The community

In the long run, the State, the Community, the established form of life remained, remained intact and impregnable, the individual, trying to break forth from it, died of fear, or of exhaustion, or of exposure to attack from all sides, like men who have left the walled city to live outside in the precarious open. This is the tragedy of Hardy, always the same: the tragedy of those who, more or less pioneers, have died in the wilderness, whither they have escaped for free action, after having left the walled security, and the comparative imprisonment, of the established convention. This is the theme novel after novel: remain quiet within the convention, and you are good, safe and happy in the long run, though you never have the vivid pang of sympathy on your side; or, on the other hand, be passionate, individual, willful, you will find the security of the convention a walled prison, you will escape and you will die, either of your own lack of strength to bear the isolation and the exposure, or from a direct revenge from the community, or from both.

DH Lawrence, Study of Thomas Hardy (1936)