Tess Of The D`urbervilles And Victorian Convention Surrounding Female Sexuality

"The sympathy which the Victorian novel routinely extends to women who are downtrodden, stifled or oppressed is often accompanied by a disappointing reluctance on the part of the novelist to challenge the conventions which underpin that oppression." Discuss.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles was thought by Hardy to be his finest novel. Throughout the novel, Tess faces many agonizing struggles, and is put up against a vast amount of social criticism. Despite Tess's inability to conform to Victorian social morals, Hardy pens her as 'the Pure Woman', and it is impossible as a reader not to empathise with her as a character. This essay will explore the ways in which Hardy represents Tess and how far he goes to challenge the Victorian social conventions that allow Tess's fate to be so tragic.

The term 'Victorian Double Standard' is not something Hardy was unfamiliar with, in fact, as noted by Penny Boumelha in her introduction to the novel, in the later part of the nineteenth century there was 'widespread public debate on sexuality and the roles of women.' (Boumelha xiv). Hardy ensures to make it clear that Tess of the d'Urbervilles relates to issues of it's time by setting it 'in the context of recognisable English society.' (Boumelha). Hardy does not take the Shakespearean 'out-clause' by using past history to make his point, but boldly sets his novel in the midst of current affairs. The setting of the novel is not only important in time, but also in place. Blackmoor, or Blakemoor, represents Tess's innocence and purity. As well as this, the village's double name introduces a key theme in the novel; that everything has two sides. As well as being a hint at Alec's own double name, it also invites readers to view everything flexibly. With his detailed portrayals of the landscape, Hardy creatively gives his readers a vivid imagination of the setting, pulling them in close to Tess and her world, and preparing them to go with her on her journey of destruction. In opening their minds and their senses, Hardy has his readers perfectly placed to empathise capaciously with her character.

Tess's characterisation is an important technique that Hardy adopts to challenge her oppression. Tess the Maiden is depicted as childlike with lines such as 'you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks' (21), and her white dress at the May Day dance symbolises her purity. Tess is outlined as honest, true, and sensitive. When Prince is accidently killed, 'Poor Tess'; 'regarded herself in the light of a murderess' (40) and despite her own reservations, went to Trantridge for the sake of her family. Tess's modesty and chastity are brought to light when she first wipes off Alec's kiss and then decides to walk rather than ride with him. Tess is also shown to be modest when despite all of the other maids dancing with men and drinking, she refuses to be involved, and on the night of her undoing, she refuses help from Alec twice before finally going with him. Later on in the novel, Tess chooses to live in poverty and work in a dismal job rather than trouble Angel, and refuses Alec's help several times before finally giving in for the sake of her family. Hardy makes clear to the reader that Tess is a good person, and it is only through extreme circumstance that she ever gives in to sin. Although Hardy portrays Tess in a way that the reader feels attached to her, he does not allow Tess to fall into the template of the 'fallen woman'. Tess is not a 'Moll Flanders' that speaks of her life in retrospect and repents her sins, nor is she an 'Esther' in Mary Barton that hides in the shadows feeling unworthy of her kin. Instead, Tess controversially tries to start again as a fresh woman and marries Angel before telling him of her past. Tess ignores the double standard and claims; 'O Angel - I am almost glad - because now you can forgive me!' (243). Tess even repeats her biggest fall in the novel by 'leaving behind the threshing machines and Arctic birds of her life as an agricultural labourer for the cashmere and frills of boarding-house life as Alec's mistress.' (Boulmelha xvii). Although Tess's actions would been seen as immoral, and the harsh treatment Tess receives as an impure woman would not have been uncommon in the Victorian era, the way in which Hardy presents Tess's good character makes it impossible not to feel that her fate is unjust.

