Tess of the D’Urbervilles
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Only a man could write such a novel....
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I'd have to say that if Thomas Hardy were a woman, Tess would have told Clare where to stick his pastoral ideals and he would have apologized or run off, at which point Tess would have found herself a man who respected her. I really hated Angel Clare for doing that to her, and Tess for letting him. I understand how important virginity was to that culture, but Tess's experience was as a victim! And Angel had just confessed to her some previous experience undertaken willingly. Hardy didn't understand women at best, and was a misogynist at worst.
Actually I was surprised a man could write such a novel.
This is a specious argument from Meri. With all due respect, Hardy understood how his Victorian world worked. And critics of his day damned him for his brutal honesty. Today, it seems, that honesty is no less abhorrent to some.
I read this book probably..35 years ago. Your comments make me want to read it again. It was one of the best books I've read.
Isobel wrote: "Actually I was surprised a man could write such a novel."His penetration into the feminine mind is certainly praiseworthy. This is my favorite Hardy novel, too.
I love this book. Only a man could dare write such a book at this time but remember, Hardy was criticized terribly for Tess. He gave it a couple more tries then turned to writing poetry exclusively because he was praised for that and was given many awards. He was very daring in one way and thin skinned in another. His marriage was a disaster and the couple couldn't get out of it. Sad.
I finished Lorna Doone, and although the author is a man he paid alot of attention to the landscape, and the scenery, and yes their was a love story between Lorna Doone and John Ridd. I guess men can write in the genre. The Moonstone is another novel by Wilkie Collins, which is a great read as well.
William wrote: "interjecting all these angry hypotheticals. "This is an online forum what do you expect?
What do I expect from an online forum? Stultifyingly ill-informed and illiterate rantings from the emotionally incomplete. Fortunately you get a better class of person on Good Reads! :-)
Most of the time! Actually it's nice to see that someone cares enough to write about reading Tess of the D'Ubervilles. I wish I had Goodreads when I was a teenager reading all these books.
Lynn wrote: "Most of the time! Actually it's nice to see that someone cares enough to write about reading Tess of the D'Ubervilles. I wish I had Goodreads when I was a teenager reading all these books."I, as a teenager, wish i would have had goodreads last september when i was starting my senior AP English class. I think it would have helped a lot with my essays. But its too late now :[
Reading is what helps with writing, can't get away from it. What is better than reading for pleasure!?
No. But it sounds like historical revisionism. Traditional accounts call the wife the sourpuss. More research is obviously needed.
Tess is probably one of the earliest novels to raise some of the issues our day associates with "date rape." (Remember that his addendum to the title was "A Pure Woman.") Hardy is generally viewed as highly sympathetic to the plight of women and as exposing the practices of his day that frequently oppressed them, so I am very surprised to see some of the readings and interpretations of his work described here.
Only Thomas hardy could write this steaming pile
Lily wrote: "(Remember that his addendum to the title was "A Pure Woman.")"Yes, and I am sure that I have read elsewhere that Hardy saw himself as Tess' only real champion and defender - against the 'modern' world that would take her virtue and destroy her character.
Tom wrote: "Only Thomas hardy could write this steaming pile"Would you care to explain your meaning?
Charlotte wrote: "Yes, and I am sure that I have read elsewhere that Hardy saw himself as Tess' only real champion and defender - against ..."Not sure I understand your comment. It seems to me that he was taking the story to the world for its responses. However, I doubt he could have anticipated the generations of readers the story would reach and influence.
Lily wrote: "Tom wrote: "Only Thomas hardy could write this steaming pile"Would you care to explain your meaning?"
Meaning Thomas Hardy was ham handed with his characters and his sensibility of Character defines Fate is highly irritating. Tess and Jude were particularly awful books. His constant historical allusions show he knows some history, but his internalization and regurgitation of it is superficial. In general I am not a fan of the Victorians, suspecting any system with no ability to laugh at absurdity or itself. Dickens stands out. Folks tell me Hardy's poetry is much better than his novels. I am reluctant to give them a try.
