[Hardy-l] RE: Tess

[Rosemarie Morgan]

>I agree with Jane on Tess's sexuality and Hardy's sensitive treatment of 
>its complexity.
>And while it is well to "remember that, however moved by and drawn to
>Tess we may feel, she is a fictional construct and not a real woman" 
>Hardy's readers are not fictional. "To speculate outside what is given in 
>the text itself" is what readers and critics do -- text and textual 
>context cannot be separated as Hardy himself recognised-- idly or not.

Rosemarie