Tess of the D

1
Tess of the DUrbervilles

• Phase the Fifth The Woman Pays

2
A Woman Telling Her Story

• The story of Jack Dollop told by Dairyman Crick
  (p.134 p.179) ? parallels Tesss experience ?
  shows the range of conventional attitudes towards
  sexual morality and marriage
• Presented from Tesss perspective this
  question of a woman telling her story was the
  heaviest of crosses to herself (p.180)
• What are the consequences when Tess and Angel
  tell their stories?

3
A Woman Telling Her Story

• To tell ones story, as conventionally
  understood, is to take control over the
  interpretation of history ? to have the power to
  give voice to and shape how others perceive ones
  experience
• Tesss story ? shows the importance of how the
  story is received
• Women ? lack the power to control the reception
  of their stories
• The power to interpret and assign meaning is seen
  to be the mans prerogative

4
A Woman Telling Her Story

• Contrast between Angels and Tesss confessions ?
  emphasised by the parallels in their experiences
  (He seemed to be her double, p.224)
• Foregrounds the patriarchal value system that
  privileges the male voice while rejecting the
  womans
• Seen in the interruptions and silencings of
  Tesss attempts to tell all her history (p.200)
  ? due to her own failure of courage Angels
  idealising assumption that she has no history
  worth telling
• Significance of the narrative effacement of
  Tesss story?

5
A Woman Telling Her Story

• Interruptions and delays to Tesss confession ?
  creates suspense that is further heightened
  through Hardys handling of mood and atmosphere
• The consequence of Tesss confession ? depicted
  in images of apocalypse, death, dissolution

6
A Woman Telling Her Story Images of apocalypse

• Contrasting Biblical allusions to the apocalyptic
  nature of Tesss confession, and the Edenic bliss
  of their courtship at Talbothays
• Emphasise the enormity of the breach in
  relationship in terms that many of Hardys
  Victorian readers would have understood as sacred
  and inviolable
• Asserts the importance of this poor milkmaids
  story in terms that assign it a value equivalent
  to that of Scripture

7
A Woman Telling Her Story Images of apocalypse

• Their hands were still joined. The ashes under
  the grate were lit by the fire vertically, like a
  torrid waste. Her imagination beheld a Last Day
  luridness in this red-coaled glow, which fell on
  his face and hand, and on hers, peering into the
  loose hair about her brow, and firing the
  delicate skin underneath. She bent forward, at
  which each diamond on her neck gave a sinister
  wink like a toads (p

8
A Woman Telling Her Story Images of apocalypse

• The external world is presented as being coloured
  by subjective experience a technique that
  anticipates the Modernism of early 20th century
  writers like Lawrence
• Grotesque prefiguration of the Last Judgement ?
  Tesss confession likened to a final reckoning of
  sin before God
• Builds on Hardys earlier characterisation of her
  idealisation of Angel
• p.213 the condition of exaltation she feels
  just immediately after their wedding wherein
  she felt glorified by an irradiation not her own,
  like the Angel whom St John saw in the sun
• p.214 She tried to pray to God, but it was her
  husband who really had her supplication.

9
A Woman Telling Her Story Images of apocalypse

• Apocalyptic, hellish atmosphere ? highly visual
  use of colour, light and shadow
• red-coaled glow, blood-coloured light (p.223)
  ? builds on colour symbolism elsewhere in the
  novel, symbolically expresses the horror and
  psychic violence of the disclosure
• ashes ? signify the death of love
• toads ? suggest an evil supernatural presence
  likens Tess to a witch, and the jewellery to her
  familiars
• impish, demoniacally funny fire (p.227) ?
  develops the sense of hellish irony

10
A Woman Telling Her Story Images of apocalypse

• Comparison
• Recall the images of Creation and Apocalypse in
  Lawrence. What similarities and differences do
  you see between Hardys and Lawrencess use of
  these Biblical allusions? How do these images
  affect our understanding of the 2 writers views
  of love and life?
• NB
• Lawrences entire worldview, as expressed most
  clearly through Birkin, is essentially
  apocalyptic. Hardy, though expressing similar
  views on the blighted nature of the universe,
  only uses apocalyptic imagery to colour the
  atmosphere of the confession scene.

