Thomas Hardy was one of the finest writers of the Victorian age. Among countless poems and novels there is one that seems to stand alone, “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” This novel is one of Hardy’s most recognized works maybe because the problems of the Victorian era relate to many in this modern age. Problems such as rape, the importance of purity and never knowing what you really have until it's gone. These three things make up the theme, sub-theme and motif of Thomas Hardy’s, “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”
Not being aware of the good things you have until they're gone is the theme of Tess. In the novel, Angel Clare and Tess are married, but when Angel finds out the truth about Tess’ past he is outraged and hurt. Succumbing to his initial feelings, Angel leaves Tess and tries to continue on about his life without her. As time passed, Angel finally realizes that he does love Tess, and so he tries to locate her. Once he finds her, he learns she has started a new life with Alec D’Urberville; the man of her past. Angel begs Tess to come back to him but she says he came too late. The theme behind the story is that Angel recognizes his mistake but still misses out on her love. When Angel left Tess he was just acting on impulse. By the time he sat down and rationalized his decisions, Tess had already continued on about her life. Angel knew he loved Tess and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, but his feelings weren’t evident until he lost her. Once Tess was gone Angel knew that he could not live without her. This is a problem still in our time. People take for granted what they have and never really realize what they had until they’ve lost it. With time people will learn to value what they already posses and try to give it all the attention is deserves.
Rape is, and always will be, a part of society. Fortunately, in our time people of any stature can be punished for such a crime. In the Victorian era however, rape victims were silent and their suffering went unheard. Often, rape victims were blamed for their misfortune, and were said to bring it upon themselves. This was the case with Tess and Alec D’Urberville. When Tess told her mother of her rape, all her mother could say was that Tess should have “known the ways of men.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles Through life people may fault, or get on the wrong side of the tracks. Yet hopefully they keep faith and then willingly they may recoup and redeem themselves by recovering. Many believe that, Tess in, Tess of the d'Urbervilles was a great example of this. In Hardy's Victorian age novel, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, he illustrates casual wrong, the will to recover, the growth of love, and death. Almost everybody has done something casually wrong and not think much of it, many call this indifferent nature.
to keep her out of the house” (138). The sexist and racist attitudes of that era, in addition to the idolized Kurtz’s savage behaviour towards the Africans, amplify the anomaly of an African woman instilling fear into colonial white men. Conrad establishes the influence that women can have, as it clearly contrasts Hardy’s insinuation of the powerless nature of females when compared to men. While both novels show women embodying traditional male roles and characteristics, the chivalric trait of honour in a woman is most prominent in Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
In the entire novel Hardy has highlighted his sympathy for lower class people of England society, particularly for rural women there is a considerable amount of controversy about the life of a women who was being exploited by the society and her purity and chastity is questioned upon throughout the novel. He became famous for his empathetic and often controversial portrayal of a younger women who became the victim by the superior rigidity of English society and his most famous depiction of such a young woman is in the novel. In the nineteenth-century society, there were two types of women: Bad women and good women. Good women were seen as pure and clean until they get married and their bodies were seen as pure as that of a goddess in a temple that could not be used for pleasure. Their role was to have children and take care of the house. Any woman who did not fulfill these expectations was dergraded by the society. While the Victorian society regarded Tess as a woman who has lost her innocence, Hardy seems to be representing her as a pure woman who being a young girl became a
toy car in his hand, he will hit it against places and throw it around
Feeling Sympathy for Tess in Tess of the D'Urbervilles I think that throughout the novel Thomas Hardy uses many different techniques that lead his readers to feel sympathy for Tess. Through reading Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' I have realised that it is. invaluable that the readers of any novel sympathise with and feel compassion for the main character. In writing 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' Thomas Hardy is very successful in grabbing the win.
In Thomas Hardy?s novel Tess of the d?Urbervilles, Hardy accurately exemplifies the injustice of life, along with the effects of misplaced blame through his use of diction and imagery. It is a well-known that life is not fair. It is also quite common that blame for this unfairness is pinned on the wrong subjects, an act which is unfair as well. Whether one is blaming himself, another or a superior power for said injustices, blame is not always given where it is due.
Tess, the protagonist and heroine of Hardy's novel, becomes a victim of rape and in turn, her life grows to become degraded, humiliating and depressing; of which none of these things she deserves. Although initially striving to be heroic and providing for her family, (after she was responsible for the death of Prince) the position she takes on at the d'Urbervilles' ultimately leads to her death as she is raped and then pursued by her seducer Alec d'Urberville until she must murder him. This courageous yet dangerous decision to murder Alec epitomises her character as a heroine as she is brave enough to perform such a malicious act in order to kill her suffering at the root rather than being passive and perhaps choosing to take her own life instead.
