[Hardy-l] Re: Thoughts on 'Tess'

[Keith Wilson]

Hi Rosemarie,
 
I'm glad we're both happy to let it remain an unresolved "mystery," but I would just like to correct a few of your misinterpretations of what I said or implied.
 
1.  You say: "She was sleeping when "appropriated" (Hardy's word) and surely one would awaken under such circumstances if for no other reason than from the sheer physical pain."
 
As I earlier indicated, the text does not say she was sleeping when the sex act occurred; it says she was sleeping when Alec returned.  The "appropriates" comes in the later general rumination on "why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man."  It's unlikely to be intended as a reference to the specific physical act of sexual "taking" by a man (which you assume it to be in speaking of "sheer physical pain"), since it is made to apply equally to both men and women: sometimes it is the man who is the coarser, sometimes it is the woman (Jude and Arabella?).
 
2.  You write: "As far as I can recall there's nothing to indicate in Hardy's text that Tess and Alec enjoyed a sexual relationship during the remainder of her stay (remember how difficult it was for Alec to get just
one kiss out of her when she leaves?). She leaves when she discovers she is pregnant (back to text) This would account for the Chase incident of approx 3 month's prior (2-3 months is the customary yardstick   --- for reasons I don't need to explain here)."
 
There is quite a lot to suggest a relationship probably continued, too much to quote here, but it comes in Chapter 12 in "Phase the Second."  Perhaps the most specific suggestion comes in the following: "She had never wholly cared for him, she did not at all care for him now.  She had dreaded him, winced before him, succumbed to adroit advantages he took of her helplessness; then, temporarily blinded by his ardent manners, had been stirred to confused surrender awhile: had suddenly despised and disliked him, and had run away."  Even Davis, prime asserter of unequivocal legal rape, accepts -- presumably from evidence like this -- that there has been an ongoing sexual relationship in the weeks since the night in the Chase.  And the Chase event wasn't "3 months prior": we are specifically told that the Chase scene occurred on a Saturday in September, and that Tess leaves Trantridge on a Sunday morning in late October, "some few weeks subsequent to the night ride in the Chase."  There is as far as I remember no specific textual indication that she leaves because she discovers she is pregnant.  The only specific reason suggested, as we saw above, is that she has come to despise and dislike Alec.  When she gets home, she tells "all" to her mother, but what that all is (whether that she has lost her virginity or that she already knows herself to be pregnant), we are not told: another matter that Hardy deliberately chooses to leave ambiguous. I'm happy to agree that in FFMC Fanny knows she is pregnant when she leaves, but what has that got to do with  a different character in a different novel?
 
3.  You write: "We have in a sense to rely on the fact that there is a parallel world beyond the novel. If there were not the outrage and uproar incited by *Tess* and *Jude* would be of little account. If the "parson's
daughter" is to be corrupted by such works (as LS maintained) then it's likely that this is because she might relate to them. We are not talking about Mickey Mouse narratives, we are talking about what Victorians called "realism."  Moreover, we are not speculating about "what might have happened beyond the bounds of the text" we are speculating about Tess (& one can't discount Hardy's other narratives concerning this event)."
 
Of course there is a world beyond the novel, a world whose inhabitants recurrently get exercised about what goes on in novels.  What has that got to do with my observation -- a completely standard one in any critical approach I'm familiar with -- that it's critically problematic to make claims affecting interpretation of the text itself about what characters do beyond what is given in the text?  As for not being able to discount what happens in Hardy's other narratives "concerning this event," I genuinely haven't got the faintest ideas what this means.  What event? -- rape, seduction, pregnancy?  Are you suggesting that because a writer has a woman leaving a location because she is pregnant in one novel, that becomes prima facie evidence for all other female characters who leave places in other narratives leaving for the same reason?  This is taking the common mythology that there are only half a dozen plots in the world to new levels of restrictiveness.
 
I still don't know what you claim are my misinterpretations, but thanks for correcting me on them.
 
Best,
 
Keith
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