Critics Flashcards
Claire Tomalin on Hardy’s elegies
She called his elegies ‘the finest and strangest celebrations of the dead in English poetry’.
Thomas Mallon on Hardy’s poetry.
Hardy’s poems are ‘racked with guilt and wonder’.
Elizabeth Day
“Cast out by a morally hypocritical society, Tess identifies most strongly with the natural world and it is here that Hardy’s textual lyricism comes in to its own”
Kristen Brady
“Generally, the heroine of romance must choose in some way between good and evil. Tess’s choices are never so clear cut”
Martin Seymour-Smith
“The question raised by the novel is this: what would a woman be if she were released from male oppression and allowed to be herself?”
Mark Asquith
“Hardy’s insistence on her lineage transforms Tess in to a puppet through which her ancestors continue their barbarous lives”
A. Alvarez on Hardy
“Through his musing voice [Hardy] makes his presence steadily felt. He hovers and watches over Tess like a stricken father”
A. Alvarez on landscape
“Landscape is continually brought to life, not for its own sake but, like a sounding board, in order to deepen and intensify whatever it is that Tess is experiencing”
