Masaryk University

Faculty of Education

Department of English Language and Literature

Late Victorian Country Life as Illustrated in

Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Bachelor Thesis

Brno 2014

Supervisor: Written by:

Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. Markéta Novotná

Anotace

Účelem práce je zkoumání povahy pozdně viktoriánského života v díle Thomase

Hardyho Tess z d’Urbervillů. Důkladná četba a podrobná analýza románu odhalí dvojí

povahu Hardyho strategie, která kolísá mezi realistickým a občas naturalistickým

vyobrazením zaznamenávajícím historická fakta a silnou přítomnost symbolických a

vizuálních prvků, které se podstatně podílejí na Tessině příběhu. Úvodní část

představuje autora a jeho práci, která je značně ovlivněna rozličnými literárními žánry

stejně jako filozofickými a společenskými postoji 19. století, které se odrážejí v Tess z

d’Urbervillů. Hlavní část práce se zabývá historickou výpovědí každodenního života,

událostmi a realitou venkovského života pozdně viktoriánské Anglie popsané

v Hardyho Tess.

Abstract

The aim of the thesis is to examine the character of the Late Victorian country life in

Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles. The close reading and detailed textual

analysis of the novel will reveal the dual nature of Hardy’s strategy, which oscillates

between realistic, and at times, naturalistic portrayal recording historical facts and a

strong presence of symbolic and visual elements that contribute significantly to Tess’s

story. The introductory part presents the author and his work which was significantly

influenced by various literary genres as well as philosophical and social attitudes of the

late 19th

century that are reflected in Tess of the d’Urbervilles. The main part of the

thesis deals with historical account of everyday life, events and reality of rural life in

Late Victorian England described in Hardy’s Tess.

Klíčová slova: Thomas Hardy, Pozdně viktoriánská Anglie, Společnost, Morálka,

Pověrčivost, Tradice, Zvyky, Vzdělání, Bydlení, Dorset, Wessex, Příroda, Venkov,

Mechanizace, Úpadek vesnice, Venkovský dělník, Janek, Mlátička obilí, Žací stroj,

Farma

Key words: Thomas Hardy, Late Victorian England, Society, Morality, Superstition,

Traditions, Customs, Education, Housing, Dorset, Wessex, Nature, Countryside,

Mechanization, Decay of village, Rural labourer, Hodge, Threshing-machine, Reaping-

machine, Farm

3

Declaration

I hereby that I have compiled the thesis on my own and that I have used only the

sources mentioned in the references.

Brno, 27 November 2014 ...................................

Markéta Novotná

4

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my thanks to my supervisor Mgr. Lucie Podroužková,

Ph.D. for her inspiring attitude, valuable advice and help with my thesis.

5

Contents

1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 6

2. Genius of Thomas Hardy ........................................................................................ 8

2. 1. Hardy’s Literary Attitudes .................................................................................. 8

2. 2. Hardy’s Wessex ................................................................................................ 14

2. 3. Nature the Idyllic - Nature the Tragic .............................................................. 16

3. Traces of Industrialization in Tess ....................................................................... 20

3. 1. Mechanization of the Countryside.................................................................... 20

3. 2. Railway in Dorset ............................................................................................. 28

3. 3. Tourism ............................................................................................................ 29

4. The Hodge Stereotype ........................................................................................... 32

4. 1. Superstitions, Customs and Myths in Tess ....................................................... 34

4. 2. Old Family ........................................................................................................ 38

4. 3. Village Education ............................................................................................. 40

4. 4. Housing Conditions .......................................................................................... 42

5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 45

6. Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 47

6. 1. Works Cited ...................................................................................................... 47

6. 2. Works Consulted .............................................................................................. 50

6

1. Introduction

Thomas Hardy is undoubtedly considered to be a significant author of Victorian

age. For his writing, he sought inspiration not only in various literary genres,

philosophy and biology, but also in fine art or theatre. Apart from that, he created

Wessex, an imaginary region in south-western England corresponding to his native

Dorset and its neighbouring counties. Hardy was not afraid to point to universally

known themes and problems of his age, despite the fact that they were inappropriate to

be discussed publicly. Therefore, he often shocked many of his readers with his fiction

and Tess of the d’Urbervilles is one of his most controversial novels he had ever written.

The end of the 19th

century meant village decay because many villagers,

especially field workers and craftsmen, had to move to industrial towns or dominions of

Britain in order to find work there. Hardy considered mechanization of the countryside

to be one of the main reasons of the decay and portrayed this fact even in Tess. Apart

from that, he knew very well that traditions and customs in villages were sinking into

oblivion, in spite of the fact that villagers still remained very superstitious and

influenced by their ancient ancestors, who used to worship pagan gods and traditions

connected with Nature which plays an important role in Tess. A rural labourer is

described as Hodge in the novel and thanks to Hardy’s familiarity with conditions of

country life, we can learn about interesting and crucial facts relating to an ordinary life

of Hodge.

Several subjects are discussed in the novel and the reason why I have decided to

focus especially on the theme concerning historical account of country life is that one

may regard fact-based information in the novel as valuable source to learn about events,

social realities or Late Victorian rural life, which is recorded in the novel realistically

and, at times, naturalistically. Symbolic and visual elements are analysed as well

because they greatly contribute to Tess’s story. The main objective of the thesis is also

to introduce Hodge, an agricultural labourer, who underwent relatively considerable

progress towards the end of the 19th

century. My aim here is to trace Hodge’s steps and

thus record his way of living, education, housing conditions or superstitions and myths.

Through detailed textual analysis of the novel as well as secondary sources, I will

7

search for factual details in the novel that mirror the historical realities of Late Victorian

rural England.

8

2. Genius of Thomas Hardy

“...social and cultural upheavals are also the subjects of his fiction: economic

migration; the class system and social mobility; the nature of femininity and the role of

women; the debunking of the world of tradition and superstition; and the perpetual

moral and intellectual uncertainty of modern life.” (Dolin 334)

2. 1. Hardy’s Literary Attitudes

“Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in a Dorset villageˮ (qtd. “Hardy’s Literary

Legacyˮ in Tess v) as a son of a stonemason and a domestic servant. In 1862 he moved

to London, where he continued his practice as an apprentice architect. He successfully

worked in the field of architecture the following six years but his heart still belonged to

his native Dorset region and writing. When he returned back to the countryside, he

started his career as a writer encouraged by his first wife (Alexander 310). Firstly, he

was rejected by a publisher and had to wait until 1872 when his first novel Under the

Greenwood Tree was published. One of his and especially Wessex first supporters was

Charles Kegan Paul, “editor, publisher and fellow Dorset denizenˮ (Morgan and Rode

160).

Dolin argues that it was a murderer Martha Brown who influenced Hardy for his

character of Tess. As a 16-year-old boy, he witnessed Brown’s execution – she was

hanged – and this event is said “to be emblematic of the sexualisation and violence with

which men regard women in Hardy” (Dolin 328). His plots and scenes are often based

on real “events reported in newspapersˮ (qtd. “Hardy’s Literary Legacyˮ in Tess vii)

and Prince’s accidental death is mentioned as an example of this fact (Ibid.).

Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), along with Hardy’s last novel Jude the Obscure

(1896), was quite shocking for readers. He simply portrays the real nature of Late

Victorian prim society and the character of his age as such. As an author, he belongs to

representatives of critical realism because he presents the reality of Victorian rural life

and outlines its problems. He was not afraid to present ‘naturalness’ of rural people and

conditions in the countryside, despite the fact that it was inappropriate in the eyes of

Victorian society (Alexander 317-318) to be that ‘frank’, so it may be considered a bold

9

move from Hardy. On the contrary, Alexander also admits: “He [Hardy] is a great visual

and symbolic storyteller, rather than a social analyst in the tradition of the 19th

– century

realistic novelˮ (319).

As far as visual and symbolic elements are concerned, Thomas Hardy is

regarded as “a cinematic novelist” (Dolin 329). According to Lodge, “he created a

visualised world that is both recognisably ‘real’ and yet more vivid, intense and

dramatically charged than our ordinary perception of the real world” (qtd. in Dolin 329)

and this was intensified by his experience from childhood he spent in a Dorset village

(Dolin 329).

When he lived in London, he repeatedly visited the National Gallery or

Continental galleries and gained useful knowledge of history of art from which he could

make use of for his writing (Henson 187). Some descriptions of landscapes and sudden

moments described in Tess may appear to be ‘Impressionist paintings’. This statement

may be confirmed by Pite’s opinion that “his [Hardy’s] geography reflects his

indebtedness to impressionist painting and corresponds to his presenting in his novelsˮ

(143). An Impressionist view may be apparent in one of the summer evenings in June,

when Tess is hidden in the garden and is listening to the music Angel is playing the

harp:

It was a typical summer evening in June, the atmosphere being in such

delicate equilibrium and so transmissive that inanimate objects seemed

endowed with two or three senses, if not five. . . .

The floating pollen seemed to be his notes made visible, and the

dampness of the garden the weeping of the garden’s sensibility. Though

near nightfall, the rank-smelling weed-flowers glowed as if they would not

close for intentness, and the waves of colour mixed with the waves of

sound. . . . (Tess 146-147)

Another such a description is evident in a scene in which Hardy describes Sun in

the spring countryside: “Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them

into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents

in invisible jets and breathings” (Tess 153). Lodge suggests that Hardy “presents his

materials in primarily visual terms” (qtd. in Dolin 328). Apart from Hardy with his

vivid descriptions, there were also painters who “delighted an urban bourgeois public

10

with paintings of harvest scenes” (Henson 193). Among these painters belonged authors

such as John Linnel or George Vicat Cole (Ibid.).

Along with painting, it was also a theatre, grand opera or “sensation fiction of

Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon” (Dolin 330) that also influenced Hardy’s

own writing in many ways. Themes typical for sensation novel such as “seduction,

murder, romantic triangle, aristocratic villain or heroin placed in physical danger”

(Allingham) appear in Tess as well. Dolin defines Hardy’s melodramatic imagination as

“vivid tableaux combining detailed and lyrical descriptions of landscape with elements

of symbolic non-verbal performance” (330). Since Hardy started his career as a poet, he

had a possibility to practice using metaphors in his fiction (Dolin 331). It should be

noted that the main reason for his transition from poetry to fiction was his marriage

because he had to “earn a livingˮ (Alexander 317).

According to Taylor, Thomas Hardy’s work was influenced by William

Shakespeare as well. However, this fact still remains neglected. Taylor also states that

Hardy’s copy of Shakespeare, which he bought in 1863, was full of annotations and

underlined passages that he could use later in his own work. As far as Tess of the

d’Urbervilles is concerned, the heroine resembles Lucrece in some aspects, a character

from Shakespeare’s poem The Rape of Lucrece who was also an innocent girl ‘marked’

by rape like Tess. Apart from a few elements from the latter, it is also a comedy As You

Like It or tragedies Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet that ‘appear’ in Tess – either their

themes or quoted passages (Taylor 124-125). It may seem that Tess and Angel are

‘victims’ like Romeo and Juliet but unlike them, they are not victims of hatred of two

belligerent families, but of social morality of Victorian age. Aspects of Shakespeare’s

plays are evident throughout Hardy’s work and since his “portraits of rustics were

authenticˮ (Taylor 152), they became highly inspiring examples for Hardy as well:

“After a long lifetime of influence and continued inspiration, Hardy and Shakespeare

seem to blend into one combined literary spiritˮ (Taylor 155).

