Tess of the d'Urbervilles

I am naturally drawn to works of literature that explore the effects of the past on the present. (This, I know, is a tricky statement; some will argue that all works of literature do this in some way.) I trace my obsession with the past to two main factors: I belong to an inherently nostalgic culture, and during my adolescence I moved to a different country. At a crucial moment in my life, in other words, I experienced an event that dramatically accelerated a preexisting tendency. I've quoted a famous line by Faulkner in previous reviews, but I'll do it again: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Thomas Hardy obviously understood this sometimes fascinating, sometimes irritating fact of life._Tess of the D'Urbervilles_ (1891) is the first novel by Hardy that I read in its entirety. My first experience of the author's prose was _The Mayor of Casterbridge_ (1886), which I was supposed to read years ago for a university course on the nineteenth-century novel. I was not able to finish it due to an illness, but I remember being pleasantly surprised. For some reason, I had expected a boring story and a tedious style; instead I found an engaging narrative with a few unexpected twists. I promised myself I would read the novel some day. Years passed, and when I heard that _Tess_ dealt with purity in a fallen world, I felt inclined to read this novel before reattempting _The Mayor of Casterbridge_.Tess is one of the most interesting characters I have encountered in nineteenth-century novels. If Flaubert and Emily Brontë catered to readers' fascination with illicit pleasure and self-destruction, and Jane Austen proved that virtue is far from safe and humdrum, Hardy offers a heroine that is pure, human, and real. Tess is a good girl who makes a mistake through no fault of her own. She is too good for this fallen world.The first quarter of the novel relates the realist equivalent of the story of Little Red Riding Hood. When Tess' father is told that he is the descendant of the noble family of the D'Urbervilles, the young woman's parents send her to a well-off family that bears that name, in the hope of improving their status. The wealthy family, it turns out, has merely adopted the name of D'Urberville, and Tess gains nothing from the experience. On the contrary, she is seduced, ruined, by Alec D'Urberville, who calls her "coz." Years later, Tess meets Mr. Right in the form of Angel Clare (talk about a symbolic name), and the encounter gives rise to the novel's central dilemma. If Tess tells Angel about her past, she may lose her second chance at a happy life. If she does not tell, her new relationship will be based on a lie (or, at least, a hidden truth) that may be made manifest at any moment. Tess' present and future are thus determined by her past. One of the crucial questions that Hardy raises is this novel is: to what extent should a person be judged by one specific past action?_Tess_ owes its transcendence largely to the complexity of the issues it raises. We as readers know that Tess should not be judged by her past mistake. She is innocent, not to blame for what happened to her. Angel, for his part, may not be so sure. On hearing about Tess' mistake, he may come to perceive her as a loose woman, someone not to be trusted. Society condemns Tess because she is a woman; her seducer does not suffer at all the consequences of his action. The situation is complicated by the fact that the society that Hardy portrays is not exactly Christian. For a Christian, the answer to Tess' dilemma is quite simple: she should be open with Angel, as it is preferable that he know the truth from the beginning. If he is to find out later on, as he surely will, he will feel cheated. If Angel judges Tess unjustly, finally, he will be responsible for that. ("In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was.") In the novel, Tess knows (almost instinctively) what to do, but her hesitancy, combined with Angel's optimism, leads to greater conflict.Another major issue treated in _Tess_ has to do with the selfish nature of human attachments. When rehearsing to herself words that are meant for Angel, Tess says: "she you love is not my real self, but one in my image, the one I might have been!" Tess is conscious that Angel does not love her for who she truly is. How many people can say that they love someone for who he/she is? To put it another way, to what extent can we claim to know a person for who he/she really is? All we know is what others choose (consciously and/or unconsciously) to show us. Based on this, we create for ourselves an image of the other person, almost as if we were covering his/her face with a mask. (In psychoanalysis, this mental image we have of another person is referred to as the "imago.") Many times, our perception of the other person is even a reflection of ourselves. We do not see each other face to face. One cannot love what one does not know, and yet how many people can truly say that they even know themselves? Our way of life does not promote this type of knowledge. We are conveniently kept busy.So far I've commented on the novel's moral and psychological dimensions. Let me now mention the style. One may criticize Hardy for many things, among which are his relativism and his pessimism, but he is undoubtedly a master stylist. The beauty of his prose is heightened by its measured quality. He is not excessive; rather, he will dazzle the reader every now and then with a beautiful passage. For instance: "It was a fine September evening, just before sunset, when yellow lights struggle with blue shades in hair-like lines, and the atmosphere itself forms a prospect without aid from more solid objects, except the innumerable winged insects that dance in it." Consider also the following meditation: "Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order." The actual explanation may be simple (the law of cause and effect), but this does not diminish the beauty of the prose. Philosophy is a different matter. At the risk of sounding simplistic, I believe much of Hardy's worldview may be summarized with the paraphrase, "Fate acts in mysterious ways."Why not five stars? I feel the novel could have been 100 pages shorter. The world it describes is rather small, so small, in fact, that serendipity plays a pretty large--and unfortunately not always believable--role. _Tess_ is great realist fiction, but it is not _Middlemarch_. At the same time, the heroine herself is memorable and unique. Like Dostoevsky's _The Idiot_, this novel seeks to trace the effects of a corrupt world on a pure individual. Hardy is a much more effective narrator than Dostoevsky, however, and personally the story of an innocent woman appeals to me more than that of an innocent man.My next Hardy novel will be _The Mayor of Casterbridge_.Thanks for reading, and enjoy the book!

