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

Lecture 6Romance and RealismACL2007Semester 1 - 2008

1. Thomas Hardy 1840 -1928

Thomas Hardy: Biographical information 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

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

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 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 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 self-consciousness 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

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

Concrete and impressionistic place 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.

Tess’s subjectivity and intensity

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 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 self-consciousness 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

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.

The Chase

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

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 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

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 threshing-machine which, whilst it was going, kept up a despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and nerves.’ (325)

Stonehenge

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

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.