, 19

V

Vatsalya Rasa, 34

Vishvanatha, 116

Viyoga Sringar, 152

Vyabhicaribhava, 20

W

West Minister Review, 11

William, 71

Woman Liddy, 97

Y

Yeobright, 41, 96

Yeobright Clym Mr.,7, 57, 76,

105

Young Boy, 55, 68

Young Man, 11, 68

Z

Zickness, 55

Copyrighted material

Rama Kant Sharma completed his

M.Phil. and Ph.D. from C.C.S.

University, Meerut. He specializes in

Victorian Fiction and Indian Aesthetics.

He has been awarded the Degree of

Ph.D in English for his work on Thomas

Hardy. He is Reader & Head,

Department of English, S.S.V.

Postgraduate College, Hapur. Already

he has published articles and book

reviews in scholarly literary journals.

ISBN-81-7625-377-4

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