SOURCE: “The influence of religion, science, and philosophy on Hardy's writings,” in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy, edited by Dale Kramer, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 54-72.

In the following essay, Schweik outlines the influence of contemporary religious, scientific, and philosophic thought on Thomas Hardy's writings.

A consideration of the influence of contemporary religion, science, and philosophy on Hardy's writings requires some prefatory cautions. First, such influences often overlap, and identification of how they affected Hardy's work must sometimes be no more than a tentative pointing to diverse and complex sets of possible sources whose precise influence cannot be determined. Thus in Far from the Madding Crowd Gabriel Oak intervenes to protect Bathsheba's ricks from fire and storm, uses his knowledge to save her sheep, and in other ways acts consistently with the biblical teaching that man was given the responsibility of exercising dominion over nature. At the...