UNIVERZA V MARIBORU

FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA

Oddelek za anglistiko in amerikanistiko

DIPLOMSKO DELO

Leonida Turičnik

Maribor, 2010

UNIVERZA V MARIBORU

FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA

Oddelek za anglistiko in amerikanistiko

Diplomsko delo

TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES:

PRIMERJAVA ROMANA IN FILMA

TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES:

A COMPARISON OF THE NOVEL AND THE FILM

Mentor: Kandidatka:

Redni prof. dr. Victor Kennedy Leonida Turičnik

Maribor, 2010

Lektorica za slovenski jezik:

Maja Koležnik, prof. slovenščine

Zahvala

Zahvaljujem se mentorju dr. Victorju Kennedyju za strokovno pomoč in

vodenje pri pisanju diplomskega dela.

Za dolgoletno podporo, vzpodbudo in pomoč se iskreno zahvaljujem

Borisu in Ani, mami in atiju, Bronki in Viktorju ter prijateljem Barbari, Alenki

in Matjažu, ki so mi stali ob strani in niso dopustili, da bi se izgubila na poti

do velikega osebnega cilja.

Izjava o avtorstvu

Podpisana Leonida Turičnik, rojena 22.02.1971, študentka Filozofske

fakultete Univerze v Mariboru, smer Angleški jezik s književnostjo in

nemški jezik s književnostjo, izjavljam, da je diplomsko delo z naslovom

TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES: A COMPARISON OF THE NOVEL AND

THE FILM pri mentorju prof. dr. Victorju Kennedyju, avtorsko delo.

V diplomskem delu so uporabljeni viri in literatura korektno navedeni;

teksti niso prepisani brez navedbe avtorjev.

Leonida Turičnik

Maribor, 15.08.2010

Povzetek

V procesu snemanja filma po predlogi romana lahko med njima nastane

precej razlik. Nekateri deli romana, na primer vsebina in liki, so v filmu

spremenjeni, okrnjeni ali dodani. Osrednji cilj diplomskega dela je bilo

iskanje in analiziranje razlik in podobnosti med knjižno predlogo in filmom,

zlasti v zvezi z vsebino in s predstavitvijo likov, okolja, ter učinek teh

podobnosti in razlik na kakovost filmske priredbe Hardyjevega romana

Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Diplomsko delo primerja roman z nanizanko v

štirih delih, ki jo je režiral David Blair, posnela pa angleška televizijska hiša

BBC leta 2008. Ugotovljene razlike in podobnosti ne vplivajo na kakovost

filmske priredbe in relativno zvesto podajajo vsebino romana v drugačni,

filmski obliki. Glede na to, da ima nanizanka štiri dele, od katerih vsak traja

eno uro, ima filmska priredba dovolj časa, da zajame velik del vsebine iz

romana. Liki iz romana so primerno zastopani, najbolj od vsega pa

navdušuje pokrajina, ki pokaže veliko lepot angleškega podeželja.

Ključne besede: teorija filma, filmska priredba, angleški roman, Thomas

Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, primerjava filma in romana.

Abstract

During the process of making a film based on a novel, many changes

appear. Parts of the novel, like characters and subplots, are sometimes

changed, subtracted or added. The main goal of this diploma paper was to

find and analyze the differences and similarities which occur in the film,

especially regarding plot, representation of characters, environment and

their effect on the quality of the film adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel

Tess of the D'Urbervilles. In the diploma paper the novel is compared with

a four parts mini series, directed by David Blair, produced by BBC in 2008.

The established differences and similarities do not affect the quality of the

adaptation and the film relatively faithfully transfers the story in a different

form – the film. Regarding the fact, that the film has four parts, each

lasting an hour, the film adaptation has enough time to capture a large part

of the story. The characters of the novel are appropriately represented and

the most impressing element of the film is the landscape, showing the

beautiful English countryside.

Key words: film theory, film adaptation, English novel, Thomas Hardy,

Tess of the D'Urbervilles, comparison of film and novel.

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Contemporary film theory and film adaptation of novels 2

3. Comparison of plot, characters, scenery

3.1. Plot 12

3.2. Characters 13

3.3. Scenery 15

4. The Maiden 16

5. Maiden no More 22

6. The Rally 24

7. The Consequence 27

8. The Woman Pays 31

9. The Convert 34

10. Fulfillment 40

11. Conclusion 43

12. Works cited and consulted 44

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1. Introduction

During the process of making a film based on a novel, many changes

appear. Parts of the original novel, subplots, and characters are

sometimes subtracted, and some scenes are added in the film adaptation.

The focus of this diploma paper will be to identify and analyze the

differences and similarities that occur, especially regarding plot,

representation of characters, scenery and their effect on the quality of the

film adaptation of Hardy's novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of The D'Urbervilles is a very powerful novel

that has attracted several directors to make film adaptations in the past.

There have been two important adaptations, one directed by Roman

Polanski in 1979, starring Nastassja Kinski, and the other by Ian Sharp, in

1998, starring Justin Weddel. Tess of The D'Urbervilles has also been put

on stage in theatres and operas.

Film adaptations transfer stories from paper to the screen and make them

available to a broader audience. They usually try to be as faithful to the

original as they can, but there are still sometimes subtractions from the

story, changed characters, and added scenes.

This diploma paper will compare the novel and the four-part television

adaptation directed by David Blair, written by David Nicholls, which was

first broadcast in September 2008 on the BBC. The adaptation of the

novel is quite accurate regarding major elements like plot, theme,

characters, and scenery, but there are some changes and differences

which this paper will focus on. No matter how faithful an adaptation is, it

can never touch the audience as deeply as the novel can. If the novel is

read first, then watched on screen, the film does help the reader imagine

the story, by putting the words into images, seeing the characters, the

landscape, houses the characters live in, and the atmosphere, but much of

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what is written stays unsaid and unshown. To what extent this happens in

the BBC adaptation will be revealed in this paper.

2. Contemporary film theory and film adaptation of novels

Film theory researches the essence of film and provides conceptual

frameworks for understanding how the film relates to reality, other art

forms, individuals and society. The history of film theory goes back to the

early 20th century, in the era of silent movies, when classic film theory was

developed. Classic film theory is concerned with technique, the narrative

concept of film art, film codes, picture/image and genre. In the early

nineteen fifties, Andre Bazin was co-establisher an important film

magazine Cahiers du cinéma, in which young French authors published

their articles on film theory and proclaimed popular Hollywood films as art

works. In the sixties, film theory became well established among

academics and took some elements from psychoanalysis, literary theory

and linguistics. In 1990s the digital revolution in media had an impact on

modern film theory. Several different theories were developed, including

Marxist film theory, Apparatus theory, Auteur theory, Feminist film theory,

Formalist film theory, Psychoanalytical film theory, Screen theory and

Structuralist film theory. One genre of film theory is film adaptation.

Film adaptation can be defined as a process and as a product. As a

product it can be given a formal definition, but as a process it is a matter of

of creation and reception. For Dudley Andrew the distinctive feature of

adaptation is “the matching of the cinematic sign system to a prior

achievement in some other system” and that “...adaptation is the

appropriation of a meaning from a prior text” (McFarlane 1996: 21).

Matching and appropriation are used for the replacing of one illusion of

reality by another. Adaptations are also compared to translations, where

the source text is given an axiomatic primacy and authority and the

rhetoric of comparison has often been that of faithfulness and equivalence.

Since adaptations are made in a different medium, they are re-mediations

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or specific translations in the form of intersemiotic transpositions of one

sign system, like words, to another sign system, like images. This is

translation in a very specific sense: as “transmutation or transcoding, that

is, as necessarily a recording into a new set of conventions as well as

signs” (Hutcheon 2006: 16). Adaptation as process involves appropriation,

taking possession of some else‟s story and filtering it, in a way, through

someone else‟s sensibility, talents and interests. In this way the adapters

are interpreters and then creators. Adapting a long novel usually means

that the adapter has to subtract or contract the story, but sometimes a

short story can also inspire film-makers to make a film, where the adapter

has to expand the source material.

At the end of the nineteenth century writers managed with their special

techniques that the film became more popular than the representational

novel, which was popular in the early nineteenth century. One of those

writers was Joseph Conrad, whose technique was to make the readers

see what they read: “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by powers of

the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel - it is, before all, to

make you see” (McFarlane 1996: 3).

The other writer was Henry James, who had a special technique called

“restricted consciousness” and who attempted “a balanced distribution of

emphasis in the rendering of what is looked at, who is looking, and what

the looker makes of what she sees” (McFarlane 1996: 4). McFarlane

believes they provide clear example by “playing down obvious authorial

mediation in favour of limiting point of view from which actions and objects

are observed” (McFarlane 1996: 6).

The cinema began to see itself as a narrative entertainment searching in

the novel for source material and the process is still continuing. Film-

makers use novels for two reasons, one being commercialism and the

other high-minded respect for literary works. Of course it is tempting to

make a film based on a story which was already popular and successful in

one medium; as well it is easier and cheaper to buy the rights of an

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expensive book than to develop an original subject. British television has

specialized in making adaptations of well-known and culturally accredited

18th and 19th- century novels (Hutcheon 2006: 5).

Some film-makers think that the adaptor should see himself as owing

allegiance to the source work, like DeWitt Bodeen, co-author of the

screenplay for Peter Ustinov‟s Billy Budd (1962), who claims that:

“Adapting literary works to film is, without a doubt, a creative undertaking,

but the task requires a kind of selective interpretation, along with the ability

to recreate and sustain an established mood”, (McFarlane 1996: 7).

Film adaptations are made for an audience to see what the books they

have read “look like”, so they can compare their own mental images of

people, scenery, events in the novel with those created by the film-

makers. We can find adaptations everywhere nowadays, on television,

movie screen, on dramatic and musical stage, on the Internet. There have

been adaptations of works written in the distant past, like those by

Shakespeare, who transferred his stories from paper to stage and made

them available to a different and larger audience (compared to books,

which were not widely available in his time).

