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

[Rosemarie Morgan]

>OK -- let's do some close reading, folks. (forgive typos  -- this 
>is  speedy stuff)

>KW: "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. "

RM: This is what Hardy's text says, Keith:

  "D'Urberville stooped; and heard a gentle regular breathing. She was 
sleeping soundly." (Ist ed)

Later Hardy adds "He knelt and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, 
and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping 
soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears." Then the narrator 
changes focus and performs the equivalent of a cinematic "fade-out" -- 
taking in the "yews and oaks"overhead and the "roosting birds" and then 
almost in the instant shifts back to Tess: "where was Tess's guardian angel?"

                         So somewhere between the "sleeping soundly" and 
the "guardian angel" the "beautiful feminine tissue" is "traced" 
(marked/scored?) --  our last view of Tess is that she's  "sleeping 
soundly". I don't feel that there is ambiguity in that (for once!) I take 
it at face value, that she is sleeping soundly when Alec kneels over her 
body and  does what he desires ....

KW: " 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.

RM: For me, Keith the link lies in "coarse." -- "Why it was"  that "there 
should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; 
why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus.." It would be hard to 
separate the second clause from the first as if it didn't follow. Yes, the 
narrator continues onwards to wax eloquently about "the wrong man the woman 
....thousands of years of analytic philosophy " but the point has been made 
regardless of the "general rumination " that follows.

>  KW:
>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)."

RM Actually I was wrong. It's four months not three. (see Maiden No More , 
.XII)

>
>KW: 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."

RM: Yes-- I agree -- "confused surrender" does seem to be sexual but I had 
always thought it referred to the Chase scene in which, I imagine (having 
experienced similar "confusions") that Tess awoke in a ghastly sweat of 
terror and then gave in to the inevitable (not an uncommon experience 
believe me)  But if "confused surrender"  does refer to the Trantridge 
period -- here again, an ambiguity -- I'm reminded of the effect of the 
trauma and Tess's defensiveness - her identifying with the oppressor. Given 
that the Trantridge period continued on for four months, though, I'm not 
convinced that any response to Alec by Tess is motivated by any desire on 
her part but rather from "dread," "wincing" -- in sum his sexual bullying 
and patriarchal authority over her.

How difficult this is -- I notice, for example, that both you and Phillip 
feel that Tess's retrospective thoughts on her confused feelings which 
include a self-questioning about a kind of "love" for Alec -- that you both 
feel this works against any (legal) "taking by force" or (seduction - 
social) intimidation factor. You both seem to feel that a woman who has 
confused feelings of affection mixed with fear and dread cannot, somehow, 
be subjected to sexual violation (Now don't start on about taking this to 
realms beyond the novel, into the real world, because it is you who have 
instigated this conversation)  Phillip even makes the point (as I recall) 
that the courts would have thrown out Tess' suit (should she have made one 
-- an unlikely event)  because she followed up at Trantridge with 4 months 
of "staying"--

  .You see, this is where I have to take issue . There is far more female 
capitulation to male desire out of fear, dread, disgust, loathing and 
anxious compassion or  even "for a quiet life" than I think is being 
conceded here. And if the law courts in Hardy's day didn't take this 
complicated issue into account they certainly do today. A woman may feel 
affectionate and even loving toward a man but this still does not give him 
the right to have sexual relations with her against her will. I would 
submit that many a woman has tender, affectionate feelings for a lifetime 
of very dear men but most certainly does not wish to have sex with them. On 
this count most women are highly discriminating and I feel that Tess is one 
of those women. She knows desire hotly and passionately when she meets 
Angel. Before that she only knows gratitude, fear, self-protection, and 
revulsion.


>KW  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."


RM   Not in my edition I have. "It was  a Sunday morning in late October, 
about four months after Tess Durbeyfield's arrival at Trantridge, and some 
few weeks subsequent to the night ride in The Chase." Presumably "some few 
weeks" must mean (if 4 months)  at least 16 weeks.

>KW - There is as far as I remember no specific textual indication that she 
>leaves because she discovers she is pregnant.

RM Re-read chapter XII-  " In the cause of her confidence her sorrow lay:" 
and later  Tess 's words to Alec "Perhaps of all things, a lie on this 
thing would do most good to me but I have honour enough left "   In other 
words, she knows she's pregnant but will not concede that she  loves him 
(Alec) if that's to be the only way out of her dilemma. As she now says, 
she has "the best o' causes  " (her pregnancy)  for telling him that *does* 
love him.  But she cannot -- she cannot tell him she loves him if this 
is  what is needed to "save ' her (to lie!) .  He - Alec  -- is aware of 
her predicament-- "if certain circumstances should arise -- you understand 
" etc etc.    It's all of a piece if you are looking in that direction.
KW
>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)."

RM - Apologies for being obscure. I simply meant that given Hardy's various 
revisions to this episode that I think we have a clearer idea of what he 
was aiming at than if we didn't have access to these revisions. Phillip 
outlined them also. They show a highly conscientious decision, I think, to 
allow readers to draw upon their own imagination and cultural knowledge of 
what the implications of The Chase and it's consequences might mean. Of 
course Hardy couldn't possibly have known that his 21stC readers wouldn't 
have understood what a hot issue the legal wrangles over under-age sex and 
rape etc were at the time of publishing *Tess.* Phillip is partly correct 
in claiming that Tess's case would have been thrown out of court because 
she stayed on at Trantridge after the event, but it was not as black and 
white as that. There were militant activists at the time who fought hard 
for women like Tess-- and even if their action failed the public 
consciousness was often as torn as we are, in reading Tess of the 
d'Urbervilles.  Ultimately Hardy isn't interested in "judgement:" -- rather 
in understanding and compassion.  But this you know.
>
>KW -
>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?


RM I simply wished to address the issue of the real and the fictional. 
Because there is, after all, no clear distinction between the two. (cf 
Wittgenstein)  If you have ever listened to the British House of Commons 
debating issues you will have been struck, I'm sure, by the abundant 
allusions made to literary texts (mostly Shakespeare ). In a sense these 
are mere flourishes, you might say. But it's not as simple as that. Every 
phrase, every metaphor and every allusion comprises an extended fictional text
embedded fairly and squarely in the modern political  mind, in the modern 
political world.  There is, in terms of ideology, no way of separating the 
fictional or mythical from what we call the real world.  That is all I had 
in mind (simplified --for now).

KW  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?

RM  -- No no -- sorry -- I meant that where Hardy has his narrator give a 
slightly different account of a situation (as happens in the variant texts) 
that these are hard to resist if and when we come to trying to decipher his 
ultimate meaning ( should there ever be such a thing) We must, surely 
listen to all his voices?


KW
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.
RM
  No , no  no  -- not at all -- - I was trying to interpolate something of 
a pattern I haven't examined in full  or in other contexts (re Hardy) so 
this is rather speculative: It goes like this:    it did strike me that if 
Hardy took so much care to delineate/ chronologise the days, weeks months 
of pregnancy in one novel and with a minor character no less,  that this 
might well be at the back of his mind when delineating another, in another 
novel -- and why not?  (I also have in mind his interest in female 
pregnancy as evoked in his poems)
>
>Phew !  I think that is it for now . Thank you Keith for hauling me up.  I 
>needed that.
Besties
Rosemarie