Critics on Tess Flashcards
Critic Rosemarie Morgan believes
that Hardy is exploring women’s “frustrating struggle to define themselves in a work that would deny them the right to shape their own lives, control their own bodies, explore their own needs and express their own desires” in his novels.
Kristin Brady
considers Hardy to be Tess’ “advocate and protector”, even going so far as to say that he is in love with her.
Rosemarie Morgan
Thinking about her suggestion in terms of the ‘classic idea of tragedy’, it could be seen that Tess is our equivalent to a tragic hero, fighting against the forces of morality and society, as opposed to fate and the gods: “Where was Tess’s guardian Angel?”
Critics see that
Ted’s sweet nature makes her weak to the needs of those around her, causing her to be made a victim ‘ in the hands of family, fate, chance, strange accidents and numerous forms of conference’s.
Hardy’s position
We get a glimpse of Hardy’s position, with regards to Ted’s when he claims that it’s the “moral hobgoblins” that are “out of harmony with the actual world, not she”. The use of the word “actual” has an immediate effect - giving the sentiment more impact. Hardy is talking about the real world - not Tess’ world - but Victorian Britain.
Pagan
Some could see Tess in a world of pagan, as opposed to Christian, morals. We learn at the end that ‘Justice’ was done, and the president of the Immortals…had ended his sport with Tess. With this direct reference to AEschylus, the famous Greek tragedian, and the idea of God’s torturing Tess for sport we can’t deny Hardy wants us to make the link between Tess and tragedy.
Northrop Frye
Not all critics see Tess in a positive light. Northrop Frye claims that Hardy induces pathos through creating an ‘inarticulate’ character, even saying that the ‘death of an animal is usually pathetic’.
Dale Kramer
As Dale Kramer notes, ‘the novel is a tragedy of the individual…the problem…is precisely that society makes no provision for a special case like Tess’s, whose justifications rely upon the unique self’.
Greece
In many ways, then, Hardy’s classic novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles may be read as a tragedy. It fits with definitions of many acclaimed critics of that time. Tragedy in Greece was a way of drawing attention to social problems, prompting discussion and then solving of problems. Is it a coincidence, then that Tess came at a time in literary history just before the 1st wave of feminism?
Helen Muchnic
Some critics see Tess explicitly in tragic terms, such as Helen Muchnic “What Hardy is actually saying through her…is that the fates of ancient Greece are still at work in his own Wessex. The immortal gods who have their sport with Tests are precisely those who had played with Alcestus and Antigone; only now their victim is a village girl instead of the wife or daughter of a great king”.