Despite the fact that adaptations are considered to be subsidiary to the

original works and that literature is superior to adaptations, many award-

winning films are adaptations of novels. According to a statistic from 1992,

85% of all Oscar-winning Best Pictures are adaptations; they make up

95% of all miniseries (Hutcheon 2006: 4). Film-makers have sought to

exploit the kinds of response excited in the audience by the novel and

have seen in the novel a source of ready-made material, which is not

surprising since the novel and the film are the most popular narrative

modes of the 19th and 20th centuries. Robert Stams believes (Hutcheon

2006: 4) that the negative view of adaptation could derive from the high

expectations of the reader, who desires fidelity to a certain text or on the

part of someone teaching literature and thus needs proximity to the text

and maybe some entertainment value to do so.

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We always connect adaptations with the source work, with the text which

we have read and which shadows the work we are experiencing at that

given moment, such as a film or play, always comparing the two, looking

for fidelity to the source work and judging its faithfulness. According to

McFarlane:

Fidelity criticism depends on a notion of the text as having and

rendering up to the (intelligent) reader a single, correct

„meaning‟ which the film-maker has either adhered to or in

some sense violated or tampered with. There will often be a

distinction between being faithful to the ‟letter‟, an approach

which the more sophisticated writer may suggest is no way to

ensure a „successful‟ adaptation, and to the „spirit‟ or „essence‟

of the work” (McFarlane 1996: 9).

McFarlane believes that it is not easy to determine the „essence”, since

the novel is read by a great number of people who then watch the film and

every reader reads the novel differently. What the film-maker can hope for

is that the way he reads the novel is the same as the way the public

(readers and viewers) is reading it. But because that can hardly happen

the fidelity approach is probably not very successful and fidelity criticism is,

as McFarlane puts it “unilluminating” (McFarlane 1996: 9). Instead of

fidelity there are, according to Hutcheon (2006: 7, 8), other ways of

theorizing of adaptation. Adaptation can be defined from three interrelated

perspectives, where the word adaptation refers to the process and the

product.

First, an adaptation is an acknowledged transposition of a recognizable

other work and is seen as a “formal entity or product”. This involves shift of

medium (a novel to film), of genre (an epic to novel), change of context

(telling the story from a different point of view).

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Second, the process of making a film adaption where (re-)interpretation

and (re-) creation are also a part of it, is also called the “process of

creation”.

Third, as the “process of reception‟” the adaption is: “a form of

intertextuality: we experience adaptations (as adaptations) as palimpsests

through our memory of other works that resonate through repetition with

variation” (Hutcheon 2006: 8).

Hutcheon‟s definition of adaptation as a process and a product allows us

to treat not just films and productions on the stage, but also works in other

media, like poems put to music, remakes of the films, musical

arrangements and song covers, comic book versions of history.

What exactly gets adapted is another area of theory of adaptation. In

terms of law, ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted, only their

expression; the form changes but the content persists. Most theories

assume that the story is the common element, the basis of what is

transposed across different media and genres, where the stories are dealt

with in formally different ways and through different modes of engagement

– narrating, performing or interacting. In the process of adapting, the story-

argument continues, the various elements of the stories get equivalences

in a different sign system, like its themes, contexts, symbols, events,

world, points of view, characters, motivations (Hutcheon 2006: 10). The

easiest story elements to be adapted across media and genres may be

the themes, like classic stories or fairy tales with their themes of magic

tasks, quests, innocence versus evil, love, pain, and nature. Characters

can also be transformed from one text to the other. A character is in a

central position mostly in the novel and theatre, where psychological

development is part of the narrative and dramatic arc. Another element

that can also be transmediated is the story, but is often changed, mostly

the plot ordering: by changing the pace, compressing or expanding of

time. Major differences can be made by the shifts of focalization or point of

view of the adapted story. The adaptation of a novel to film involves

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different modes of engagements on the part of the adapter and the

audience. Hutcheon believes (2006: 12), that it is not the same if a story is

being shown or it is being told, neither is the experiencing a story directly

or kinesthetically. Each particular mode is used to adapt different things in

different ways. For Hutcheon, to tell a story, as in short stories or novels, is

to explain, describe, expand, summarize; the narrator has a point of view

and power to leap through space and time or maybe even venture inside

of characters‟ minds. On the other hand, showing a story, like in movies,

stage plays, operas, involves a visual performance, experienced in real

time.

A novel, like a film, tells us stories in different ways. What is important for

both and what they share is the narrative. While a novel uses language

and words the film makes a large continuous unit that tells the story to a

large audience. The narrative is at certain levels not only the chief factor

novels and films based on them have in common but is the chief

transferable element. If a narrative is described as a series of events,

which are causally linked, involving a continuing set of characters which

are influenced by the course of events, such a description might apply also

to a narrative displayed in a literary text and to one in a filmic text.

McFarlane (1996: 15-17) distinguishes between several different kinds of

approaches regarding narrative point of view such as:

First-person, where there is only an unreliable comparison between the

attempts at first-person narration offered by novel‟s first-person narration

and by films, including the individual discourses of each character

surrounded by a discourse which ascribed to a known and named narrator

who is or is not an active participant in the events of the novel.

Omniscient novel, where the narrative is moved through two kinds of

discourses: those attributed to different characters in direct speech and

that of the narrative prose, which guides our reading of the direct speech

of the characters.

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A mixture of the two mentioned above: mode of “restricted

consciousness”.

There is a difference between telling us stories, which is that a novel tells

us the story and the film presents or shows us a story. Telling a story orally

or on paper is never the same as showing it visually and aurally. When a

story is told the audience uses a lot of imagination which is not limited with

what people see or hear. When we read a novel, we can stop at any time,

we can choose to read one part again or we can skip a part of the novel.

Things change when we watch a film: we get caught in a story that is

being shown uninterruptedly on the screen, we stop using our imagination

and we start to percept the film through visual and gestural

representations, e.g. character‟s emotions are often represented by music

or other sounds (Hutcheon 2006: 23).

What a film can hardly give the audience is the description of thoughts and

feelings of a person unless they talk about them. What can help to

understand, to read the film is to know the following “extra-cinematic

codes” (McFarlane 1996: 29): language codes (certain tones of voice or

particular accents have different meanings); visual codes (response to

visual codes goes beyond just seeing and include the selective and the

interpretative); non-linguistic codes (comprising both musical and other

aural codes) and cultural codes (including the information on how people

live or lived, at certain times and places). By watching a film we share with

the film‟s maker a basic assumption that we know the codes.

Film adaptations cannot be seen as inferior or superior to novels, they just

show the same story in a different way, keeping a story alive, telling it over

and over again, changing with each repetition and yet staying recognizably

the same.

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Adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novels

Ever since there has been cinema, there have been film adaptations of

Thomas Hardy‟s novels and stories. His works have attracted some of

the world‟s most admired film makers, and the characters in his novels

have been portrayed by many of the best screen performers of the

twentieth century. The films based on Hardy‟s works give us a glimpse

into the many of ways Hardy has been interpreted and understood, and

the best of them were successful by giving us rewarding and enjoyable

cinematic experiences.

Not many Victorian novelists had the opportunity to see their works

shown in the cinema, but Thomas Hardy was one of them; he could

negotiate screen rights with film producers and see his novels put before

the camera. Even though he was fond of the new commercial

possibilities of the new medium, Hardy often expressed mistrust over it,

but nevertheless he took the potential of film to expand his readership

into new areas. The only worry for him in selling film rights for his novels

was that he didn‟t want to harm the book by misinterpreting the general

characteristics of the novels.

The first known film adaptation of a Hardy novel is Tess of the

D’Urbervilles, produced in America by Adolph Zukor‟s Famous Players

Company (today‟s Paramount Pictures) in 1913, starring the popular

stage actress Minnie Maddern Fiske. Most movies at the time that were

based on works of literature were actually filmed tableaux, preceded by

title cards which explained what the following scene represents. Hardy

apparently saw this film and was disappointed by it; maybe this led to his

fear of his novels being distorted by motion pictures.

The first film version of Far from the Madding Crowd appeared in 1915; it

was produced by the Turner Film Company and starred Florence Turner

as Bathsheba, and it was the first adaptation of a Hardy work to be

filmed in and around Dorset, in authentic “Wessex” locales. The next

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movie based on a Hardy novel was Progress Film Company‟s 1921

version of The Mayor of Casterbridge, which was also shot in “Wessex”.

The last silent film based on a Hardy novel was the Metro-Goldwyn

Company‟s Tess of the D’Urbervilles in 1924. It was shot in Dorset

locations but the action of the drama was moved from the late Victorian

era to the Jazz Age. This Tess was also released with two different

endings: one in which Tess is hanged, another in which she is reprieved.

Theatre owners were allowed to decide which ending they would show.

The first all-talking film made in Britain, released in 1929, was Hardy‟s

popular first work, Under the Greenwood Tree. It was the last adaptation

of one of Hardy‟s novels for the next twenty-five years.

During the 1930s, ‟40s, and ‟50s, producers expressed interest in

bringing a Hardy novel to the screen, but only one film was made, based

on Hardy‟s short story Our Exploits at West Poley. It was the film The

Secret Cave, a British production, made in 1953.

The first major adaptation of a Hardy novel after almost forty years from

the last adaptation was Far from the Madding Crowd in 1967. The film

was warmly received in its native Britain, but was perceived as

something of a disaster in America. This film‟s failure in the U.S.

discouraged producers from embarking on other large-scale films based

on Hardy‟s work.

Producers soon discovered that British television was an amenable

home for Hardy‟s works. In December 1969, BBC-2 broadcasted a 50-

minute adaptation of Hardy‟s story The Distracted Preacher. In 1970

there followed a four-part serial version of The Woodlanders and in 1971

the six-part Jude the Obscure. Under the umbrella title Wessex Tales,

the BBC brought to the screen six adaptations of Hardy‟s short stories in

1973.

In 1978 BBC-2 broadcasted a seven-part serial version of The Mayor of

Casterbridge. The production was entirely written by Dennis Potter and

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starred Alan Bates, who previously played Gabriel Oak in Schlesinger‟s

Far from the Madding Crowd. 1978 was also the year when controversial

director Roman Polanski began to work on his film of Tess. The film was

released throughout the world in 1979 and 1980 and has been hailed as

a masterpiece.

