Lecture 7 Tess of the D

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Lecture 7 Tess of the DUrbervilles

• A novel is an impression, not an argument.

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Essay writing assignment 2

• To what extent is Tess differentiated from
  stereotypes of the feminine?

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More on Hardys background

• Hardy is a penetrating thinker a philosopher
• A sociologist
• a theorist of love relationships
• And nature poet
• Hardy continued to educate himself through his
  own studyall of his life
• Started reading Shakespeare at 13 years old
• Hardy had no university degree.

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Keep in mind

• Writing convention of the Victorian novel
• virtuous characters (such as Tess)
• who are intended to engage the readers sympathy
  
• Should be represented as
• speaking in standard English.

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In dealing with Tess, given her peasant
background, we get this explanation

• Mrs. Durbeyfield habitually spoke the dialect
  her daughter, who had passed the Sixth Standard
  in the national school under a London-trained
  mistress, spoke two languages the dialect at
  home, more or less ordinary English abroad and
  to persons of quality.

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Focus of Lecture 7

• Note some important clarifications
• Structure and critical significance of length of
  Phase the Third, The Rally
• Characteristic Concerns and Issues
• Representation of Tess as a Woman
• Nodal Incidents (Seeing Connections)
• Refer to last weeks GP Lecture on Gender

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The Narrative Trajectory

• The central drive of its plot of its narrative
  framework of its narrative pattern?
• Its narrative system or method?
• Hardys large use of the accidental and the
  coincidental drive the plot forward
• The narrative system of the novel is the system
  of its narrated episodes involving
• A series of accidents and coincidents

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Free enough but not totally free

• Hardy recognizes a very strong element of
  determinism in human existence
• His characters are not fully free
• But they are free enough
• Free enough to recognize and make real,
  significant choices (though not totally free)
• Free enough to make mistakes, or to struggle to
  make their lives whole and unified

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Next Structure and Length of Phase 3

• The portion of the novel set in Talbothays is
  noticeably quite long
• We recall this is the part of the novel that
  details the happiest time of Tesss life
• Designed this way for what intended effect?
• So that the later very unpleasant Phases have a
  much higher shock and tragic impact
• When contrasted with Phase the Third

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Characteristic central concerns

• An attack on Victorian Christian moralism in
  relation to sexuality
• The Victorian cult of chastity
• Hardy stresses repeatedly that Tesss behaviour
  was in consort with Nature
• It is Victorian society that is out of sync with
  the world
• The dominant class and class conflict issues
• The struggle for existence directed by an
  indifferent nature and human suffering and
  mortality
• Heredity and Ancestral Destiny
• The passing away of a way of life from field
  to ville

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Characteristic Concerns

• Religious belief and religious hypocrisy
• Economic materialism and economic repression
• Economics of sexual relationships between classes
• Pleasures of Country solitude and outdoor life
  in Nature vs. modern town life
• Tradition (rural values) vs Technological
  Progress (Farm hands vs Farm machines)
• Value of Intellectual Liberty (as symbolized in
  Angel)

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• Throughout the novel Hardy suggests that Tess is
  a part of Nature
• And though society may judge her to have fallen
  
• Nature cannot.
• She has been condemned
• under an arbitrary law of society which had no
  foundation in Nature.

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Degeneration in Family Descent

• Tesss weakness, her dreaminess
• Depicted in the journey to the market (Ch 4)
• Also at Talbothays dairy when she she tells
  Dairy-man Crick how our souls can be made to go
  outside our bodies when we are alive (Chapter
  18)
• This dreamy unreality in Tess is not a mere odd
  aspect of her character
• It results from her heredity it is even
  reflected in both her parents

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Ancestral Destiny (link to determinism)

• Hardy appears to be at pains to emphasize that
  among country folk
• Degeneration of an old stock is common
• And in Tesss family line, (genealogical tree)
• The stock is in decline
• From the once powerful, ancient and knightly
  family of DUrbervilles
• To the heavily handicapped Durbeyfields

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Angel theorizes about ancestral destiny

• Angel tells Tess of the legend that some
  DUrberville of 16th / 17th century committed a
  dreadful crime
• Tess later learns that it concerned a murder,
  committed by one of the family, centuries ago
• On their wedding night, Angel takes Tess to one
  of her familys dilapidated mansions

