On Thomas Hardy’s Religious Sense in His Works [7]
论文作者:潇霖论文属性:短文 essay登出时间:2009-04-21编辑:黄丽樱点击率:15550
论文字数:5047论文编号:org200904212314251358语种:英语 English地区:中国价格:免费论文
关键词:ReligioninfluenceresearchThomas Hardydistinguished religious sense
enough for her tired son to fall deeply asleep), she sees a man enter her son's house. It is Damon Wildeve, Eustacia's former lover, and when Mrs.Yeobright knocks on the door she interrupts their discussion. Afraid of incurring her mother-in-law's wrath, Eustacia decides to withdraw to the back of the house with Damon, assuming her sleeping husband will wake and allow his mother to enter. As they left, "they could hear Clym moving in the other room, as if disturbed by the knocking, and he uttered the word 'Mother'" (Hardy 222). However, the 'conjuncture' that Clym will awake and let in his mother, as Hardy labels it in his chapter title, is incorrect, and Mrs. Yeobright sorrowfully leaves her son's house. Having seen him enter and Eustacia look from a window at her, she is convinced that her son's new wife has poisoned her son's mind against her and comments, "'If they only showed signs of meeting my advances half way how well it might have been done!'" (Hardy 224
).
The readers know that Mrs. Yeobright's belief is unfounded--although Eustacia did make the faulty assumption that Clym would answer the door, she did not act with malicious forethought. However, Hardy's powerful chance denies Mrs. Yeobright and Clym a reunion, and the distraught mother begins the long and hot journey home. She randomly encounters a young village boy on the heath and confides to him that she is "'a broken-hearted woman cast off by her son'" (Hardy 225). Mrs. Yeobright soon collapses on the heath from exhaustion, the heat, and disappointment.
Meanwhile, Clym wakes with no knowledge of what has occurred. While Eustacia is sorry and apprehensive of Clym's anger when she realizes that she has unwittingly turned away his mother, she decides not to tell him of his mother's visit. Once again, irony intrudes when Clym decides that he ought to attempt a reconciliation with his mother. If he had only made this decision a day earlier, then the entire incident could have been avoided. Mrs. Yeobright would not have undergone her trial in the eat or experienced what she thought was a rejection at the hands of her son and his merciless new wife. As Clym journeys to his mother's home, he discovers her prostrate body on the heath. Although he does prevent her from dying alone, she has been bitten by an adder and expires during the night without regaining full consciousness and being reunited with Clym. Even worse, her young companion arrives on the scene to inform Clym of his mother's last words.
After Mrs. Yeobright's death, Clym becomes ill as "Despair had been added to his original grief by the unfortunate disclosure of the boy who had received the last words of Mrs. Yeobright (Hardy 239). Clym's ramblings dramatically illustrate his tortured state of mind:
“'I cannot help feeling I did my best to kill her… My conduct to her was too hideous--I made no advances; and she could not bring herself to forgive me. Now she is dead! If I had only shown myself willing to make it up to her sooner”. (Hardy 239)
Clym blames himself for her death and their failure at reconciliation. To Eustacia, who knows herself truly guilty for not letting in Mrs. Yeobright and therefore avoiding her death and facilitating a reconciliation, listening to Clym's self-denouncing speeches are agony. After monologues such as these, "There escaped from Eustacia one of those shivering sighs which used to shake her like a pestilent blast" (Hardy 239), but she cannot bring h
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