Transcript Romance, Realism and Place in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D

Romance, Realism and
Place in Thomas Hardy’s
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Lecture 6
Romance and Realism
ACL2007
Semester 1 - 2008
1. Thomas Hardy 1840 -1928
Thomas Hardy: Biographical
information
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Born and brought up in rural Dorset in south-west England. His father was a
stone mason with a love of nature and rural life and its rhythms, his mother
had a keen interest in storytelling and local folklore.
Hardy encountered but did not directly experience extreme rural poverty
Hardy’s formal education ended at the age of 16 after which he was
indentured as an architect.
His lack of a classical education and insufficient financial security denied
him entry into university.
Immersed himself in self-improvement/auto-didacticism.
Was exposed to literary and intellectual life through his friend Horace Moule
Married socially ambitious Emma Gifford who supported his decision to
write full-time.
Moved back and forth between London and the house he designed and had
his father and brother build in Dorset (Max Gate)
Hardy’s ouvre
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Prolific writer – 14 novels, short story collections,
poetry collections, ghosted biography.
His prominent novels include:
 Far
from the Madding Crowd (1874)
 The Return of the Native (1878)
 The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)
 The Woodlanders (1887)
 Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)
 Jude the Obscure (1895)
Hardy’s publishing context
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Hardy wrote novels as was common in the day for publication in
serial form. Often changed his own intentions of the text in order to
anticipate his publishers’ judgement of market sensitivities, or in
response to critics.
The novels were mostly published toward the end of a serial run in
three volume books.
Hardy often kept chapters deemed too sensitive for serial publication
for the volume version – for example the original serialised version
of Tess included a fake wedding scene between Alec D’Urberville
instead of the seduction/rape of Tess.
Abandoned fiction after Jude the Obscure in 1895– Despite positive
reviews Hardy was more sensitive to those critics who were morally
outraged by it.
Hardy’s
literary/social/intellectual context
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Hardy’s life spanned from the early Victorian era through to post WWI England – a
time of great change and sometimes countervailing social trends.
Auguste Comte – Positivism. Secular human development through education and
science – continuation of ritual. Developing the intellectual trend that seeks to
displace the traditional of hegemony of Judeo-Christian thought.
Conflict between science and religion – Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859)
does much to undermine religious authority. Hardy gradually abandons religious
views
Victorian class rigidity - Hardy felt the pressure for people to remain in their own
class. Was determined to bypass this and ascend socially
Extension of mass education in the 1870s puts pressure on the class system.
Victorian gender and sexual values/hypocricy
Publication of Tess – Moral censorship – (‘Mrs Grundy’ figure)
The tension between tradition and new ways of thinking and being is felt in Tess of
the D’Urbervilles
Hardy’s
literary/social/intellectual context
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Greek tragedy – Speaks to the kind of pessimistic
fatalism that marks Hardy’s attitude and which is evident
in Tess.
Also reflects the philosophical attitude of the 19th
century German philospher Arthur Schopehauer whose
understanding of reality is linked to the illusion of free-will
and order – the only forces are ego-driven selfconsciousness and the unconscious force of nature.
This is reflected in the literary movement of Naturalism
(exemplified by authors such as Emile Zola - Germinal)
which portrays grim warts and all lived realities.
Anti-realism: Fairy-tale, folktale, ballad.
2. The convergence of romance
and realism in place
Realism and Place in Tess
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The most obvious aspect of the realism in Tess
of the D’Urbervilles is its attention to establishing
the historical reality of the places in which it is
set.
Despite the place names being part of the
invented universe of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex,
the novel takes care to map out its specificity.
Much has been written about the identifiability of
the places in Hardy’s Wessex and the southwest
of England.
The places of Tess
Vale of Blackmoor
 Frome – rich valleys (Talbothays)
 Flintcome-Ash
 Heathland
 Sandbourne
 Stonehenge
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Concrete and impressionistic
place
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The well-established specificity of place
develops a concreteness of context which allows
Hardy to explore some more subjective
understanding of place.
The effect may be read as a modern gesture in
that there is an emphasis on the impressionistic
levels of experience which serve to heighten the
potentially powerful symbolic impact they have.
Romance conventions and place in
Tess
Superstition
 Symbolism
 Fatalism
 Oral traditions - Ballad and Folktale –
Love, betrayal and revenge
 Fairytale
 Over-determined narrative.
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Tess’s subjectivity and intensity
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Tess Durbeyfield experiences the world with
sensitivity and intensity. The central event of
Tess of the D’Urbervilles is the rape of Tess and
the guilt this produces in her in the face of social
conventions which expect her to remain chaste.
