Tess of the D'Ubervilles Flashcards

You may prefer our related Brainscape-certified flashcards:
1
Q

Give three examples of contrast between wealth and poverty

A

Alec and Angel buy Tess new clothes in attempts to exert control over her.
• Alec’s wealth means that he does not have to work, while Tess’s (self-enforced) poverty mean that she takes on the hardest tasks of the rural labourer.
• Alec offers Tess’s homeless family the building that his mother used to keep her chickens.

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

Give three examples of contrast between the Durbeyfields and the Clares

A
  • Tess’s family indulge themselves when they can (e.g. in alcohol); Angel’s family are abstemious.
  • Tess’s family are not particularly interested in religion; their Christian faith determines everything that the Clare family do.
  • Tess’s family life lurches from crisis to crisis; the Clare family seem to be in greater control of their finances and their destiny.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

List three forms of technology that play a role in the story of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Include a brief description of the role played by each.

A
  • The train connects rural Wessex to London and the outside world.
  • The threshing machine causes a significant shift in the lives of rural labourers.
  • The turnip-slicing machine standing opposite the ‘grave’ (p. 313) in which the roots had been preserved symbolises the cruelty and hardship of the work Tess does at Flintcomb-Ash.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

Make a list of three reasons why setting is a vital factor in Hardy’s work.

A
  • The rural life Hardy depicts was under threat and it was therefore important to try to capture it.
  • Tess’s life is bordered by the county in which she was born. This contains the action of the story and makes Tess’s early naïvety believable.
  • Varying the setting allows Hardy to use pathetic fallacy to reflect Tess’s changing states in the environment she inhabits.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

Why were some critics initially shocked by Tess?

A
  • Tess is insistently defined as a ‘pure’ woman, despite having had an illegitimate child.
  • The subject matter, including rape and murder, was seen as inappropriate for a novel by some.
  • Some critics did not like Hardy’s style and mocked it.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

What is “realism”?

A
  • An attempt to represent the world truthfully.
  • An emphasis on accurate details in descriptions of setting, dress and dialogue.
  • A willingness to represent sordid or unpleasant aspects of life.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
7
Q

List three events that might provide focal points for a feminist reading of the novel. Briefly describe the significance of each for such a reading.

A
  • Tess reproaches herself for not helping her mother with the domestic chores (p. 20). This suggests that Tess has taken on the gendered expectation that her life will primarily take place in the domestic rather than the public or professional sphere.
  • Alec’s rape of Tess and the lack of any legal action or punishment against him demonstrates the sexual double standard that Hardy critiques. It was more acceptable for men than for women to act on their sexual desires.
  • Tess’s education is cut off before she can attain her ambition of becoming a teacher. A feminist reading would emphasise the inequality of access to education that women have experienced historically.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
8
Q

List three moments in the text that a cultural materialist critic might highlight, and explain why.

A
  • The fact that Angel interacts so closely with the family and workers at Talbothays makes cross-class relationships seem integral to the text.
  • It is significant that Alec D’Urberville inherits and does not have to work for his money. This makes him lazy and morally suspect in the eyes of Hardy’s narrator.
  • The lack of possibilities for Tess as a worker and the fact that she ends up earning minimal wages at Flintcomb-Ash confirm the difficulties of rural life.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
9
Q

What kind of insights might be gained from an ecocritical reading of Tess of the D’Urbervilles?

A
  • A close reading of the scene where Tess and Angel deliver the milk to the train station might focus on the changes to rural life brought by the railway.
  • Stonehenge demonstrates how humankind have shaped and altered their natural environment since the earliest civilisations.
  • The emphasis on farming, particularly at Talbothays, is suggestive of the possibilities of harmony between humans and their natural world.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
10
Q

List three ways in which we might define Tess as belonging to the tragedy genre.

A
  • The story ends in death.
  • Fate works against the protagonist.
  • She is pursued and ultimately brought down by the actions of others, although she does have character traits (such as pride and a quick temper) that help to bring about her downfall.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
11
Q

Does the narrator in Tess of the D’Urbervilles have a patronising attitude towards the protagonist of the novel?

