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

[Keith Wilson]

I don't think we are going to come to an understanding, Rosemarie, and I'm afraid I can't keep on these exchanges with you -- I just don't have time!    
 
But just one final attempted demonstration -- which I'm sure won't convince you --  of the problem with the way in which you discuss what need to be accurately articulated textual issues if there is to be any point in discussing them at all.  You begin your last e-mail with "OK -- let's do some close reading, folks".  But then you produce a plethora of textual approximations and outright inaccuracies.  The Chase incident is NOT three months before she leaves (as you formerly claimed), and NOT four months before she leaves (as you now claim, twice in the course of your latest e-mail).  What Chapter XII says is that Tess has been at Trantridge for four months, not that it has been four months since the night in the Chase.  What the text clearly states, also, is that the Chase scene occurs in September (first page of Chapter X) and that she leaves Trantridge some weeks later in late October (first page of Chapter XII). If one misreads what the words on the page say as fundamentally as that, all analytical/explicatory logic collapses, along with all basis for discussion.
 
Since I don't have time exhaustively to list comparable approximations and contradictions in the rest of what you say, I'll have to call it a day there.
 
Very best wishes,
 
Keith
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