11
A Woman Telling Her Story Images of death

• The death of their relationship is accompanied by
  images of spiritual death and paralysis
• Numbness and shock ? expressed using words like
  vacant, stupor, blankness
• The images of death find their ultimate
  expression in the sleepwalking scene, in which
  Angel, dreaming that Tess is dead, lays her in a
  tomb in an Abbey

12
A Woman Telling Her Story Images of death

• Parallels between the aftermath of the confession
  and the death of Prince
• Used in symbolically suggestive ways rather than
  as an argument for a direct parallel between the
  2 events
• Tess is likened to a wounded animal which is
  about to die
• The round little hole of Tesss formerly
  sensual mouth recalls the hole in Princes
  chest Tess kneels crouched in a heap at
  Angels feet, just as Prince sank down in a heap

13
A Woman Telling Her Story Images of death

• It is also Tesss Prince (Angel) whose love
  dies a metaphorical death, and as in the first
  instance, this death of Tesss hopes eventually
  leads to her back to Alecs promise of financial
  provision
• The whiteness of Tesss features in both
  incidents ? Tesss shock at the loss of Prince /
  Angel. Complicates the usual meanings assigned to
  the colour white (purity, chastity).

14
A Woman Telling Her Story Images of death

• Comparison
• Consider Lawrences use of images of death in
  WIL eg. the lovemaking scene between Gudrun and
  Gerald, Geralds death in the snow and as a
  counterpoint, Birkin seeing Ursula as his
  resurrection and his life.
• How do Lawrence and Hardy use images of life and
  death in their considerations of love, and what
  do their separate treatments of the topic show
  about their respective views of love and
  relationships?

15
A Woman Telling Her Story The sleepwalking
scene

• Sleepwalking scene ? shows a tension between
  Angels willed, conscious response and his
  unconscious response to Tesss confession
• Begins the process of the fracturing of the self
  that continues during Angels stay in Brazil, and
  results in his readiness to accept Tess upon his
  return to England
• Here, however, Angel remains unaware of his
  continued love for Tess

16
A Woman Telling Her Story The sleepwalking
scene

• Written from Tesss perspective
• Melodramatically develops the Gothic elements
  which were first introduced in the confession
  scene, but pushes them past the limits of
  ordinary credibility
• One of Hardys disproportionings in which he
  stretches the limits of realism to allow the
  articulation of larger artistic truths
• - Tesss total assimilation of societys
  patriarchal values
• - Tesss purity of character
• - the dissolution of Tess and Angels
  relationship
• - the power of the unconscious

17
A Woman Telling Her Story The sleepwalking
scene

• So easefully had she delivered her whole being up
  to him that it pleased her to think he was
  regarding her as his absolute possession, to
  dispose of as he should choose. It was consoling,
  under the hovering terror of tomorrows
  separation, to feel that he really recognised her
  now as his wife Tess, and did not cast her off,
  even if in that recognition he went so far as to
  arrogate to himself the right of harming her.
  (p.248)
• Tesss total acceptance of patriarchal values ?
  partly conditioned by class differences
• Seen in her willingness to subjugate herself to
  Angel, even to the point of being willing to die
  at his hands.

18
A Woman Telling Her Story The sleepwalking
scene

• There was, it is true, underneath, a back current
  of sympathy through which a woman of the world
  might have conquered him. But Tess did not think
  of this she took everything as her deserts, an
  hardly opened her mouth. (p.241)
• If Tess had been artful, had she made a scene,
  fainted, wept hysterically, in that lonely lane
  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. (p.253)

19
A Woman Telling Her Story The sleepwalking
scene

• Foregrounds Tesss purity of motive
• Her refusal to take advantage of others weakness
  demonstrates an ethical integrity that both
  elevates her to heroic stature, as well as
  precipitates her tragedy
• Tragic waste Angel did not know that he loved
  her still (p.254)
• Use of subjunctives ? if, might have
  Hardys strategy of raising possibilities only to
  deny them ? heightens the sense of loss and
  disappointment
• Reiterated narrative assertions that if Tess were
  more capable of what she sees as ethical
  compromise, the disaster might have been avoided

20
A Woman Telling Her Story The sleepwalking
scene

• Highlights the resources available to women in
  the context of a patriarchal society their
  bodies, and emotional manipulation
• Ironically points to the powerlessness of women ?
  the only form of power they can exercise is
  acquired through sly, devious means

21
A Woman Telling Her Story The sleepwalking
scene

• The swift stream raced and gyrated under them,
  tossing, distorting, and splitting the moons
  reflected face. Spots of froth travelled past and
  intercepted weeds waved behind the piles. If they
  could both fall together into the current now
  (p.249)

22
A Woman Telling Her Story The sleepwalking
scene

• Water imagery developed to reflect Tess and
  Angels fractured relationship and also the power
  of the unconscious
• Nature is portrayed as a destructive force,
  acting even against itself (the river currents
  splitting the reflection of the moon)
• The troubled undercurrents in Tess and Angels
  relationship are now surfaced in their
  destructive entirety, threatening to fracture
  their sense of self as well as their relationship

23
A Woman Telling Her Story The sleepwalking
scene

• Comparison
• How does Lawrences exploration of the
  unconscious develop Hardys treatment? What
  images (including water images) does Lawrence
  use, and with what effect?