Tess Flashcards

1
Q

Characterisation techniques used to depict Tess (5)

A
  • Direct narration (focusing on her physical appearance/ external situation)
  • authorial comment/ intrusive narrator
  • Tess focalised through other characters e.g. Alec (lips/ sexuality), Angel ( idealistic), Dairymaids (her love for angel)
  • inner thoughts, direct or indirect of Tess
  • imagery and symbolism (Tess as an extension of Nature/ bird like)
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

How does Hardy portray Tess as a vessel of emotions

A
  • Her irrationality: very traditional view of a woman being emotional and intuitive rather than rational (reaction to princes death, her agnosticism is seen to be purely due to Angel not her own believes)
  • Tess is seen as a ‘vessel of emotions’
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

Tess as Hardy’s ideal woman

A
  • Tess is his ‘absolute woman, totally femine’
  • Tess is favourable contrasted to the other dairy women: ‘The deeper passioned Tess…finely formed, better educated… more woman than either’ pg 137
  • Tess as an exoticised other
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

How does Hardy present Tess’s aristocracy

A
  • Tess’s physical appearance ‘more finely formed’
  • Walking to Talbothays Hardy consciously contrast Tess with her surroundings- which is her ancestral land
  • Burden: causes all her trouble- results in her encounter with Alec which leads to her downfall, leads Jack to act even more foolishly
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

How does Hardy present Tess and Alec’s relationship (religion, consummation, tension)

A
  • lexical fields strongly associated with worship and devotion
  • biblical and classical allusion to deity/ divine figures (Artemis, Demeter)
  • quasi-religious language foregrounds the ‘religion of love’
  • tension through Tess internal conflict whether to confess or not
  • When Tess and Angel finally can consummate their love in the New Forest the lovers re-enter paradise, cut off from the world- in this passage Hardy raises the novel to the level of romance, even myth as the lovers head towards stonehenge
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

Tess as a male construct

A
  • Tess is Hardy’s fictional construct- male sexualisation/ idealisation of women- what Woolf depicted as a masculine literary style
  • male narrator, Tess is defined in terms of him
  • Alec: sees Tess as a hyper sexual being, seductress/ temptress, a women upon which to exert power over
  • angel lessens Tess identity as a complex women by dangerously idealising her- which ultimately leads him to think of her as being ‘another woman’. He also sees Tess as an educational project
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly