Analysis of Tess of D'urbervilles - Chapter 16

659 Words2 Pages

The chapter I am presenting is Chapter 16, the first chapter of Phase the Third of Thomas Hardy's Tess of d'Urbervilles. This phase of the text or rather this phase of Tess's life, as Hardy would prefer to say, is unerringly named The Rally. Acco. to the Oxford dictionary the word rally means..... The meaning speaks for itself. Tess is putting her past behind her to start a new independent life... in other, lighter, words, Tess is preparing for round 2. But before we even get to the point of praising her bravery lets consider this fact... did women in the Victorian era who went through something as humiliating as rape even HAVE a round 2...did life await these women... the only choice of life they had was that of a prostitute or something lower than that. But Hardy seems to have turned this age-old conviction around. The story begins where it was supposed to end. Any other woman in Tess's position i.e., someone who's gone through an abuse and given birth to an illegitimate child would have ended up on the street as a prostitute.She wouldn't still enjoy nature.. she wouldn't praise the good lord for the green trees...no. In the victorian times, her place was the street. She would be depressed, quashed and vanquished. Runover by men and treated like filth by women. But with Tess, this is not the scene. She begins a journey from the villain to the hero, from hell to heaven, as is evident from Hardy's description of the Vale of Great Dairies later. She recovers from the trauma, regains her optimism and is all set to start a new independent life. Hardy creates a job oppurtunity that beckons her. Tess begins her journey southwards. She starts from Vale of Blackmoor, passes through Stourcastle. She then goes southwest and on her way she discerns Kingsbere... the place where the tombs of her ancestors are present. The place where all the rightful d'urbervilles should lay. And the place where Tess's dead child - a true descendent of the d'Urbervilles family - should have been buried. All she can remember of when she looks at that scenery of kingsbere is her child who was burried in that obscure part of a church. She refers to her ancestors as `the useless ancestors'. She didn't admire them anymore. She curses them for the pain they have put her through.

Open Document