Mechanical Birds and Shapes of Ice: Hardy’s Vision of the ‘Blind Watchmaker’

Abstract

Gillian Beer has shown that the Darwinian plot radically changed the way the world was perceived, hence the way literature was written. Symbols and metaphors are used to convey complex issues such as the mutations brought by science, radical changes which were so hard to grasp. Thus, many of Thomas Hardy's images and metaphors, whether in his poems or his novels, can only be understood if one bears in mind the impact of Darwinism upon the Victorian frame of mind. This paper focuses on the way two key images (Hardy's vision of mechanical birds and ominous icebergs as cogs of destiny) may be highlighted by today's readings of the Darwinian legacy, such as Richard Dawkins' 1986 The Blind Watchmaker: both may be read as symptoms of an ontological paradigmatic shift, as Thomas Hardy grappled with the philosophical contradictions of a new era.

Keywords

• archaeopteryx
• arctic
• bird
• design
• destiny
• evolution