A Study of the Persistence of Individuality in Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Tess of the D'Urbervilles" is a striking one among Hardy's novels for its delineation of the notion of individuality or strong individual character.The social setting and the tragic happenings which occur therein in the novel are the grounds against the backdrop of which the narrative of the birth and development of an individual self takes place.However, the protagonists or the characters' bouts of suffering and sacrifice, incidentally, lead them to seek for themselves choices and self-knowledge that in turn would guarantee the functionalist state of a society and social solidarity among the members of the society.In other words, the strong sense of individuality as gained by the protagonists and as occasioned by their tragic sufferings in the novel is only meant to be lost for the cause of the order of the existing society of the period.This paper would make an attempt to explore the reasons and the factors which go into making such a scheme or a pattern in the novel.