Role of Fate in Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy wrote this novel in the end of the last decade of the nineteenth century. This novel is remarkable like all the other Hardy’s novels for the tragic vision it indicates; there is a story which ends in a tragic manner. In so far as Hardy is concerned, he writes tragedy of fate which has a major role to play. This novel is almost like the Greek tragedy in the classical Greek tragedy in the sense that they wrote play in a way where Aristotle wrote Greek tragedy and other things. He was dealing particularly with plays. But the world view was essentially disastrous in tragedy mainly because in those Greek tragedies, the tragedy arose out of the dictates of fate. So, fate had decreed that it would be like this. And, because it was decreed that it would be like this, it happened accordingly.

So, the tragedy in Greece according to the classical western tradition owes its existence to the role of fate that there is a tragic end is a result of the fact that fate had decreed like this. So, if we take for example the tragedies of Sophocles who is one of most classical writers; he wrote very popular tragedies, like Oedipus Rex. It is so popular because Freud has analyzed Oedipus Rex from the point of view of Oedipus’ Complex. This tragic play is a story of a child who is born like any other child and at the time of birth itself it is forecast from the skies that he will slay his father and marry the mother. Oedipus commits the sin of patricide and marries his own mother, an act which is the most despicable sin man could ever commit. So, it destined in this way. The oracle predicts that this case is going to happen with this child. Fore this reason the king, the father of the child throws the child away into the jungle. But the infant Oedipus was saved by a shepherd. Oedipus returns after some time and again by some chance the kingdom of the empire is given to the same child, Oedipus. He takes up the kingdom from his father and also marries the Queen.