[Hardy-l] Tess

[Rosemarie Morgan]

THis is subtle and sensitive, Keith, and I agree with all of it.  Just one 
or two more points to complicate the issue. Victorian readers would have 
known that taking sexual advantage of a sleeping woman constitutes 
statutory rape. No two ways around it. Moreover, despite the recent c19 
revision in the law and upping the legal age of consent to (I think?) 16 
(it could have been 15 -- my memory fails me) Tess is borderline "child" at 
the time of the violation.

  Alternatively, in the MS,  the narrator has a distinctly tired and 
trusting Tess leaning, yieldingly, even affectionately against Alec on the 
ride to the Chase.  Hardy revises these acts (in MS) of apparent "yielding" 
presumably to lessen the implication of the vulnerable Tess as compliant.

As in all cases of date -rape an affectionate, cuddling-up woman is all too 
often mistaken for one seeking sexual conjugality and clearly Hardy 
perceives the danger as an innocent young girl, exhausted, desperate for 
sleep and beyond all mannered gestures of self-defense, relies on the 
warmth and safety provided by her male companion. And is misunderstood?

As to erotica in general, in Hardy, I think we might accept the mores of 
his rural culture (as Keith notes, in W) where occasions of sexual intimacy 
are far more frequent than his more puritanical biographers allow. It may 
be that Hardy's grandparents, parents, aunts and nieces conceived out of 
wedlock more often than not and it may be that such 
autobiographical  influences are immaterial., but it is not irrelevant that 
sexual freedom in rural cultures prevailed over the virginity cult of the 
Victorian middle-classes . We surely can't override that?

One last point. I'm interested in the varying interpretations of Tess' 
knifing of Alec.  Here I would disagree with Keith.  I don't feel Tess is 
that naieve (to feel that Angel influences her homicide in any way or would 
even feel gratified by it) - yes I know that's not quite how Keith put it 
but that seems to be the outcome. Tess (to my admiration) has an extremely 
uncharacteristic courage -- I mean, a warrior courage not characteristic of 
Victorian women in general although evidently Florence Nightingale also 
possessed this warrior spirit.  Tess *can* strike a man in 
self-defense.  And does. Earlier with Alec's leather gauntlet and later 
with his knife.  Driven to passion she acts with violence.  This is 
actually quite astonishing if you think back on Victorian codes and 
practices (for women) and how anger is regarded as male behavior solely . 
Yet Tess exercises quite a strong degree of violence  in her young 
career.     That she will hit back (or, less aggressively, but 
anarchically, baptise her own child, or more dangerously, suggest to Clare 
that they need not marry -- she only wants to "love him") seems to me 
perfectly commensurate with her instinct to fight back, at whatever cost.

She is, to my mind a warrior. And if she "drifts" upon a current in her 
last days (and here I think I agree with Jackie) -- it is because she is at 
peace, now, and "ready" to go. She has in a sense moved beyond (as she does 
in moving mind out of body when gazing at the stars) -- and in common with 
many of her sisters in history, she will "burn" for all that she has done. 
So Be It.
This -- I think -- is the sublimation of her heroism
Besties
R



his readers to examine their preconceptions about moralized sexual 
categories.  Just as surely, his way of presenting Alec's murder 
deliberately challenges his readers to examine more thoughtfully -- in this 
particular instance, at least! -- the superficially straightforward 
categories of "murderer" and "victim."
>
>Best,
>
>Keith Wilson
>
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