Non-standard English, local customs, dialect, topographical and local details -

these are typical examples of regional or provincial novel that helped to depict a

character of local people (Pite 60-61) and a realistic, at times romantic, image of “a

particular locality, distant from the metropolitan centreˮ (Pite 60). In other words, we

can consider Hardy to be a regional novelist who, “trained as an architect, visualizes

settings topographicallyˮ (Alexander 317).

11

It might be noted that Hardy as a writer may be connected with more than just

one particular literary genre. For a reader, it sometimes may appear confusing to match

a specific genre to his work. It is evident that he was able to combine his knowledge of

melodrama, sensation fiction, Impressionist painting, use of metaphors in poetry,

influence of philosophy and other acquaintance to create his characters, plots and

sceneries. He was also familiar with “the Bible and its interpreters and with classical

mythologyˮ (Watts 47). A researcher, for instance Jeremy Burchardt, writing a literary

publication or study on Hardy’s work, may consider him to be the author of regional

novel because he uses dialect, customs or local details, whereas the others may regard

his novels as realistic or naturalistic such as Cedric Watts. It depends on men of letters’

opinions, the field of their studies and literary specialization. Alexander also confirms

this fact when he states that “mixing of genres involves a greater variety of dimensions

than is found in other novelistsˮ (318).

Except for various literary genres, we can find quotations from the Bible in Tess

and learn that people living in the countryside were mainly Christians on the one hand,

but on the other hand they were influenced by their ancestors who used to worship

pagan gods and lived according to nature laws. In one scene the narrator says: “. . .

women whose chief companions are the forms and forces of outdoor Nature retain in

their souls far more of the Pagan fantasy of their remote forefathers than of the

systematized religion taught their race at later dateˮ (Tess 126). According to Watts,

Hardy’s religious “attitudes are complex, paradoxical and at times apparently self-

contradictory” (43). He also claims that Hardy was “‘a harmless agnostic’” (Ibid.) and

“voiced atheistic and antitheistic sentiments” (Ibid.). Nevertheless, it is suggested that

Hardy was not “particularly interested in religionˮ (qtd. “Hardy’s Literary Legacyˮ in

Tess vii), but in the possibility to allow “his characters to express superstitions and

supernatural beliefsˮ (Ibid.): “‘I don’t quite feel easy,’ she said to herself. ‘All this good

fortune may be scourged out of me afterwards by a lot of ill. That’s how Heaven mostly

does’ˮ (Tess 246).

In general, Tess is considered to be rather atheistic because the reader has “the

impression that there is no God” (Watts 45). However, antitheistic elements may be also

evident. Watts speaks about a “‘First Cause’ or ‘Will’” (Ibid.), so one has an impression

that there is “uncaring and, at times, seemingly cruelˮ (Ibid.) ‘higher power’. As far as

the term antitheist is concerned, Watts uses the definition that: “. . . antitheist asserts

12

that God exists but is uncaring or malevolent instead of benevolentˮ (43). Cline defines

antitheist in more possible attitudes and one of them does not forbid to believe in a god,

“but requires believing that this god is evil in some fashion and thus must be opposed”.

(“Antitheism”) In addition, Patil claims in his study that Hardy was convinced that

religion full of dogmas and wrong believes “exploits the poor and degenerates the richˮ

(Patil 78). He also found religion to be “a hindrance than an opportunity for co-

existenceˮ (Ibid). In general, it may seem that “the reader meets different systems of

belief’” (Watts 47) or ‘disbelief’ in Tess.

Hardy’s opinions on life and religion were influenced by thoughts of A. Huxley,

H. Spencer, F. Galton and Ch. Darwin under whose influence “he became a rationalist”

(Patil 77), but also Comte and Schopenhauer’s ideas inspired his work (Watts 46).

Influenced by Darwin, he believed in “transcendence of human life” (Patil 77)

and also in evolution. He was acquainted with The Origin of Species By Means of

Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

published in 1859 (Richardson 156) as well as with The Descent of Man which was

published in 1871. Hardy’s fiction is permeated by modern scientific elements of his

age. Richardson states that “Tess’s downfall can be explained along the lines of

biological determinismˮ (172). As an example of this fact may be considered the scene

in which Tess’s unwanted child falls ill: “But now that her moral sorrows were passing

away a fresh one arose on the natural side of her which knew no social law . . . the baby

had been suddenly taken illˮ (Tess 111). Sorrow is feeble and according to Darwin’s

theory, only the “favoured individualsˮ (Richardson 157) can win “the struggle for lifeˮ

(Ibid.). Nature has its own rules and unlike the society, it does not care whether the

child is baptized or not. For Nature, Sorrow is just a “little prisoner of the fleshˮ (Tess

111) too weak to live and therefore he finally dies: “So passed away Sorrow the

Undesired – that intrusive creature, that bastard gift of shameless Nature who respects

not the social lawˮ (Tess 114). What is more dominant then, the Nature or social laws?

It may appear that on the one hand, Hardy’s characters behave naturally and according

to their own will, but on the other hand they are finally suppressed by the ‘heavy hand

of society’s law’.

According to Watts, Schopenhauer’s philosophical idea that “the universe is

permeated by a ‘will’ or life-force which generates human beings, who are destined to

sufferˮ (46) also appears in Tess. It is the scene wherein Tess finds suffering pheasants,

13

the victims of shooting-party from the previous day. She “broke the necksˮ (Tess 332)

of the poor birds and thus put them out “of their tortureˮ (Ibid.). It may appear that Alec

is also a kind of hunter who catches poor Tess and ‘kills’ her view of happy life. He

wounds her soul by raping her and a baby named Sorrow is a brand destroying her

purity. Like the “rough and brutalˮ (Tess 331) hunters, also Alec “ran amuck, and made

it . . . [his] purpose to destroy lifeˮ (Tess 332). In this case, he destroys life of Tess who

is harmless like the birds in the forest. It may be noted that Thomas Hardy was a

“supporter of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animalsˮ (Watts 47)

and his attitude to hunting may be visible from the hunting scene in Tess. The narrator

notes that shot and wounded pheasants were “brought into being by artificial means

solely to gratify these propensitiesˮ (Tess 332) of cruel hunters with “bloodthirsty light

in their eyesˮ (Tess 331). The passage in which Tess hears the strange noises at night

not knowing it is a painful cry of poor pheasants she states that “‘all is vanity’ˮ (Tess

330), but afterwards she realises that such a thought is not current. In terms of

modernism “all was . . . worse than vanity – injustice, punishment, exaction, deathˮ

(Ibid.). Tess’s sad images of “very fierce and cruelˮ (Tess 148) tomorrows is another

example of pessimism that the narrator calls “the ache of modernismˮ (Ibid.).

Here we suffer grief and pain,

Here we meet to part again;

In heaven we part no more.

(qtd. Wordsworth in Tess 422)

Another of Schopenhauer’s thoughts is that “the wise person seeks detachment

from . . . futile vitalityˮ (Watts 46). This idea relates to the fact that poor people had a

lot of children and so did the Durbeyfields. Tess, who feels that their living conditions

are not suitable, is more responsible than her parents and therefore is critical of her

mother “for thoughtlessly giving her so many little sisters and brothers, when it was

such a trouble to nurse and provide for themˮ (Tess 39). Hardy notes that Tess “felt a

Malthusian towards her motherˮ (Tess 39) and since he was influenced by Darwin who

supported Malthusianism (“Wikipediaˮ), it is not any surprise that even Hardy acquired

these ideas suggesting population control (Ibid.).

14

As mentioned above, Hardy believed “in the gradual evolution of the worldˮ

(Patil 78) and apart from that, he was also interested in archaeology and history of

Dorset. He was convinced that “living people are only ever custodians of the world for

future generationsˮ (qtd. “Hardy’s Literary Legacyˮ in Tess vii) and even human

being’s life is just a mere episode of history. He believed that everyone has an

“opportunity to make our markˮ (Ibid.). On the one hand, Tess is more sceptical about

this. When she has a conversation on the topic of education with Angel, she thinks what

a ‘nothing’ she is compared to her educated future husband. Angel offers her literature

or history lessons, but Tess does not seem to fancy learning about history because

according to her, she is “one of the long rowˮ (Tess 150) and then she admits: “the best

is not to remember that your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands’

and thousands’, and that your coming life and doings’ll be like thousands’ and

thousands’ˮ (Tess 151). On the other hand, the reader may finally realize that her life

experience might seem more educating than acquired knowledge from books and

schools.

2. 2. Hardy’s Wessex

“Wessex, in other words, seems to be located upon the margins, positioned

somewhere between Hardy’s literary revisions, his hand-drawn maps, British historical

artefacts across the landscape, the actual counties of south-west England and the

reader’s imagination.” (Morgan and Rode 177)

Hardy’s stories are set into Wessex, the region of south-western England he was

raised in and “knew intimately, and whose history and traditions were a major part of

his consciousness” (Williams 104). Wessex was originally the name of one of the

Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Heptarchy that lay in the south of England (Morgan and

Rode 159). Morgan and Rode accentuate that “Hardy first used name Wessex in his

novel Far From the Madding Crowd” (158) in 1874. The latter along with Tess of the

d’Urbervilles belongs to the edition of fourteen so called Wessex novels which were

published in 1895 for the first time. A necessary part of the edition was also Hardy’s

“hand-drown map” (Morgan and Rode 165), which might have become a reader’s guide

for better orientation in the fictional world.

15

Many publications that deal with the real locations which Hardy mentions and

describes in his novels were written. Pite contends that it is mainly South Wessex which

plays an important role in his novels, but also places from other counties in Wessex may

be found in his works (Pite 76): “‘Wessex was at once an invention and a very precise

mapping of an actual geographical entity, down to actual farms, tracks, villages and

towns, renamed for the purpose of fictionˮ (Amigoni 149).

In other words, Hardy broadened the boundaries of his native Dorset by counties

surrounding this area and thus “revived the ancient name Wessex” (Williams 104).

Dorset (South Wessex) remained the ‘main’ area for his writing. Apart from Dorset, it

was also Devon (Lower Wessex), Somerset (Outer Wessex), Wiltshire (Mid Wessex),

Hampshire (Upper Wessex), Berkshire (North Wessex) and Cornwall (Off Wessex) that

created ‘Hardy’s world’ (Morgan and Rode 165). As far as Tess is concerned, the

heroine crossed South Wessex, Mid-Wessex and Upper Wessex as well (Morgan and

Rode 163). We may consider unchanged names of London, Bristol and Bath as an

interesting thing. The reason for this was the fact that they were “the principal

‘boundary’ cities” (Morgan and Rode 164). The same may be said about Stonehenge,

“the heathen temple” (Tess 466) as Tess calls this place, “‘older than centuries; older

than the d’Urbervilles’” (Ibid.), because its name was not changed either. Stonehenge is

the last ‘stop’ of Tess’s long journey: “‘And you used to say at Talbothays that I was a

heathen. So now I am at home’” (Tess 467).

