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Tess of the d'Urbervilles

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Title: Tess of the d'Urbervilles


1
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
  • Introduction
  • October 2007

2
The Victorian Period in literature
  • Victorian literature is the literature produced
    during the reign of Queen Victoria (18371901)
    and corresponds to the Victorian era.
  • It forms a link and transition between the
    writers of the Romantic period and the dissimilar
    literature of the 20th century.
  • A great deal of change occurred during this
    period (brought about because of the Industrial
    Revolution) so it is not surprising that the
    literature is often concerned with social reform

3
Victorian Authors
  • Significant Victorian novelists and poets
    include the Brontë sisters, (Anne, Emily and
    Charlotte Brontë), Robert Browning, Elizabeth
    Barrett Browning, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens,
    Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis
    Stevenson, Bram Stoker, William Thackeray, and
    Oscar Wilde.

4
Style of the Victorian Novel
  • Influenced by the large sprawling novels of
    sensibility of the preceding age
  • tended to be idealized portraits of difficult
    lives in which hard work, perseverance, love and
    luck win in the end
  • virtue would be rewarded and wrong-doers are
    punished.
  • tended to be of an improving nature with a
    central moral lesson at heart, informing the
    reader how to be a good Victorian.

5
Victorian Compromise
  • the literature from this period demonstrates a
    duality, or double standard, between the concerns
    for the individual (the exploitation and
    corruption both at home and abroad) and national
    success
  • Often referred to as the Victorian Compromise.
  • Connection to other double standard?

6
Thomas Hardy
  • Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
  • English poet and novelist famous for his
    depictions of the imaginary county "Wessex"
  • Hardy's work reflected a sense of tragedy in
    human life.

7
American vs. British
  • English novelists (Jane Austen, Charles Dickens,
    William Thackeray) lived in a complex,
    well-articulated, traditional society and shared
    with their readers attitudes that informed their
    realistic fiction.
  • American novelists were faced with a history of
    strife and revolution, a geography of vast
    wilderness, and a fluid and relatively classless
    democratic society. American novels frequently
    reveal a revolutionary absence of tradition.

8
American Novels
  • America was, in relative terms, a young country
    with little to no tradition
  • American novelists, like Hawthorne, had to depend
    on his or her own devices.
  • America was, in part, an undefined, constantly
    moving frontier populated by immigrants speaking
    foreign languages and following strange and crude
    ways of life.

9
The American Protagonist
  • The main character in American literature might
    find himself alone among cannibal tribes, or
    exploring a wilderness, or witnessing lonely
    visions from the grave, or meeting the devil
    walking in the forest.
  • Virtually all the great American protagonists
    have been loners. The democratic American
    individual had to invent himself.

10
English Novels
  • England was rich with tradition and a
    long-established social structure based in the
    highest class (the aristocracy) down to the
    working class and the lowest classes

11
the English protagonist
  • Many English novels show a poor main character
    rising on the economic and social ladder
  • perhaps because of a good marriage or the
    discovery of a hidden aristocratic past.
  • this does not challenge the aristocratic social
    structure of England, it confirms it.
  • The rise of the main character satisfies the wish
    fulfillment of the mainly middle-class readers

12
Pessimism vs. Meliorism?
  • Is Hardy, the author of Tess, a pessimist or a
    meliorist?
  • As readers we will determine this and try to
    prove our standpoint via rich textual analysis.

13
Pessimism
  • from the Latin pessimus (worst)
  • a belief that the experienced world is the worst
    possible.
  • a general belief that things are bad and tend to
    become worse.
  • A common conundrum does one regard a given glass
    of water as "Is the glass half empty or half
    full?" Conventional wisdom expects optimists to
    reply with half full and pessimists to respond
    with half empty.

14
Meliorism
  • From Latin melior (better)
  • Belief that the universe is becoming
    progressively better
  • Social Meliorism believes that by educating the
    people about the condition of the world, the
    people will be inspired to change the worlds
    injustices
  • Via artwork, literature, performance, etc.

15
Pessimist or Meliorist?
  • Some readers have called Hardy a pessimist,
    someone who believes that humans are doomed to
    lives of misery.
  • Hardy considered himself a meliorist, someone who
    believes that conditions can be improved and who
    therefore writes about social problems in order
    to expose them for correction.
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