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Thomas Hardy
Tess of the DUrbervilles
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Origins
A serial form titled Too Late Beloved wasrejected
A censored version was published in theGraphic in July 1891
The original title of the novel was ADaughter of the DUrbervilles (March 1890in the USA)
The final title was Tess of theD'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman FaithfullyPresented. (1891)
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Themes
Country vs town
Industrialisation
Men and women Christianity and older ways
Sexual mores
Ancestry and class Purity and goodness
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The sub-title
Inserted:
"at the last moment, after reading the final
proofs, as being the estimate left in a
candid mind of the heroine's character
an estimate nobody would be likely to
dispute. It was more disputed than
anything else in the book."Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, ed. Scott Elledge, 3rd edition. New York: WW
Norton, 1991, p. xii.
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Tess
A Wessex Eve Strongly associated with natural abundance and
fecundity
Leads a procession in honour of the harvest
which is a mixture of pagan and Christian
A pure woman
Pure woman
Passive victim? Seductress? Victim of beauty?
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Ellen Rooney on Tess
While rape entails the unambiguous violence
that would guarantee Tess's purity, seduction
defines the less pure space of complicity,
desire, and reading [.] Ultimately, the meaningof purity hinges on the relation between
seduction and rape. Hardy, cannot clarify this
relation because he cannot represent Tess as a
desiring or speaking subject.'A Little More than Persuading': Tess and the Subject of Sexual Violence," in Rape
and Representation, eds Lynn A. Higgins and Brenda Silver. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1991, p.96
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The one vol edn of Tess(1892)
Conversation between two women farmworkers:
"A little more than persuading had to do wi'the coming o't, I reckon. There were they
that heard a sobbing one night last year inthe Chase and it might ha' gone hard wi' acertain party if folks had come along.
Well, a little more, or a little less, 'twas athousand pities it should have happenedto she, of all others." (pp. 70-71)
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Hardys comment
He regretted inserting:
"a mock marriage . . . for the seduction
pure & simple of the original MS. which
I did for the sake of the Young Girl. The
true reading will be restored in the
volumes."Letter to Thomas Macquoid (29 October 1891) in The Collected Letters of ThomasHardy, eds Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate, 7 vols. Oxford: Clarendon
Press,1978-88, 1 245-46.
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Later edition
She had never wholly cared for him [Alec], shedid not care for him now. She had dreaded him,winced before him, succumbed to adroitadvantages he took of her helplessness; then,temporarily blinded by his ardent manners, hadbeen stirred to confused surrender awhile: hadsuddenly despised and disliked him, and hadrun away. That was all. Hate him she did not
quite; but he was dust and ashes to her, andeven for her name's sake she scarcely wished tomarry him. (p. 64).
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Alec DUrberville
New money?
Hypocrite?
Rapist? Preacher?
A Miltonic satanic tempter?
Does he get just deserts?
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Whose fault?
Where does it begin?
Sir John?
The horse? The vicar?
Mrs Durbeyfield?
Tess and Alec? Tess and Angel?
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Coincidence
The letter
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Fate
Is Tess:
Punished for crimes and flaws of earlier
generations? [her mailed ancestors [who] rollicking home from a fray had dealt
the same measure even more ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time (Tess, p. 57)].
Punished for her own flaws?
A victim of social convention? Pre-destined to suffer?
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