Whether 'The president of the immortals' really did inflict justice upon Tess is much debated, just like Tess's fateful night in The Chase. Whether Tess was raped has been widely discussed by critics such as Ellen Rooney and Kristen Brady, many of which, including the two mentioned, have not been able to make a definite conclusion. The most recent publication of the novel leaves the case slightly ambiguous, but as William Davis notes; In the 1891 edition of Tess Alec gives Tess a draught of a cordial from a `druggists bottle` that he "held....to her mouth unawares.." Hardy removed all reference to the cordial. (Davis)

By removing this evidence that the tragic event certainly was rape, Hardy firstly ensures the ambiguous scene is certain to draw the attention of critics, allowing the book to be in the spotlight. Secondly, Hardy implies it could have been a seduction. In doing this, and still choosing to coin her 'A Pure Woman', Hardy makes his novel challenge convention even more.

In the 'rape' scene, Hardy heightens the controversy in a rather disturbing manner. Although through the majority of the novel, the omniscient narrator draws his reader close to the mind of Tess, at this point in the novel Hardy's use of metaphor and imagery does something different; Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; (Hardy:82)

The words 'tissue', 'blank', and 'traced' create an image of a pen, tracing a 'coarse pattern' across a 'blank' page; just as Hardy was doing as he wrote the lines. In doing this, Hardy eerily connects himself, his narrator, and his reader; to Alec's act. This seems to suggest that Hardy wants to communicate that he, and perhaps men in general could be held partially responsible for what Alec does. Of course Hardy himself is responsible for penning the scene quite literally, but there is evidence to suggest his narrator is also guilty of objectifying Tess. The narrator points out Tess's 'pouted-up deep red mouth'(21), a mouth which the narrator makes 'the most privileged feature of her physical appearance throughout the novel' (Silverman). Every male character in the book projects a sexual gaze onto Tess, supporting the theory that Hardy wanted to place blame for her sexuality onto men as a unity; an idea that wouldn't have been very popular with his upstanding male readers. It is in this scene that Hardy confronts another Victorian convention that contributes to Tess's fall. He writes; Doubtless some of Tess d'Urberville's mailed ancestors rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same measure even more ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time. (82).

This openly accuses Tess's aristocratic 'fathers' of committing the same act. Not only is Hardy implicating the 'genteel' Alec, but also Tess's own elite ancestors. The idea that the upper-end of the social hierarchy are at fault is forceful with Angel also. In class, as well as in gender, Angel should be 'better' than Tess, he comes from a privileged background and is of course; a man. However Angel's unrelenting criticism of Tess and his inability to accept her once he learns she is damaged; lead the reader to place Tess, the debauched milkmaid; above him. As Shumaker asserts; 'The gender hierarchy collapses under his unforgiving rigidity' (Shumaker). Hardy conveys Tess as the 'better' one, elevating her class and her sex. While doing this, Hardy also ensures that Angel as a character stands for convention itself, Angel 'spoke with a conventional sense of duty' (142) and the narrator tells us; With all his attempted independence of judgment this advanced and well-meaning young man, a sample product of the last five-and-twenty years, was yet the slave to custom and conventionality when surprised back into his early teachings'. (284).

As well as penning Angel as a symbol of convention, Hardy goes as far as to accuse his conventionality of being the cause of Tess's latter stage grief. He writes; she grieved for the beloved man whose conventional standard of judgement had caused her all these latter sorrows (320). While Angel stands for convention, Tess clearly stands for nature. Angel labels her; 'a fresh and virginal child of nature' (136) and 'A lady. in feeling and in nature' (181). Hardy often puts convention and nature up against each other, for instance, after the fateful night in The Chase, the narrator tells us; She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly. (98)

He also expresses after the grim scene with the pheasants; She was ashamed of herself for her gloom of the night, based on nothing more tangible than a sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in Nature. (298)

Hardy even goes on to say that; 'The recuperative power which pervaded organic nature was surely not denied to maidenhood alone'. (112). By creating a link between Tess and nature, and then an opposition between nature and social convention, Hardy again challenges the social laws that see Tess so downtrodden, by defining them as unnatural.

