Thomas Hardy departs not only from Shakespearean tragedy but from all major tragedians before him, as well as from Aristotle's definition of tragedy in the Poetics. Aristotle says that tragedy concerns a man of noble birth who falls from greatness due to a tragic flaw. One can see this in Shakespearean tragedy. All his great tragic heroes fit into this pattern: Lear with his stubborn pride, Othello with his jealousy, Macbeth with his ambition, Hamlet (perhaps the most difficult to classify) with his indecision.

Hardy, however, generally chooses low-born characters. Tess Durbeyfield, it is true, comes of aristocratic lineage, but has not been bred and educated accordingly. Michael Henchard achieves a certain importance in his community but the leading corn merchant in Casterbridge is scarcely to be compared with princes and generals: his is a fall from respectability rather than greatness.

More importantly, though, the Aristotelian tragic flaw or ἁμαρτία is absent in Hardy's work. His characters are flawed human beings but they do not have a single tragic flaw that causes their downfall, they suffer because that is the nature of life. Hardy's vision is really pessimistic rather than tragic. This creates more sympathy for his characters, since they are the victims of malignant fate rather than the authors of their own doom.