Classics and the Western Canon discussion
This topic is about
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
>
Week 5: Chapters 33-37
date
newest »
newest »
Once again, Tess is plagued with a series of coincidences and bad omens that remind her of her past. The Trantridge man at the inn recognizes Tess and insults her. The cock crows on their wedding day foreshadowing doom and gloom and echoing Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth, as well as Peter’s denial of Jesus. The old coach they ride in prompts Angel to refer to the legend of a D’Urberville man who committed murder in a similar coach. And when they get to their new home, Tess is greeted with portraits of D’Urberville women glaring down at her. Does it seem as if poor Tess just can’t catch a break?
Tess pleads with Angel to forgive her after she confesses. Angel claims forgiveness does not apply in her case:“You were one person; now you are another. How can forgiveness meet such a grotesque prestidigitation as that?”
Tess equates her past with Angel’s while Angel sees it very differently. He calls her action “a grotesque prestidigitation.” Prestidigitation means performing a magic trick, a sleight of hand. Why does Angel accuse Tess of tricking him? Did she trick him? Is his reaction to her confession justified? Is there a difference between his “eight-and-forty hours dissipation” with the London woman and Tess’ relationship with Alec?
Despite his freethinking ideas, Angel has completely absorbed the most rigid form of traditional morality, with its egregious double standard. It is destroying his happiness, not to mention Tess's.
I agree. I think Hardy has been foreshadowing Angel's true nature all along. He cuts Tess off every time she tries to tell him her story as if he doesn't want to risk destroying his ideal image of her. This makes it increasingly hard for her to reveal the truth.Angel's dalliance with the London woman is actually greater than Tess’ since his was one of choice whereas hers was forced upon her. He even attacks her for waiting until after they are married to reveal her story when he did exactly the same thing. It's amazing Tess doesn't see what a hypocrite he is. She blames herself, claims she is unworthy of him, offers to drown herself, and suggests divorce before opting to return home.
Love may be blind, but isn't this taking it to an extreme?
I think our modern ideal woman would show more gumption than Tess. But I think we'll agree with Hardy that Tess is more sinned against than sinning.
At this point I feel like Hardy is writing a case study of what would happen if someone takes responsibility themselves for all horrible events that take place in their life. At the start Tess is seen taking care of her own parents who are out drinking. Then she is out delivering the family’s goods since her father is too hung over, she falls asleep and kills the family’s horse which she blames on herself so she gets a job to get a new one. She is then rapped and has a child which falls ill and dies, all of which she blames on herself and so on. It is a lot for anyone person to take on to their self.
I think that the reading this week makes the case for those critics who feel that Tess is too passive. Hardy suggests that there were a number of ways Tess could have stood up for herself, or could have more effectively endeavored to change Angel's mind. She could, for instance, have told Angel about his sleepwalking to give him pause, perhaps to her benefit. Hardy writes, "the many effective chords which she could have stirred by an appeal were left untouched." She needn't have solved his "problem" for him by suggesting ways he could get rid of her; "her mood of long-suffering made his way easy for him, and she herself was his best advocate." Because she feels herself unworthy, she doesn't advocate for herself, for the marriage, or for their love.
And, of course, Tess could have resisted Alec more forcefully, maybe even repelled him, or at least come away with bruises and torn clothes she could show to a judge.
Roger wrote: "And, of course, Tess could have resisted Alec more forcefully, maybe even repelled him, or at least come away with bruises and torn clothes she could show to a judge."There is a huge difference between what happens to Tess in the woods with Alec and the choices she makes with Angel. Alone in the woods with a sexual predator, Tess is helpless. Not even bruises and torn clothes would have convinced a judge—or anyone else—that she is not responsible for her own victimization. And we don’t have to go back to Hardy’s time to know that is true because it still happens to many victims of rape today.
With Angel, she can exercise agency as Gary points out. She has had opportunities to assert herself with him, but she never goes through with it until his confession. She pleads for forgiveness during her confession, reminds him she was a child when she was violated and “knew nothing of men.” Angel admits she was more “sinned against than sinning,” but he still blames her. The narrator even tells us she has a choice after Angel’s sleepwalking scene:
If Tess had been artful, had 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. But her mood of long-suffering made his way easy for him, and she herself was his best advocate.