Tess's link to nature is not always to her advantage. There are times in the novel that nature itself seems to be 'sporting' with Tess, and this is where Hardy could be retracting his bold expressions. When Angel puts to Tess that if they were to have children, these children would be 'growing up under a taunt' (262), Hardy writes; Yet such is the vulpine slyness of Dame Nature that til now Tess had been hoodwinked by her love for Clare. (263).

Nature also seems to be turning on Tess shortly after when we learn that; She looked absolutely pure. Nature, in her fantastic trickery, had set such a seal of maidenhood upon Tess's countenance (257).

Although it looks that Hardy is countermanding his previous contests against convention, these illusive backstabs could actually be further pangs against social law. Nature is not turning on Tess, but repelling the system that oppressed her in the first place. This argument is most supported when the narrator comments on the death of Tess's child; So passed away Sorrow the Undesired - that intrusive creature, that bastard gift of shameless Nature who respects not the social law; a waif (108).

With this powerful, ingenious line; Hardy depicts nature so criminally, and Sorrow so harshly, that the effect on the reader is the want to fight against the line, and therefore against society. Although this backtrack can easily be resolved, there is another matter in the novel that needs to be clarified. To truly confront the social laws, Hardy could have had Tess and Angel reunite, and live happily ever after, disposing of Alec in a tidy way like Orlick's imprisonment in Great Expectations. Hardy however has Tess murder Alec, confirming Angel's proclamation that they cannot be together 'while that man lives' (262). This gives the Victorians the 'justice' their ethics ask for by having Tess sentenced to death. By having Tess commit the murder, Hardy seems to conform to the notion that she is a wrongdoer and should be punished. Of course there are other ways of looking at this. Perhaps, as James Hazen notes; 'Its pointlessness in itself is an indication of [Tess's] underlying self-destructive intention.' (Hazen) It could also be, as the structure of the final lines suggest; a further attempt to grab at the reader's emotion; by fating Tess to such a tragic ending, Hardy leaves us questioning whether 'justice' (Hardy: 420) was really done. Rosemarie Morgan believes however, that 'knifing the heart' of Alec was Hardy's final stab at depicting Tess's vitality and moral strength. Tess 'turns her own life around yet again, but this time with readiness, she says, to face her executioner. (Morgan: 109).

In final consideration, it would be quite erroneous to say that Hardy has a 'disappointing reluctance' to challenge convention. In fact, as the evidence conveys, Hardy makes a vast effort to confront social law in several ways. Although the cunning dubiety of nature and the ambiguity of his motives for penning Alec's murder could expose him as falling short, these two paradoxes in the novel can competently be elucidated. On top of this, the strength of the oppositions to custom he exhibits throughout the novel vastly outweighs these possible flaws.

Bibliography

Barreca, Regina, Sex and Death in Victorian Literature. London. Macmillan. 1990. Print.

Boumelha, Penny, Introduction in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. By Thomas Hardy. London. Oxford University Press. 2008. Print.

Davis, William. "The Rape of Tess: Hardy, English Law, and the Case for Sexual Assault." Nineteenth-Century Literature , Vol. 52, No. 2 (1997): 221-231. JSTOR. Draper, R.P, Hardy: The Tragic Novels. Surrey. Macmillan. 1975. Print.

Hardy, Thomas, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. London. Oxford University Press. 2008. Print.

Hazen, James. "Tess of the d`Urbervilles and Antigone." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, Volume 14, Number 4, (2010): 207-215. Project Muse. Laird, J.T, The Shaping of Tess od the d'Urbervilles. London. Oxford University Press. 1975. Print.

Morgan, Rosemarie, Women and Sexuality in the novels of Thomas Hardy. London. Routledge. 1988. Print.

Shumaker, Jeanette. "Breaking with the Conventions: Victorian Confession Novels." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, Volume 37, Number 4. (1994): 445-462. Project Muse. Silverman, Kaja. "History, Figuration and Female Subjectivity in "Tess of the d`Urbervilles". Novel: A forum on fiction. Vol. 18, No. 1 (1984): 5-28. JSTOR. Widdowcon, Peter, Tess of the d'Urbervilles Contemporary Critical Essays. London. Macmillan. 1993. Print.