The Oxen Flashcards
(3 cards)
Rural Nostalgia
Hardy often wrote about the disappearing rural world of his youth, shaped by folklore, oral traditions, and simple communal beliefs.
By 1915, England was fully industrialized and urbanized: over 80% of the population lived in towns or cities, and rural customs were fading.
Literature like Hardy’s Wessex Poems (1898) and Poems of the Past and the Present (1901) consistently mourned this vanishing countryside.
Declining faith
his notebooks and letters show how deeply he wrestled with scientific rationalism versus childhood belief, especially after reading Darwin (On the Origin of Species, 1859) and Huxley’s essays.
The oxen represents a loss of faith - however, the pull represents the whole left by God’s replacement
WW1
By December 1915, British military deaths were over 100,000, and the optimism of early patriotic fervor had collapsed into disillusionment.
Hardy, aged 75, saw the war as confirmation of his bleak view of human nature and history: brutal, mechanistic, indifferent.
So - The oxen’s story represents the desire to return to nostalgia - deep