As Mike points out above (#7), Hardy seems to be making a study of what happens to someone who takes responsibility for the horrible events in her life. And it is obvious Tess does blame herself for everything that has happened to her. She even tells Angel she is not good enough for him. Why does she believe that?
I think Hardy is demonstrating the deleterious impact society can have on our self-image. Tess believes in her own guilt because she has internalized society’s message that a woman is to be blamed for whatever happens to her. She has moments where she resists believing it, but those moments don’t last. She thinks the man painting Bible messages is accusing her of guilt. Her mother blames her. Her father is ashamed of her. And now Angel blames her. She gets the same message everywhere she turns.
Hardy reminds us repeatedly that Tess is innocent. Tess’ tragedy is she doesn’t believe that about herself. Like all those around her, she engages in victim-blaming, and, in this case, she is the victim. She is a product of her gender socialization. And through Tess, Hardy demonstrates the devastating impact gender socialization can have on our self-image and on the choices we make.
To point out the obvious, it's no accident that the title of our current reading selection, Phase the Fifth, is The Woman Pays.
The night before their separation, Angel sleepwalks into Tess’ room. He announces his wife is dead, kisses her, and declares her to be “So sweet, so good, so true!’ He rolls her in a sheet, carries her across the river, and lays her in an empty stone coffin in the Abbey grounds. He has no recollection of any of this when he wakes up the next day. What are we to make of this bizarre scene? Is it significant Angel declares his love for Tess and her innocence while asleep but has no recollection of the incident when he wakes?
Tamara wrote: "What are we to make of this bizarre scene? Is it significant Angel declares his love for Tess and her innocence while asleep but has no recollection of the incident when he wakes?"Bizarre indeed. I was puzzled by this for some time, but came to the conclusion that Hardy uses this scene to echo and extend Angel's feeling that the Tess he knew or thought he knew had changed forever into someone else whom he could not love. Wrapping her in a shroud, solemnly carrying her to the abby, and placing her in a coffin, Angel acts out that she—the Tess he loved —is dead to him. The love he expresses for Tess and her innocence is for the women who no longer exists for him.
Gary wrote: "Wrapping her in a shroud, solemnly carrying her to the abby yard and placing her in a coffin, Angel acts out that she—the Tess he loved —is dead to him...."I agree. I think the scene demonstrates that the Tess he once loved is dead to him.
But I’m also wondering why his gentler and more compassionate nature emerges only when he is asleep. Maybe it is that society’s rigid dictates are unable penetrate his thoughts when he is asleep, thereby allowing his love for Tess and sympathy for her plight to surface. But when he is awake, he is conscious of society’s dictates and allows them to suppress his natural instinct for compassion.
I'm not sure if that makes sense.
This is an opportune time to look at Angel's and Tess's love. I suggest that both are in love with exaggerated ideas about the other person that are not much grounded in reality. Angel's love is enthusiastic but shallow. He is in love with the idea of Tess's rustic simplicity, innocence, and purity, and of course her beauty. When he learns she is not completely simple and pure, that she has a history, both his shallow love and he flee.
Tess's love is reticent but deep. Tess resists falling in love and even when in love believes herself unworthy. Yet once in love she is overwhelmed by it. Angel is her sun and moon, her everything. The question of whether or not he is deserving is irrelevant. Her loyalty and love for the man is unquestioning and unshakable at this point in the novel.
My intellectualization of their love misses something important. Men are drawn to Tess by her beauty, by her sexual attractiveness. There is a strong physical element in Angel's and Tess's relationship, one that Hardy thinks is natural especially among young people. In Chapter 28 we read,
"That she had already permitted him to make love to her he read as an additional assurance, not fully trowing that in the fields and pastures to 'sigh gratis' is by no means disesteemed; love-making being here more often accepted inconsiderately and for its own sweet sake than in the carking, anxious homes of the ambitious, where a girl's craving for an establishment paralyzes her natural thought of a passion as an end."Hardy has a rather jaded view on falling in love. "She [Tess] had bowed to the inevitable result of proximity, the necessity of loving him."
I'd happily be proven wrong, but I think Hardy had a fairly negative view of love whether in or outside of marriage. Sexual love was preordained by nature and all it takes is proximity and physical attraction to awaken. Non-physical love relies on ideas and notions that may be or even seem real, but probably are not.