A new adaptation of Our Exploits at West Poley (featuring a young Sean

Bean as “Scarface”) was filmed in 1985, but British television aired it

much later, in 1990; in 1987 BBC telecasted The Day After the Fair,

based on Frank Harvey‟s stage adaptation of “On the Western Circuit.”

In the U.S., the Hallmark Hall of Fame series broadcasted in 1994 a 100-

minute version of The Return of the Native. Two performers unknown at

that time, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Clive Owen, played the roles of the

main characters Eustacia Vye and Damon Wildeve.

From 1996 to 2000, film and television screens were full of Hardy

adaptations, some casting famous actors. In 1996, Michael

Winterbottom released Jude, a realistic adaptation of Jude the Obscure,

casting Christopher Eccleston as Jude and Kate Winslet as Sue. One

year later, an adaptation of The Woodlanders, starring Rufus Sewell and

Emily Woof, premiered in British theatres.

Three different Hardy adaptations were released in 1998. London

Weekend Television broadcasted together with America‟s Arts and

Entertainment networks a new serial version of Tess of the D’Urbervilles;

Granada Television released a miniseries based on Far from the

Madding Crowd. In some British theatres, The Scarlet Tunic was shown

for a short period of time.

One of the most unorthodox adaptations of Hardy‟s work is Michael

Winterbottom‟s The Claim (2000), a film which translates the story of

The Mayor of Casterbridge to a wintry California boom town in the

1860s. Another adaptation of The Major of Casterbridge was made by

Britain‟s ITV network and America‟s A & E in form of a TV miniseries in

2003. One of the latest adaptations is the BBC/WGBH coproduction of

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Under the Greenwood Tree aired on December 26, 2005, in Britain and

in April 2006 in America.

The latest adaptation of Hardy‟s work (also the subject of this diploma) is

the four-part television adaptation of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, directed

by David Blair and written by David Nicholls, which was first broadcast in

September 2008 on the BBC (Niemeyer 2008).

3. Comparison of plot, characters, scenery

3.1. Plot

The story of Tess, a pure woman, is a tragic story of seduction, love,

betrayal and at the end, murder. At the centre is a young girl who tries to

find her place in society and fails. The BBC film adaption is quite faithful to

the plot, maybe also because of its length. It is the longest adaptation of

Tess ever made and compared to other adaptations has an extra hour to

tell Tess‟s story. Except for some minor parts, the plot is the same as in

the novel. Some events happen on a different occasion or are presented

in another way; in the novel Angel writes a letter to his parents about the

events in Brazil while in the film he tells Tess what happened there when

they are reunited and spend some nights in the empty house.

There are also some scenes in the novel which are left out or changed in

the novel (some are more important and some less); in the night, when

their horse Prince dies in the accident, in the novel she drives with her

younger brother Abraham; in the film she is alone. A part missing in the

film is when Alec gives Tess rose blossoms to put in her bosom, he puts

some blossoms into her hat, others in the basket. This part is quite

important and should be in the film, because on her way home a thorn of a

rose pricks her chin and Tess thinks of that as an ill omen. One important

part which is altered in the film is the point when Tess is raped by Alec. In

the novel it is a little vague what really happens but in the film there is no

doubt that Alec rapes her. Actually, in the film it is clear from the start that

Tess doesn‟t really like Alec and the audience takes Tess‟s side right

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away. Another missing part is the man who writes words from the Bible on

boards; she meets him on her way back home from the Slopes and the

words he writes strike her because it seems as if he knows all about her

sins and wrong actions. The part when Angel walks in his sleep (after their

wedding) is left out too. Considering the length of the film, this part should

be included, since in the whole tragedy this is a part where Tess feels

loved by Angel again, even just for a short time, regardless of the fact that

Angel is sleep walking and that it has a different meaning for him. Another

missing part is the episode of Tess “mercy-killing” the pheasants that were

wounded by hunters, which is a sensitive portrayal of her own

predicament.

The film also shows some scenes which are not in the novel; the most

important is the scene at the end, just moments before Tess is executed

by hanging: Tess imagines that on that beautiful May Day, when she saw

Angel for the first time, he danced with her and not some other girl. They

dance and the course of all the events that actually happened changed.

There are some other, smaller changes which do not affect the story.

3.2. Characters

Tess is played by Gemma Arterton, a young actress best known for her

part in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace. In the first half of the film

her youth, her innocent looks and behaviour suit the character she is

representing, but in the second half her character should develop and

become more mature, and the course of events should change her. At the

end Gemma Arterton still shows innocence instead of signs of hard blows

in her past as punishment for her naiveté. Despite that, the audience can

find sympathy for Tess in all of the crucial moments of the film, especially

in scenes when she is confronted by Alec and Angel, where she is full of

energy and she shows her anger as well as disappointment in people in

her life. The screen writer David Nichols made Tess more palatable to

modern audiences by making her character not so extraordinarily meek

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and servile; Gemma Arterton is simply a more modern Tess, spirited,

impetuous and less obviously a victim.

Angel Clare is played by Eddie Redmayne, who plays him with overflowing

sincerity and virtue. He replaces the self-righteousness and pomposity of

the character in the novel with a more innocent character. Eddie

Redmayne delivers a convincing performance as a young man who was

brought up in a strict Victorian clergyman‟s family and who shows rejection

of social norms and family expectations for love of a milk maid. What is

missing is a little of the energy, passion and attraction between Tess and

Angel at the beginning. Their attraction becomes more visible in the scene

where Angel carries Tess and other milkmaids across a flooded lane. The

character develops through the film and gets deeper and better, especially

after he comes back from Brazil and in the last, heartbreaking scene,

when Tess is hanged, Eddy Redmayne gives a wonderful performance.

The darkest character in this film is Alec D‟Urberville, played by Hans

Matheson. He is much more attractive than Alec in the novel, but still a

malevolent, obvious villain, who takes advantage of an innocent girl and

causes her downfall. He manages to keep Alec‟s motives relatively

ambiguous and gives the audience a glimpse of the heart that beats inside

the cad. Hans Matheson is also good at showing Alec‟s double nature: in

one scene he shows his love and passion for Tess and moments later he

is angry at her, threatens her and shows his evil nature.

Other characters are well cast and portrayed. In the film, one character

who gets more attention than in the novel is Groby, who is present in a

large part of the film, and who knows everything about Tess‟s past. In a

way he follows and reminds her of her sins in the past, making her believe

she cannot escape her past and thus can never be really happy. John

Durbeyfield is played by Ian Puleston – Davies; Joan Durbeyfield is played

by Ruth Jones; Liza –Lu Durbeyfield is played by Jo woodcock; Mrs.

D‟Urberville is played by Anna Massey; Groby is played by Christopher

Fairbank and is given more importance in the film as in the novel;

15

Dairymaids Marion, Izz Huet and Retty Priddle are played by Rebekah

Staton, Jodie Whittaker and Emely Beecham; reverend Clare and Mrs.

Clare are played by Kenneth Cranham and Jessica Turner; Mercy Chant

is played by Jeany Spark.

3.3. Scenery

Tess of The D'Urbervilles takes place in the late 19th century in an area

where almost all Hardy's novels take place, the fictional region of Wessex,

southwest of London. It all starts in Marlott in the Vale of Blakemore or

Blackmoor (Hardy allows both pronunciations), Blakemore being the older

version of Blackmoor. There might be a connection to the family names

Durbeyfield and D‟Urberville, which are very similar, and by giving us two

names of the valley, Hardy is reminding us that the valley, just like the

individual families, has its own history and its own origins.

Tess spends some months at The Slopes, the D‟Urberville residence,

which is all new and modern, in contrast to The Chase, the ancient,

primeval forest, which stretches all across Wessex and where Tess is

raped by Alec. The contrast of old and new, past and present, nature and

civilization often appear in Hardy‟s novels, overlapping and coexisting.

Another part of the novel takes place at Flitcomb-Ash farm, a horrible, grey

and melancholic place, where Tess lives in the worst conditions possible.

The happiest place for Tess is the Talbothays Dairy in the beautiful, green

area The Vale of Dairies.

It seems that the people and the surroundings are connected and the

scenery changes like the people and their relations change in the story:

Tess meets Alec in a wonderful house at The Slopes and is raped by him

in the dark forest of The Chase; the love between Tess and Angel grows

over a green, vital summer at Talbothays Dairy and reaches bottom at

Flitcomb-Ash, where Tess digs for turnips in the “desolate drap” fields.

16

The film is shot on 35mm film, where the quality of the picture is much

higher than shot on traditional Super 16mm, on which most television

series are shot. The larger part of the film is made outside in the counties

of Wiltshire, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Dorset, all in the West

Country. The scenery is, compared to the novel, too light, not so dramatic,

even though it does show the dark, misty woods of the Chase, and the

waste land of Flitcomb-Ash farm. This all makes the film less of a “heavy

weight” drama, but it is still tragic and heart-breaking.

As the film is a costume drama, the costumes play an important role: they

are well made, look authentic and the male actors even grew their own

beards. Another important part in the film is the music, which played a

dramatic role in setting the tone and mood of the film.

4. The Maiden

The novel and the film begin one evening in May when John Durbeyfield,

heading back home, meets parson Tringham. The parson reveals to John

his pedigree, and tells him he is a descendant of a noble family, the

D‟Urbervilles, who are unfortunately extinct and lie in vaults at Kingsbere-

sub-Greenhill. After the parson leaves, the film switches to a club-walking

scene, a modern form of an ancient tradition, in which participants worship

the earth and the goddess of fertility, while in the novel John Durbeyfield

tells a local boy Fred what just happened to him and asks him to go ahead

to Marlot and send him a horse and carriage to carry him home.

Chapter II describes the countryside, the beautiful Vale of Blakemore in

North Dorset, as being a “fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the

fields are never brown and the springs never dry...“(Hardy 1994: page 9).