It could be said that Tess allows herself to
succumb to the impression of her subjective
intensity.
Tensions between tradition and
progress
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I mentioned earlier in the discussion of Hardy’s literary and intellectual context the
tension between tradition and change that characterised the times.
On the one hand Hardy in Tess of the D’Urbervilles encourages the falling away of
the old order of Judeo-Christian society, and lambasts the social hypocrisy of
Victorian attitudes to women through the figure of Tess. In this sense Hardy is
informed by Comtean positivism with its emphasis on the agency of free will in
manipulating material (and symbolic) realities in order to achieve social progress.
Yet on the other hand there is an obvious spirit of fatalistic pessimism running through
the novel which is perhaps driven by that Schopenhauerian understanding of the
illusory perception of free-will and order being shaped by ego-driven selfconsciousness and the unconscious forces of nature.
Here the unseen and unstoppable forces of ‘nature’ are those of social convention –
the forces which shame Tess after her rape and the birth of her ‘Sorrow’
So in some ways Hardy can be read as straddling the idealism of progress and the
more conservative acceptance of individual fate. It is not always easy to classify one
attitude as romantic and the other as realist.
The tension between tradition and progress plays itself out in the portrayal of place.
The outdoor sway of nature
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Much of what occurs in TOTD is outdoors
and this environment is portrayed so that it
achieves parallels with the feelings of the
characters within it – there is a rawness to
the sway of nature in the outdoors on
individual consciousness.
May Day
Tess is linked with the Pagan ‘Cerealia’ –
the May Day festival that forms a pivotal
part of the early chapters of the novel and
which connect the place of the action with
the continuities of traditional pre-Christian
ways of life in the region of Dorset.
 Significantly these are at the time of the
novel’s action losing their popularity.
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The Chase
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Alec’s rape of Tess is committed outdoors in the
Chase. ‘with the setting of the moon the pale
light lessened, and Tess became invisible as she
fell into reverie upon where he had left her.’ (73)
Here the emphasis is on Tess’ vulnerability in
this landscape – her invisibility, and paralysis, in
it she is subject to the forces of nature (night,
sleep, sexual violence)
Talbothays
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Much of Tess’ work occurs outdoors – at the romantically idyllic
Talbothays which is linked to older, more traditional ways of
engaging in rural life and work and the flourishing of love between
Tess and Angel.
The landscape and moods fluctuate with the seasons
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The fecundity of spring in which Tess finds herself approaching the
oblivious harp-playing Angel Clare. She is compared to a stealthy cat in
a garden which had been ‘left uncultivated for some years, and was now
damp and rank with juicy grass which sent up mists of pollen at a touch;
and with tall blooming weeds emitting offensive smells’ (122).
 Later it is summer and the sleepy eroticism of the outdoors and the
rhythmic milking of cows connects Tess and Angel in a (still chaste) kiss.
Flintcomb-Ash
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At Flintcomb-Ash the work is also outdoors but contextualised by a
grimmer reality – the encroachment of the modern urban economy
on lived experience and land use in rural areas.
Here in particular we observe the domination of mechanised farming
in the form of the threshing machine which alienates the workers
from the rhythm and moods of the pre-industrial milk farm.
‘Close under the eaves of the stack, and as yet barely visible, was
the red tyrant that the women had come to serve – a timber-framed
construction, with straps and wheels appertaining – the threshingmachine which, whilst it was going, kept up a despotic demand upon
the endurance of their muscles and nerves.’ (325)
Stonehenge
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Finally we come to Stonehenge. This pre-Norman, pre-Christian
place is principally aligned with the kind of idealism which
characterises Hardy’s positivist and romantic embrace of individual
action – it is here that Tess decides something for herself
Ironically it is a decision to no longer run from social convention and
the illusion of free will.
Yet she experiences a moment of individual isolation and fulfilment –
in the moment of sleep on the altar she is transformed, ready to face
the faceless men who have pursued her.
Her ‘I am ready’ is a romantically individual and positivist statement
in which she confirms her decision to submit to the realities of social
contradiction.
Romantic modernism
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Of course the narrative context of the convergence and resolution of
the romance and realist tensions in such a symbolic place is in itself
a romantic gesture. As Millgate observes – it is one of many
traditional romance narrative devices Hardy employs.
Yet there is more to the alignment of place and self than a simple
romantic alignment.
The emphasis returns over and again not to a kind of supernatural,
or objectively observable link between place and self, but on the
sense that there is only a subjective link.
This positions the text firmly in the modernist trajectory – it is a text
which is aware of its own textuality.