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• There she sees a portrait gallery of her
  ancestors with treacherous narrow eyes and large
  teeth
• Angel, after learning of her rape, charges
• decrepit families imply decrepit wills
• And accuses Tess of being
• the belated seedling of an effete aristocracy
• After learning that she killed Alec, Angel
  wonders
• what obscure strain in the lt DUrberville
  blood gt led to this aberration

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Representation of Tess as Woman

• Tess is a woman whose life is centered around men
• Hardy has been convicted of chauvinist
  manipulation
• And omission of Tesss lt inner thoughts
  gt
• This is not lt a feminist way gt for a woman to
  be
• It is argued, that Tesss independence of mind on
  matters of religion and sin occurs when she is
  not engaged in a relationship with any man.
  What do you think?
• That once involved, her critical thought
  declines,
• And she puts all her thought into the
  relationship.

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• Tesss wasting of her
• Loyalty to men also happens because of
• The repressive gender ideal of her culture
• (Patriarchal Culture)
• This disables Tess enough
• to make her almost completely dependent on these
  men for any sense of self.
• She suffers from this dependency.

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A primal value Stand by your Mana womans
loyalty to her man

• Tess as a woman is endowed with great capacities
  for not only centering her life on men
• But in the case of Angel,
  of devoting her self to a man like Angel
• It is possible to affirm that in women-men
  relations, a womans loyalty to her man
• Is one of lifes greatest (natural) gifts

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• It may then be argued
• That Tess as a novel,
  (Tess)
• Is powerfully suggesting that such a capacity
  does exist
• And even that it is a primal value in
  womanhood in Nature
• This no doubt offends contemporary Sexual /
  Feminist perspectives and politics

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Textual evidence

• In the novel
• Tesss loyalty to Angel, including intellectual
  loyalty, loyalty even to his infidel beliefs
• Is carried to such an extent that it becomes
• Suffocating? Self-destructive?
• Pathological?
• Sickening?
• Soul-destroying?

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Moving on More about Phase the Third

• Tess had never in her recent life been so happy
  as she was now,
• possibly never would be so happy again.
• She was, for one thing, physically and
  mentally suited among these new surroundings.
  Chapter 20
• The landscape is one of fertility, of surplus, of
  promises of animal and human contentment.

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Tesss growth Both intellectual and emotional

• Almost at a leap Tess thus changed from simple
  girl to complex woman. Symbols of reflectiveness
  passed into her face, and a note of tragedy at
  times into her voice. Her eyes grew larger and
  more eloquent. She became what would have been
  called a fine creature her aspect was fair and
  arresting her soul that of a woman whom the
  turbulent experiences of the last year or two had
  quite failed to demoralize.

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• The germination of a new springtime
• was almost audible in the buds it moved her as
  it moved the wild animals, and made her
  passionate to go.
• Notice how Tesss recovery is placed in the
  context of animal life
• Within the world of Nature

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Tess and Angel

• One may argue the love that develops between Tess
  and Angel is sexual
• The Nature in which it occurs is the combined
  action of landscape, agriculture, inclusive
  of farm animals, and weather
• All these are symbolically suggestive of this
• What a fresh and virginal daughter of Nature
• The overwhelming impetus of the Talbothays Dairy
  section is towards the positive expression of
  sexual desire as the natural and essential way
  of being human.

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• This is not to deny their courtship is infused
  and undermined by customs of sexual regulation
  and control
• But that they still had feelings that break free
  from such constrictions and constructions
• This experience creates a tension felt against
  the Natural
• The resistance to Nature creates frustration and
  tension

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Note Natural (Animal) Imagery Potential for
loss of personality

• Tess is repeatedly compared to animals birds,
  cats, snakes, a leopard, a fly
• Tess is persistently engulfed by the vegetation
  of the natural world she inhabits
• a field man is a personality afield a
  field-woman is a portion of the field she has
  somehow lost her own margin, imbibed the essence
  of her surrounding, and assimilated herself
  within it. Chapter 14, Phase 2

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Angel - Tess

• Angels doubts about marrying a woman who is
  beneath him in class
• His fearful self-control
• All these provide a feeling of resistance
• But all, except his self-control are swept away
  finally
• By the power of sex within Nature which
• dominates this whole section of the novel