It is also presented in this way in the film, showing local girls dancing on

the hill, embracing this beautiful landscape. All the girls, including Tess,

are dressed in white dresses, carrying white flowers,. In the novel she has

a red ribbon in her hair “and was the only one of the white company who

17

could boast of such a pronounced adornment“(12). In film, she doesn't

wear a red ribbon, this piece of symbolism is missing. Red color is often

used in the novel as a symbol of passion, sin, sexuality, blood, as opposite

to white, symbolizing purity, chastity and at this point already shows that

Tess is not like all other girls, she is somehow special. John Durbeyfield

passes by in a carriage, singing, in the film shouting, his wonderful news

and embarrassing Tess. A group of three young men is approaching; one

of them joins the girls and dances with them, but not with Tess. It is Angel

Clair, who after leaving the girls, feels that he didn't choose the right girl.

Looking back he sees white figures dancing, except one „the pretty

maiden with whom he had not danced. [ ] he yet instinctively felt she was

hurt by his oversight. He wished he had asked her; he wished that he had

inquired her name. [ ] he felt he had acted stupidly “(16). The feeling of

regret can also be seen on the film and it makes you wonder, how the

story would end, if he danced with Tess.

In the evening Tess returns home and finds her mother beside the tub,

washing clothes on one foot and with the other foot rocking her youngest

child in the cradle. Tess offers to help her mother, who was left to do all

the work by herself on that day, since Tess was out. Normally mother

would be angry at her but not this time, since she has news for Tess. First

she tells her the good news about their noble predecessors and then the

bad news about her father's sick heart. Tess is shocked and when she

hears that he might live only ten days, months or ten years. She wants to

fetch him from Rolliver's Inn, where he went to get up some strength, but

her mother uses this opportunity to leave the house after all day work at

home and goes alone. After a while Tess sends her younger brother

Abraham after them and soon decides to go to Rolliver's herself. The film

doesn't show the cradle, which was being used for many years. Tess's

mother tells Tess at once the great news, that “they have been ignobled”

and that „Durbeyfields are the greatest gentlefolk in the country“. As proof

they have the spoon with the family crest on it. Even greater news is that

they have rich relations, out by Trantridge, and all she has to do is to go

18

and claim kin. Tess is not very fond of this idea, saying that this is

begging. Mother rushes off to bring father home.

In chapter IV Rolliver's Inn is described and Tess's mother explains her

plan about sending Tess to their relatives to John Durbeyfield. This part is

left out in the film, where we only see how Tess' mother and father on the

street, on their way back home, her mother saying that their relatives will

certainly notice Tess if she pays her trump card – her pretty face,

suggesting that she might marry a noble, rich man. After coming home it

was obvious that John cannot drive the beehives early in the morning to

retailers in Casterbridge. Tess decides to go and take her little brother

Abraham with her, to keep her company. In the film Tess goes alone on

this trip. After her brother fell asleep, so does she and wakes up seconds

before the accident with mail-cart. Sadly their horse Prince was deadly

injured, the „pointed shaft of the cart had entered the breast of the

unhappy Prince like a sword, and from the wound his life's blood was

spouting in a stream “(35). Again there is the contrast of white horse and

red blood, which is not so obvious in the film. Prince died, whereas in the

film the man driving the other cart shots Prince, because nothing else can

be done. Later that day Prince's body is brought home, due to John's wish

to bury the horse in the garden and not to sell it for cat's meat. The novel

describes the funeral, the whole family is gathered around the grave and

the film only shows how John is digging a hole in the garden. While he is

doing that Tess is inside the house talking to her mother, who looks out

through the window, wonders how they will live in the future, farther will

probably get work as day laborer, if his heart holds out – saying that she

looks at Tess, playing on her bad consciousness, waiting for a reaction.

Tess feels really bad and says she will go and claim kin. Mother's face

shows a feeling of victory, that was just what she wanted from Tess to do.

In the novel a part of this conversation is in chapter V, where Tess decides

to go to see D'Urbervilles and asks for work. She travels with a carriage to

the district known as The Chase, on a boarder of which was the residence

of the D'Urbervilles, the so called The Slopes. The Chase is a remain of

the ancient, primeval forest that used to stretch all across Wessex. The

19

Slopes is just the opposite, a new mansion, glass-houses, everything

„looked like money – like the last coin issued from the Mint“(43). Hardy

often brings up the idea of old and new, present and past, nature and

civilization coexisting. There is a difference: in the novel the house is red,

„like a geranium bloom“(42), which formed a big contrast with the

evergreens of the lodge, while in the film the house is white. At this point in

the novel the story of the Stokes - D'Urbervilles is explained. In the film

this theme is subject of conversation between Alec D'Urberville and his

mother later on. Tess meets Alec D'Urberville, in the novel described as a

tall young man, smoking, with full, red lips, a well-groomed black

moustache with curled points, 23 or 24 years old. Alec in the film has no

moustache but otherwise suits the description. The scene where Alec

feeds a strawberry to Tess, watching her eat, is much stronger, has more

passion in the film than in the novel. A part missing in the film is when Alec

gives Tess rose blossoms to put them in her bosom, he puts some

blossoms into her hat, others in the basket. This part is quite important

and should be in the film, because on her way home a thorn of a rose

pricks her chin and Tess thinks of that as an ill omen – “like all the

cottagers in Blackmoore Vale, Tess was steeped in fancies and

prefigurative superstitions” (50).

Tess comes home the next day, in the afternoon and a letter from the

D'Urbervilles is already waiting for her, inviting her to work on the poultry

farm. The letter is written in the third person, while in the film the letter is

written in the first person, by Mrs. D'Urberville. A week later Alec

D'Urberville comes by, acquiring whether Tess has made a decision yet.

Tess was pleased he was interested in her but she would rather not go

and neither did John Durbeyfield. Seeing this as a change to earn money,

Tess decides to go. In the film Tess receives the letter during her English

lessons with Mrs. Evans. Some days after, Tess gets ready to go to The

Slopes. Her mother washes her hair, a broader pink ribbon than usually (in

the film the ribbon is blue), puts her on the white frock which she had worn

at the club-walking, does everything to make her beautiful, so Alec will

“never have the heart not to love her” (57). John says he is ready to sell

20

Alec the title for a thousand pound, in the film the amount is fife hundred

pounds. Alec picks Tess up with a cart, waiting for her on the hill. Now

Joan Durbeyfield wonders, whether Alec is a good-hearted man who will

marry Tess. If he will not marry her “afore, he will after” (61), if only Tess

plays her trump card right, meaning her pretty face – in the film this

conversation takes place on the night they found out about their noble

predecessors and Joan brings John home from the Rolliver's.

In chapter VIII Alec drives Tess to The Slopes with a cart. He is driving

very fast, saying that he always drives down the hill at full gallop and

nothing is better for raising the spirits. Besides his horse Tib, which

already killed a man, has a queer temper too. Tess is forced to hold on

him, around his waist, begging him to slow down. Before they go down the

hill again he wants to kiss her, but she refuses at first. She gives in, but

dodges aside. Now he gets angry, saying he will break both their necks

driving fast. Out of fear she lets him kiss her on the cheek, but wipes it out

with her handkerchief. Alec wants a proper kiss, without the handkerchief,

she agrees but her hat blows off her head on the road. She picks it up and

refuses to sit in the cart again. So she walks five or six miles on foot to The

Slopes, Alec on her side on the cart. In the film Alec doesn't mention his

horse; he just says there is nothing better to raise the spirits than driving

down hill at full gallop. Tess refuses to hold on his waist, but allows him to

kiss her on her mouth. She wipes the kiss with a handkerchief and before

he kisses her again, she unbinds the hat. As in the novel she walks the

rest of the way.

The next morning a maid brings Tess to Mrs. D'Urberville, each carrying a

hen under her arm. In the film it was the farm bailiff named Groby who

takes her to the mansion. She meets two other maids, Car and Nancy

Darch, The Queen of Spades and the Queen of Diamonds, as Groby

names them and also suggests Tess “to stay on their right side”. Blind

Mrs. D'Urberville wants Tess to whistle to her birds every day, so she has

to learn how to whistle. Alec helps her with that and slowly Tess gets used

to his presence, loses her original shyness of him. In the novel Tess

21

believes that one day he was standing behind the curtains, listening to her

and from that day on, she always checks the curtains, but never finds

anybody. In the film this part is left out.

Every Saturday night, after the work is done, all the workers on The

Slopes go to Chaseborough, a market-town, some miles away, to have

fun, to drink beer and dance. Tess didn't want go at first, but after some

time she changed her mind. She goes to the market alone but at night she

always searches for her fellows to feel safer on her way home. One

Saturday in September Tess goes to the market again, searches for her

friends, who went to a private little jig as they call it, at the house of a hay-

trusser and peat-dealer and meets Alec, standing at the street corner. She

tells him that she is waiting for some company homeward and proceeds to

the hay-trusser's where people are dancing to music of fiddles. It gets late

and Tess really wants to go home, but people just won't stop dancing.

Alec, who reappears, offers her to get a trap and drives her home but she

still doesn't trust him and refuses. Finally the dance is over and they go

home. On the way a fight arises between Tess and Car, who was Alec's

favorite before Tess, because Tess is laughing at her. They are laughing

because syrup is pouring down Car's back from the basket on her head.

Alec comes on his horse and interrupts the fight, taking Tess with him.

Soon all are laughing again, Car's mother saying “Out of the frying-pan

into the fire!” (84), predicting an evil event. In the film everything is the

same, except that Alec buys Tess a dress before she goes to the market.

In Chapter XI they ride through the dark forest, Tess falls asleep, leaning

her head on Alec. She awakes when Alec puts his arm around her waist to

support her, pushes him away so he almost falls of the horse and gets

angry, saying she could really trust him more. He declares his love to her,

hoping he could treat her like a lover. She is not sure what to say and feels

bad because of the push earlier, lets him put his arm around her. After she

finds out that they are lost, Tess is angry and wants to walk home. They

get of the horse; Alec decides to search for a road or a house on foot and

comes back for. He tells her that he has bought her father a new horse

22

and toys for the children and asks her if she loves him at least now a little.