A
  • Tess’s love for Angel seems naive and idealising to the narrator, who says, ‘in her reaction from indignation against the male sex she swerved to excess of honour for Clare’ (p. 193).
  • The narrator often focuses on physical features, such as her mouth and lips, which make Tess seem like an object on display.
  • But the narrator also gives the reader insights into Tess’s complex inner self.
  • The narrator continues to reinforce Tess’s status as a ‘pure’ woman throughout the novel.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
12
Q

Make a list of three moments when the narrator deliberately obscures our perspective or withholds information from us. Briefly note why these shifts in perspective occur.

A
  • We are not told that Tess has succumbed to Alec’s temptation at the end of the novel. We must follow her tracks as Angel does. This creates a connection between the reader and Angel, who had previously lost our sympathy through his ill-treatment of Tess.
  • We do not hear Tess tell her story to Angel; this happens in the hiatus between Phases four and five. We already know that she was raped and had an illegitimate child, and at this point Hardy is more interested in the effect the narrative has on Angel.
  • After the rape scene we are told that an ‘immeasurable chasm was to divide our heroine’s personality thereafter from that previous self of hers’ (p. 74). Hardy leaves a gap of four months after this point to emphasise this transition in Tess’s life.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
13
Q

Choose three moments when we see the symbolic significance of the colour red, and briefly explain it.

A
  • In the first chapter Tess wears a red ribbon in her hair, which marks her out from her fellow dancers. We could interpret it as a marker of her ultimately tragic fate or as symbolic of her sexuality.
  • The piece of blood-stained paper she sees blowing around in Chapter 44 is symbolic of Tess’s weariness and the futility of her journey to see Angel’s parents in the face of hostile fate.
  • Alec is often associated with the red glow of fire (for example, when he seems to almost spring from the fire in Chapter 50). This exacerbates his devilish characteristics.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
14
Q

List five words that you find obscure or archaic. Give a dictionary definition for each.

A
  • acclivity (p. 384) – an ascending slope
  • effigy (p. 363) – a three-dimensional representation of someone; a statue.
  • expostulate (p. 173) – to disagree
  • polychrome (p. 122) – multi-coloured
  • domiciliary (p. 121) – concerned with the home
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
15
Q

Compare Angel’s speech with Tess’s speech when she first arrives at the dairy. Then choose a moment of dialogue between the two characters later on in the novel. What shifts in language use do you find?

A
  • Even before she speaks to Angel, Tess expresses complex ideas, e.g. on p. 120.
  • The early dialogues are often structured by Angel questioning Tess.
  • After Tess’s admission, in Chapter 35, Angel seeks to shut down Tess’s attempts at dialogue.
  • When they are reconciled in the final chapters of the book, their language is simple and similar.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
16
Q

Make a list of three non-visual symbols in the novel. Do they give different effects in contrast to Hardy’s visual imagery?

A
  • Music symbolises the connection between Tess and Angel, from her early enchantment with his harp music to her later practising ballads for when he returns from Brazil.
  • Tess’s voice is identified as ‘fluty’ and it is the first aspect that attracts Angel’s attention.
  • The cockerel crow at the end of Chapter 33, just as Angel and Tess set out on their honeymoon, is symbolic of bad luck.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
17
Q

Identify three moments in which dialect is used by one of the minor characters. What does it reveal about the character or the context?

A
  • In Chapter 1, Jack Durbeyfield’s dialect ‘’Twas said my gr’tgrandfer had secrets’ (p. 9) provides a stark contrast with Parson Tringham’s educated accent.
  • In Chapter 4, an unidentified speaker at the village pub says, ‘But Joan Durbeyfield must mind that she don’t get green malt in flower’ The exact meaning of the local phrase is not revealed here, but it soon becomes clear that it predicts Tess’s pregnancy outside of wedlock.
  • When Izz tells Angel that ‘nobody could love ’ee more than Tess did!’ (p. 270), the honesty of her speech is reinforced by her dialect.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
18
Q

Identify three significant words or images that recur in the novel, and briefly describe how their meaning alters according to the context.