According to Pite, Hardy offers his readers “images of Wessex as either a

pastoral idyll or the powerless victim of changeˮ (10). It depends on the reader’s critical

point of view which image he or she will choose. Pite argues that Hardy’s novels

“strictly divide knowledge into local and generalˮ (12) and it depends on whether we

are inhabitants who can attain the local, or people from outer world who cannot fully

understand Hardy’s thoughts. He also points out that these two groups “can never be

joinedˮ (Ibid.).

Hardy, apart from articles in various publications or periodicals, also expressed

his opinions on the Dorset countryside, based on his observations, in letters he wrote to

his friend H. Rider Haggard who was a writer of adventure stories and also an “expert

on agricultural matters”. (“Rural Englandˮ) In 1902 and 1906, he published Village

England which was based on his travels and articles, and some of Hardy’s letters

concerning the topic Dorset were included in this book as well (Ibid.).

16

Haggard also visited Dorset and after his visit of the northern part of the Dorset

Downs, which lie “between the valley of her [Tess’s] birth and the valley of her loveˮ

(Tess 335), he praised “Winterborne Stickland, where the soil is light, a chalky loam

with a chalk subsoilˮ (264). On the contrary, Hardy was not that enthusiastic about this

part of Dorset where Tess “reached the irregular chalk table-land or plateauˮ (Tess 335),

and where “the air was dry and cold, and the long cart-roads were blown white and

dusty within a few hours after rainˮ (Ibid.). Tess also criticizes hedges that Haggard

considers to be “in this neighbourhood neatly keptˮ (264). For the sake of these fences,

a lot of trees had to be damaged: “There were few trees, or none, those that would have

grown in the hedges being mercilessly plashed down with the quickset by the tenant-

farmers, the natural enemies of tree, bush, and brakeˮ (Tess 335). It may appear that

Tess disagrees with the vision of people who try to adapt Nature for themselves with

force.

On the one hand, Hardy portrays the landscape influenced by mechanization and

the reality of hard working labourers in fields, but on the other hand we can find the

sceneries distant from reality, which confirms Morgan and Rode’s statement: “Here was

an enchanted world of nature, free and unencumbered by the industrial world, a natural

world that belonged as much to his forebears as to himself. . .” (159).

2. 3. Nature the Idyllic - Nature the Tragic

“Tess is not, of course, part of nature. She does not live in a rabbit-warren, but

in a society which, however tolerant, has rules to control the behaviour of its women,

‘natural’ as they may be.ˮ (Henson 193)

Nature plays an important role in Tess. According to Henson, generic woman “is

defined by the detached narrator as amorphous, not part of nature, but semi-permeable,

having absorbed its essence into herˮ (194). A reader can see a kind of ‘fight’ between

social and nature rules throughout the book. It is usually nature that finally wins because

she does not make differences between good and bad, social forms or rules because

though social laws change during centuries, laws of nature not.

17

In Tess, however, every part of the action is heavily signalled by weather

and above all, by landscape. Moving from the extreme of lush summer at

Talbothays, for instance, to Flintcomb-Ash and bitter winter, and finally to

the sacrificial circle on Salisbury Plain, the action is faithfully mirrored in

the landscape. (Henson 188)

It should be noted that because of a sudden change of Tess’s mood in some

situations, weather and landscape rapidly change in a moment: “Her face had latterly

changed with changing states of mind, continually fluctuating between beauty and

ordinariness, according as the thoughts were gay or grave. One day she was pink and

flawless; another pale and tragical (Tess 125). Even Henson noticed this fact (197) and

it is most evident in the scene in which a dairyman Crick tells the story of a milker Jack

Dollop who “courted a young woman over at Mellstock, and deceived her as he had

deceived many aforeˮ (Tess 159). The girl gets pregnant and her mother decides to

‘catch’ this Jack and make him to marry her daughter. Jack, afraid of girl’s mother,

“scrambled into the churn through the trap-doorˮ (Ibid.) but the lady finally finds him.

Whereas this story entertains everyone, “Tess remained much depressed all the

afternoonˮ (Tess 161) and along with the change of her mood comes a sudden change of

the landscape:

The evening sun was now ugly to her, like a great inflamed wound in the

sky. Only a solitary cracked-voiced reed-sparrow greeted her from the

bushes by the river, in a sad, machine-made tone, resembling that of a past

friend whose friendship she had outworn. (Tess 161)

On the one hand, Jack Dollop’s story may seem to be “rather a humorous

narrationˮ (Ibid.), but on the other hand only Tess can “see the sorrow of itˮ (Ibid.)

because she is the only one who sympathizes with the poor deceived girl. What is more,

since Tess cannot tell her secret to a soul at Talbothays, “not one knew how cruelly it

touched the tender place in her experienceˮ (Ibid.).

Locations and places where Tess goes change according to her mood as well.

Talbothays Dairy seems to be a gorgeous peaceful place, “more cheeringˮ (Ibid.)

compared to other locations that a reader goes through with the heroine. It is because

Tess was entirely happy there. On the contrary, when Angel leaves her and desperate

18

Tess has to suffer for the second time of her ‘short’ life, everything worsens – the

landscape is gloomy, people are bad and Tess appears to finally resign herself to living

alone without Angel: “Thus Tess walks on; a figure which is part of landscape; a field

woman pure and simpleˮ (Tess 334).

When Tess recovers from her rape and loss of unwanted baby boy Sorrow, she

leaves Merlott knowing that she will never feel a pure girl again but on the other hand,

she manages to find enough strength to start a new phase of her life: “. . . and some

spirit within her rose automatically as the sap in the twigs. It was unexpected youth,

surging up anew after its temporary check, and bringing with it hope, and the invincible

instinct towards self-lightˮ (Tess 120) and thus Tess sets out “on a thyme-scented, bird

hatching morning in Mayˮ (Tess 123) to Talbothays Dairy with the aim of forgetting her

past. It may appear symbolic that she starts her new life on May, the month when new

lives are born in nature, and when plants and animals are recovering from winter. The

same could be said about Tess who as well as nature sparkles in the spring landscape

with a vivid energy after some curative time in Merlott. Nevertheless, she knows very

well that her previous life must stay a secret because “a sense of condemnation under an

arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in Natureˮ (Tess 332) was torturous to

her. The narrator admits: “Most of the misery had been generated by her conventional

aspect, and not by her innate sensationsˮ (Tess 110). For nature, nothing changed and

time continues passing by as before: “Meanwhile the trees were just as green as before;

the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had

not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her painˮ (Tess 109).

In terms of love we know that according to Darwin, individuals choose their

sexual partners instinctively, which is evolutionary process. However, this controversial

topic also meant a lot of questions at the time when it was published in The Descent of

Man. Thomas Hardy was fascinated by Darwin’s theories, their critics and questions

connected with them. Therefore, “the complex interaction of the social and the naturalˮ

(Richardson 158) appears in his fiction (Ibid.). Not only Tess, but her companions at

Talbothays as well love Angel Clare. According to the rules of nature, they would

logically choose a ‘male’ who would be able to provide for the family but on the other

hand, according to the rules of society, they have to be satisfied with a husband from

their social class because a rich man usually is not interested in poor milkmaids.

19

The full recognition of the futility of their infatuation, from a social point

of view; its purposeless beginning; its self-bounded outlook; its lack of

everything to justify its existence in the eye of civilization (while lacking

nothing in the eye of Nature). (Tess 175)

The fact that nature, sun in this case, makes no differences between the rich and

poor also confirms the milking scene in one summer evening. In general, sun rays fall

down on everyone equally as does on the milchers in “long thatched shedsˮ (Tess 128)

at Talbothays. The narrator compares “obscure and homely figuresˮ (Ibid.) of milchers

to “a Court beautyˮ (Ibid.) to highlight the fact that sun shines for everyone with no

exception:

. . . the sun, lowering itself behind this patient row, threw their shadows

accurately inwards upon the wall. Thus it threw shadows of these obscure

and homely figures every evening with as much care over each contour as

if it had been the profile of a Court beauty on a palace wall. (Ibid.)

Despite the fact that Tess is not the part of nature as such, she is influenced by

her in many ways; from traditions, for example Maypole dance in Merlott or

superstitions, to ‘pagan’ thoughts that differ with morality of Victorian society. This

morality is based on the conditions which poor Tess cannot meet as a girl who was

‘seduced’: “She has been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the

environment which she fancied herself such an anomalyˮ (Tess 103).

20

3. Traces of Industrialization in Tess

3. 1. Mechanization of the Countryside

“A field man is a personality a field; a field-woman is a portion of the field; she

has somehow lost her own margin, imbibed the essence of her surrounding, and

assimilated herself with it.ˮ (Tess 106)

In the final quarter of the nineteenth century rural England went through the

Agricultural Depression. It was the age of “plunging profits, farm failures and rural

decay” (Wild 87). There were two “great depressions”, in 1875-84 and 1891-99

(Williams 5). Since the Tess’s story takes place approximately in 1886, references

should be found to the 1875-84’s depression in the novel.

Whereas wheat farmers had great problems and in many cases went bankrupt

because of the bad harvests and cheaper corn from North America, dairy farming was

growing (Hopkins 90) compared to other departments of farming. A reader can see this

fact even in Tess when the heroine works at Talbothays, the dairyman Crick’s dairy

farm. Talbothays lies in the Valley of the Great Dairies, which differs from the Vale of

Little Dairies in Blackmoor Vale where Tess comes from.

The enclosures numbered fifty acres instead of ten, the farmsteads were

more extended, the groups of cattle formed tribes hereabout; there only

families. These myriads of cows stretching under her eyes from the far east

to the far west outnumbered any she had ever seen at one glance before.

(Tess 125)

Hardy describes dairyman Crick’s household of maids and men’s position as

“perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social scale, being above the line at which

neediness ends, and below the line at which the convenances begin to cramp natural

feelingsˮ (Tess 153). Tess along with her fellows “lived on comfortably, placidly, even

merrilyˮ (Ibid.) at Talbothays. This dairy farm as well as others sells its milk to towns

and makes butter. Generally speaking, Dorset butter was “famous all over the world”, as

Haggard states (257). In addition, it may appear that Hardy stylizes garden at

21

Talbothays into Paradise on Earth (Van Ghent 36). This is the scene in which Angel

plays the harp and Tess listens to him “keeping behind the hedge that he might not

guess her presenceˮ (Tess 147). Van Ghent mentions that apple trees in this “outskirt of

gardenˮ (Ibid.) should remind of Paradise (36). It may be suggested that Hardy’s aim to

present Talbothays in such a light was rather symbolical than only to express reality of

dairy farming “fairly flourishingˮ (Haggard 280). It may appear that objects and events

of Victorian country life served to Hardy as means for realistic, at times naturalistic,

description of reality, but they also served as symbols in the life of the main heroine.

