Thomas Hardy's Novel Universe: Astronomy, Cosmology, and Gender in the Post Darwinian World (review)

Pamela Gossin's study of Thomas Hardy and astronomy is a pleasure to read and a welcome addition to the scholarship on Victorian science and literature. It will appeal both to literary scholars and historians of science. Gossin maintains that bringing together the methods of analysis from both fields to create a "literary history of science" offers the best "interpretative space" in which to understand Hardy's novels (xv). But instead of limiting herself to a consideration of Darwinian evolution, as do most Hardy scholars, Gossin argues that we must recognize the powerful influence of astronomical science on the universes Hardy created in his fiction. She points out, quite rightly, that many of Hardy's contemporaries conceived of organic evolution as only one element in a cosmic process that included stellar and planetary evolution. This important insight enriches the interpretative space in which she analyses Hardy's work. By exploring the "extensive presence of astronomical concepts, allusions, symbolic associations and deep cosmic metaphors in Hardy's literature," Gossin is able to offer fresh readings of his novels (xvi). Instead of a pessimistic Darwinian, whose characters are repeatedly beaten down by a soulless universe, we get a glimpse of a different Hardy, who affirms the possibility of finding meaning in the stars.

The book is divided into two parts. In part 1, "Critical Methodology, Literary and Historical Background," Gossin argues that scholars in literary studies and the history of science must cooperate far more than they have in the past. After a highly personal account of how she came to be attracted to a "literary history of science," Gossin attempts to bring her two imagined audiences up to speed. For historians of science, she provides an overview of the literary history of astronomy, stressing the diversity of form, genre, style, and mode in past astronomical writing. For scholars who work on science and literature, Gossin offers a chapter on the history of astronomical and cosmological theory from ancient times to the Victorian period. Both of these well-done surveys provide the tools for engaging a literary history of astronomy. But part 1 is quite lengthy, almost one hundred pages, or two-fifths of the book. Although Hardy and his Victorian context are dealt with at the end of each overview, it is not clear that extended discussions of Plato, Kepler, and Galileo are absolutely necessary for understanding Hardy's "novel universe."

In part 2, "Reading Hardy's Novel Universe," Gossin focuses on how Hardy's immersion in astronomy informs his novels. Drawing on evidence from Hardy's literary notebooks, she persuasively argues that he became familiar with astronomy largely through his reading of Richard Proctor, the nineteenth century's most prolific popularizer of astronomy. Hardy was fascinated by Proctor's emphasis on the vastness, grandeur, and power of the universe. But the best evidence for Hardy's personal knowledge of astronomical discoveries and cosmological ideas, she declares, is to be found in the pages of his novels. Three chapters are devoted to close readings of the personal cosmologies of the major characters in Hardy's novels as they struggle to deal with the revelation by scientists of a randomly generated and probably godless universe. In her readings of each novel, she explores the complex astronomical analogies by which Hardy illustrated the characters' relationships to one another and their success, or lack of success, in finding meaning in the heavens. Instead of reacting to the findings of modern science with fear, aversion, or "cosmic despair," Hardy sees the possibility of attaining a harmonious relationship with the natural world, though that possibility becomes less likely as each subsequent work appears. These three chapters are the strongest in the book and their finely nuanced interpretations of Hardy's fiction leave no doubt that astronomical themes were integral to his novel-making. The concluding chapter delves more deeply into how Hardy handled the issue...