TOTD context Flashcards
Which suffragettes were in favor of Tess’ characterisation?
Millicent Fawcett and Evelyn Sharp
What did Hardy respond to the suffragettes?
I have always been in favor of women’s suffrage
What is social law?
Acceptable behavior within the constraints of the law of a society
What is natural law?
Uncontrollable events that can impose on an individual
How was the novel published?
It was published serially in bowdlerized form in the graphic (July-December 1891) and in its entirety the same year but Hardy revised it until his death
How did rural life change in the 1890s?
- Dependency on urban markets increased the impacts of depression on Dorset
- Wages and employment rates fell as there were only 12,500 agricultural labourers in 1891 as gross output fell
What is the genre of the novel?
Verisimilitude, bildungsroman, realism and tragedy
What would eco-critical reader’s be interested in?
The way rural traditions and farming methods had changed reflecting Hardy’s cynicism towards industrialisation
Who were socialised to believe in the dangers of hell?
Children
What is a fallen woman?
An archaic term to describe a woman who has, “lost her innocence and fallen from the grace of god,”
How does TOTD link to Post- Darwinism?
- When Darwin published the origin of species in 1859, Hardy was fascinated by it as an amateur scientist. He places his novels in a post-Darwinian state with a fin de siècle trend of pessimism, religious skepticism and social adaptation as those who don’t adapt to change won’t survive. This influences the animalistic descriptions and primitive feelings of the novel implying we are all descended from apes
- Darwin notes that physiologically women, “come to maturity at an earlier age than man,” but Hardy resists these binaries through Tess’ philosophic outlook and sense of duty to show maturity
What does the Dorsetshire labourer in 1883 criticise?
The class system through the cruelty of the nobility towards farmers that led to rural depopulation. However, Hardy also introduces the role of the railways in 1847 as a cause of depopulation as a facilitates journeys and the transportation of milk at Talbothays
How did Hardy loose his Christian faith in the 1860s?
Reading humanist writings by August Comte and John Stuart Mill
What did Malthus propose?
The population would naturally grow faster than humanity’s ability to feed itself
What happened to Hardy in his youth?
- He witnessed when he was 18, the hanging of Elizabeth Martha Brown who was the last woman to be publicly hung after killing her husband
- His servant Jane Phillips who brought a man into their home but ran away to give birth to a child who was baptised but died two days later
- The inspiration for Castor Bride came from his apprenticeship master at 16, John Hicks from Dorchester
Why was Sorrow’s baptism initially suppressed?
It sanctioned agnosticism and heterodoxy
How do Marxists see the novel?
To shed light on the ways Victorian society is structured around fixed and unequal class relation and would stress that the labour of the rural poor bring greater benefits to their employers than themselves
What were Hardy’s attitudes towards women ergo allowing it to be seen through a feminist reading?
- Sympathetic to working class women as their hours in factories were seen to build England’s prosperity in the eyes of industrialists
- The subtitle A pure woman is a subversive attack on Victorian morality as he believed moral worth shouldn’t be defined by Chasity. Victorian society saw women as physically and emotionally weak idolizing them as homemakers leading it to be morally rejected by 3 publishers
- Involved in debates and discussions about women’s suffrage
- May Sinclair praised Tess’ psychology always and profoundly right and Hardy offers sensitivity as an effective challenge to double standards
- Hardy wrote to Helen Ward in December 1908 that, “women are entitled to the vote as a matter of justice if they want it,” but it will collapse, “social rules,” but this fall was inevitable
- He also wrote to Fawcett in dissatisfaction of Tess as, “far short,” in attempts to challenge societal expectations towards women as he described social laws as, “pernicious conventions,”
How does Hardy define tragedy?
The worthy encompassed by the inevitable
What are the two states the novel explores?
Post-lapsarian and pre-lapsarian
Why was seduction frowned upon in Society?
Sexual repression was a required function for men and women to work together and to prevent children
Why could Tess gain an education?
Under the 1870 education act, it was compulsory for 5-10 year olds to be educated and then it was made free in 1891
How does biblical indoctrination present women?
Temptresses due to Adam’s downfall in the book of Genesis
How is paganism presented?
Reconnection with nature during May day as a central belief that follows the cyclical patterns of the season and the sun’s progress known as the turning of the wheel. May day references to an arcadia through primordial seasonal rituals which tie Tess to the land and to myths like Chasity (Artemis) and the abduction of Persephone