Another event that caused problems to farmers in the field of livestock farming

was “attacks of disease among cattle-foot and mouth disease, liver rot, and swine fever”

(Hopkins 90). Some of the bankrupt farmers “left the land” (Hopkins 91) and tried to

find a new one mainly in America, British colonies (Mingay 172) or as Angel in Brazil:

. . . a red-and-blue placard setting forth the great advantages of the Empire

of Brazil as a field for the emigrating agriculturist. Land was offered there

on exceptionally advantageous terms. Brazil somewhat attracted him as a

new idea. (Tess 311)

Hardy also records the reality of life of agricultural workers who went to Brazil

to find a new land to cultivate. They believed in better life than they lived in Britain, but

the reverse was true in many cases. We can see in the background of the extract below

that the author nearly naturalistically describes the reality of the painful fate of many of

the workers who travelled there:

The crowds of agricultural labourers who had come out to the country in

his wake, dazzled by representations of easy independence, had suffered,

died, and wasted away. He would see mothers from English farms trudging

along with their infants in their arms, when the child would be stricken

with fever and would die; the mother would pause to dig a hole in the loose

earth with her bare hands, would bury the babe therein with the same

natural grave-tools, shed one tear, and again trudge on. (Tess 402)

Pite points out that the characters in Hardy’s novels are “able to move to houses

further afield and travel further in search of workˮ (Pite 82). Tess is an example of this

22

statement. This heroine changes places a few times. Firstly, she goes to work to

Trantridge. Then, we can find her on the Talbothays dairy farm in the south, and as her

‘life story’ continues, her travels continue as well. She finds hard work in the uplands at

Flintcomb-Ash and finally, we find her in a luxurious seaside town Sandbourne, which

is the exact opposite of the previous one. The reader can feel constant ‘move’ because

of Tess’s need to find work and new, better life. As Morgan notes, “Tess embraces the

widest geographical area in Hardy’s Wessex” (qtd. in Morgan and Rode 175).

According to Pite, Hardy’s aim was to symbolically end her story nearby The Chase

where her sorrow had begun (80):

What happened on ‘The Chase’ led to Tess’s wandering around ‘South

Wessex’, as far west as Emminster and south as far as Wellbridge and

Sandbourne; at the moment when she has tried definitively to free herself –

by murdering Alec and running away with Angel – the choice of route

returns her to the beginning of her social exclusion and imprisonment, ‘The

Chase’ lying just a few miles to the west of the route she follows through

the forest. (Pite 80)

Angle goes further than his wife and also Tess’s friends and companions from

Talbothays and later from Flintcomb-Ash, Izz and Marian, finally try their luck in “their

land of Canaan – Egyptˮ (Tess 430).

As Haggard noted, it was typical that workfolks, as Hardy called labourers in

Dorset, “moved regularly, every year or twoˮ (280). During the Late Victorian period,

the agricultural workforce shrank as a consequence of migration from the countryside

caused by continuous agricultural mechanization or the lure of higher industrial wages,

as Wild discusses (89). Thomas Hardy claimed that a distinct feature of industrialization

of the countryside was its depopulation when “families, who had formed the backbone

of village life in the past, who were the depositories of the village traditions, had to seek

refuge in the large centres” (Tess 417). He argued that machines displaced manual

labour and caused the decay of villages. Not only in The Dorsetshire Labourer, but also

in Tess, Hardy describes this process “designated by statisticians as ‘the tendency of the

rural population towards the large towns’, being really the tendency for water to flow

uphill when forced by machinery” (Ibid.).

23

According to Williams, it was not only machinery that caused the decay of

villages, but as far as depopulation is concerned, it was also Joseph Arch’s Union that

“encouraged many thousands of labourers to move to the towns or to emigrateˮ (1).

Thanks to education and railways, they knew very well that they could get better-paid

jobs somewhere else and before its bankruptcy, it had been the Union that helped them

with this very often (Ibid.). In case the Union did not manage to provide higher wages

for agricultural labourers, it assisted them with seeking a job either in industrial towns

or in “the Dominions or America, where they helped the foreign market to outsell

English produceˮ (Williams 11).

Williams points out that “employment in many parts of the county was regulated

by hiring fairsˮ (109) and in Dorset County, it was Candlemas fair in Dorchester –

Casterbridge in Tess - that used to be held on 14 February. This day “was of great

import to agriculturistsˮ (Tess 380) and field labourers hoped to find an opportunity to

change their current place. Farmers, on the other hand, sought a new, “fresh handsˮ

(Haggard 280): “It was at this fair that new engagements were entered into for the

twelve months following the ensuing Lady-Dayˮ (Tess 380). Hardy accentuates in Tess

the fact that since women’s work was cheaper, farmers tried to make use of hiring them

“for tasks which women could perform as readily as menˮ (Tess 338) because “a

woman who, like a boy, fills the place of a man at half the wages” (“The Dorsetshire

Labourer”) was more profitable for them. Although “female field-labour was seldom

offered nowˮ (Ibid.), a tyrannical farmer Groby at Flintcomb-Ash can profit from Tess’s

and her fellows’ rough work. The fact that women did men’s work at steam-threshing

may be seen in the scene wherein Alec tries to persuade Tess to stop working in such

terrible conditions and offers her to take her home to Merlott: “. . . I have told the

farmer that he has no right to employ women at steam-threshing. It is not proper work

for them; and on all the better class of farms it has been given up, as he knows very

wellˮ (Tess 397).

The Candlemas fair was followed by an Old Lady-Day which was hold on 6

April and meant “a day of fulfilmentˮ (Tess 416) when “agreements for outdoor service

during the ensuing year, entered into at Candlemas, are to be now carried outˮ (Ibid.).

Since this day, labourers were able to resettle from old places “to the new farmsˮ (Ibid.).

Williams points out that earlier, agricultural labourers from South had not left their

villages so often because the railway in Dorset was quite a late issue and till its

24

installation, people had known “nothing about the life outsideˮ (4) their villages where

“their ancestors had lived for generationsˮ (Ibid.). In addition, Hardy shows on the

example of Tess’s mother, who belongs to the old generation that missed compulsory

education and migration as well, that times has changed compared to the generation of

her children:

When Tess’s mother was a child the majority of the filed-folk about

Merlott had remained all their lives on one farm, which had been the home

also of their fathers and grandfathers; but latterly the desire for yearly

removal had risen to a high pitch. (Tess 416)

It should be mentioned that Thomas Hardy describes “all the mutations so

increasingly discernible in village lifeˮ (Tess 416) and also depopulation of English

countryside not only in Tess, but also in The Mayor of Casterbridge and Far from the

Madding Crowd (Williams 109).

According to Mingay, “the fall in numbers of women and girls in the

countrysideˮ (171) contributed to the decline in the village population as well. Women

and girls were forced to migrate especially because of the “mechanization of some tasks

in which females had commonly been employedˮ (Ibid.). Among these tasks belonged

“the hoeing of root corps, haymaking and the binding and stoking of the sheaves behind

the reapersˮ (Ibid.). The reaping-machine appears in Tess during the grain harvest in

Merlott: “The machine had begun, and a moving concatenation of three horses and the

aforesaid long rickety machine was visible over the gate, a driver sitting upon one of the

hauling horses, and an attendant on the seat of the implementˮ (Tess 105). The fact that

binding and stoking of the sheaves was mainly women’s work is confirmed in the scene

in which “the reaping-machine left the fallen corn behind it in little heaps, each heap

being of the quantity for a sheaf; and upon these the active binders in the rear laid their

hands – mainly womenˮ (Tess 105-106). The harvest scene appears to be naturalistic

because Hardy vividly describes killing of animals living in the open field.

Rabbits, hares, snakes, rats, mice, retreated inwards as into a fastness,

unaware of the ephemeral nature of their refuge, and of the doom that

awaited them later in the day when, their covert shrinking to a more and

more horrible narrowness, they were huddled together, friends and foes, till

25

the last few yards of upright wheat fell also under the teeth of the unerring

reaper, and they were everyone put to death by the sticks and stones of the

harvesters. (Tess 105)

After happy times on dairy farm at Talbothays, Tess is reduced to working at

Flintcomb-Ash, “a starve-acre placeˮ where “corn and swedes are all they growˮ (Tess

337). It was a village in the west where field workers were always taken “because few

care to comeˮ (Ibid.). During the hard times that have troubled Tess since her husband

left her, she tries to ease her pain by recalling the “happy summer at Talbothays”

(Henson 200). Milking was not considered to be hard work there; quite the contrary, it

was romanticized. As the exact opposite of Talbothays Dairy, “that happy green tract of

land where summer had been liberal in her gifts” (Tess 340), we can find Flintcomb-

Ash, the farm full of torment for Tess. It is not a place for “summer memories” (Henson

200) of Talbothays dairy farm, which is located “on the edge of the heath” (Williams

105) in the Frome valley. At Flintcomb-Ash, the threshing-machine, “the red tyrant that

women had come to serve” (Tess 385), appears and is described as follows: “. . . a

timer-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 nervesˮ (Ibid.).

Apart from the threshing-machine, there is also an engine, which may be

considered as another example of the fact that the rural countryside is being

mechanized.

A little way off there was another indistinct figure; this one black, with a

sustained hiss that spoke of strength very much in reserve. The long

chimney running up beside an ash-tree, and the warmth which radiated

from the spot, explained without the necessity of much daylight that here

was the engine which was to act as the primum mobile of this little world.

(Tess 385-386)

In the novel, the engineman is seen as “a dark motionless being” (Tess 386) who

is also a kind of ‘machine’ without emotions and has nothing in common with field

workers: “He was in the agricultural world, but not of it” (Ibid). He may appear to be a

servant of this machine and moreover, the narrator states that he “served fire and

26

smoke” (Ibid.), whereas the workers “served vegetation, weather, frost and sun” (Ibid.).

The engineman came from the industrial north, but this southern part of Wessex still

remained the old times when people lived in harmony with nature. It was also the nature

that determined events in agricultural world, but in Tess we can see that industrialization

with its machines and opportunities finally prevails over the nature and ‘its children’.

What used to take months in the past days, the machines do in a few weeks time now.

However, there are also old men on the farm at Flintcomb-Ash who are convinced of

better productivity and quality of agricultural work in the “past days, when they had

been accustomed to thresh with flails on the oaken barn-floor; when everything, even to

winnowing, was effected by hand-labour, which to their thinking, though slow,

produced better results” (Tess 387). Mingay notes that elderly men usually stayed on

farms and did some light work in the barns or stockyard. They could stay “perhaps for

having some special skill, or merely out of charity” (173).

Hardy accentuates that the period of haymaking was more welcome and

comfortable for women than threshing that followed: “Not a woman in the county but

hates the threshing machine. The dust, the din, the sustained exertion demanded to keep

up with the steam tyrant, are distasteful to all women but the coarset”. (“The Dorsetshire

Labourer”) Tess also has to undergo this experience in spite of the fact that women are

allowed only to ‘feed’ the machine. Although farmer Groby is acquainted with this fact,

he does not care and Tess “was the only woman whose place was upon the machine”

(Tess 395) then. This machine shakes “bodily by its spinning” (Ibid.) and Tess becomes

very exhausted as a result: ‘“How the little limbs tremble! You are as weak as a bled

calf, you know you are”’ (Tess 397). Whereas most of the farm-women “kept up their

strength by drinking ale” (Tess 396), Tess never joins them because of “traditionary

dread, owing to its result at her home in childhood” (Ibid.). However, her companion,

Tess’s exact opposite Marian, drinks a lot not only because of the hard work, but also

due to unrequited love of Angel.

According to Henson, the scene at the field wherein Tess and Marian are

grubbing up turnips is “one of the most disturbing images in Hardy’s novels” (199).