A
  • Red images recur throughout the text and are most frequently associated with Tess. She wears a red ribbon at the club-walking in Chapter 1. By the end of the novel her once ‘rosy’ but now whitened hands demonstrate the change she has gone through in becoming Alec’s mistress.
  • Images of technology and modernity also recur. While the train is representative of the ‘ache of modernism’ (p. 124) in Tess and connects her to the outside world, the threshing machine emphasises her isolation.
  • Images of blood are sometimes found at moments of heightened tension. For example, the narrator focuses on a ‘piece of blood-stained paper’ (p. 298) when Tess finds the Clares’ house empty in Chapter 44. The final culmination of this image is of course the ‘gigantic ace of hearts’ (p. 382) formed by Alec’s spreading blood.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
19
Q

How does Hardy use both time and space to structure his novel?

A
  • Tess’s journeys through Wessex mark key moments in the plot and in her character development.
  • Tess’s family home in Marlott is a key location and its loss brings about the final acceptance of Alec’s advances.
  • The narrator gestures back to the medieval times of the D’Urberville family’s greatness to create a sense of hereditary decline and a linkage between generations.
  • Time speeds up or slows down according to the needs of the plot. For example, we spend much time at Talbothays during Tess and Angel’s courtship but the period of her life as Alec’s mistress is collapsed into a few pages.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
20
Q

‘Like many Victorian novelists, Hardy is a realist even when he seems to question the possibilites of realism.’ Consider Tess of the D’Urbervilles in the light of this statement.

A
  • Like George Eliot, Hardy is interested in subjectivity.
  • He also sees an attempt at the truthful representation of the world as part of the novelist’s duty.
  • He uses free indirect discourse to bring us into the individual’s mindset.
  • He provides abundant details of setting and environment that enrich the realist narrative.
  • Hardy does not glamourise rural life. He demonstrates its difficulties and indignities realistically.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
21
Q

Write a list of four or five ways in which minor characters impact upon the trajectories of the central plot.

A
  • Cuthbert and Felix Clare are overheard lamenting Angel’s marriage in Chapter 44.
  • Tess feels that the whole Clare family is set against her and doesn’t return to ask Angel’s parents for help.
  • Farmer Groby turns out to have been the man who insulted Tess at the inn in Chapter 33. His words increase Tess’s feelings of guilt and anxiety as the wedding approaches.
  • When Angel asks Izz Huett to go with him to Brazil in Chapter 40, her answer defending Tess’s love for him lays the foundations for his ultimate return.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
22
Q

Locate a passage of dialogue between Tess and Alec and one between Tess and Angel. Compare the ways in which Tess’s lovers speak to her and what their conversation reveals about their attitudes to their beloved.

A
  • Alec and Tess’s dialogue on pp. 76–7 suggests his disrespectful attitude towards her and contains hints of her later violence.
  • On pp. 123–4 Angel listens to Tess and respectfully asks for her opinions and thoughts. At this point in their relationship it is interesting to note that Tess still calls Angel ‘sir’.
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
23
Q

‘A weakness of this novel is that neither Angel or Alec are truly believable characters.’ Do you agree with this statement?

A
  • Yes: The extremity and hypocrisy of Angel’s reaction to Tess’s admission of her sexual history is not believable.
  • Yes: Alec’s conversion to pious Christianity seems very brief and he is easily swayed when he encounters Tess again.
  • No: Angel’s reaction to Tess’s admission reflects the double standard by which female sexuality was judged in comparison to male sexuality.
  • No: Alec’s conversion and loss of faith gives him a sense of development as a character and sets up an important contrast with Angel.
24
Q

Make a table offering three or four comparisons of the cruelties of nature versus the benevolence of nature.

A
  • The natural world, and a particularly fine spring help to revive Tess after her trauma (p. 99).
  • Talbothays is a place of plenty, represented by the milk, cheese and other food provided by the Cricks from their farm.
  • The climate in Brazil is said to have been part of the cause of Angel’s illness and the death of his un-named companion.
  • The freezing winter at Flintcomb-Ash pushes Tess to the limits of her physical endurance and sees Marian drinking alcohol to alleviate her situation.
25
Q

What is the thematic significance of ruined or dilapidated buildings in the novel?

A

• Tess frequently finds herself in ruinous buildings, from the thatched cottage over-run by chickens at The Slopes to Stonehenge in the final scenes of the novel. These ruins suggest the persistence of the past in the present but also simultaneously emphasise the degrading effects of time.

26
Q

How does Tess’s story show gender to be a significant issue? List three events and briefly explain the significance of each.