@Lily: What I meant was it seems to me that Hardy, far from being a mysogynist, was in fact attempting to portray Tess as a form of "ideal" woman. Despite losing her virtue, she still remains a sort-of idyllic country innocent, sacrificed by the double-standard of modern morality. I cannot find the exact quote, but I am sure that I remember reading that Thomas Hardy was half in-love with the character of Tess.I don't know if I've explained myself any better there. I think part of the issue is that Tess is so often a victim of what we would now call mysogyny, but I feel that Hardy wished to draw our attentions to the injustice and double-standard. Tess could not be a strong, 'modern' woman as today's readers might wish her to be, as that would utterly destroy the tragic allegory (of the fading of the countryside in the wake of industry) which Thomas Hardy wished to portray.
Tom, Dickens stands out for what. I think he was a great writer. He was the very one who laughed at society in his day. We are not man haters, we just don't like how Tess is portrayed, due to a man writing about how a woman is supposed to feel. I guess he didn't get it.
I don't necessarily think Hardy got it wrong. He actually was very good at humanizing his characters. Better than Dickens, I believe.
Dickens is better in my estimation.
Dickens stands out for me from other Victorian writers (the Brits anyway) for his sense of humor (or humour for the Brits anyway) and much more sincere and honest portrayal of life in his stories.I've no sense of man hating here, I just hate Hardy. The best of his works, and by best I mean the least irritating, is the Mayor of Casterbridge, which has a halfway decent man (sure he was a drunken idiot when he was younger) succumbing to his past like a cartoon. His novels are not sincere and his characters are one dimensional and stereotypes or worse. awful archetypes for some sort of Hardy ideal. His stories are driven by arbitrary moral codes instead of by honesty and that is why they fail.
yes, I think Dickens is a better author than Hardy, but maybe Hardy's characters are meant to have human frailties and that is what he was trying to portray as in Tess, and Far from the Madding Crowd. His descriptions went on longer than even Dickens does to a degree.
Tom wrote: "Lily wrote: "Tom wrote: "Only Thomas hardy could write this steaming pile"Would you care to explain your meaning?"
Meaning Thomas Hardy was ham handed with his characters and his sensibility of ..."
Respectfully disagree there, Thomas. Despite what you say it is not a bad novel merely a problematic one.
I, for one, thought that Hardy's ability to portray human emotions, on both Tess' and Angel's side, was exquisite. So what if he didn't dare go against the norm? If all the books of that time were written for the sole purpose to revolt against the moral codes and to stand out, we wouldn't know today the true representation of their time, place, and people.
What the heck's the fuss???I wish I could write as well as Hardy.
This man has a book that has been read by millions and is still to this day being read and commented on. Wouldn't it be nice to leave your life's imprint on the world as he has?
I loved the book for what it was. I wouldn't dream of critiquing it. I am so not in his league, nor are most of us.
Saying this book is misogynistic is like saying Jane Austen's books are, because all the women in her books just sit around waiting for a man. That's just how things were back then.
Lena wrote: "Saying this book is misogynistic is like saying Jane Austen's books are, because all the women in her books just sit around waiting for a man. That's just how things were back then."Yeah, emetic is it not?
The point of the book is surely that Hardy is defending Tess and making her his heroine even though (by Victorian standards) she is a 'fallen woman'.This book will have seriously shocked the Victorian bourgeoisie. Moreover, we need to be aware there were things Hardy *couldn't* write as they would not have been published.
You can't judge this book by modern standards - a modern writer, of either gender - would not tell the story in the same way. The point of the book is not relevant in our society, which is why so many of us find it puzzling at best, infuriating at worst.
And now it shocks the current ardent philistines who only wish strong Sigourney Weaver types in their literature. Boy, do times change!