Field and sky are confronted there in their bleakness:

Every leaf of the vegetable having already been consumed, the whole field

was in colour a desolate drab; it was a complexion without features, as if a

27

face from chin to brow, should be only an expanse of skin. The sky wore,

in another colour, the same likeness; a white vacuity of countenance with

the lineaments gone. So these two upper and nether visages confronted

each other all day long, the white face looking down on the brown face,

and the brown face looking up at the white face, without anything standing

between them but the two girls crawling over the surface of the former like

flies. (Tess 339-340)

Their unhappy situation is emphasized by the fact that they cannot stop working

even if they are tired and the weather worsens, because “if they did not work they would

not be paid; so they worked on” (Tess 340).

Mingay points out that a lot of village girls used the opportunity to work in

“domestic service, and in shops and factories in townsˮ (171). As far as Tess is

concerned, it may be noted that the heroine does not belong to the girls and women that

Mingay describes because she still tries to find work on farms and does not wish to

migrate to a town like other girls of her age. Moreover, she rejects even the very thought

of working in a town because she is afraid of “towns, large houses, people of means and

social sophistication, and of manners other than ruralˮ (Tess 328). On the other hand,

thanks to Angel, Tess acquires proper manner and language, which could help her to

become an ideal candidate for work in a household of a noble family. However, “not

being aware of the rarity of intelligence, energy, health, and willingness in any sphere of

life, she refrained from seeking an indoor occupationˮ (Ibid.). Be that as it may, it may

be stated that Thomas Hardy described vividly and realistically the reality of women’s

work in the late 19th

century.

28

3. 2. Railway in Dorset

“The railway, like the ancient prehistoric roads and the later Roman military

routes, is carved into the landscape, and the Wessex terrain remains a concrete

residuum or sedimentation of human history stretching back in time.” (Morgan and

Rode 176)

Hardy knew very well that the situation in Dorset was not satisfactory because

Dorset was bypassed when the railways were built in surrounding areas except the latter

that “lost its place within the network of relationsˮ (Pite 38) and thus became isolated.

Hardy’s readers can meet variety of ‘lines of communication’ from turnpikes to Roman

roads in his novels and the same may be said about the means of transport (Ibid.). As far

as Tess is concerned, modern trains stand against horses or carriages, but it should be

noted that “the railway exists only in the background of Tess” (Morgan and Rode 176).

In addition, one of the old Roman roads is also mentioned in the story. It is the scene in

which Tess “cut across the straight and deserted Roman road called Long-Ash Laneˮ

(353), when she is about to see her husband’s family in Emminster. Railways came late

to Dorset and turnpikes as well. Pite points out that first railways appeared in Dorset

after 1847, which was compared to other counties with a long delay. He also claims that

the delay was caused by “the war of the gauges combined with a conflict between two

possible routes [coastal and central] into the southwestˮ (39).

Pite states that “the railway links prevented Dorchester from suffering radical

declineˮ (40). This piece of Victorian technology, as new railway network and

increasing amount of railway stations may be considered, opened “the crucial new

market for dairy farmersˮ. (“Victorian Farmˮ) It was the Great Western Railway that

provided special night trains which were travelling from south-west England to London,

Bristol and Birmingham and delivered fresh milk into these towns (Wild 100). As a

narrator of Victorian Farm emphasizes, it was “for the first time ever, fresh milk be sent

in bulk from the countryside to the townˮ (Ibid.).

‘Londoners will drink it [milk] at their breakfast to-morrow, won’t they?’

she asked. ‘Strange people that we have never seen.’ . . . ‘Noble men and

noble women, ambassadors and centurions, ladies and tradeswomen, and

babies who have never seen a cow.’ . . . ‘Who don’t know anything of us,

29

and where it comes from; or think how we two drove miles across the moor

to-night in the rain that it might reach ’em in time?’ (Tess 225)

Neither Londoners nor customers from other towns and cities had any idea about

the real work of dairy maids. Hardy expresses the difference between ‘townspeople’ and

villagers through the words of Angel who admits that people in towns cannot drink milk

in such a consistence that rural people are used to: “‘. . . its strength has been lowered,

so that it may not get up into their heads’ˮ (Tess 225). As far as Tess is concerned, she

knows very well that her effort will never be appreciated because for these ladies,

centurions or noble women, it is natural to have a glass of fresh milk for their breakfast

and they do not care whose hands milked it to which Tess cannot reconcile herself.

Apart from other advantages, railway links also helped to connect cities with

tourist attractive “holiday destinationsˮ (Pite 40). These were usually “seaside towns

accessible by railˮ (Ibid.) such as Brighton, Worthing and also Bournemouth that Hardy

named Sandbourne in Tess.

3. 3. Tourism

Although Dorset has been “primarily agricultural” (Williams 106), there are

even some industries and “tourism in seaside towns” (Ibid.) in Wessex. Hardy also

mentions one of these seaside towns in Tess. He describes Sandbourne, “a city of

detached mansions; a Mediterranean lounging-place on the English Channel” (Tess

446). It is the scene in which Tess stays “as mistress to Alec” (Watts 48) at The Herons.

According to Pite, Angel must have been shocked when he met his wife living like a

lady from a city and wearing dress according to the latest fashion in “this new and

exotic environment, dislocated from her rural lifeˮ (Pite 81).

This fashionable watering-place, with its eastern and its western stations,

its piers, its groves of pines, its promenades, and its covered gardens, was .

. . like a fairy place suddenly created by the stroke of a wand, and allowed

to get a little dusty. An outlying eastern tract of the enormous Egdon Waste

was close at hand, yet on the very verge of that tawny piece of antiquity

such a glittering novelty as this pleasure city had chosen to spring up. (Tess

445)

30

The fact that Hardy created a new partially imaginary country called Wessex and

renamed the real towns of Dorset and its neighbouring counties by fictional equivalents,

made Hardy and his work “a nostalgic adjunct to holiday tourism” (Amigoni 149).

During the Industrial Revolution, a lot of people migrated to towns and later, this urban

population tried to use any opportunity to go to the countryside and breathe some fresh

air that industrial towns lacked. Besides, countryside recreation meant also an

opportunity to discover a rural heritage or do some sports. All these ‘pleasures’, which

countryside provided, contrasted with “poor working conditions” (Curry 1) that workers

from towns had to bear. Curry points out that when wakes weeks and bank holidays

were introduced, townsfolk were allowed to enjoy their leisure time more than ever

before (Ibid.).

Angel Clare and his brothers ramble through Wessex at the beginning of the

story and thus may be considered to be the examples of “young men of a superior class”

(Tess 13) who visited rural areas of England. These three ‘trippers’ are “carrying small

knapsacks strapped to their shoulders, and tout sticks in their hands” (Ibid.). Angel

along with his brothers visits the local Cerealia1 in Merlott on their way. Whereas he is

amused by “the girls dancing without partners” (Tess 14), his ‘noble’ brothers “were

plainly not intending to linger more than a moment” (Ibid.) because ‘fraternizing’ with

villagers “would have struck unpleasantly upon their biased niecenessˮ (Tess 254).

Villagers were ‘formed’ by weather and seasons. In other words, it was nature that

influenced and led their lives. Later on at Talbothays Dairy, Angel himself has an

opportunity to discover life of a rural labourer.

Secondarily, he made close acquaintance with phenomena which he had

before known but darkly – the seasons in their moods, morning and

evening, night and noon, winds in their different tempers, trees, waters and

mists, shades and silences, and the voices of inanimate things. (Tess 142)

In addition, “the romantic and other artistic movements of the nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries” (Curry 2) contributed to “an increase in public preference for

1 Cerealia is “an ancient fertility rite celebrating the goddess Ceres’ return to earth to welcome her

daughter, Prosperine, goddess of Springˮ (Morgan and Rode 172).

Morgan, Rosemarie, and Scott Rode. “The Evolution of Wessex.ˮ Morgan 157-177.

31

the countryside” (Ibid.). Among these artists belonged writers such as Wordsworth,

Byron, the Brontës sisters or Thomas Hardy. Then, landscape painters such as Turner

and Constable or musicians Elgar, Delius and others helped to make the Victorian

England “countryside a popular place to spend leisure time” (Ibid.). It may appear that

Thomas Hardy considerably influenced tourism in Dorset not only during his life, but

his novels have drawn tourists’ attention to this county until today.

32

4. The Hodge Stereotype

“The impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic life than the

pachydermatous king. Looking at it thus he found that life was to be seen of the same

magnitude here as elsewhere.ˮ (Tess 186)

According to Hopkins, people from the cities and towns regarded an agricultural

labourer as “Hodge, a dull, rather backward and unenterprising yokel . . . chewing a

straw, as seen in a multitude of Punch cartoons” (92). Thomas Hardy described Dorset

as the county “where Hodge in his most unmitigated form is supposed to reside”. (“The

Dorsetshire Labourer”) Even his character Angel is influenced by “the Hodge

stereotype” (Freeman 173) as the rest of the higher society and it were “books,

pamphlets and articles on rural lifeˮ (Freeman 175) that contributed to the idea of

primitive rural people:

The conventional farm-folk of his imagination – personified by the pitiable

dummy known as Hodge – were obliterated after a few days’ residence. At

close quarters no Hodge was to be seen. At first, it is true, when Clare’s

intelligence was fresh from a contrasting society, these friends with whom

he now hobnobbed seemed a little strange. Sitting down as a level member

of the dairyman’s household seemed at the outset an undignified

proceeding. The ideas, the modes, the surroundings, appeared retrogressive

and unmeaning. (Tess 141)

According to Freeman, the label Hodge was typically used in the south of

England, which was a poor area with a “community more fragileˮ (174) than in any

other part of England, and it was the labourer from the south that appeared “in official

inquiriesˮ (Ibid.) most often. For these rustics “of limited spheres, miles are as

geographical degrees, parishes as counties, counties as provinces and kingdomsˮ (Tess

119). Nevertheless, Education Acts, newspapers and agricultural trade unions helped to

broaden Hodge’s knowledge and horizons and let to his progressive transformation

(Freeman 176).

In the society’s opinion, “. . . the labourer was usually seen as deferential,

dependent and ignorantˮ (Freeman 174) and it may appear that Tess’s parents are an

33

example of such a view. They are superstitious, uneducated and ‘dull’; they use “their

languageˮ (Freeman 183) that urban elites cannot understand; her father, who prefers

spending his time in a local public house to working, is not an exemplary breadwinner;

their great wish is to be ‘dependent’ on their purported rich relative Alec d’Urbervilles

or later, on Angel Clare.

It was especially the Union that “killed offˮ (Freeman 175) Hodge. Later on, the

Hodge label almost disappeared “in written descriptions of the labourerˮ (Freeman 173)

at the end of 19th

century. However, the stereotype was still commonly used in society

(Ibid.). Be that as it may, meaning of this label underwent the progress and finally, as

Howkins states:

The labourer’s permanence became valued as a counterbalance to the

changing industrial and urban social landscape; agricultural work was

revalidated and accorded new aspect as a skilled employment and the

labourer was made ‘the bearer of Englishness’, the carrier of a folk

tradition that transcended and superseded the ephemeral culture of the

towns. (qtd. in Freeman 182)

As Williams notes, a mere labourer “could also hope to rise out of their class

through marriage or educationˮ (115). As far as village girls are concerned, they could

improve their social status either by becoming teachers or through marriage with a man

from better social background, which was also Tess’s case. It should be mentioned that

this happened in towns quite often but on the contrary, it was a slow unusual process

(Ibid.) in the rural areas.