Gary wrote: "I'd happily be proven wrong, but I think Hardy had a fairly negative view of love whether in or outside of marriage...."There is plenty of evidence to suggest Hardy is critical of the nature of Angel’s love for Tess and of her love for him. Angel loves the ideal image he has conjured up of her and is unable to reconcile the ideal with the real Tess. And Tess is overwhelmed by her love for him to such a degree she thinks he can do no wrong. Hardy describes it as, “she swerved to excess of honor for Clare.”
Hardy’s criticism of the nature of their love suggest he doesn’t subscribe to it, that he holds it up as an unhealthy example of love. It’s true he doesn’t present us with an alternative, healthy love relationship in the novel, one that is grounded in reality and based on mutual understanding and respect. But to conclude from that he is cynical about love or that he doesn’t believe a healthy love relationship can exist is a bit of stretch.
We simply don’t know what his personal views are about love. And we can’t determine what his personal views are based on a work of fiction. The only thing we know for sure is he is critical of the nature of Angel’s love for Tess and of her love for him. That he is showing us a blueprint of what love shouldn’t be suggests he is aware there are healthier alternatives out there for what love should be.
You’re right. I think I was emotionally caught up in the current bleakness of Tess’ and Angel’s relationship that I pushed it to a generalization that wasn’t justified if based only on a partial read of Tess.
Gary wrote: "You’re right. I think I was emotionally caught up in the current bleakness of Tess’ and Angel’s relationship that I pushed it to a generalization that wasn’t justified if based only on a partial re..."No worries :)
Alec seems to accept some measure of responsibility for his actions when he and Tess separate. He apologizes for hurting her and admits he wronged her. He promises not to hurt her, again, and assures her if she ever needs anything, she can write to him and you shall have by return whatever you require. Tess adamantly refuses his offer: I have said I will not take anything more from you, and I will not—I cannot!
By contrast, when Angel and Tess separate, he gives her strict instructions not to contact him unless it is an emergency. He assures her he will contact her if and when he can bring himself to “bear it.” He says,
But until I come to you, it will be better that you should not try to come to me.
He gives her a packet of money before she departs. Tess’ reaction:
I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only—only—don’t make it more than I can bear!
Of the two, who treats Tess with greater compassion and decency? What does her reaction reveal about herself?
It's Tess who leaves Alec, but Angel leaves Tess. I suppose Alec does about all he can for Tess, short of marrying her. Which of course is what he should do, by the mores of the time.
I have zero time for Alec. His speech is basically a 19th century, "Sorry Tess, my bad." He doesn't offer to marry her. At most he's offering her money, which is what Angel gives her too.Although it's easy to hate Angel, my feeling is that Hardy is actually setting up a double tragedy. Tess is wronged by life, Angel is held back by being a good man, also by the wreck that society has made of his values. In both cases I think Hardy's critique is less of the individuals (though that can be made) than of the forces that shape their destructive instincts.
I think this is another case where different versions of the text read a little differently and lead to different conclusions. I'll check when I get home...
I don't see Angel as a good man. He is mentally enslaved to a moral code the basis of which he denies. When he should show compassion and forgiveness, he hypocritically uses this inherited moral code as a bludgeon on poor Tess. He makes her and himself both miserable.
Roger wrote: "I don't see Angel as a good man. He is mentally enslaved to a moral code the basis of which he denies. When he should show compassion and forgiveness, he hypocritically uses this inherited moral co..."I think Hardy would agree with you since he puts these words in Angel's mouth:
I think the parson that unearthed your pedigree would have done better if he had held his tongue. I cannot help associating your decline as a family with this other fact--of your want of firmness. Decrepit families postulate decrepit wills, decrepit conduct . . . Here was I thinking you a new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the exhausted seedling of an effete aristocracy.
He accuses Tess of a "want of firmness," blames her for something she has no control over--her "decrepit" ancestry, and characterizes her as an "exhausted seedling of an effete aristocracy." Ouch!
Those are particularly harsh and cruel words to direct at someone as devoted to him as is Tess. They show Angel to be a hypocrite and totally devoid of compassion.