A
  • Tess’s pregnancy and brief life as a mother. Although the narrator passes over this period fairly quickly, it is of course significant that because of her gender Tess must carry and care for the illegitimate child, whereas Alec can walk away.
  • In Chapter 52 we are told that because Tess’s family is only made up of women and children, they are superfluous to the requirements of any employer.
  • The difference between Angel’s reaction to Tess’s admission of a past sexual encounter and her reaction to his admission of an equivalent situation demonstrates a biased attitude towards female sexuality.
27
Q

Make a list of three ways in which religious faith is problematised in the novel.

A
  • Felix and Cuthbert Clare are unsympathetic characters from the very start of the novel. They represent a scholarly and hierarchical attitude to faith.
  • Angel Clare has lost his faith.
  • Alec’s conversion to Christianity seems brief and hollow.
28
Q

Identify three types of love found in the novel and give an example of each.

A
  • Motherly love: Seen in Tess’s love for Sorrow, her grief at his death and her later tending of his grave.
  • Obsessive or idealising love: Both Alec and Angel return to Tess’s image obsessively. Alec’s ‘love’ may be better described as desire, however.
  • Love within marriage: Seen between Tess and Angel in the final sections of the novel.
29
Q

Is justice possible only for men?

A
  • Men of the privileged classes, such as Alec and Angel, have power over Tess. Her fate is ultimately controlled by them.
  • Tess has no recourse to legal or other assistance following her rape. Alec’s later offers to provide her with money are insulting.
  • In the Victorian period laws were decided and enacted by men to the frequent disadvantage of women (e.g. The Contagious Diseases Act took action against women, not men, in attempting to cut down prostitution).
30
Q

Give an example of pathetic fallacy in the novel and explain its significance.

A

• The mist in Chapter 11 is symbolic of Tess’s bewildered and vague state of mind. It provides conditions that enable Alec to rape Tess.

31
Q

Tess embodies a clash between nature and society.’ Do you agree?

A
  • Yes, Tess is seen as a ‘child of nature’.
  • Tess is often in harmony with her natural surroundings.
  • She feels comfortable working in the rural, natural world.
  • She presents a contrast to modern society as represented by Sandbourne.
  • The role of Sorrow is also interesting with regards to this clash between nature and society, regarding the social stigma of illegitimacy.
32
Q

Discuss the ways in which Hardy’s narrator seeks to represent an unequal and unjust society.

A
  • The women of the text have fewer opportunities than the men, although class and wealth are also factors here regarding the possibilities open to Angel and Alec.
  • Tess’s education is curtailed because she is from a lower-class family and her help is needed at home.
  • Tess sees injustice as fundamental to life, for example when she tells Abraham that they are living in a ‘blighted’ world.
  • Hardy doesn’t necessarily provide any solutions for social injustice, but it is significant that he flags it up for his readers.
33
Q

In what ways is Tess disadvantaged by her background? Make a list of four or five reasons outlined early on in the novel

A
  • Tess is the eldest child and is expected to help her mother with the domestic duties of the household.
  • Tess’s education was curtailed and her ambition to be a teacher forestalled.
  • Tess’s mother and father do not plan for their family’s long-term well-being.
  • Tess has little understanding of sex and her innocence is a disadvantage. She asks her mother ‘Why didn’t you warn me?’.
34
Q

Give examples contrasting rural life with the modern world as it is glimpsed in the novel.

A
  • Rural life is slow and determined by the rhythms of nature.
  • Modernity speeds up the pace of life, as symbolised by the train that whisks the Talbothays milk up to London.
  • In rural life the labourer is strongly connected to the land.
  • The modern farm machinery that Tess encounters at Flintcomb-Ash.
35
Q

List four or five moments in the narrative that shed light on the character of Angel Clare.

A
  • The first time we meet Angel in Chapter 2 he is differentiated from his brothers and we are told that he has an instinctive reaction to Tess.
  • Angel’s reaction to Tess’s revelation of her past sexual encounter shows that Angel is conventional in his expectations of female behaviour and demonstrates a level of hypocrisy.
  • Angel’s sleep-walking episode in Chapter 37 reveals how he feels about Tess on a subconscious level.
36
Q

Consider two or three of the minor characters in the novel and list their functions in terms of supporting the development of the plot or the development of other characters.