Tess Being a Victim of Fate in Tess of the D'Urbervilles “The president of the Immortals had done his sport with Tess” In his novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy expresses his dissatisfaction, weariness, and an overwhelming sense of injustice at the cruelty of ‘our’ universal fate disappointment and disillusionment. Hardy puts out an argument that the hopes and desires of Men are cruelly saddened by a strong combination of fate, unwanted accidents, mistakes and many sad flaws. Although Tess is strong willed and is clearly educated emotionally and mentally she soon becomes a victim of ‘fate’. Many people would say that Tess was just unlucky, “Had a stroke of bad luck,” others would prefer to differ and argue that she has fallen into fates hands.
The Victorian Age was a virtuous era, full of chaste women and hard-working men. As with any seemingly utopian society, there are the misfits: those who always seem to go against the grain. Hidden in the shadows of towns were bastardized babies and public outcasts. The flourishing literature of the era attacks the societal stereotypes and standards that make for such failures and devastating tragedies. In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy, Tess Durbeyfield's initial loss of innocence brings her down to an insurmountable low, and the victorian society, of which she is a part, dooms her to a horrible fate with its "normal" shunning of her innocent misbehaviors. Tess' rapid downward spiral to her death is caused by the chauvinistic actions of the men in the story, solidified by society's loss of acceptance of Tess based on the actions taken against her, and brought to home by Tess' imminent doom to the rigid ways of the Victorian society.
The tale of Tess of the d'Urbervilles is filled with would-have-beens. Time and again, as Tess's life branches off onto yet another path of sorrows, the narrator emphasizes the sadness of the moment with a would-have-been or an if-only. When her husband, after learning of her past, determines that they must not live together, the narrator mentions a reply to his arguments that "she might have used...promisingly" (245), but she does not, and they part. At their parting, Hardy writes that "if Tess had been artful, had she made a scene, fainted, wept hysterically, in that lonely lane, notwithstanding the fury of fastidiousness with which he was possessed, he would probably not have withstood her" (255). But owing to a combination of pride and a long-suffering mood, she does not. When the abandoned wife, having fallen on hard times, attempts to seek her father-in-law's help, we are told that "her present condition was precisely one which would have enlisted the sympathies of old Mr. and Mrs. Clare" (304), but measuring the father by his less compassionate sons, she fails to call on him. Angel, having reconsidered her situation while in Brazil, misinterprets the lack of letters from his wife: "How much it really said if he had understood! That she adhered with literal exactness to orders which he had given and forgotten: that despite her natural fearlessness she asserted no rights, admitted his judgement to be in every respect the true one, and bent her head dumbly thereto" (345-46). But he fails to see the true reason of her silence, or he might have returned to her sooner, before it was too late. Angel himself joins the narrator in pronouncing would-have-beens upon the sad events of Tess's life. Hav...
Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy, identifies modern concepts of British culture from the late 18th century onwards. The tragic female heroines of the novels, Tess Durbeyfield and Eustacia Vye, redefine the culture of British society by challenging social constraints and values. Hardy demonstrates the dynamic of sexual power through the significance of the female body and the body as an identity. Additionally, Tess and Eustacia desperately crave freedom, which seems entirely out of reach. Tess longs for the freedom to choose her own lover, yet she knows she is a tragic product of her past.
Hardy’s novels are ultimately permeated upon his own examination of the contemporary world surrounding him, Tess’s life battles are ultimately foreshadowed by the condemnation of her working class background, which is uniquely explored throughout the text. The class struggles of her time are explored throughout her life in Marlott and the preconception of middle class ideals are challenged throughout Hardy’s exploration of the rural class. Tess of the D’Urbervilles revolves around Hardy’s views of Victorian social taboos and continues to be a greatly influential piece from a novelist who did not conform to the Victorian bourgeois standards of literature.
Some regard Hardy’s novels as a representation of Classical/ Aristotelian tragedy (King, 1978; Brooks, 1971; Johnson, 1923), while others regard them as realistic/ Ibsenic tragedy (Spivey, 1954; Lawrence, 1936). These are briefly described below. Johnson (1923) argues that the interpretation of the novels and short narratives as tragedy suggests that Hardy shared the sense of Greek Aristotelian tragedy. He supports his argument that Fate determines the life of Hardy’s tragic characters, and that the tragedy of Tess arouses feelings of pity and fear in us (the role of F...
Clarke, R. (n.d.). The Poetry of Thomas Hardy. rlwclarke. Retrieved February 1, 2014, from http://www.rlwclarke.net/Courses/LITS2002/2008-2009/12AHardy'sPoetry.pdf
The writing career of Thomas Hardy went through many changes. He was a semi fictional English novelist and poet. His most famous novels were; “Desperate Remedies”, “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”, and “Jade the Obscure”. One of his most famous novels was “Far from the Madding. This book talks about a woman and her love life she had with different men. In the beginning a woman named Bathsheba Ever...