Sorry, that was a typo of mine. It should read “held back FROM being a good man” not by. I don’t think he’s good, but he clearly had potential to be; he has interesting ideas and looks beyond social class for example. That’s why I see it as his tragedy too…he could be good and also a revolutionary force, but he can’t transcend his absurd moral programming (just as Tess can’t).
But Alec is right that Tess suffers from a lack of firmness.
I think it's more that she believes his judgment of her, as someone else alluded to above. She's quite firm in her convictions. She's firm in her choice to remain perfectly still even when he carries her out across the water. She's firm in her choice to make a clean break and return home.
Emily says of Angel's good qualities that he "looks beyond social class, for example." But he does not. His ideas are constrained by his social class, like the idea that there were at some time in the past "true aristocrats" and "noble families" who declined over generations.
How and why did that happen? He implies that the bloodlines became mixed with those of "inferiors" and degenerated. That's a very stark theory, definitely not his own. It seems more suitable to the ideology of the aristocracy he despised, but which beneath that surface, he admired in its "pure" form.
He is breeding cattle too much.
I wonder what ideas he might have absorbed had he read Jane Austen or been introduced to her social world of the landed gentry 50 years earlier. Or even contemporary society, as in Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence. Perhaps Hardy is sending up that ideal as a critique of the British class system.
[@Emily, BTW, you can edit your own posts to correct them by clicking the "edit" button at the bottom of the post.]
Sam wrote: "Emily says of Angel's good qualities that he "looks beyond social class, for example." But he really does not. His ideas are constrained by his social class, such as the idea that there were at som..."I see it the same way you do, Sam.
Kathy wrote: "I think it's more that she believes his judgment of her, as someone else alluded to above. She's quite firm in her convictions. She's firm in her choice to remain perfectly still even when he carri..."Does that make her firm in her convictions?
She seems to have abdicated all responsibility for herself and has allowed Angel to lead every step of the way. He carries her across water. She allows it not knowing if he is planning to drown them. He tells her cannot live with her. So she obliges by going home. He tells her not to contact him. So she doesn't.
It seems to me the only conviction Tess has is the conviction to allow Angel to define her and to dictate her every move. I guess that is a firm conviction of sorts but not a very healthy one.
I'm curious which edition people are reading. I ask because I read Tess twice in different editions and it had a large effect on how I view Angel. The first time I read the Project Gutenberg file, based on the 1912 text, I believe (Hardy editing for his books to be released as a set). Angel in this has issues but also many redeeming features.
Then I read the 1891 edition (Penguin uses this; it's Hardy's edit from when he was turning the serialized manuscript into a coherent novel). This features the cold, disagreeable Angel I suspect many of you are reading.
My introduction to the Penguin discusses some of the changes, and also proposes a motivation: that the public had criticized Tess as immoral and so Hardy really wanted to insist on his subtitle of "A Pure Woman," at the cost of a "character assassination of Alec and Angel."It adds:
Angel is less likable in the 1891 Tess than in any other edition [there are many, not just the two I mentioned]: he is more priggish, and he reacts more savagely to Tess's confession. ... Hardy introduced changes which rid Clare of his passionate abandon and set him on the path toward Shelleyan 'fastidiousness'... but in 1891 he does not yet have the qualities of self-criticism which temper his stringently moral character. He is the familiar man of heterodoxy here, but not yet the man of 'heterodoxy, faults and weaknesses'. He is the infuriating 'stickler for good morals' except that in 1891 he seems to exempt himself from the impurity he hates in others. [Later] he 'admires spotlessness, even though he could lay no claim to it.'... Many of the revisions to Angel's character ... are clearly meant to endow him with a kind of nobility conspicuously absent from the 1891 Tess. For example, Hardy makes numbers of tiny changes to the pivotal episode in which he reacts to Tess's confession.
I do remember on my second reading having a strong sense of cognitive dissonance... this is not the character I remember.
I find the "bad Angel" of the 1891 edition a bit overly-villainous. And giving him redeeming features renders a more complex reading, and sets up a double tragedy as I mentioned above. Bad Angel reflects badly on both himself and Tess. It's so interesting to me to read about Hardy's changes, especially as there is no "definitive edition."
That's very interesting, Emily. It explains some of the different reactions we're having. Thanks for digging into this.I'm reading the 1891 edition, which portrays Angel in a very negative light.