Whereas Tess thanks to her marriage to Angel raises to become a farmer’s

respectable wife as “Mrs. Crick, the dairyman’s wifeˮ (Tess 135) is, Angel ‘sinks’ to

enter “the ranks of the agriculturists and breedersˮ (Tess 137) instead of entering the

Church and studying at Cambridge University as he was expected. According to

Angel’s parents, there is no need to give their son “a University education, if it is not to

be used for the honour and glory of Godˮ (Tess 139). Angel’s argument on this seems

simple and current because he suggests that university education “may be used for the

honour and glory of manˮ (Ibid.). However, his father, the Vicar, refuses to accept such

a vision. As a result of his father’s refusal, Angel decides to do without university.

34

Moreover, he is wholly conscious “that he was at present out of his classˮ (Tess 149)

because he milks cows and lives among “a number of varied fellow-creatures-beings of

many mindsˮ (Tess 142) as he describes “the typical and unvarying Hodgeˮ (Ibid.). The

purpose of his behaviour is just to learn “how to be a rich and prosperous dairyman,

landowner, agriculturist, and breeder of cattleˮ (Tess 149). Finally, he takes a fancy to

farming and what is more, “he became wonderfully free from the chronic melancholy

which is taking hold of the civilized races with the decline of belief in a beneficent

Powerˮ (Tess 142). Apart from other things, Angel’s parents disagree with his choice of

wife. Whereas he is full of happiness and love with this “fresh and virginal daughter of

Natureˮ (Tess 144) and “a visionary essence of womanˮ (Tess 155) as he calls Tess, his

parents would prefer him to marry their friend’s daughter Miss Mercy Chant, who is

supposed to be an ideal wife for their son for she is “great at Antinomianism and Bible-

classesˮ (Tess 189). Nevertheless, Clare “increasingly despised the material distinctions

of rank and wealthˮ (Tess 140) and knows well what his wife should be like. His bride

Tess then becomes “Mis’ess – so to name her nowˮ (Tess 265). It may appear ironic

that Angel’s parents disagree with the marriage just because “a dairywoman was the last

daughter-in-law they could have expectedˮ (Tess 252) considering the fact that they are

both faithful servants of God and do a lot of work for charity. Neither her poverty nor

her “ancient lineˮ (Ibid.), but her sin finally arouses “the tenderness towards Tessˮ (Tess

439).

4. 1. Superstitions, Customs and Myths in Tess

Wild states that Tess is “a symbol of the final eradication of the English

peasantry” (90), which highlights the fact that she comes from a village that is still

outdated in many ways because “superstitions linger longest on these heavy soilsˮ (Tess

408). It may be suggested that customs and superstitions, which are described on the

example of Merlott and Blackmoor Vale, might be symbols of decay of rural England

villages.

The harts that had been hunted here, the witches that had been pricked and

ducked, the green-spangled fairies that ‘whickered’ at you as you passed; -

35

the place teemed with beliefs in them still, and they formed an impish

multitude now. (Tess 408-409)

According to Mingay, “the long survival of old myths and magical beliefs” (130)

was the result of “the slow progress of education” (131). The scene in which Tess’s

uneducated mother, “with her fast-perishing lumber of superstitions, dialect, and orally

transmitted ballads” (Tess 22), uses the Compleat Fortune-Teller to find out about her

daughter’s (un)happiness in Trantridge, is an apt demonstration of real belief in such a

thing. Joan Durbeyfield asks Tess to hide the book back under the thatches because “a

curious fetishistic fear of this grimy volume on the part of her mother prevented her

ever allowing it to stay in the house all night” (Ibid.).

When Tess is on her visit at the Slopes where her ‘rediscovered family’ lives,

she is given roses by Alec “in prodigality of his bounty” (Tess 44). Hardy mentions that

“cottagers in Blackmoor Valeˮ (Tess 47) as well as Tess are “steed in fancies and

prefigurative superstitions” (Ibid.). Therefore, when the thorn of the rose “pricked her

chin” (Ibid.), she believes it is an ill omen. Nevertheless, Hardy sardonically points out

that this was the first omen “she had noticed that dayˮ (Ibid.), but the true is that her

visit at the Slopes is full of hints that Alec d’Urbervilles has a sinister plan that will

change Tess’s future. However, as a pure village girl, she cannot know men’s ‘bad

character’ and cannot even know what to expect from a man like Alec. Later, when she

comes back home as a “maiden no moreˮ (Tess 89), she reproaches her mother for not

warning her:

‘I was a child when I left this house four months ago. Why didn’t you tell

me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know

what to fend hands against, because they read novels that tell them of these

tricks; but I never had the chance o’ learning in that way, and you did not

help me!’ (Tess 99)

It may appear that what Joan Durbeyfield has not done for her poor daughter to

avoid all her suffering, Tess unknowingly does later for her younger sister “so gentle

and sweetˮ (Tess 467) Liza-Lu. Tess’s tragedy might be considered to be a lesson for

Liza-Lu, who is therefore given an opportunity to mature and become a ‘virtue’ woman

and wife, which her sister Tess could not. Thanks to Tess’s ‘example’, Liza-Lu knows

36

the danger that can meet young and innocent village girls. It may be suggested that Tess

is providence for her sister; the providence “of her simple faithˮ (Tess 86) that was not

present there in The Chase, where Tess lost her virtue. Tess - Liza-Lu’s providence –

thus indirectly ‘warns’ her to be aware of ‘the seductions’ of men and life because they

may cause great pain over rejection from family and society.

Another example of superstition can be seen on the Talbothays dairy farm when

one of the cows stops giving milk. One of the dairy maids believes that “it goes up into

their horns” (Tess 132). On the contrary, better educated Dairyman Crick almost

sarcastically doubts it because as he says, “even witchcraft might be limited by

anatomical possibilities” (Ibid.). Then, they start to sing songs and believe that it might

help to solve this problem. Mingay claims that “traditional remedies” (130) for humans

and animals “owed much to superstition” (Ibid).

Later, on Talbothays dairy farm, the churn breaks. It “revolved as usual, but the

butter would not comeˮ (Tess 158). The first thing that comes to Mr Crick and dairy

maids’ minds is that it is a consequence of “somebody in the house is in loveˮ (Tess

158) as Mrs Crick suggests, because she “heard tell in her younger days that that will

cause itˮ (Tess 159).

There were also a lot of myths about marriage and one of them also appears in

Tess. After Tess and Angel’s wedding, when they are saying goodbye to Mr and Mrs

Crick, the cock crows. “An afternoon crow” (Tess 257) means ill omen as Mrs Crick

fears. Few hours later, Tess learns of Retty’s suicide attempt. This unhappy event might

have been a mere coincidence but on the other hand, it seems to fit Tess’s frame of mind

because she believes that the cock crow was a real ill omen which foretold Retty’s

desperate act.

Although rural life became more mechanized and scientific in the 19th

century,

the sort of movement back was evident there because of the sentimentality about old

traditions such as “the local Cerealia ˮ (Ibid.) in Merlott.

The forests have departed, but some old customs of their shades remain.

Many, however, linger only in a metamorphosed or disguised form. The

May-Day dance, for instance, was to be discerned on the afternoon under

notice, in the guise of the club revel, or ‘club-walking,’ as it was there

called. (Tess 10)

37

According to Royle, “seasons and the Christian yearˮ (272) regulated the

customs in a village. Villagers had an opportunity to meet their neighbours and Royle

also suggests that even though the customs were generally rural in terms of origin,

people in towns celebrated some of them as well and thus “town and country came

together in drunken revelry and delightˮ (Ibid.).

As far as the Merlott May-Day dance is concerned, Hardy accentuates its

singularity for those were “solely womenˮ (Tess 10) who took part in the ceremony

consisting of “walking in procession and dancing on each anniversaryˮ (Ibid.). It may

appear evident that neither historians nor Hardy were exactly sure about its original

purpose because “it had walked for hundreds of years . . . and it walked stillˮ (Tess 11).

Girls and women wore “white gownsˮ (Ibid.), which was “a gay survival from Old Style

days, when cheerfulness and May-time were synonyms – days before the habit of taking

long views had reduced emotions to a monotonous averageˮ (Ibid.).

Apart from geography of south and southwest England, Hardy was also inspired

by history and myths of this area when he was creating Wessex. The Cross-in-Hand is

one of the real mysterious places that he described in his work.

Some authorities stated that a devotional cross had once formed the

complete erection thereon, of which the present relic was but the stump;

others that the stone as it stood was entire, and that it had been fixed there

to mark a boundary or place of meeting. (Tess 369)

According to Kay-Robinson, one of the many purposes of the Cross-in-Hand

often suggested as “a memorial to mark the site of the miracle related in ‘The Lost

Pyx’” (139) is least like. On the other hand, she mentions the opinion that there is a

connection between this stone and ancient Cerne Abbey “suggesting that the concave

capital was designed to receive offerings” (Ibid.).

The Cross-in-Hand or “Crossy-Hand” (Kay-Robinson 138), as local people call

this stone pillar on Batcombe Down, appears in the scene in which Tess goes to visit her

husband’s parents in Emminster and meets Alec d’Urbervilles there. Alec, who is afraid

of her charm, forces her to swear on the pillar where used to be, according to his words,

the Holy Cross: “. . . and to lessen my fear, put your hand upon that stone hand, and

swear that you will never tempt me - by your charms or ways” (Tess 370). On her way

38

back to Flintcomb-Ash, Tess meets a shepherd who disproves the theory about the Holy

Cross and says that “a malefactor who sold his soul to the devil was tortured there by

nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung” (Tess 371). It may appear that also Tess

unknowingly sold her soul to the devil [Alec] when she swore on that stone hand.

However, at this particular moment in time, she does not know that this devil will

follow and finally catch her. Poor Tess does not know that she will be also hung as a

malefactor.

4. 2. Old Family

“Tess is a victim both of violent historical change . . . and of the suppression of

the violence of history.ˮ (Dolin 341)

As Dolin noted: “Tess is different, and her difference is her fate” (340). This

difference is caused by Tess’s aristocratic ancestors from her father side. She inherited

“a nobility bearing, a quality of dignity” (Watts 51) and these traits “mark her out from

other young women” (Ibid.). With these traits, she captivates Angel who believes that

Tess is a “child of soil” (Tess 437). He is convinced that he found a virtuous wife

because “there are few purer things in nature than an unsullied country maid” (Tess

315). Nevertheless, he finally realizes that the reverse is true. Tess is a descendant of

“what’s called a’ old family” (Tess 152) that according to Angel’s opinion, “have done

their spurt of work in past days, and can’t have anything left in ‘em now” (Ibid.). Tess

herself hates her aristocratic origin because she is convinced that this is the reason of

her misfortune. On her way to Talbothays, she glimpses a tomb of d’Urbervilles in

Kingsbere and is full of disgust of her ancestors. As her new life episode begins with

this journey, she realizes that she has “as much of mother as father” (Tess 124) in her

and that “all her prettiness comes from her [mother], and she was only a dairymaid”

(Ibid.). This statement confirms the scene in which Tess and Angel, being on the

honeymoon in a farm-house that used to be a seat of d’Urbervilles, can see portraits of

ladies from this noble family. Faces of these “horrid women” (Tess 260) are not only

ugly, but they have also “sinister faces” (52) as Watts describes them. It is said that

these women’s “lineaments once seen can never be forgotten” (Tess 260). It may seem

that even Tess’s face must be unforgettable, but this is because of her beauty which is

39

the exact opposite of these two ladies whose ugliness “haunts the beholder afterwards in

his dreams” (Ibid.).