I'm not sure what it would mean to ask 'what if' Tess were written by a woman. Would it mean that the novel would somehow be more meaningful? Less? Would it mean that it would suddenly gain some insight because Thomas Hardy couldn't possibly, being a man, understand how awful it would be to be raped? Would Tess maybe be less infuriatingly needy of the worthless wimp she fell in love with? Maybe the problem is the question. Asking the question borders on a dangerous assumption, the one that hints that women authors are all so similar that it is automatically predictable how the story would turn out. Or that the story would be 'different'. I cannot imagine, given that both Sylvia Plath and, oh, I don't know, maybe Audrey Nifnegger could possibly ever be categorized as having anything similar about each other except that the former committed suicide, and reading the latter makes me want to commit suicide.
Let's have a little respect for both female and male authors and perhaps speculate about how Tess' fate might actually apply to a lot of us, how bad things happen to anyone, how society's rules don't always fit with our loves, how nature just sits there and watches... beautiful and indifferent, how reading Sylvia Plath makes me feel happy compared to the unrelenting sadness of Thomas Hardy.
I think it's important to remember that the novel is a Tragedy (in the classical sense of the term), and Hardy puts in lots of clues for people to debate what the motors of that Tragedy actually are. It's not some remote, unknown force, it's in the motivations and social dynamics of the world Tess lives in.
I read this book years and years ago. I loved it. I remember it as desperately sad. I remember that it fired up my feminist interests.
Try looking at the story of Tess as an experiment in the power of naming objects.Tess as (a pure woman/object) would be subject to each and every antagonists subjective view.
As she progresses through the novel she changes only in name, not in character/subject.
Being a pure wo/man she has only the freedom of choice.
life or death.
Hardy was foremost a platonist, using the novel as allegorical tool.
TESS WAS ONE OF HARDYS BELOVED HEROINS, THE STORY OF TESS WAS HIS WAY OF TELLING HIS WORLD HOW UNFAIR HE THOUGHT WOMAN WERE TREATED IN AND BY SOCIETY. HE WAS A MAN AHEAD OF HIS, WHEN HIS BOOK WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IT MADE ENEMIES OF FRIENDS. DINNER PARTIES AND TABLES WERE DIVIDED PRO AND AGAINS THE HEROINE, THE BELIFE WEATHER OR NOT HIS HEROINE WAS STILL PURE AND IN HIS VIEW SHE WAS STILL PURE. IF TESS WOULD HAVE WRITTEN BY A WOMAN OF THE DAY, SHE WOULD HAVE FOUND A LORD WHO ACCEPTED EVERYTHING ABOUT HER. BUT HARDY WAS A REALIST AND PAID ATTENTION TO THE WORLD ARROUND HIM, THEREFOR HE KNEW THAT THOSE THINGS RARELY IF EVER HAPPENED AT ALL.
This novel shows there is a failure in the system.At those times, society wanted readers to take books of Dickens, the Bronte sisters and Austen because they lead to a "perfect ending" where the ones who followed the moral values or decided to follow them are rewarded while the ones who doesn't are punished.
It is astounding that one man had the nerve to write about the crude reality, where the woman is the "sinner" for having a baby while the man is cleared (and SOMETIMES praised for being a Don Juan).
Had the authour been a woman, the novel would have had a little more of romance as well as that bastard of Alec would have repented for his wrongdoings.
My favorite. Hardy used exquisite style to pronounce social commentary in the form of this distastefully tragic tale, so scandalous that this piece was--for all intents and purposes--banned. His writing was as beautiful as the story was troublesome, making the reading disturbingly delightful. Paradox of great writing.
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The various hardships Tess has to overcome reveal a Victorian world where young lower-class women could suffer, especially if they were attractive enough to warrant the romantic attentions of gentlemen from a higher class...who clearly did not always have the best of intentions. Austen doesn't bring this element into her novels, as her characters come from the same class and, if Pride and Prejudice is anything to go by, lead such sheltered lives that a comparison to Tess becomes irrelevant.