SOURCE: Sullivan, Tom R. “The Temporal Leitmotif in Far from the Madding Crowd.” Colby Library Quarterly 10 (1974): 296-303.

In the following essay, Sullivan explores Hardy's notion of “evolutionary meliorism” as it is exhibited in various manifestations of the concept of time in Far from the Madding Crowd.

Efforts to define Thomas Hardy's philosophical position go on, and on, and on. It has been argued by scholars, and repeated endlessly in seminar and term papers, that he viewed the world as a pessimist, a determinist, or a fatalist. Hardy himself did not want to be considered a philosopher,¹ but he did, on a less abstract level then suggested by the isms noted above, generalize about kinds of action which he thought best for men, and his generalizations do not imply the philosophic positions usually attributed to him. He chose to describe his own ‘idiosyncratic mode of regard’ in the following...