Tess is grateful but she doesn't love him. In the film Alec kisses her hand,

disappointed that she has no feelings for him and lives, but he doesn't

declares his love for her as in the novel. Tess falls asleep on leaves. What

happens next is very vague in the novel: Alec comes back; the fog is so

thick he can't see Tess, but feels her on the ground. He kneels down,

feeling her breath on his face, his cheeks touch hers. The novel doesn't

say exactly what happens next, but the film is much more conclusive:

there is no doubt that Alec rapes Tess. The scene happens in very dense

fog, at first it is hard to see what is going on, but the expression on Tess'

face and her screaming leave no room for doubt. In the morning Alec sits

next to Tess, turned with his back to her, smoking a cigar. Tess is lying

motionless on the ground, crying, and when he asks her to come with him;

she just turns her face away. Tess walks home, meets Car and Nancy who

make fun of her, because she has mud on her dress, not knowing what

happened. Mrs. D'Urberville was already calling for her, so Tess goes to

work, to whistle to Lady's birds. But after that horrible night she can't

whistle, she breaks in tears in front of Mrs. D'Urberville and runs away.

Mrs. D'Urbervilles wonders what has happened with Tess, showing

sympathy and concern.

5. Maiden no more

On Sunday morning, in late October, one month after the event in The

Chase, Tess packs her belongings and returns home. Alec catches her on

his dog-cart, wondering why she left so suddenly, when everybody is still

asleep, saying he could drive her home. Tess agrees to drive with him a

part of the way. In the film Alec comes after her on his horse and not on a

dog-cart. The dialogue is very similar in the novel and the film, containing

all important elements: Alec asks her to go back with him to The Slopes,

admitting that he did wrong, but he was born bad, lived bad and will

probably die bad (98). He offers help if she got pregnant. Tess says she

will not come back, she doesn't want anything from Alec, since she doesn't

23

want to be his creature. Alec kisses her good-bye, on her cheeks; she

stands there like a marble. In the film Alec asks her to part as friends, to

give him a last kiss. She lets him kiss her on her cheeks, saying that she

never did and never will love him, she doesn't even hate him. She ends

the scene by saying: “You are just dust and ashes to me now”. We read

this sentence in novel at the end of this chapter, when Tess is already at

home, talking to her mother. In the novel Tess meets a young man that

writes words from the Bible on boards, working for the parson of this

parish, Mr. Clare of Emminster. The words he writes strike Tess, because

it seems like the man knows what has happened to her. This event is

missing in the film. Tess goes directly home, sees the new horse in front of

the house, in the house new toys for the children. The closure of this

chapter and the scene are the same. Tess tells her mother what

happened, partly accusing her for that, since she did not warn her, told her

there was danger in men.

In chapter XIII some girl friends from Marlott come to visit Tess, admiring

her, her dress. In the novel Tess gets caught by their excitement and

almost becomes merry. In the film she is very passive, her mother is

talking instead of her, still believing Tess will marry Alec. Tess runs out of

the room in the middle of the visit. In the novel Tess tries to live normally,

goes to church on Sunday but when she hears people whispering about

her, she stays at home and to avoid other people, goes out only after dark

for the most of the winter. In the film the scene switches to another day,

when Tess's teacher, Miss Evans wants to visit her, hopes to start their

lessons again and brings her a book, but Joan says Tess is not feeling

well and that she will pass her the message.

The novel continuous in August, people are working on the field. One of

them is Tess, hiding her face under her hat, all the time looking down on

the ground. Around midday a group of children comes closer, to bring

Tess her baby. All workers take a break, to eat and drink and Tess breast

feeds her baby. Women talk about Tess and her baby, what a pity it is

what happened to her. In the evening the baby gets sick and Tess realizes

24

that he is not baptized. She wants to call for the parson but her father

doesn't allow it. In the night she decides to baptize the child by herself and

names him Sorrow. Tess's son dies before morning, now she would like to

give him a Christian burial. The vicar refuses her wish and Tess buries

Sorrow on her own, on the part of churchyard where other not baptized

infants, drunks, suicides are buried. In film, after Miss Evans' visit, we see

landscape in winter, then turning into spring. Workers are in field, sowing,

among them Tess. But is it is May and not August, because we hear

music, coming from the mead where the club-walling is taking place. Tess

leaves the field, follows the sound of music and watches the young girls in

white, dancing in the circle. As soon as she sees she was noticed by two

of her old friends, she goes back to the field. Her sister Liza-Lu and her

younger brother bring Tess her baby. Liza-Lu joins the dance and Tess

breast feeds her child. This is the point where the first episode ends: Tess

sitting on a rock, breast feeding her baby and beautiful, green landscape

behind her. The second episode begins in the night the baby gets sick and

dies. The film doesn't show how exactly she buries Sorrow, but she thrusts

the cross with his name next to the grave and puts flowers in a jar, like in

the novel.

In the last chapter of this part we get some inside of Tess' thoughts. The

part describing how she notes different dates, birthdays, the anniversaries

of good and bad events, the greatest of them all being the date of her

death, appears in the film in the second episode, when she accidentally

meets Angel Clare in the woods and tells him about that.

During the winter she stays at home, helping her family, until at least, end

of May, she receives a letter from a dairy, that they need a milkmaid. Tess

decides to work on a farm called Talbothays.

6. The rally

In May, Tess leaves home for the second time, less than three years after

she returned from Trantridge. She hires a trap to a little town of

Stourcastle, where she waits for a carrier's van to proceed her way. A

25

farmer offers her to take her with him on his spring cart and she accepts,

even though she doesn't know him. From Weatherbury she continued her

way on foot. In the film we see Tess only walking on a green hill, she looks

like she enjoys the nature. Not far from the dairy Tess meets the “red and

white herd” of cows (136) being gathered for the half-past four o'clock

milking. Again Hardy uses the red – white contrast, which cannot be seen

in the film. Tess follows the cows and arrives to the dairy farm.

Mr. Crick, the dairyman, is a nice man; he owns the biggest dairy in that

part of land. Tess starts at once and meets some other workers, maids

and dairymen, who are also milking the cows. There is a difference

between film and the novel: Mr. Crick complains that cows don't give the

milk very easy and in the novel a dairyman Jonathan Kail says it's so

because there is a new hand among them – in the film it is one of the

dairymaids who says that. Another maid says she heard that the milk goes

up cow's horns and in the novel Mr. Crick answers, he is skeptical from

anatomical point of view – in the film it is Angel Clare who says that. The

film also leaves out Mr. Crick's story about William Dewy and how he

tricked a bull. Tess sees Angel for the first time after that dance in May

some years ago and soon remembers where she had seen him before,

but Angel doesn't recognize her. In the novel he has a moustache and a

beard; in the film he has none. Regarding appearances there is another

difference: in the film Tess wears a red top, which makes her stand out

from other girls who all wear neutral colors and attracts attention.

Chapter XVIII describes Angel Clare and his family, which is left out in the

film. We see his family later on when Angel visits them. Some days later,

at breakfast, Tess explains her fancy about how souls can be made to go

out of our bodies when we are alive and draws Angel's attention, and he

says: “What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature that milkmaid is!”

(155). She seems familiar to him, he connects her with something joyful

but he just can't remember where they met before.

26

In the following weeks Angel and Tess spend more time together, discuss

different matters, get to know each other (in novel and in film). In the film

there is a scene in the woods, where Tess tells Angel about the dates,

anniversaries, which is written in chapter XV. She finds out that Angel

hates old, noble families and is glad she didn't tell him about her family

history. As a newcomer Tess gets the task to wake up as first early in the

morning, at 3.00 a.m. (in the film 4.00 a.m.), then to wake up all others

after that: first Mr. Crick, then Angel. That is the time Angel and Tess

spend together alone, like the only persons on earth, Adam and Eve. In

the film he tells her about his future plans, about going to Brazil, to

become a farmer, Tess says she wanted to be a teacher once, but at the

moment, she only hopes she will be as happy as she is now. In the novel

he was very impressed by her, “she was no longer the milkmaid, but a

visionary essence of woman – a whole sex condensed into one typical

form.” (167). They start to fall in love with each other.

In chapter XXI there is a great stir at the dairy – the butter would not come

and when ever that happens the dairy is paralyzed. No one knows what is

wrong; Mrs. Crick thinks someone might be in love in the house. Mr. Crick

tells then the story of Jack Dollop, who took advantage of a very young

girl, with no intention to marry her. Other workers laugh at the story, but

Tess gets pale and goes out on fresh air. The film skips this part and

continues on the day when butter tastes like garlic and everyone goes out

on the mead to clean it. While working close together Tess uses the

opportunity and tells Angel that other girls (Izz, Marian and Retty) are

pretty, excellent dairywomen, they skim better than she does, just to

convince him to marry one them and not her. From that day on she tries to

avoid him, to give other three girls a chance.

On Sunday morning in July the maids go to church, but due to the heavy

rain a part of the road is flooded and they can't cross it. Angel comes and

carries them one by one across, Tess as the last one. While carrying Tess

he wants to kiss her but he doesn't want to take advantage of an

accidental position. In the film we see the tension between them, when

27

she is in his arms, soft music playing and making it a romantic scene. On

that same evening they find out that Angel is to be married with a girl in

Emminster and their dreams of marring him are shattered.

In the last chapter of this part Angel declares his love to Tess, but the film

continues on the day Angel visits his parents in Emminster. He declares

his love to her after talking to his parents.

7. The Consequence

Angel Clare rides to Emminster to see his parents and brothers. He tells

his parents about Tess and his intentions to marry and take her with him to

Brazil. Even though his parents wish he would merry Mercy Chant, who is

a lady and is from a good family, they will not oppose Tess as long she is

a pure, good Christian girl. Before going back to the dairy farm Mr. Clare

mentions Alec D'Urbervilles, who asked him for help in spiritual matters. In

the film Angel sees Alec talking to his father right after he steps in the

house of his parents. His father explains who that was while they take a

walk together. What is added in the film is that the whole family attends

the sermon, where Angel also sees Marcy. After the sermon he talks to his

brothers. In the novel he talks to his brothers after breakfast on the first

days of his visit. The conversation between Angel and his family is quite

the same in the novel and in film.

