tess_class notes

8/10/2019 Tess_class notes

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Thomas Hardy

Tess of the DUrbervilles


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Origins

A serial form titled Too Late Beloved wasrejected

A censored version was published in theGraphic in July 1891

The original title of the novel was ADaughter of the DUrbervilles (March 1890in the USA)

The final title was Tess of theD'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman FaithfullyPresented. (1891)


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Themes

Country vs town

Industrialisation

Men and women Christianity and older ways

Sexual mores

Ancestry and class Purity and goodness


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The sub-title

Inserted:

"at the last moment, after reading the final

proofs, as being the estimate left in a

candid mind of the heroine's character

an estimate nobody would be likely to

dispute. It was more disputed than

anything else in the book."Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, ed. Scott Elledge, 3rd edition. New York: WW

Norton, 1991, p. xii.


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Tess

A Wessex Eve Strongly associated with natural abundance and

fecundity

Leads a procession in honour of the harvest

which is a mixture of pagan and Christian

A pure woman

Pure woman

Passive victim? Seductress? Victim of beauty?


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Ellen Rooney on Tess

While rape entails the unambiguous violence

that would guarantee Tess's purity, seduction

defines the less pure space of complicity,

desire, and reading [.] Ultimately, the meaningof purity hinges on the relation between

seduction and rape. Hardy, cannot clarify this

relation because he cannot represent Tess as a

desiring or speaking subject.'A Little More than Persuading': Tess and the Subject of Sexual Violence," in Rape

and Representation, eds Lynn A. Higgins and Brenda Silver. New York: Columbia

University Press, 1991, p.96


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The one vol edn of Tess(1892)

Conversation between two women farmworkers:

"A little more than persuading had to do wi'the coming o't, I reckon. There were they

that heard a sobbing one night last year inthe Chase and it might ha' gone hard wi' acertain party if folks had come along.

Well, a little more, or a little less, 'twas athousand pities it should have happenedto she, of all others." (pp. 70-71)


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Hardys comment

He regretted inserting:

"a mock marriage . . . for the seduction

pure & simple of the original MS. which

I did for the sake of the Young Girl. The

true reading will be restored in the

volumes."Letter to Thomas Macquoid (29 October 1891) in The Collected Letters of ThomasHardy, eds Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate, 7 vols. Oxford: Clarendon

Press,1978-88, 1 245-46.


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Later edition

She had never wholly cared for him [Alec], shedid not care for him now. She had dreaded him,winced before him, succumbed to adroitadvantages he took of her helplessness; then,temporarily blinded by his ardent manners, hadbeen stirred to confused surrender awhile: hadsuddenly despised and disliked him, and hadrun away. That was all. Hate him she did not

quite; but he was dust and ashes to her, andeven for her name's sake she scarcely wished tomarry him. (p. 64).


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Alec DUrberville

New money?

Hypocrite?

Rapist? Preacher?

A Miltonic satanic tempter?

Does he get just deserts?


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Whose fault?

Where does it begin?

Sir John?

The horse? The vicar?

Mrs Durbeyfield?

Tess and Alec? Tess and Angel?


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Coincidence

The letter


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Fate

Is Tess:

Punished for crimes and flaws of earlier

generations? [her mailed ancestors [who] rollicking home from a fray had dealt

the same measure even more ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time (Tess, p. 57)].

Punished for her own flaws?

A victim of social convention? Pre-destined to suffer?


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