A
  • Izz Huett provides a foil to Tess. She is the most similar to Tess of all the dairymaids and when Angel asks her to accompany him to Brazil her reaction is crucial to the plot. Angel goes alone.
  • Retty’s attempted suicide helps to precipitate Tess’s confession.
  • Mercy Chant demonstrates the difference between Angel and his parents. They deem her a suitable wife; Angel does not warm to her type of Christianity.
37
Q

List three or four significant social changes Hardy examines in the novel and consider how they effect rural life.

A
  • Tess received a better education than her parents; throughout the nineteenth century education increased in availability, particularly to the urban poor, leading towards the 1870 and 1891 Education Acts.
  • Sandbourne, the seaside town where Angel finds Tess, is a new urban development and seems to have sprung up from the countryside, disturbing the landscape that had remained unchanged for thousands of years.
  • Emigration was a possibility for some nineteenth-century farmers; Angel tries it but finds it more problematic than he expected.
38
Q

What is the significance of machines in Tess of the D’Urbervilles? Give at least two examples.

A
  • In Chapter 30 we see Angel and Tess delivering the milk to the railway station. The spread of the train network connected rural areas to large cities with much greater speed than ever before.
  • In Chapter 47 we see the threshing machine in action. The industrial revolution and the development of steam-powered farm machinery began to displace some forms of intensive manual labour, although the machine still requires intensive work from Tess in particular.
39
Q

Identify three of Tess’s solitary journeys and briefly consider the significance of each.

A
  • In Chapter 30 we see Angel and Tess delivering the milk to the railway station. The spread of the train network connected rural areas to large cities with much greater speed than ever before.
  • In Chapter 47 we see the threshing machine in action. The industrial revolution and the development of steam-powered farm machinery began to displace some forms of intensive manual labour, although the machine still requires intensive work from Tess in particular.
40
Q

Make a table offering points of comparison between Angel and Alec. Think about both similarities and differences.

A
  • Angel is angelic and plays a harp; Alec appears as devilish.
  • Angel’s love is spiritual; Alec’s is material.
  • Angel is physically attractive; Alec has ‘an almost swarthy complexion, with full lips … above which was a well-groomed black moustache with curled points’ (p. 40).
  • Both men think of taking Tess abroad.
  • Both dress Tess up in fine clothes and try to turn her into something she is not.
41
Q

Explain why Hardy’s depiction of the natural environment is interesting.

A
  • Nature is sometimes personified. For example, at the beginning of Chapter 14 the sun ‘had a curious sentient, personal look’.
  • Sometimes Tess is shown to be part of nature: ‘she was of a piece with the element she moved in.’ (p. 85)
  • At other times nature seems hostile to the protagonist, such as when the mist seems to collude in Alec’s plans to disorientate Tess and take advantage of her.
42
Q

Consider three of the letters written in the novel. What are their functions and what do they reveal about their writers?

A
  • In Chapter 31 Joan Durbeyfield’s letter urges that Tess keep her past a secret from Angel. Tess takes her mother’s advice to heart.
  • Tess tries writing to Angel several times and eventually manages to write a passionate plea in Chapter 48 that reveals the insecurity of her social and emotional position as a married woman with no husband.
  • Marian and Izz write an anoymous letter to Angel in Chapter 52. They suggest Tess needs her husband to return as she is in danger. This letter maintains the sisterly bonds between the women.
43
Q

Why are animals significant in this text? Give three examples of different animals used by Hardy.

A
  • Prince, the horse, is vital to the Durbeyfield family business. His death sets off the train of events that put Tess in Alec’s power.
  • The cows at Talbothays are treated as individuals with preferences for different milkers. Their gentle presence provides the backdrop to Angel and Tess’s courtship.
  • Tess feels for the suffering birds as if they were ‘kindred sufferers’ in Chapter 41 (p. 279).
44
Q

List three moments when the narration becomes distanced or detached and think about why Hardy might adjust the perspective of the novel at key moments.

