How Tess of the D’Urbervilles drew on The Origin of Species
A documented line of influence: Thomas Hardy demonstrably engaged Charles Darwin’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin · 1859
The Age of the NovelThe influenced
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy · 1891
The Age of the NovelRelevance
7/10
On Tess of the D’Urbervilles’s page
- The intellectual bedrock under Tess — Hardy called himself "among the earliest acclaimers" of The Origin of Species and attended Darwin's funeral
- Tess is destroyed by heredity and indifferent chance: Darwin's struggle for existence reimagined as the doom of one country girl
- Read Darwin first and Hardy's cruelty makes sense — there is no providence in this novel, only the blind, ruthless nature The Origin described
On The Origin of Species’s page
- Hardy was, by his own account, "among the earliest acclaimers" of this book, and stood at Darwin's funeral in Westminster Abbey
- Tess is the novel that takes Darwin's pitiless nature personally — heredity as fate, the strong surviving and the gentle crushed
- The "ruthless Darwinian world" Hardy builds around his heroine is this book translated into a human tragedy