Influence of Science on Christianity in the Tess of the D’Urbervilles
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Department of English
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.