Shared context

Question 1

What does Van Ghent claim?

Answer 1

Both Alec and Angel are metaphors of the extremities of human behaviour

Question 2

What does Cockburn claim?

Answer 2

The power imbalance of gender relations in most societies generates cultures of masculinity prone to violence. These gender relations are like a linking thread, a kind of fuse, along which violence runs

Question 2

What does Dworkin claim?

Answer 2

Women have been taught that for us, the earth is flat and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge

Question 3

What does Stur claim?

Answer 3

• The city of Herat provides temptations for Mariam that form a mirage that lures her out of the Kolba
• The Kolba is an Eden in which Mariam is expelled from

Question 4

What does Brady claim?

Answer 4

She calls attention to the rape/seduction as the central ambivalence of the novel. The events take place in a fog for the characters and readers alike. Hardy presents Tess as blameless. Before her seduces/rapes Tess, Alec describes her body as, “beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer and practically as blank as snow,”

Question 5

What does Higonnet claim?

Answer 5

Hardy uses the character of Tess to complicate conventional ideas of modesty and desire