A
  • Chapter 2 sees Hardy introducing Tess. Tess only comes in to focus as an individual after Hardy has introduced her as part of a group.
  • We see Tess’s reaction to Angel’s reappearance through the limited and detached perspective of Mrs Brooks looking through the keyhole. It is through this minor character’s eyes that we also discover Alec’s body.
  • The final moments of the novel look upon Angel and ’Liza-Lu as ‘two speechless gazers’ (p. 398). Moments when individual names are not used might make us think about the way that individual stories connect to more universal issues.
45
Q

List three instances of violent action in Tess of the D’Urbervilles and comment on each.

A
  • Prince is killed by ‘the pointed shaft of the cart’ (p. 33). Not only does his death lead directly to Tess claiming kin with the D’Urbervilles, we could also argue that this violent penetration prefigures Tess’s rape.
  • Tess lets the window fall on Alec’s arm in Chapter 51 when he is pressing her to bring her homeless family to Trantridge. We are not sure whether or not Tess does this on purpose.
  • Tess’s murder of Alec is of couse the most obviously violent act in the novel but it also leads to the taking of Tess’s own life through a legal form of violence, her hanging.
46
Q

How is love represented in the novel?

A
  • Alec couches his interest in Tess in very colloquial, material terms. This is reflected in his dialogue: he calls her ‘my pretty Coz’ (p. 41) and ‘artful hussy’ (p. 57).
  • Angel’s love for Tess is also physical and he embraces her in Chapter 27 while they are skimming the milk. Tess and Angel’s courtship is very intimately bound up with the setting of the dairy at Talbothays.
  • Tess’s love for Angel seems much more constant than his for her. She idealises him and writes to him, ‘Angel I live entirely for you’ (p. 336). In some senses her love is self-sacrificing.
47
Q

Make a table listing three or four events that happen in the second half of the novel and the ways in which they are foreshadowed in the first half.

A
  • Tess eventually becomes Alec’s mistress and we might argue that this is foreshadowed from very early on when, for example, Tess allows him to feed her a strawberry (p. 42).
  • Jack Durbeyfield’s death in Chapter 50 is foreshadowed in Chapter 3 when Joan tells us of the ‘fat around his heart’ (p. 22) and also by his tendency to look back to his long-deceased ancestors rather than into the future of his own family.
  • Tess’s sorrowful journey to Flintcomb-Ash has a more joyful counterpart earlier in the novel when she walks to Talbothays. The closing down of possibilities for happiness echoes the larger structure of the tragedy.
48
Q

How is the impact of rural depopulation felt in this novel? Make a list.

A
  • The class to which Tess’s ‘father and mother had belonged’ (p. 352) including carpenters, shoemakers and blacksmiths rather than farm labourers, are being pushed out and making village life less varied.
  • Both Alec and Angel consider emigrating, Angel to Brazil and Alec to Africa to work as a missionary.
  • Tess and Angel encounter untenanted spaces in the text. Both the ‘mouldy old habitation’ where they spend their wedding night (p. 216) and the empty manor-house they stumble upon in Chapter 57 speak of a loss of rural inhabitants.
49
Q

Think about the three key families in this novel: the Durbeyfields, the Clares and the D’Urbervilles. Make a table outlining contrasts and comparisons.

A
  • The Durbeyfields are represented in a trajectory of descent from their noble ancestry to their current humble situation. The parents are improvident and the children are not well-defined characters: Tess stands out amongst them.
  • The middle-class Clares are a more stable family. Angel is the outsider as a non-believer in a family of devout Christians.
  • The D’Urberville family is affluent, with their money and their family name coming through success in trade. Alec and his mother do not demonstrate the loving familial bonds we see elsewhere in the novel.
50
Q

Why is work so significant in this novel?

A
  • Work gives Tess a sense of purpose, agency and enjoyment at Talbothays.
  • But when machines start to intervene in farm work, Tess’s relationship to the natural world shifts and the monotony of her work seems to be part of her oppressive fate. See, for example, Tess working with the turnip-slicing machine in Chapter 46.
  • Jack Durbeyfield’s lack of interest in work demonstrates his improvidence and means that his daughter must take his place as a provider for the family.
51
Q

List four or five ways in which the present is haunted by the past in Hardy’s novel.

