Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders: literary criticism and analysis

Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders was published in 1887, a few years after the death of Charles Darwin. However, the novel was set in the middle of the 19th century, in about the same year that Darwin published On the Origin of the Species. Hardy may not have selected his setting arbitrarily. The Woodlanders has often been read within the context of Darwinian influences in society and literature. However, literary critics tend to emphasize the fusion between Romantic and Darwinian depictions of nature in The Woodlanders to show how Hardy drew from Darwin to develop his characters and themes. Irvine, for example, claims Hardy was an "evolutionary pessimist," and this is certainly apparent in The Woodlanders, which provides an overtly pessimistic view of human nature but especially of patriarchy (625). In fact, Hardy's The Woodlanders shows that while Darwinian principles of evolution sometimes favor members of the species with no moral scruples, in the end the survival of the fittest showcases the strengths of those who were previously of the subordinate social classes, people like Grace and Marty in The Woodlanders. Although social Darwinism is usually used to perpetuate injustice and inequality, a deconstruction of social Darwinism that is applied to Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders shows how the author's "evolutionary pessimism" is paralleled by an ironic optimism.