I have been planning to read Tess of the D’Urbervilles for a long time. I know now why this book has been so beloved by readers. This book is a long saga about a young girl named Tess who is very beautiful. She is raped by a person in a higher social class than she, and as a result has a baby. Shunned by her neighbors, she leaves her home village and becomes a milk maid. There she meets Angel Claire also of a higher class. He falls in love with her, and eventually they marry. When he learns of her past, he is shocked, shuns her and leaves for Brazil. The man who raped her, Alex d’Urberville tragically returns to her life. Tess is a very pure, admirable, hard-working, sympathetic character, and your heart will go out to her and hope things are going to eventually turn out well because she deserves it. But this is a tragedy, and nothing works out for Tess. .

I had been warned about Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I was not to expect a happily ever after. What I didn’t expect was to feel the misery that is Tess throughout the whole entire book. You will not get a break. You will not feel good (except at Talbothay’s), and you will live in a bubble of frustration throughout the book. Enjoy!There is no disputing that Hardy was a talented story-teller or that this book for the time it was written was groundbreaking by addressing and challenging the social construct of the time, but that aside there was nothing enjoyable about this novel and my frustration levels were so high, I thought I might toss my Kindle across the room.WARNING: Spoilers ahead!!*****Let us start from the beginning. Sir John finds out he is, in fact, Sir John D’Urberville. What’s in a name when you witness a drunkard father with delusions of grander strolling around his town after being told of his ancient lineage? The idea that somehow blood makes you more superior to another human being. Horse excrement.Moving along…I find it hard to believe that Tess, having the amount of brothers and sisters under her household, could be that naïve about the birds and the bees so to speak…but here we are. It was a sign of the times I’m sure. Keep thy maidens as ignorant as possible in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost I guess.This inevitably leads her to get knocked-up by the playboy, Alec to which we’re not entirely sure because of the vagueness of the scene that transpired. I hadn’t really figured out what happened until she’s nursing her child in a field in Marlott. This part confuses me to no end. Alec—despite being a playboy and a rake and an utter a-hole (‘xuse my French)—offers her marriage. It never seemed to me that he was going to deny her anything despite her being with child (which we find out he didn’t know about at all). Ultimately in the end, she ends up having to go back to him anyway. Full circle. The story could have ended right here.Fast forward, she loses her child and seeks employment 40 + miles away at Talbothay’s where she meets Angel Clare. They fall madly in love with each other. He asks her repeatedly to marry him but she wrestles with telling him about her past and therefore refuses over and over and over and over. Heeding the advice of her mother, she refrains from telling Angel about her prior circumstances until after they wed. Honestly? Not what I would have done. What did she have to lose? She apparently lost him anyway. She might as well have told him.And let’s talk about that, shall we?Angel, Angel. You pompous douchebag, Angel. He goes on to confess (after the wedding) that he had a two-day affair in which he proceeded to screw his brains out and then felt bad about it afterwards. Notice, no mention of the other woman.Then, Tess takes that as her queue to let everything out and what does our boy Angel, do??? Turns into a complete macho a-hole. I mean, I get why he is upset. Naturally. But if one of your options is to move to the Colonies where no one would be the wiser about your wife’s past a whole ocean away, do you not love Tess enough to move there and start a new life since you were thinking about doing that anyway? Goodness. The first test of your wedding vows and your impulse is to go to BRAZIL?! Lord help me with this one.And speaking of Brazil. I nearly lost it. I completely lost it when he asked Izz to, in short, live with him in sin in Brazil because he was in fact “living in sin” with a wife who had lost her virginity already. So, let me get this straight, Angel. You want to flee from living in sin to…live in sin? Did I get that right? :::screams:::So, more misery unfolds until we are presented with Alec the good witch converting to Christianity (Protestantism?? I don’t know. Pick a religion), he sees Tess and POOF! He falls in love with her again and stalks her while her family falls into despair from her father’s death (Sir John…hah! Bull excrement right there) and she ultimately goes with him because he was her last hope since Angel is frolicking around in Brazil acting a fool.5 years later (:::Facepalm:::), Angel comes back to find her with Alec at an Inn, he travels aaaaaaaaaall that way for her and to claim his wife, and when he finds her with Alec, he basically shrugs and walks away….WHAT THE #%^K?!So our girl Tess, who has to take everything upon herself because she’s surrounded by b!+ch boys, immediately murders Alec in an effort to be with her one true love. See, Angel? That’s how it’s done.And to add to all the oddness of this whole entire plot, they end up…wait for it…in Stonehenge. :::rolls eyes::: Stonehenge???? Lord have mercy.There, she gets arrested for killing Alec but not before she makes the request to marry her little sister. Based on the very vague final chapter, I suppose that’s what happens which is further odd. You mean to tell me, Angel, that you were worried about what society might think of you and your non-virginal wife and you go and marry your dead, murderous wife’s sister? I’m sure the town will be quiet about that one.As you’ve gathered by now, this was not the book for me. Spare me the lecture about how this book is a work of art. How dare I! Blah, blah, blah. There’s enough misery in the world. When I dive into a book, I want to get away from it.