Angel returns home at milk – skimming time and surprises Tess, who just

came from her chamber, taking some rest. They go together to the dairy,

to skin the milk. There Angel asks her to be his wife, which Tess cannot

accept. In the film Angel finds her on the meadow, declares his love to her

and asks her to marry him. She admits that she loves him but she can

never marry him. Every couple of days Angels asks again on that matter,

but she still refuses to become his wife. While making cheese they agree

she will tell her reasons on Sunday. In the film the event of one early

morning, when Tess still didn't say “yes” to Angel, is missing: as every

28

morning between three and four Tess, dressed in her bed-gown, wakes

Angel. He surprises her on his door and says that if she doesn't agree to

be his wife he will have to leave the dairy, for her own safety sake. Even

though he promised himself not to touch Tess before they were married he

kisses her on her cheek. Later that afternoon they drive milk to the railway

station.

On their way to the station they pass a former seat of an ancient Norman

family, the D'Urbervilles. Angel explains Tess who they were and how said

it is when a family is extinct. Tess just agrees that is sad and makes no

other comment on that. In the film this event is set to another day, later on,

when Angel brings Tess to this residence to show it to her. Tess tells her

reason why she can't marry Angel on the railway station: in the novel they

sit on the cart, in the film in the waiting room of the station. Tess being a

D'Urberville is no problem for Angel and since she will make him very

happy she agrees to marry him. She doesn't have the courage to tell him

the rest of her story. When they come back to the dairy Angels suddenly

remembers the dance where he saw Tess for the first time.

Tess writes an urgent letter to her mother and soon receives her replay.

Joan asks Tess not tell Angel her “bygone trouble”, especially since it

happened a long time ago and it wasn't her fault at all. This was not quite

the answer Tess expected or wished for. She wants to tell Angel of her

past, thinking he deserves to hear all the truth but fears he wouldn't

understand. In the following days they spend a lot of time together,

seeking each other's company. In the film Angel takes her to see an old

house where her ancestors once lived and suggests her to revert to the

old spelling of her name. He also mentions he met Alec D'Urberville when

he was visiting his parents. Tess is shocked, realises she can never

escape her past and that she will never make Angel happy. But she

doesn't tell him the truth.

One evening they are alone in the house, trying to find the right date for

the wedding. Angel would like to start his business in spring, so they could

29

start the New Year as husband and wife. In the novel Tess has doubts

about marrying him again; she says she is not worthy to be his wife. It all

would have been different if he had danced with her when she was

sixteen, she would have four more years of his heart and happiness. This

part is not in the film. Mr. Crick, his wife and two milkmaids walk on them

as they sit close together (in the film they are kissing) and they announce

they are to be married. Later that evening Tess goes to her chamber with

a bad feeling, because she broke her promise that she will not marry him,

but other girls are really happy for her. They are happy that Angel will

marry her and not a lady. At night when they are all in bed, Marian asks

Tess to tell Angel all about them, how they loved him, how they tried not to

and didn't hate Tess. In the film it is Retty who says that but not for all

girls, just for herself.

In chapter XXXII Tess and Angel finally decide on the wedding date - 31st

December. Before Angel takes her to see his parents he would like to

spend some months with her, so she can learn social skills, be more

presentable especially to his mother. He plans to work on a flour-mill and

right after the wedding they will stay in an old D'Urbervilles mansion for a

fortnight. A problem occurs when Izz notices that in the church their name

was not mentioned. According to tradition “there must be three times of

asking. And now there be only two Sundays left between” (262). Tess is

worried and takes that as a bad sign. Angel comforts her that there will be

no asking, but they will get a license anyway. To show his thoughtfulness

he orders new clothes for Tess from London. In the film they go together

to the tailor in the nearest town. We see Tess trying on a simple wedding

dress, not allowing Angel to see her. Angel goes to get the horse and the

gig and Tess waits for him in front of the inn. Two men come out from the

inn, one being a Trantridge man – Groby. They recognize each other.

Groby offends her (in the film he calls her a whore), Angel hears him and

knocks him down, forces him to apologize. Later that night Angel fights

that man in his dream. Tess has enough and writes Angel a letter, where

makes her confession and puts it under his door. In the film she stays up

all night, sitting on the stairs which lead to his room. He comes down in the

30

morning as usual, acting completely normally. On the wedding day, Tess

goes up to his room to see it once again, for the last time and discovers

her letter, unread. She goes to her own room and destroys the letter. In

the film they are packing their bags, preparing to leave. Tess goes to

Angel's room to bring his harp when she finds the letter. Completely in

shock she goes down to her room, where her wedding dress is hanging in

the middle of the room. We see her inner fight: looking at the dress, the

letter in her hand behind her back, standing right next to the fire. What

shall she do? Finally she lets the letter slip from her hand in the fire. She

tries to speak to Angel but he convinces her they can confess their faults

after the wedding. As on the first day on the diary farm, she is again

wearing the red top. At this point the second episode ends.

The third episode starts by showing dairymaid Retty walking through

woods and the next scene is set in the church. Retty goes in the river at

the very moment when Tess and Angel get married. Right after the

wedding the couple drives directly to the rented D'Urberville mansion but

in the novel they go back to the farm. They say good-bye to all, Angels

kisses Marian, Izz and Retty on their cheeks. When they drive through the

gate a cock starts to crew, which is supposed to be a very bad sign.

Tess and Angel arrive at the mansion, sit down to have supper. Before the

supper (in the film during the supper) a messenger brings a package for

Tess. Angel's parents have sent her family jewels. She puts them on.

Shortly after that Jonathan Kails brings the luggage and the news about

Retty and about Marian who was found dead drunk. In the film a man

brings the news only about Retty and Angel tells Tess the details while

they sit next to the fire. Angel believes it is time to make his confession

about his affair with a woman in London. He tells his story, asks Tess for

forgiveness and then she tells her story, hoping he will forgive her too.

31

8. The Woman Pays

Angel's reaction, the dialogue between Tess and him are almost the same

in the novel and in film. In the film her suggestion that she could put an

end to herself, to kill herself is left out. In the film it is also not so clear how

long they stay there and that Angel goes to the mill to study the business.

There is one important part missing in the film namely the part where

Angel walks in his sleep, takes Tess in her arms and brings her to the

near-by Abbey church. He repeats several times “My wife - dead, dead!”

(316). Tess lets him carry her, wondering what he might do to her. Angel

puts her in an empty stone coffin, kisses her and lies down on the ground

next to the coffin. Now Tess sits up, takes Angel's arm and brings back to

the house. They leave the house after the breakfast and in the novel they

stop at the dairy in Talbothays, where they hear the story about Retty and

Marian again. As they leave Mrs. Crick notices that they are not same,

“how onnatural the brightness of her eyes did seem, and how they stood

like waxen images and talked as if they were in a dream!” (322). They part

on a cross road; Tess drives on in a carriage and Angel alone on the fly.

Before they part in the film Tess asks him: “At least kiss me goodbye,

Angel!”, but he just looks at her and put the bags in her arms, saying

almost without emotion, “Goodbye, Tess.”

Tess drives through Blackmoor Vale, stops at a turn-pike gate. The man

who kept the door tells her the news in Marlott, about Durbeyfields, how

their daughter married a gentleman and about their noble ancestors. This

part is missing in the film, where she arrives directly at her parent's house.

Joan and John Durbeyfield are very disappointed and angry at Tess that

she came back alone and that she told Angel about her past. After a few

days Tess receives a letter from Angel, informing her that he has gone to

the North of England to look at a farm. Tess uses the letter as a reason to

leave them again and gives them the impression she is rejoining her

husband. She also gives them 25 pounds from 50 which Angel gave her.

In the film Angels gives her only 25 pounds which she gives her parents to

32

repair the roof and buy a new horse. There are scenes added in the film:

while she is staying at her parent's she visits Sorrow's grave, and before

she goes away she tells her sister Liza-Lu that she will find work and some

day come back and take her away from there.

Angel returns to his parents too. He explains why Tess is not with him and

that she will stay with her parents until he comes back from Brazil and

takes her with him. His parents ask questions about Tess, in the novel it is

mostly his mother and in the film his father. Angel admits they have a

difference (not a quarrel) and convinces them that her history is spotless.

He leaves his family and stops at the house where they spent the first

three days of their marriage. For the first time he has doubts whether he

acted in the right way. Izz Huett knocks on the door, wants to visit Mr. and

Mrs. Clare. After he settled the account for the rent he continues his way

and takes Izz with him. While they drive he tells her that he is separated

from his wife for personal reasons and asks her if she will come with him

to Brazil. She would but he changed his mind very soon, Izz making him

realize that he already has a loving wife, who loves him more than

anybody else. In the film he leaves his parents 50 pounds for Tess in case

she will be in need, doesn't stop at that house and meets Izz on the road.

After he asks her to go with him, they stop at Izz's house so she can take

her luggage. When she comes back to Angel, he realizes he made a

mistake and they part. Angel takes a train to London and five days later

leaves England.

Chapter XLI: Eight months later, in October, Tess travels around; having

irregular jobs and shortly before winter finds no work. She tries not to use

any money Angel has left her because she feels that this money is a

souvenir of her husband, but has no other choice. Additionally her parents

write her that they must repair the roof and need 20 pounds. Tess gets the

remaining 30 pounds from Angel's bankers and sends 20 pounds to her

parents. She spends the remaining pounds for winter clothes and food. In

the film this part is skipped, we just see Tess walking around, asking

people if they have work for her. For a short time the novel lets us see

33

what is happening to Angel: he is in Brazil, lying ill from fever. Tess

receives a letter from Marian, informing Tess about work on an upland

farm. In the film there is no such letter, Tess finds out about that job from

strangers on the road. She decides to go there and travels on foot. One

evening a man overtakes her on the road and recognizes her: it was

Groby, a worker from Trantridge, who knows all about her and is angry

that Angel hit him. He wants Tess to apologize for that. Tess gets scared

and runs away in to the forest. She falls asleep in the forest and wakes up

in morning, hearing some strange noises. These noises come from

pheasants that were shot by hunters the day before. There are many of

them, some already dead, some barely alive. Tess feels really sorry for

them and to help the ones which are wounded and are slowly dying, she

breaks their necks to ease their suffering. It makes Tess realize that she

should not feel sorry for herself, saying “And not a twinge of bodily pain

about me! I be not mangled, and I be not bleeding, and I have to hands to

feed and clothe me” (355). Later that morning, after breakfast Tess has

problems with some young men making compliments on her good looks.

