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.
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.
toy car in his hand, he will hit it against places and throw it around
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.
At the conclusion of each work the protagonist reaches a realization of her/his actions and accepts the responsibility for the consequences. In the novel, Tess realizes how D'Urberville abuses her and the importance of Angel Clare, her husband, and therefore murders D'Urberville and begs Clare to accept her into his life again: "I could not bear the loss of you any longer- you don't know how entirely I was unable to bear your not loving me!" Tess accepts the consequences for her actions and accepts her execution: "it was as is should be.
Tess' two "choices" as her husband, Alec d'Urberville and Angel Clare, hold many of the patriarchal stereotypes of the Victorian Age, chasing Tess as more of a metaphorical piece of meat than a passionate lover. As their secrets are revealed on their wedding night, it becomes harder and harder for Angel to love Tess, seeing her as "another woman in your shape" (Hardy 192). The author, at this point in the relationship between Tess and Angel, perfectly exemplifies the values and culture of the Victorian age. Though both Angel and Tess are guilty of the same misbehaviors in their pasts, Angel believes that "forgiveness does not apply to [Tess'] case" (Hardy 191). Under the reign of Queen Victoria, the role of men in sexual relations was strictly reproductive, and the sex act was considered a release of helpless energies, basically holding no sins of love or conjugal travesties. For women, however, it was a softer, more passionate act, meaning more of the love than the fertilization, and emotionally pulling the sex partner too close to just scoff the happening off and move on with life (Lee 1). Such conflicting views in the perspective of sexual intercourse make it nearly impossible for Angel to "forgive [Tess] as you are forgiven! I forgive you, Angel" (Hardy 191). Jeremy Ross also believes that Hardy "abandoned his devout faith in God, based on the scientific advances of his contemporaries" (Ross, Jeremy 1).
Tess's natural side wins over, but she is then set up for a bitter end because she abdicates herself to Angel's moral indignation, blind to her own natural goodness. This is the tragedy of the text. Because the two sides of the "social chasm that [divide] our heroine's personality" cannot be brought into accord, Tess must lose everything. The Talbothay period shows what a happy community might look like - what her life might have been were it not for the albatross of shame. Talbothay is a shiny foil for the social brutality present in every other phase of Tess's short life.
...cept her. ?Unadvisable? gives the impression that Angel does not really care one way or another. All of this is unfair to Tess, as Alec?s decision to rape her was not her fault in any way. Also, Angel?s sexual history is more promiscuous than Tess?s, and yet he sees only her flaws. Hardy uses specific word choices and diction to thoroughly inform the reader of the injustice of Tess?s circumstances.
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
... Tess stands out because of her exquisitely charming beauty, and Eustacia is condemned for her seductive nature. Only those women who subscribe to societal standards seem to both metaphorically and literally survive. Perhaps Tess and Eustacia were fated for their tragic ending. Hardy leaves room for the reader to interpret what may have happened had they attempted to change their paths.
However her constant bad luck caused her to make bad judgements which then caused us the readers to believe it is fate. To conclude Tess’s innocent and beauty proved to do her no good and she was also unaware of her sexuality. Her lack of common knowledge and wanting from her also made her susceptible to other men.
Outside of their respective classes - Angel Clare being that of a wealthier class and Tess Durbeyfield being that of a lower class - they find happiness independently and as a pair by defying societal standards. The very beginning of the novel, for instance, introduces a young Angel Clare who strays from his journey with his brothers to join in a dance with some country girls. In Angel’s initial description, Hardy states that “the appearance of the third and youngest would hardly have been sufficient to characterize him; there was an uncribbed, uncabined aspect in his eyes and attire, implying that he had hardly as yet found the entrance to his professional groove. That he was a desultory tentative student of something and everything might have only been predicted of him.”
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.
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...
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...
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...