A
  • Tess’s acts of remembrance for her baby, tending and placing flowers on his grave.
  • Parson Tringham brings the past back into the lives of the Durbeyfields through his antiquarian research.
  • Ancient traditions or pagan beliefs continue to work on the lives of modern individuals, such as the ill-omened meaning of the cross upon which Alec makes Tess swear she will not tempt him, in Chapter 45.
  • The buildings and physical structures of the past continue into the present. Ancient humanity is recalled in Stonehenge and the incremental geological changes that form Tess’s natural environment continue into the present.
52
Q

Consider the moments in the novel where we are invited to think about families and heredity. List both the positive and negative qualities that might have been passed down to Tess through her family.

A
  • Tess’s life is haunted by her ancestral lineage. We see this particularly when she finds herself at the D’Urberville tomb in Chapter 52.
  • Tess’s features seem to have been passed down from her ancestors, although the portraits of the women in the D’Urberville mansion (Chapter 34) are grotesque inversions of Tess’s beauty.
  • We should not forget that Tess has two parents and although we assume her mother’s heritage is more humble, Joan Durbeyfield asserts that Tess inherits her beauty from her mother, at the end of Chapter 6. We are told that Tess has the ‘energy of her mother’s unexpended family’ (p. 104) in Chapter 16.
53
Q

Tess of the D’Urbervilles is a story about the relationship between the individual and their hostile environment. Discuss.

A
  • Tess’s family environment is difficult and the Durbeyfields seem to create problems, such as their broken roof, through their improvidence. This environment continues to draw Tess back in order to try to help her family, to the detriment of her own self-fulfiment.
  • The natural world sometimes seems to conspire against Tess, such as when the mist provides cover for Alec’s rape.
  • Tess often seems alone, particularly on her journeys across the countryside, which are frequently lengthy and tiring.
  • In Angel’s relationship with his brothers we are told that ‘his squareness would not fit the round hole that had been prepared for him’ (p. 165). We might read this to illuminate the situation of all the individuals of the novel as fundamentally alienated from each other.
  • The technology we encounter in the novel seems to make Tess’s environment alien and hostile to her. See the turnip-slicing machine in Chapter 46.
54
Q

Does Hardy’s novel criticise inequality? If so, how and why?

A
  • Yes, the double standard by which women’s sexuality is judged is condemned. This is reinforced by Angel’s admission of what we see as an equivalent sexual history. The reader cannot sympathise with his hypocrisy.
  • The life of the rural labourer is shown to be difficult and unstable in comparison to the lives of those further up the social scale.
  • The narrator, however, does sometimes seem to look down upon or patronise Tess, which compromises the critique of inequality.
55
Q

How far do you agree with the idea that Tess’s fate could only ever be tragic?

A
  • Tess is a proud character; her pride is part of her tragic downfall.
  • Tess is linked inextricably to her D’Urberville heritage, which is always associated with tragic or ominous fates.
  • Once Tess has lost her virginity, in the eyes of her community she will always be a ‘fallen’ or ‘impure’ woman and her fate will necessarily be tragic.
  • However, the significant tragedies of Tess’s life are caused by other people: Alec’s rape and Angel’s abandonment.
  • There are moments of hope, such as Tess’s journey to Talbothays, where it seems possible that Tess’s fate might be more hopeful.
56
Q

How is the novel’s concern with the passage of time reflected in its structure?

A
  • The novel is divided into phases that all reflect significant movements across both time and space.
  • The novel depicts the passage of time through changes in the seasons and weather.
  • Events or characters that we first see early in the novel are often repeated or mirrored later on, such as the appearance of Car Darch at Trantridge and later at Flintcomb-Ash. This gives a sense of time as cyclical or repetitive.
57
Q

What is the relationship between religion and morality in Tess of the D’Urbervilles?

A
  • Hardy’s views on religion are complex. Although he lost his own faith he was respectful of Christianity and recognised its link with morality.
  • Alec finds religion but later goes on to see his religious zeal as a ‘craze’ (p. 356). But he abandons his morally respectful attitude to Tess when he abandons his religious beliefs.
  • Mr Clare’s religious belief seems to consider self-sacrifice an important part of his and his family’s morality.
  • Tess seems to have an innate sense of right and wrong that is independent of any religious belief.
  • The signpainter’s biblical messages represent a very black and white understanding of religious morality, which Tess finds cruel.