[hardy-l] More on the ending to Tess of the D'Urbervilles

[Paul Yuellig]

Rosemarie...
 
Your reply reminds me of how attempts at humor or irony by those who have been "educated" (your email says' Yale)  above and beyond those that they think are looking to them for answers to their questions fall flat. Let's stick to the novel and its content. You either like the ending and think that it's realistic, given Tess's character or you don't and would prefer another. We all know how great Hardy was at writing descriptive narrative...that's reason enough for reading his novels. My question lies in the likelyhood of Tess actually commiting murder. A peasant girl killing a gentleman in late 19th century England? I doubt it. Therefore, I dream of an alternate ending.

--- On Wed, 2/4/09, Rosemarie Morgan <Rosemarie.morgan at yale.edu> wrote:

From: Rosemarie Morgan <Rosemarie.morgan at yale.edu>
Subject: RE: [hardy-l] More on the ending to Tess of the D'Urbervilles
To: sfarrell at unm.edu, hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu
Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2009, 11:18 AM

There is also the aesthetic/ideological problematic of attributing noble
qualities to those who die young in an untimely manner.  What if Jeanne
d'Arc had been tried and found innocent and had married her beau and had
borne 10 lusty children and died as a dear old mind-wandering, arthritic,
varicosed greatgrandma?  Or perhaps, had she be born today, diagnosed
schizophrenic and housed in a psychiatric ward eventually to die as a
middle-aged, over-medicated drooling spinster hallucinating about Jesus?

Cheers,
Rosemarie

and perhaps their unconscious collective rage of having "to take the
fall" for many of the injustices of society and religion.  That's the
only way I can make sense in my own mind of the ending of the novel.

>   Susan
> 
> 


_______________________________________________
Hardy-l mailing list
Hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu
http://coyote.csusm.edu/mailman/listinfo/hardy-l




      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://coyote.csusm.edu/pipermail/hardy-l/attachments/20090204/a13b90d6/attachment.html