The Darkling Thrush

Question 1

Fin De Seicle - Turn of the Century

Answer 1

Fin De Seicle - widely seen as a cultural decline at the time

Population growth in England surged from ~16 million in 1841 to ~30 million by 1901, straining cities and resources.

Literature like H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) reflected themes of degeneration and decay.

Hardy himself had faced bitter criticism for the pessimism in his novels (notably Jude the Obscure, 1895), which led him to abandon fiction and return to poetry - perhaps why the thrush is more hopeful

Question 2

Decline in faith

Answer 2

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) undermined faith

by 1900, active religious participation had sharply dropped, especially in urban areas.

The frail “aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small” singing in the winter gloom may represent hope - but its unsavouriness may represent a non religious idea

Question 3

The Skylark and Romanticism

Answer 3

The thrush recalls the Romantic bird-symbols of joy and poetic inspiration (Wordsworth’s skylark, Shelley’s Ode to a Skylark, Keats’s Nightingale).

By 1900, literary tastes were shifting toward Modernism, but Hardy straddles the line — drawing on Romantic nature symbolism, but the lark is beruffled and corrupted