Tess - Class Notes

Thomas Hardy
Tess of the DUrbervilles
Origins
A serial form titled Too Late Beloved was
rejected
A censored version was published in the
Graphic in July 1891
The original title of the novel was A
Daughter of the DUrbervilles (March 1890
in the USA)
The final title was Tess of the
D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully

Presented. (1891)
Themes
Country vs town
Industrialisation
Men and women
Christianity and older ways
Sexual mores
Ancestry and class
Purity and goodness
The sub-title
Inserted:
"at the last moment, after reading the final
proofs, as being the estimate left in a
candid mind of the heroine's character
an estimate nobody would be likely to
dispute. It was more disputed than
anything else in the book."
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, ed. Scott Elledge, 3rd edition. New York: WW
Norton, 1991, p. xii.
Tess
A Wessex Eve
Strongly associated with natural abundance and
fecundity
Leads a procession in honour of the harvest
which is a mixture of pagan and Christian
A pure woman
Pure woman
Passive victim? Seductress? Victim of beauty?
Ellen Rooney on Tess

While rape entails the unambiguous violence
that would guarantee Tess's purity, seduction
defines the less pure space of complicity,
desire, and reading [.] Ultimately, the meaning
of purity hinges on the relation between
seduction and rape. Hardy, cannot clarify this
relation because he cannot represent Tess as a
desiring or speaking subject.
'A Little More than Persuading': Tess and the Subject of Sexual Violence," in Rape
and Representation, eds Lynn A. Higgins and Brenda Silver. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1991, p.96
The one vol edn of Tess (1892)

Conversation between two women farm
workers:
"A little more than persuading had to do wi'
the coming o't, I reckon. There were they
that heard a sobbing one night last year in
the Chase and it might ha' gone hard wi' a
certain party if folks had come along.
Well, a little more, or a little less, 'twas a
thousand pities it should have happened
to she, of all others." (pp. 70-71)
The serialised version

Tess to her mother:
He made love to me, as you said he would do; and he
asked me to marry him, also just as you declared he
would. I never have liked him; but at last I agreed,
knowing you'd be angry, if I didn't. He said, it must be
private even from you, on account of his mother; and by
special license; and foolish I agreed to that likewise, to
get rid of his pestering. I drove with him to Melchester,
and there in a private room I went through the form of
marriage with him as before a registrar. A few weeks
after, I found out that it was not the registrar's house we
had gone to, as I had supposed, but the house of a
friend of his, who had played the part of the registrar. I
then came away from Trantridge instantly, though he
wished me to stay, and here I am.
Hardys comment
He regretted inserting:
"a mock marriage . . . for the seduction
pure & simple of the original MS. which
I did for the sake of the Young Girl. The
true reading will be restored in the
volumes."
Letter to Thomas Macquoid (29 October 1891) in The Collected Letters of Thomas
Hardy, eds Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate, 7 vols. Oxford: Clarendon
Press,1978-88, 1 245-46.
Later edition
She had never wholly cared for him [Alec], she
did not care for him now. She had dreaded him,
winced before him, succumbed to adroit
advantages he took of her helplessness; then,
temporarily blinded by his ardent manners, had
been stirred to confused surrender awhile: had
suddenly despised and disliked him, and had
run away. That was all. Hate him she did not
quite; but he was dust and ashes to her, and
even for her name's sake she scarcely wished to
marry him. (p. 64).
Angel Clare
Middle-class and educated

Anglican family
Sexual double standards?
Entirely wrong?
Vindicated?
Alec DUrberville
New money?
Hypocrite?
Rapist?
Preacher?
A Miltonic satanic tempter?
Does he get just deserts?
Whose fault?
Where does it begin?

Sir John?
The horse?
The vicar?
Mrs Durbeyfield?
Tess and Alec?
Tess and Angel?
Coincidence
The letter
Fate
Is Tess:
Punished for crimes and flaws of earlier
generations? [her mailed ancestors [who] rollicking home from a fray had dealt
the same measure even more ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time (Tess, p. 57)].
Punished for her own flaws?

A victim of social convention?
Pre-destined to suffer?
More Milton
Tess baby is named Sorrow.
Thy sorrow I will greatly multiply
By thy conception; children thou shalt
bring
In sorrow forth. . . . (Paradise Lost 10.19395)

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Thomas Hardy

Tess of the DUrbervilles

D'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully

Ellen Rooney on Tess

The one vol edn of Tess (1892)

The serialised version

Middle-class and educated

Where does it begin?

Punished for her own flaws?

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