It's a really sensitive kind of material, and it arrived with some soft marks, it could and should have been wrapped/packed more carefully.

"The art of our necessities is strange, that can make vile things precious"—this maxim of King Lear’s is well demonstrated in Hardy’s novel, as the ultimate consequences of Tess and her parents’ proceedings force her to embrace the proposal of the man whom she loathed and blamed for all her tribulations. Nevertheless, while Alec was indeed a reprobate, he had no clue as to the extent of the mischief he wrought on Tess’s life, since she chose to run away in silence and bear the burden on her own rather than avail herself of the situation and fulfill her parents’ whim to have her become the wife of a rich, distant relation of a glorious lineage. Fine, Alec was reckless by nature (and, if he bore the name D’Urberville, it was because his father had liked the sound of it, thus assuming it just to impress rustics more ignorant than himself, yet not having the shred of a rightful claim to it), but we can’t say of Alec that he also was deceitful or maintain positively that he would have shirked his duty to Tess. Inasmuch as he made no promises whatever, he couldn’t break any, right? Now Tess, out of shame and pride, resumes her position of dairymaid. Later on, out of fear, and in accordance with her mother’s advice regarding her past imprudence, she withheld her confession about her liaison with Alec to her new suitor, Angel. So far, so good. Yet, once they are married, Tess discloses her secret to Angel, trusting he would understand and forgive it, considering that he had been the first to reveal to her that he had been through a misadventure of the kind before meeting her in the fields. Then her troubles begin again. Poor Tess! her honesty proved her downfall! This is a story wherein temptation both corrupts as well as redeems the souls of simple people: her parents’ greed led to Tess's exposure to vice; Tess’s charms inflamed Alec’s desire; her candour and diligence captivated Angel’s heart; her beauty once more roused Alec, undoing his recent conversion to Christianity, and on learning what Tess had concealed from him four years ago, he is bent on making amends; and Tess, in despite of her animosity towards Alec, after her separation from her husband, could not help accepting the culprit back in order to rescue her family from the ruin brought about by her own faults as well as her father’s mundane pretensions. In the end, Tess avenges her returned husband Angel’s honour by thrusting a knife into the heart of her false saviour—and through this act she definitely substantiated the notion that she was a descendant of the ancient, though decayed and savage, D’Urbervilles, to the spreading of which fact, in the hopes of receiving assistance from antiquarians, for the sake of the restorarion of said lineage, her father directed his efforts until he died, instead of working like everyone else in the country. At any rate, his belief turned out to be correct, however absurd his expectations on that account. A tragic tale, no doubt, yet the manner in which Hardy tells it may soothe you as though a leaf that is swayed by a gentle breeze.

英国の中堅作家ハーディの代表作であり、映像化により知名度も相応に高い作品である。危惧していた「性的描写」はまったく穏やかで、安心して読み進められる。" The Convert" の章の以下フレーズが、ハーディの主張なのであろう・・・。The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay not only among things done, but among things willed.What Tess had been was of no importance beside what she would be.結婚前に起きた不幸な過去の経験（＝原罪）を克服してゆくヒューマンストーリーである。ヒロインであるテスの 「 美貌 」 を再三にわたり強調する意図がやや不明ではあるが、平凡ながらも田園風景をバックにキリスト教義をうまく散りばめながら「人間賛歌」を謳うハーディの健筆がなかなかの力量を見せている。原文で楽しむ書籍の選択肢のひとつとしての候補となる小説である、と評し得よう。

The best book to start with if wanting to explore this author. His grasp of women's issues in the nineteenth century is amazing. Also the description of country life, so raw and colourful are terrific. He had the writer's eye on that age.

Si bien el libro llegó sin daños, lo único que no me gusta de penguin es que es en formato 'apa', por así decirlo. Otras editoriales tienen formato 'Chicago' lo que significa que puedes leer el libro, y si hay alguna especificación para términos o palabras, éste se encontrará en el pie de dicha página, pero en esta edición, al tener otro formato, toda esta información se encuentra al final, por lo que es un poco incómodo ir y venir tantas veces.Pero de ahí en fuera, la trama del libro es excelente, siendo de los mejores trabajos de Hardy, lo único que diría aquí es, que si apenas empiezas a leer en inglés, mejor busca el libro en español, ya que podría contener en casi todas las páginas palabras o forma de narrar que requiere mayor atención y comprensión del lenguaje.