Tamara wrote: "Kathy wrote: "I think it's more that she believes his judgment of her, as someone else alluded to above. She's quite firm in her convictions. She's firm in her choice to remain perfectly still even..."It's hard to imagine what a different "healthy" choice might be. I think Tess is quite clear on her options, which are extremely limited. She can either accept Angel's reaction to her past and initiate action in response--she is the one who suggests she will go back home; he hasn't thought of that--or she can grovel at his feet and cry and beg him to change his mind, which is not going to change the outcome. In fact, in taking the initiative to move out to the dairy for the season and arriving with her head held high and an optimistic, can-do, start-over spirit, she has already tried to change the outcome once, and now that route has been closed to her.
I really think that Tess's behavior is secondary to the point of this whole drama: the double standard that allows men to get away with behavior that isn't tolerated in women. It continues today. Just check out Taylor Swift's "The Man": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqAJL...
Kathy wrote: "I really think that Tess's behavior is secondary to the point of this whole drama: the double standard that allows men to get away with behavior that isn't tolerated in women..."I agree with you, Kathy. I also think it is about the way young women are socialized to blame themselves for the injustices perpetrated against them. Unfortunately, that, too, continues today.
I saw so much of that when I volunteered at shelters for battered women and at the center for victims of sexual assault. Women of all ages, educational background, and socio-economic status would blame themselves and attempt to justify the abuse and assault they experienced at the hands of men who "loved" them.
Thomas Hardy is impressive for recognizing this, and you can see why the book was considered scandalous. It makes me want to read more of him!
I encourage you to read more of is books, Kathy. He's a great author. I've read several of his novels and they're all socially-oriented.
BTW: Hardy came under such heavy criticism for writing his last novel, Jude the Obscure, that he stopped writing novels and turned to writing poetry.
Emily wrote: "Then I read the 1891 edition ... This features the cold, disagreeable Angel I suspect many of you are reading. I really appreciate your note about this, Emily. I'm reading the 1919 5th Edition (Modern Library) and didn't understand why so many in the group were so hard on Angel. By my lights, I feel sympathy for Angel ... and of course for Tess. Both are living by a set of beliefs, illusions, and conventions that are unrealizable at best and misguided at worst. Of Clare we read, his " love was ethereal to a fault, imaginative to impracticability." Both are rigid in their thinking, and it's fair to attribute this to their upbringing and their youth. They're both good people but will they, indeed can they, learn and grow from their personal tragedy? I'm not very optimistic about this because they are on their own and bound under "a sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in nature." They are, each of them, alone on the moor.
I really appreciated Emily's note as well because I was having a similar reaction to the discussion. It seemed I was more sympathetic to Angel than others were. My edition doesn't clearly state which it is (it's a cheap paperback, the same old copy I read in college), but it does include prefaces to multiple editions, the last one dated 1912.
They get married, but Tess is unsettled. Angel thinks she is upset about the carriage because of a legend about a D’Urberville man who committed a heinous crime in his family coach. They head back to the dairy to say goodbye. The cock crows three times as they depart, which Tess interprets as a bad omen.
They arrive at the D’Urberville farmhouse in Wellbridge. Tess is apprehensive. Again, Angel misunderstands her concern, thinking it’s because their luggage is delayed. Tess receives a package from Angel’s father—jewelry heirlooms from his godmother. Jonathan arrives with their luggage and the news that Retty Priddle had tried to drown herself; Marian is drunk; and Izz is despondent. Tess feels any one of these dairy maids is more deserving than her to be Angel’s wife.
Angel confesses he indulged himself for two days with an older woman while he was in London. He asks Tess to forgive him. Tess does so immediately and now has the courage to reveal her past, assuming he will be equally quick to forgive her. Angel is in disbelief, claiming she is not the same girl with whom he fell in love. Tess alternates between begging for forgiveness, internalizing blame, and defending herself. She even offers to kill herself and suggests divorce, both of which Angel rejects. She suggests returning to her family to which Angel readily agrees. He says he will leave the area, as well.
The night before their separation, Angel sleepwalks. He carries Tess to a nearby abbey and places her in an empty stone coffin. Tess coaxes him back home. He has no recollection of the event the following day when they say their goodbyes and go their separate ways.