She decides to make herself unattractive, puts on her working clothes,

cuts off her eyebrows, and ties a handkerchief on her head so almost all of

her face is covered. Tess goes on and tries to find a job, asks on farms but

unfortunately there is no work for her and she has to go the farm that

Marian has written about – Flitcomb-Ash. In the film the events from the

time Tess leave her home to the point she comes to Flitcomb-Ash are

slightly different. Tess walks around and tries to find a job. Some strangers

passing by on a cart tell her about that farm, Flitcomb-Ash, but don't

recommend it, since it means hard work and people usually don't stay

there long. The next morning she walks through the forest and hears

gunshots, then sees some men shooting birds. Tess tries to go around

them but they see her. One of them is Groby and as in the novel he is

really mean to her and wants from her to apologize for Angel's blow in his

face. Groby says she was D'Urberville's tart but she replies she a married

woman now. Tess gets scared and runs away, falls on her knees, takes

dirt in her hands and puts it on her face. Sobbingly she scratches her face

with hand nails so blood and dirt are all over her face. Looking like that

34

she proceeds her way. She arrives at Flitcomb-Ash and meets Marian –

they are both very surprised to see each other. From that point on the

novel and the film do not differ. Marian tells everything about the farm,

saying it is a starve – acre place, the work is very hard. The bailiff is the

same man as in Trantridge, Groby, who is again picking on Tess. Izz Huett

comes to work on the farm too, now three good friends are helping and

supporting each other in hard times. Marian tells Tess about Angel how

he wanted to take Izz to Brazil (in the film that is part is missing) but at the

end changed his mind. Tess realizes she has been too passive for too

long and decides to visit Angel's parents. One Sunday morning she makes

the fifteen miles walk to Emminster, in her best clothes. Tess rings the bell

on the vicar's doors but no one answers, they are all in church. She

decides to come back later and walks by the church. The sermon has just

ended and people come out of the church, among them Angel's brothers.

They walk behind her and seeing Mercy in front of Tess start talking about

Angel and the first anniversary of his marriage to the milk dairymaid. They

pass by Tess and join Mercy. Together they find her shoes. In the film

Tess sees and hears them on the churchyard, and we see that Mercy has

noticed her, while she was speaking to Angel's parents and his mother

sees Tess too. Shortly after that Angel's brothers and Mercy find Tess's

shoes next to the road and take them. Tess observes them. They see her

standing there too and ask her if they can help. She gets scared, runs

away and accidentally bumps into Angel's parents. In the novel Tess stops

in a village to have lunch and she hears there is someone preaching in the

barn. She is interested and wants to hear it. This part is omitted in the film;

Tess is on her way back to the farm, walks by a tent and stops at its door.

The preacher is Alec D'Urberville.

9. The Convert

This is the first time she sees Alec after her departure from Trantridge. In

the novel he has changed, he wears trimmed, old-fashioned whiskers, the

sable moustache is gone, he is dressed half-clerical. In the film he looks

35

the same, except for his clothes which are more clerical. Different

emotions go through Tess which is to see also in the film. Alec recognizes

her too and is distressed by it, “the effect on her old lover was electric, far

stronger than the effect of his presence upon her” (390). Tess leaves the

barn (in the film, tent) and Alec comes after her. The conversation that

follows between them is in the film shorter, but contains every important

part from the novel. Alec is worried about Tess's soul, now that he has

changed and realized what true Christian faith means for man (sense of

security, the certainty). Tess cannot bear to listen to this after what he has

done to her and thinks he only wants to save his own soul. In the film more

time is given to her explanation of the birth and death of their child, a

scene where Alec looks really moved, whereas in the novel it is only

mentioned, that she has had troubles and tells what happened. What is

left out in the film is the part where Alec tells Tess about his meeting with

the old Mr. Clare, how he helped him to change, to convert. In the film

Alec mentions him during his sermon. The missing part is film is also that

Alec accompanies Tess for a quite long time to the spot called “Cross-in-

Hand”, the most forlorn place of the upland. The name comes from a

stone pillar which stood there, a strange rude monolith. After Alec leaves

Tess she meets a shepherd and asks him whether this stone was ever a

Holy Cross. He answers that it was never a Holy Cross, but “Tis a thing of

ill-omen, Miss. It was put up in old times by the relations of a malefactor

who was tortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung.

The bones lie underneath. They say he sold his soul to the devil and that

he walks at times” (398) Tess feels the petite mort after she hears that

story and leaves. Near Flitcomb-Ash she meets Izz and a young man,

Amby Seedling, who used to work with them on the dairy farm and is in-

love with Izz and has followed her here.

Some days later Alec visits Tess on the farm. It is a grey, slightly foggy,

cold day and in the novel Tess is working with a man on a slicer, whereas

in the film she works with Izz and Marian. Alec comes closer (he rides a

white horse in film) and wants to speak to her, having in hand a marriage

license. Tess refuses him and says she loves someone else, which shocks

36

Alec who dares to say (in novel and film): “Somebody else? But has not a

sense of what is morally right and proper any weight with you?”(403).

Afterwards she admits that she is already married and wants them to be

are strangers now. Of course he doesn't agree with that, after all what has

happened between them he is more her husband than the other man, who

apparently abandoned her wife and left her in this misery. That night Tess

writes a letter to Angel, assuring him her love and between the lines

expressing her fear that something terrible might happen. In the film she

reads the letter and for some moments we see Angel in Brazil, in bed with

fever and in that moment when she says something terrible might happen

we see the scene where Tess is working on the field and Alec is observing

her on his white horse. The scene interchanges between Tess sitting by

the table writing the letter, Angel lying in bed and when she cries out to

him to help her and save her from the threats, Angel opens his eyes. At

this point the third episode ends. In the novel Alec visits Tess again one

Sunday in February, when all other workers have gone to a fair.

Shortly after this, in March, the workers at the Flitcomb-Ash farm are

threshing the last wheat-rick. Groby tells Tess to work on the top of the

machine and untie the sheaves. Alec comes to see her again, only this

time he is not dressed as a cleric, but normally. The old Alec is back, with

his old weltlust, the dark character breaking through to the surface again.

He tells Tess he gave up preaching and that it was her fault, knocking all

the faith out of him when he saw her again and by supplying the same

paradise as good as any other. He proposes to her to go away with him,

who is here and wants to take care of her, not like her husband. “You have

been the cause of my backsliding, [ ] you should be willing to share it, and

leave that mule you call husband for ever” (422). In the film he says that

with almost the same words. Tess strikes him with her leather glove then

dares him to punish her, hit her, but she will not cry out. “Once a victim,

always a victim – that's the law!” (423). In the film this sentence is missing.

She still refuses to go with him and his dark nature comes up, by saying

(in both the film and the novel): Remember, my lady, I was your master

37

once! I will be your master again. If you are any man's wife you are mine!”

(423).

In the afternoon Alec comes back again (in the novel, not in the film),

waves to her from distance and sends her a kiss, as a sign that the quarrel

is over. In the evening he approaches her and still wants to help her, if she

will only show some confidence in him. Tess thinks maybe he has

changed a little, and allows him to walk to her. This part is left out in the

film. Later on she writes a long letter to Angel, with almost the same

contents we hear in the film earlier, asking him to return before something

terrible happens.

Chapter XLIX describes the thoughts and worries of old Mr. and Mrs.

Clare about Angel. Angel wrote to them several times about his

whereabouts. They wish his life had turned in another way; his father

should have sent him to Cambridge in spite of Angel's want of faith and

perhaps he would have taken Orders after all. They blame themselves for

his unhappy marriage with Tess and still don't know what exactly

happened between Angel and Tess. During the time Angel was in Brazil,

suffering downfalls, his plans could not be realized. The fever killed a lot of

people; he saw mothers burying their children with their bare hands. He

meets a man to whom he tells the story about his marriage with Tess and

who opens Angel's eyes by saying that he was wrong in leaving Tess. In

the film this whole part is not included, but Angel tells Tess about his life in

Brazil when they are re-united (except the part with this man). Angel

realizes that he really wasn't fair to Tess and that he shouldn't have dwelt

so much on her past but should have looked to the present and their future

together.

Then we go back to Tess (in both the film and the novel) on the farm. Liza-

Lu comes to tell Tess her mother is probably dying; her father is also not

well. In the film her father is sick, and they don't mention her mother. Tess

decides to leave the farm to help her parents, even though it is before her

contract ends and she will not be paid for her work all these past months.

38

In the novel Tess goes first and Liza-Lu follows her the next day, while in

the film they go together and walk all night. In the film Tess leaves a

message for Alec in case he should come looking for her: Marian and Izz

shall tell him her husband has come back.

Tess arrives home early in the morning (in the novel it is still dark). In the

novel her mother is still sick; her father‟s condition is unchanged. In the

film only her father is ill and when she enters the house he is sitting in his

chair, looking very ill. John tells Tess about his scheme for living: he thinks

of sending round (in the film he is sending) to old antiquarians and asking

them to subscribe to a fund to maintain him. If they have money to keep

up old ruins, they might as well pay for living remains. In the novel, Joan

gets better and Tess starts to work in the fields to help her family. One

day, in late afternoon, Tess finds herself working next to a man she

doesn‟t know; it is Alec, disguised as a worker. Again he offers his help to

her and the whole family. Tess refuses his offer, but admits that she

doesn‟t have a husband after Alec asks her where she is planning to go

next and suggests she might join her husband. In the film Alec visits her

near her house and not in the field. John Durbeyfield dies (in the novel

suddenly) and they have to move out of the house which was leased in his

name.

