Influence of Science on Christianity in the Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Abstract

The conflict between science and religion is not a strange thing and it has become a common issue in almost literary writings. Many literary figures who believe on religion and establish their writings on the religious aspects are found astonishing to see the unusual impact of science on their firm faith. Thomas Hardy, the nineteenth century English novelist,has seriously observed this sudden influence of science in Christianity and successfully illustrated in his novel Tess of the D' Urbervilles. Going through the text no reader can ignore Hardy's love and faith to Christianity on one side and also the influence of science and technology he observes on the other. The publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species (1859)helps Hardy not only to make the clear distinction between Christian religion and science but also makes him aware of the conflict between the two diverse disciplines. Consequently, Hardy takes these two areas as the enemy of each other and he reveals them with enough evidences from his day to day experiences of human life in his novel. Although the issuelike the conflict between science and religion of this research appears quite common and obvious in this post modern era where science has been reached to its climax, but it is also essential to grasp the hidden gravity of the text. In the form of a research and no good researcher can avoid this underlying issue. Therefore, the quality of this research lies on the pattern which takes the pain to find out a genuine and deserving issue out of a common phenomena, which in fact is a major characteristics of a perfect research.