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

[Pauline Guerin]

With very great respect, I always find it a little odd that anyone should
feel the need to re-write someone else's ending.  There are two things here
that disturb me.  

 

Firstly, Tess may have been largely passive in the book, but that does not
mean that she would not feel great passion, frustration or even violence
towards someone she may have felt had done her wrong, or was blocking her
desired path.   As part of my Masters degree (in Victorian Literature and
Culture) for my dissertation I wrote about 'The Feminisation of the Madman,'
this took me on a fantastic visit to Bethlem Hospital where I was lucky
enough to research both male and female 'mad' patients, incarcerated between
around 1860 and the early 1900s.  Many of the women were segregated;
isolated from the rest of the 'community' for their own safety.  Some even
had to be restrained because of their violent tendencies.  Many of these
patients, both male and female, were not 'mad' or insane, but had been
institutionalised by their own families for varying reasons, (including
those who were deemed to be a 'nuisance ' and those whose masturbatory
habits were allegedly out of control).

 

I do not think, therefore, that Tess was insane, but she was 'mad' -
furious, and why not? She'd not been dealt a particularly nice hand
whichever way one looks at it.  Just because she is female, also does not
mean that she does not have an urge to kill, far from it.  There is the old
saying 'always watch the quiet ones'!

 

Secondly, as a novelist myself, I am currently engaged on a project whereby
the ending is, not only tragic, but also bloody and disgusting.  This is not
necessarily how I would like the ending to be, it is merely how the ending
is.  I, too, have feelings of despair, disgust and anger in my life, but the
ending of my novel is absolutely nothing to do with how I feel, and I find
it a little difficult to suggest that Hardy put his own feelings into his
ending.  The upshot of it is that we cannot know, we can surmise, but to do
so and believe it is dangerous.

 

On a lighter note, I'd be pretty upset if someone wants to change the end of
my novel, because after all, it is my vision; my interpretation of the
emotions of the characters.  To make it a happy ending would detract from
the point of the novel in the first place.  As someone previously said, you
either like it or you don't, but please don't fiddle with it.  J

 

Kind regards to all

 

 

Pauline

 

 

 

 

Pauline Guerin MA

 

I don't think that Tess had such a terribly strong, negative emotion in her
to have murdered Alec. It was an unrealistic act on her part, given how
passive she had always been.. Simply leaving with the returned Angel would
have been more realistic for Tess's character. I think Hardy was writing out
his feelings of anger, despair or disgust which were in his own life

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