As far as the Durbeyfields are concerned, they are no exception in terms of being

impoverished descendants of aristocratic families. According to Williams, Hardy was

inspired by a real noble family of the Turbervilles in Tess. The family was powerful

especially in Middle Ages and officially died out in 18th

century (171). Williams points

out that “it is not improbable that various poor relations continued living obscurely in

Dorsetˮ (Ibid.). When Angel and Tess talk about old families he admits: “There’s the

Billetts and the Drenkhards and the Greys and the St. Quintins and the Hardys and the

Goulds, who used to own the lands for miles down this valley; you could buy ’em all up

now for an old song a’mostˮ (Tess 152). It may appear to be an example of ‘“how are

the mighty fallenˮ’ (Tess 6) if one takes in consideration that “many of the tillers of the

soil were once owners of itˮ (Tess 226).

On the contrary, Alec d’Urbervilles’ father, who is not alive when the story takes

place, was a mere merchant from the North and “decided to settle as a county man in the

South of Englandˮ (Tess 41) one day. Knowing that his original name consisting of

“bald stark wordsˮ (Ibid.) was not too exclusive, Mr. Stoke decided to find a proper one

“that would not too readily identify him with the smart tradesmanˮ (Ibid.). He visited

the British Museum and spent a lot of time seeking a proper name in “works devoted to

extinct, half-extinct, obscured, and ruined familiesˮ (Ibid.) that would sound well and

d’Urberville finally corresponded to his idea. Hardy sardonically admits: “Yet he was

not an extravagant-minded man in this, and in constructing his family tree on the new

basis was duly reasonable in framing his inter-marriages and aristocratic links, never

inserting a single title above a rank of strict moderationˮ (Tess 41-42). It may seem that

Alec owns Tess’s ancestors’ character, which confirms the theory that not only heredity,

but also power and money create human beings because Alec neither has a drop of

aristocratic blood in his veins nor noble ancestors and despite this, he is endowed with

“fierce, domineering, feudal renownˮ (Tess 224).

40

4. 3. Village Education

According to Mingay, “there were wide regional differencesˮ (131) in terms of

literacy. Mingay also suggests that people in the countryside near London were more

literate than those who lived in distant rural areas of the countryside. This was the

situation of 17th

century and these differences decreased by the end of 19th

century when

“average male literacy across the country had increased as high as 97 per centˮ (Ibid.).

Before 1870, “the children of small farmers, artisans and labourers depended on

there being a charity school or a little private institutionˮ (Ibid.). However, there were

still a lot of village areas with no schools. It was the parish clergy, landowners or the

voluntary National and British Societies and Methodist chapels that usually founded and

funded village schools. The Revised Code from 1862 brought changes in the

educational system in Britain (Mingay 132). School education was funded, pupils were

tested and “it established a system of payment by resultsˮ (Bowlby) based on the tests

and regular attendance (Ibid.).

Hardy also mentions changes in education system in Tess by comparing Tess’s

and her mother’s knowledge. Whereas Tess, “with her trained National teachings and

Standard knowledge under an infinitely Revised Codeˮ (Tess 22), is educated within the

realms of possibility for her class, her mother Joan, unlike her children, missed the years

of compulsory education and the difference between her and Tess is evident: “. . . there

was a gap of two hundred years as ordinarily understood. When they were together the

Jacobean and the Victorian ages were juxtaposedˮ (Ibid).

Thanks to Forster’s Education Act in 1870, School Boards were elected in

neglected areas and brought better education there. Royle accentuates that “education

was neither compulsory nor freeˮ (413) and the grant system of school fees lasted until

1891. As a landmark in education, we may find a year 1880 when attendance became

compulsory “for all children between the ages 5 and 13ˮ (Ibid.).

Children from the poor class were supposed to acquire just the basic knowledge,

which was “reading, writing, arithmetic and religious knowledgeˮ (Royle 414).

However, Education Acts allowed children to broaden their knowledge, so they also

studied subjects such as “history and the countries of the worldˮ (Wild 92). Also Tess’s

idea what is beyond the Vale “depended on the teaching of the village schoolˮ (Tess

39). Before 1870, geography had been taught “in a catechetical, mnemonic wayˮ (Pite

41

4) and had been focused on Great Britain as such (Ibid.). Wild states that these subjects

helped children and youths to realise that their life did not necessarily need to be tied to

their village. This, apart from other things, contributed to their migration to the cities

and towns or overseas (92).

Royle points out the fact that there were apparent differences in education

system between classes. He admits: “Nowhere can the class structure of nineteen-

century England and Wales be seen more clearly than in the education system” (Ibid.).

However, if someone finished elementary school, he or she might have become a

teacher, which meant “social advancementˮ (Royle 415) then. Since Tess attended a

village school “where she had held a leading place at the time of her leavingˮ (Tess 39),

she wishes to become a teacher one day. One of the oldest training colleges for teachers

was the Whiteland College in London founded in 1841 (Royle 415). It may seem that

Tess’s “London-trained mistressˮ (Tess 20) might have attended just this college.

Joan Durbeyfield compared to Tess did not pass the Sixth Standard in the

National School and thus “habitually spoke the dialectˮ (Ibid.), whereas her daughter

“spoke two languages: the dialect at home . . . ordinary English abroad and to persons of

qualityˮ (Ibid.).

As far as the buildings of village schools are concerned, they were not very

idyllic either. Firstly, those schools were “crampedˮ (Mingay 132) and secondly, the

conditions in which pupils had to study were very poor. It was no exception that

children had to study in a single “cold and draughtyˮ (Ibid.) room wherein pupils of all

ages were educated. They were usually divided into two groups according to their age.

Mingay points out that “noise was a great problemˮ (133) and “some schools even

lacked a supply of drinking waterˮ (Ibid.). In spite of discomfort children had to bore,

the growth of literacy finally exceeded the negative sides and the idea of Hodge

stereotype faded away. Later, thanks to the Education Acts, the conditions got better.

Wild claims that “new and better-equipped village schools were builtˮ (92), so the

children did not have to study in cold rooms, where “the ink froze in the standsˮ

(Mingay 133) or “wind and rain penetrated through defective windowsˮ (Ibid.).

42

4. 4. Housing Conditions

“. . . whereas the urban problems might be thought to be the result of

industrialisation, those of the rural areas were really the product of persistent neglect.ˮ

(Hopkins 93)

Hardy’s heroine’s family lives in a kind of cottage like many villagers

throughout Britain. Mingay records cottages almost identically like Hardy in Tess.

However, whereas Mingay describes the fact that “many bedrooms let in rain and windˮ

(183) quite realistically, Hardy’s description may appear to be rather romantic

considering the fact that there was nothing idyllic about this way of living: “she [Tess]

watched winds, and snows, and rains, gorgeous sunsets, and successive moons at their

fullˮ (Tess 102). It was also Wild whose description of cottage corresponded to

Mingay’s. Wild states that “the only sanitation was an outside privy shared by

neighbouring familiesˮ (91). Moreover, according to higher society or clergymen, it was

unhealthy and also immoral if parents shared bedroom with their children. However, the

truth is that this fact was not rare. As a matter of fact, it was very frequent that most of

the children slept together in one big room and the rest with parents or even with

grandparents (Ibid.). Some shared their bedroom ‘only’ with brothers and sisters.

Nevertheless, “such accommodation became very crampedˮ (Mingay 183). It is an

interesting fact that Hardy describes both. In one scene, he depicts “the large bedroom

where Tess and all her little brothers and sisters sleptˮ (Tess 30), whereas in another

one, he offers the reader a view of “the bedroom which she [Tess] shared with some of

the childrenˮ (Tess 102), which confirms Wild and Mingay’s view of parents and

children sleeping in one bedroom together.

“Extremely bad housing conditions” (Hopkins 93) might have caused serious

health complaints to the agricultural workers who lived in overcrowded cottages (Ibid.).

As far as tenant farmers are concerned, their dwellings were often better because their

financial situation was more satisfactory than the situation of an ordinary agricultural

worker (Wild 90). Therefore, they lived in new farmhouses or model cottages, whereas

the workers and their families were forced to live under the “thatched roof and an earth

privy outside” (Hopkins 93). Thomas Hardy was acquainted with this reality and he also

mentions this fact in The Dorsetshire Labourer when he notices: “. . . the family which

43

dwells in a cleany and spacious cottage has the probability of more cheerful existence

than a family narrowly housed and draggletailedˮ. (“The Dorsetshire Labourer”) Hardy

also mentions the fact that dependent labourers cared about the cottages more

responsibly compared to copyholders, cottage freeholders (Ibid.) or “‘liviers’ who were

disapproved of in villages almost as much as little freeholders, because of their

independence of manner and when a lease determined it was never renewedˮ (Tess

415). In 1883, few years before Hardy started writing Tess, he had stated in The

Dorsethsihre Labourer that “. . . the Damocles' sword of the poor is the fear of being

turned out of their houses by the farmer or squireˮ. (“The Dorsetshire Labourer”) Since

Tess’s father was “the last of the three lives for whose duration the house and premises

were held under a leaseˮ (Tess 415), after his death, Tess and the rest of the family

belongs to those who are forced to leave the house for “regular labourers, who were

stinted in cottage accommodationˮ (Ibid.). At this moment, Tess looses even the little

she had: “her few square yards of thatchˮ (Tess 102). Hardy describes this fact as one of

the causes of rural depopulation.

The village had formerly contained, side by side with the agricultural

labourers, an interesting and better-informed class, ranking distinctly above

the former – the class to which Tess’s father and mother had belonged –

and including the carpenter, the smith, the shoemaker, the huckster,

together with nondescript workers other than farm-labourers; a set of

people who owed a certain stability of aim and conduct to the fact of their

being life-holders like Tess’s father, or copyholders, or, occasionally, small

freeholders. But as the long holdings fell in they were seldom again let to

similar tenants, and were mostly pulled down, if not absolutely required by

the farmer for his hands. Cottagers who were not directly employed on the

land were looked upon with disfavour, and the banishment of some starved

the trade of others, who were thus obliged to follow. (Tess 416-417)

As an exact opposite of the thatched cottage, where Tess and her family lived in,

we may consider The Slopes in Trantridge, the estate of ‘new’ d’Urbervilles. A rich

tradesman Mr. Simon Stoke bought this country-house that was “built for enjoyment

pure and simple, with not an acre of troublesome land attached to it beyond what was

required for residential purposes, and for a little fancy farm kept in hand by the owner,

44

and tended by a bailiffˮ (Tess 40). It may appear that Trantridge has Alec’s nature for it

has its “own code of moralityˮ (Tess 71). In addition, levity “ruled The Slopesˮ (Ibid.)

and what is more, people from Trantridge are convinced about “the uselessness of

saving moneyˮ (Ibid.). Alec belongs to the upper-class ‘dandies’ and is far from being a

good landowner. Instead of studying and working, he lives from his parents’ fortune and

his life does not appear to be exemplary. The same may be said about people “in that

vicinityˮ (Ibid.). They do not care much about work when “leaning on their ploughs or

hoesˮ (Ibid.) try to “prove that parish relief was a fuller provision for a man in his old

age than any which could result from savings out of their wages during a whole

lifetimeˮ (Ibid.).

