Marriage, murder, and morality; The Secret Agent and Tess

Abstract

This article opens by citing some contemporary reviews and critical accounts (including Conrad's own) to show how (and why!) Conrad was commonly compared to Thomas Hardy by those people who then read him. Evidence that Conrad in fact had read Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and with deliberation and care adapted dramatic elements that struck him to form a crucial part of The Secret Agent, is considered. It is maintained that Conrad found much in Tess that was of use, often in the spirit of creative rejection. Key areas of both novels are closely examined, and Conrad's characteristic method of ironic tragedy is contrasted with Hardy's particular tragic emphases. Ultimately, the intention of this study is to place present assumptions about the nature of “Modernism” in a new light.