Thomas Hardy's Fatalistic View of Life in Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy was considered a fatalist. Fatalism is a view of life which insists that all action everywhere is controlled by nature of things or by a power superior to things. It grants the existence of fate, a great impersonal, a primitive force, existing from all eternity, absolutely independent of human wills, superior even to any god whom humans may have invented. The power of fate is embracing and is more difficult to understand than the gods. The scientific parallel of fatalism is determinism. It acknowledges, that man's struggle against the will behind things, is not to take advantage, but does decree that the laws of cause and effect must not be suspended. Determinism explains the conditions which fatalism describes. The use of fatalism for extending the plot was a technique used by many Victorian authors, but with Thomas Hardy it became something more than a simple device.

Due to his fatalistic view of life, Hardy presents the character of Tess as having a many forces working against her efforts to control her destiny. Fate approaches Tess in many different forms. Fate is through chance and coincidence, and the manifestations of nature, time, and woman. The basis of Thomas Hardy's fatalism is seen in his youthful actions and the very first works he wrote, and there is a gradual development up to the day of his death. He had a fatalistic outlook throughout his whole life. In fact, even his birth seemed to be caused by a twist of fate.

When Hardy was born, the doctor pronounced him dead. He was thrown aside until fate stepped in and a nurse realized that Hardy was in fact alive. Probably because of this, Hardy never felt that his life was worth it. He felt that his stoically born life was a record of unhappiness. He believed that fate gives it´s back to man. Hardy incorporates these feelings into the novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Fateful incidents, overheard conversations, and undelivered letters are symbols of how fate can be against