Chapter IL begins by describing the Old Lady-Day, when workers are

moving from one farm to another, changing “The Egypt of one family...”

which “...was the Land of Promise to the family who saw it from a distance,

till by residence there it became in turn their Egypt also” (449). On that

same day Tess and her family have to leave the house. Maybe the lease

for the house would have been extended if Tess, as well as her parents,

were morally better people: “It was, indeed, quite true that the household

had not been shining examples either of temperance, soberness or

chastity. The father, and even the mother, had got drunk at times, the

younger children seldom had gone to church, and the eldest daughter had

made queer unions. By some means the village had to be kept pure”

(450). The night before they leave, Alec visits Tess again and tells her the

39

story about the D‟Urberville Coach, which can only be heard by a true

D‟Urberville and which is a bad omen for the one who hears it: it has to do

with a murder, committed by a member of the family, centuries ago. Tess

tells him they cannot stay here, mostly because of her and her past and

that they are going to Kingsbere, so Alec offers them his cottage and of

course Tess refuses. In the film this part, where Alec visits Tess is

missing. Later that night Tess writes an angry letter to Angel, saying that

he treated her monstrously, which she didn‟t deserve. She never intended

to wrong him, but he wronged her and she can never forgive him. Now she

will try to forget him. In the film she writes the letter after her father‟s

funeral.

The next morning they leave Marlott. On the way they meet Marian and

Izz, who are also migrating to another farm. In the film they travel through

a forest and Alec is following them. When they stop to spend the night,

Tess tells him why they had to leave Marlott (which she did earlier in the

novel). When they get to Kingsbere they find out that their lodgings are

gone, let to another family. Since they have no place to stay, they go to

the graveyard, where their great ancestors rest in their vaults. That night

Alec visits her again and after talking to Joan, he explains to Tess that he

will take care of her family and she will go with him. Tess wishes to be

dead. In the film he gives her the last opportunity to consent to his offer,

and asks her for just one kind word, but she stubbornly refuses and says

“no”.

At the end of this chapter, Marian and Izz write to Angel to tell him that he

should come home since Tess is endangered by an enemy in the shape of

a friend, who should be away. They sign the letter as Two Well-Wishers

and send it to the Emminster Vicarage. The film switches to the Emminster

church. In the middle of the sermon Angel appears, ill and weak. In the

novel he comes home one evening.

40

10. The Fulfillment

It is evening in Emminster Vicarage; Angel is expected by his parents and

when he finally arrives, his mother is shocked by his appearance: “O, it is

not Angel – not my son – the Angel who went away!” (470). The same

reaction is shown in the film after the sermon, in their house. Angel reads

the letter from Tess as well as the one from Marian and Izz. He admits that

he was wrong and unfair to Tess and now wants to be with her again. In

the novel he writes to Joan first, but she doesn‟t want to tell him where

Tess is. As soon as he feels better he goes to look for Tess. In the novel

he starts at Flitcomb-Ash, where he speaks to Groby (only in the film) and

then proceeds to Marlott. First he visits the house where Tess was born,

then goes to the church and visits John‟s grave. In the film he also visits

Sorrow‟s grave. The parson tells him Joan Durbeyfield is in Trantridge,

raising chickens. In the film Angel goes to the D‟Urbervilles‟ house, before

he visits Joan and there meets Liza-Lu, who brings him to Joan. At first

she refuses to tell Angel where Tess is, but at the end she gives in and

tells him Tess is in Sandbourne. During their conversation, she shows her

disapproval of his actions and this can also be seen in the film. The film

slightly differs from the novel here, since Joan doesn‟t tells Angel where

Tess is, but Liza-Lu follows Angel after he leaves and tells him the truth.

Angel takes a train to Sandbourne. He asks around, telling her name,

looking for Mrs. Clare or Miss Durbeyfield. A postman recalls a similar

name, Mrs. D‟Urberville, who is staying at The Herons. He finds her and

sees Tess has changed. He tries to apologize for what he has done to her

but Tess keeps saying that it is too late; Alec won her back. The

conversation is the same in the novel and in the film, where two sentences

are added: that Tess has become Alec‟s creature and after telling him to

go away forever, because it is too late for her, she is already dead. Tess

returns to her room, where Alec is waiting for her in the bed. She attacks

Alec for lying to her, when he said that Angel would never return, for taking

advantage of her, making her a victim. All the time Mrs. Brooks, the owner

41

of the house is listening at the door. She runs downstairs when she hears

someone approaching the door. Shortly, she hears a rustle of garments

against the banisters, the opening and closing of the front door and sees

Tess stepping into the street. In the film everything is the same, but she

sees Tess walking down the stairs and leaving the house. Mrs. Brooks

continues with her sewing, when suddenly she sees a red spot on the

white ceiling which is getting bigger and bigger, in the shape of gigantic

ace of hearts. Here is again the symbolism of red-white. In the film a

couple of red drops fall on her hand when she looks up at the ceiling and

sees the red spot. She goes upstairs and finds Alec dead, stabbed in the

heart.

In the meanwhile Tess, runs after Angel and finds him at the train station.

She explains that she is free now and that Alec can never come between

them again since she has killed him. Angel can‟t believe what he hears

and when Tess asks him to forgive her the sin of murdering Alec he does

and promises to protect her, “Tenderness was absolutely dominant in

Clare at last” (493). The conversation between them in the film is shorter.

In the film and the novel they walk away together, leaving Sandbourne.

The plan is that they go somewhere near the coast and later leave

England from some port. In the film they sleep the first night in the forest

and find an empty house on the second day. In the novel they stay in the

house on the first night. They stay in that house for some days; Tess

refuses to leave it, because they are finally re-united, and “Why should we

put an end to all that‟s sweet and lovely! ...What must come will come. All

is trouble outside there; inside here content.” (498). In the film there are

two scenes added: one is a love scene showing Tess and Angel making

love, and the other when Angel tells Tess what happened in Brazil (in the

novel he wrote about that to his parents). The next morning the caretaker

of the house finds them sleeping and they must run away. In the novel

Tess turns back and says good-bye to the “happy house”. They walk

across the country and stop at Stonehenge. They rest; Tess stretches out

on a large stone, probably the altar. As Tess feels her life is coming to an

end, she makes Angel promise he will take care of her family, marry Liza-

42

Lu, and love her. In the novel Tess explains that Liza-Lu has all the best of

her, without the bad of her; if he marries her it will almost be like death has

not divided Tess and Angel. Tess then falls asleep and wakes up when

police come for her.

They part (in the novel and the film) with Tess saying that everything is as

it should be, “This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. ... I

am ready” (505), and she goes with the police.

The last chapter describes the day Tess is hanged in prison in

Wintoncester. It is a warm day in July, at eight o‟clock in the morning. Two

figures are standing on the opposite hill, Angel and Liza-Lu, watching the

tall staff on the tower. Shortly after eight o‟clock, the black flag moves

slowly up the staff; Tess is dead. Angel and Liza-Lu bend down as if they

are praying, and stay that way for a long time. Then they rise and leave

hand-in-hand. The film shows Tess in the prison, shortly before the

execution. While she walks through the corridor, she thinks of that May

Day when she saw Angel for the first time and wonders how it would have

been if they had danced that day. This whole scene is added and doesn‟t

happen in the novel. It is completely new and doesn‟t appear in any other

adaptations of Tess. The last part ends with a very emotional scene,

where we see Angel watching the black flag before he falls down crying

and with Liza-Lu‟s assistance gets up again and they leave.

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11. Conclusion

The focus of this diploma paper was to compare the differences and

similarities of the novel and the film and to find out to what extent they

affect the quality of the story.

Looking at the film and comparing it with the novel chapter by chapter, we

find some changes in plot and characters and except for two important

episodes (Angel sleep walking and Tess‟s mercy-killing of the pheasants)

the film is faithful to the novel and the changes do not affect the quality

very much.

The actors chosen to play in the film perform well, although perhaps the

main character Tess could have been played by someone with more

experience in life (or acting), which can then be reflected on quality of

acting. The really fascinating element in the film was the scenery, and due

to the fact that 80 per cent of the film happens outside, it leaves a very

good impression on the audience and adds more value to the film.

Despite some changes the film is a good adaptation of the novel. By

changing the novel from a heavyweight classic to a light classic, the

screen writer made the film more appealing to a modern audience, and

even though some of the weight is taken away, the story is still full of bleak

atmosphere, depressing coincidence and tragedy.

If someone saw this adaptation without reading the novel first, the four

episodes would leave one satisfied but otherwise the novel has much

more to give to the reader. The adaptation is merely a mean which

enables us to “see” the content of a novel; it helps reader‟s imagination by

putting the characters and their environment into picture and sound, and

as Alfred Uhry said (Hutcheon 2006: 5): “Adapting is a bit like

redecorating”.

44

12. Works cited and consulted

Bignell, Jonathan (1999) Writing and Cinema. New York: Pearson Education Inc.

Hardy, Thomas (1994) Tess of the D'Urbervilles. London: Penguin Books Ltd.

Hutcheon, Linda (2006) A Theory of Film Adaptation. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group

McFarlane, Brian (1996) Novel To Film, An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. Oxford: Claredon Press

Nichols, David (2008). Tess of the D'Urbervilles. [DVD] London: BBC Worldwide Ltd

Reynolds, Peter (1993) Novel Images, Literature in Performance. London and New York: Routledge

Internet Sources:

Gilbert, Matthew (2009) Revisiting Hardy's Feisty Heroine. Pridobljeno 20.1.2010, iz http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2009/01/03/revisiting_hardys_feisty_heroine/ .

Masterpiece Classic (2009) Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Pridobljeno 27.12.2009, iz http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/tess/index.html.

Niemeyer, Paul J. (2008) Thomas Hardy: The Films Page. Pridobljeno

20.1.2010 iz http://www.thomashardyfilms.com/ Strong,Jeremy (2006) Tess, Jude, and the Problem of Adapting Hardy.

Pridobljeno 20.1.2010, iz http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200607/ai_n17220752/pg_1?tag=content;col1 .

Williams, Sally (2008) Tess of the D'Urbervilles: Wessex Appeal. Pridobljeno 27.12.2009, iz http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3559063/Tess-of-the-D'Urbervilles-Wessex-appeal.html.