45

5. Conclusion

The novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles provides a portrayal of Late Victorian

country life in England to its readers. Symbolic and visual elements participate in the

heroine’s story in which fiction mingles with the reality of Hardy’s age. The thesis has

shown that Hardy records historical account through realistic, at times, naturalistic

depiction of rural life but on the other hand, romantic spirit rich in metaphors and

influenced by poetry or art such as Impressionist painting, theatre or grand opera are

also apparent in Tess. Hardy applied his knowledge of art particularly to portray nature,

weather and sceneries, which means that Tess is an example of art that is influenced by

another kind of art. It should be noted that scientific and philosophical ideas as well

permeate into Tess in many aspects. In addition, the thesis has displayed that nature

plays an important role in the story and is supposed to be a ‘higher power’ for which

neither social laws nor any social class is superior.

The thesis has also demonstrated that the novel helps to create nation’s

perception of the country life because Tess, which belongs to so called ‘Wessex novels’,

presents imaginary Wessex to its readers; the region inspired by an ancient Anglo-

Saxon kingdom and corresponding to Dorset and its neighbouring counties. Visitors

from towns longing to ramble in the country had a possibility to follow the steps of

Hardy’s characters because his handmade maps of Wessex were provided along with his

novels. Therefore, Dorset, which is known as ‘Hardy’s region’, has drawn tourists’

attention until today because they can connect real towns and villages with their

imaginary counterparts.

Apart from other things, a reader can learn more about Victorian society, mainly

rural people. It may be noted that Hardy gives his characters some characteristics of

their pagan ancestors – they are superstitious, believe in myths and most of the

traditions in the countryside have pagan roots. The novel presents Hodge, a rural

labourer, who had been considered to be a dull, primitive villager for a long time.

However, industrial revolution and its reforms had started the process of his gradual

development, and therefore Hardy presents two kinds of Hodge in Tess, which the thesis

has discussed. On the one hand, the heroin and her peer group, which underwent

compulsory education, are examples of a new generation, whereas Tess’s parents

46

present the ‘old-fashioned’ group, which literally corresponds to Hodge’s description.

On their example, Hardy shows the real living conditions of most of the rural labourers

or craftsmen.

According to Hardy, mechanization of the countryside was one of the main

problems that caused village decay and he accentuates this fact even in Tess. Machines

appear regularly throughout the novel; from a threshing-machine and reaping-machine

to train. All these inventions quickened and simplified work, which meant that a lot of

labourers lost their ‘jobs’ because less hands were needed on farms as a consequence of

mechanization. Moreover, Hardy vividly and realistically records the reality of women’s

work on farms in the late 19th

century.

In general, it may be stated that in one single novel, Thomas Hardy managed to

express his own view on the character of decaying rural areas in his native region. The

thesis has shown that as specifically as he could, Hardy recorded problems of his age

with which rural labourers and farmers had to struggle. Therefore, a reader can learn

about mechanization of the countryside, village decay, the reality of women’s work on

farms, housing conditions or village education. Gradual customs and traditions decline

was last but not least of difficulties to which Hardy could not reconcile himself.

In conclusion, Thomas Hardy mingled reality and fiction in Tess of the

d’Urbervilles and created a fictional story combined with the real life in the Late

Victorian countryside. Therefore, I used literary science sources as well as sources

dealing with historical realities in the thesis to compare Hardy’s account with real

historical facts of the period.

47

6. Bibliography

6. 1. Works Cited

Alexander, Michael. A History of English Literature. 3rd

ed. New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2013. Print.

Allingham, Philip V. “The Victorian Sensation Novel, 1860-1880 – ‘Preaching to the

Nerves Instead of Judgment.’” Victorian Web. 18 Dec. 2013. Web. 19 Aug.

2014. <http://www.victorianweb.org/genre/sensation.html>.

Amigoni, David. Victorian Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.

ProQuest ebrary. Web. 18 Jul. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/docDetail.action?docID=10477157&p00=da

vid%20amigoni>.

Bowlby, Chris. “The 150 – Year Battle to Improve Britain’s Schools.” History Extra. 10

Oct. 2012. Web. 1 Sept. 2014. <http://www.historyextra.com/feature/150-year-

battle-improve-britain%E2%80%99s-schools>.

Cline, Austin. “Definition of Antitheist.” About.com. n.d. Web. 22 Aug. 2014.

<http://atheism.about.com/od/Atheist-Dictionary/g/Definition-Antitheist.htm>.

Curry, Nigel. Countryside Recreation, Access and Land Use Planning: Participation,

Preferences, Policies. London: Spon Press, 1994. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 18 Jul.

2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/docDetail.action?docID=10095817&p00=co

untryside%20recreation>.

Dolin, Tim. “Melodrama, Vision, and Modernity: Tess of the d’Urbervilles.ˮ A

Companion to Thomas Hardy. Ed. Keith Wilson. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons,

2010. 328-344. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 24 Jul. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/docDetail.action?docID=10577681&ppg=2>

.

Freeman, Mark. “The agricultural labourer and the ‘Hodge’ stereotype, c. 1850-1914.ˮ

Agricultural History Review, vol. 49 (2001): 172-186. British Agricultural

History Society. 2012. Web. 7 Aug. 2014.

<http://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/49n2a3.pdf>.

48

Haggard, H. Rider. Rural England: Being an Account of Agricultural and Social

Researches Carried Out in the Years 1901 and 1902. Vol. 1. 1904. New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2010. Google Books. Web. 3 Sept. 2014.

<http://books.google.cz/books?id=clxbQ5rcAhUC&printsec=frontcover&hl=cs#

v=onepage&q&f=false>.

Henson, Eithne. Nineteen Century Series: Landscape and Gender in the Novels of

Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy: The Body of Nature.

Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2011. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 15 Jul. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/docDetail.action?docID=10501033&p00=ni

neteen%20century%20series%3A%20landscape%20gender%20novels%20charl

otte%20bront%C3%AB%2C%20george%20eliot%2C%20thomas%20hardy%3

A%20body%20nature>.

Hardy, Thomas. “The Dorsetshire Labourer.” 1883. The Dorset Page. 2000. Web. 7

Aug. 2014.

<http://www.thedorsetpage.com/genealogy/info/the_dorsetshire_labourer.htm>.

---. Tess of the D’Urbervilles. 1891. London: HarperCollins, 2010. Print.

Hopkins, Eric. Industrialisation and Society: A Social History, 1830-1951. London:

Routledge, 2000. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 18 Jul. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/docDetail.action?docID=10054094&p00=in

dustrialization%20society>.

Kay-Robinson, Denys. Hardy’s Wessex Reappraised. Newton Abbot: David & Charles,

1972. Print.

“Malthusianism.ˮ Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopaedia. 26 Sept. 2014. Web. 7 Oct.

2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism>.

Mingay, G. E. Social History of the English Countryside. London: Routledge, 1990.

ProQuest ebrary. Web. 3 Aug. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/docDetail.action?docID=10060960&p00=so

cial%20history%20english%20countryside>.

Morgan, Rosemarie, ed. Ashgate Research Companion to Thomas Hardy. Farnham:

Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2010. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 8 Oct. 2014. <

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/detail.action?docID=10428206&p00=thomas

+hardy>.

Morgan, Rosemarie, and Scott Rode. “The Evolution of Wessex.” Morgan 157-177.

49

Patil, Mallikarjun. Thomas Hardy: The Poet: A Critical Study. New Delhi: Atlantic

Publishers and Distributors, 1997. Google Books. Web. 21 Aug. 2014.

<http://books.google.cz/books?id=uTUvHevEtvAC&pg=PR1&hl=cs&source=g

bs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

Pite, Ralph. Hardy’s Geography: Wessex and the Regional Novel. New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2002. Print.

Richardson, Angelique. “Hardy and Biology.” Thomas Hardy: Texts and Contexts. Ed.

Phillip Mallett. Gordonsville: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 156-175. ProQuest

ebrary. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/reader.action?docID=10044841&ppg=181>.

Royle, Edward. Modern Britain: A Social History, 1750-2010. London: Bloomsbury

Academic, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 10 Aug. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/docDetail.action?docID=10535514&p00=m

odern%20britain%3A%20a%20social%20history%2C%201750-2010>.

“Rural England.ˮ Cambridge University Press. n.d. Web. 24 Aug. 2014.

<http://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/history/social-and-population-

history/rural-england-being-account-agricultural-and-social-researches-carried-

out-years-1901-and-1902>.

Taylor, Dennis. “From Stratford to Casterbridge: The Influence of Shakespeare.”

Morgan 123-156.

Van Ghent, Dorothy. “On Tess of the d’Urbervilles.ˮ Modern British Fiction. Ed. Mark

Schorer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. 30-44. Print.

“Victorian Farm.” Victorian Farm: Complete Series: 2-DVD Set. Dir. Stuart Elliot. Perf.

Ruth Goodman, Alex Langlands, Peter Ginn. Acorn Media, 2009. DVD.

Watts, Cedric. Humanities Insights: Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Penrith:

Humanities-Ebooks, 2007. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 20 Aug. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/docDetail.action?docID=10567315&ppg=1>

.

Wild, Trevor. Village England: A Social History of the Countryside. London: I.B.

Tauris, 2004. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 18 Jul. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/docDetail.action?docID=10133099&p00=vil

lage%20england%3A%20a%20social%20history%20countryside>.

50

Williams, Merryn. Thomas Hardy and Rural England. London and Basingstoke:

Macmillan, 1972. Print.

6. 2. Works Consulted

Bujak, Edward. England’s Rural Realms. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. ProQuest ebrary.

Web. 10 Aug. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/docDetail.action?docID=10231646&p00=en

gland%27s%0rural%20realms>.

Burchardt, Jeremy. Paradise Lost: Rural Idyll and Social Change since 1800. London:

I.B. Tauris, 2002. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 10 Aug. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/docDetail.action?docID=10133053&p00=pa

radise%20lost%3A%20rural%20idyll%20social%20change%201800>.

Gericke, Jaco. Hebrew Bible and Philosophy of Religion. Williston: Society of Biblical

Literature, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 27 Aug. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/docDetail.action?docID=10676859&p00=dy

stheism>.

McDowall, David. An Illustrated History of Britain. Harlow: Longman, 2006. Print.

Sutherland, John. So You Think You Know Thomas Hardy?: A Literary Quizbook.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 8 Oct. 2014.

<http://site.ebrary.com/lib/masaryk/detail.action?docID=10233647&p00=thoma

s+hardy>.