[Hardy-l] Tess, confused

[Phillip Mallett]

Rosemarie's message (copied to me by Angelique: I 
may well have missed others) quotes the narrator 
on Tess's 'confused surrender'. She rightly 
points out that the phrase requires a reading of 
the scene as - if not legal rape, which is 
difficult to prove even with a more fair-minded 
jury than many Victorian women found (see Carolyn 
Conley, 'Rape and Justice in Victorian England', 
VS 29 [1986]), and with more evidence than we 
have here - at least a violation. It's hard to 
suppose that 'confused surrender' suggests that 
Tess gave her full consent. But as that last 
phrase suggests (it's not obviously 
tautological), there may be degrees of consent, 
or different levels of expressing the absence of 
full consent.

Rosemarie doesn't, however, quote the whole 
phrase: 'stirred to confused surrender'. It seems 
to me that to allow the possibility that Tess was 
'stirred' (the narrator's summary), that she was 
'dazed' by him (her words), is not to diminish 
her, or to exculpate Alec (or not much). One 
might be 'stirred' to response (arch, 
half-pleased, as I cited in my earlier message), 
and confused (or 'dazed'), and then 'surrender', 
without either full consent or (as it were) the 
full non-consent of saying 'No', loudly.

Tess's own comments later don't sound to me like 
those of a bullied, traumatised woman: 'If I had 
ever sincerely loved you, if I loved you still 
...'; and again 'I have never really and truly 
loved you, and I think I never can'. This last is 
in response to his comment that she never 
'willingly' gives him her mouth: from which we 
must conclude, surely, that she has given it 
without being willing, that in some sense she has 
loved him, that she has even tried or wanted to 
love him. All this I think makes it clear that 
she has continued - dazed, stirred and confused 
('temporarily blinded by his ardent manners' - 
but not e.g. 'cowed and beaten into submission') 
- as Alec's lover over the 6-8 weeks between the 
night in the Chase. The four months suggested by 
Rosemarie is mistaken: ex-plicitly, Tess leaves 
on a Sunday late in October, the Chase scene 
occurs on a Saturday in September - at one stage, 
'early September', hence my 6-8 weeks rather than 
4-6).

I would be interested in others' response to the 
question which motivated me to send my earlier 
message.: granted that Alec can't be hauled 
before the courts, etc., why so much investment 
in the precise degree of consent in this one 
scene? I agree it might be an issue if we suppose 
(as I've suggested, on the basis of the 
conversation as Tess leaves I think this wholly 
implausible) that this is the one and only time 
Tess has sex with Alec. But if, as is so much 
more likely, there was a brief affair, entered 
into without full consent but without its 
opposite either, begun under the very 
considerable pressures of exhaustion, gratitude, 
and economic vulnerability, all added to whatever 
degree of stirring there was, and now deeply 
regretted - if this is what we have, does Tess 
somehow forfeit our sympathy? Is the legal 
position - that she now stands outside various 
kinds of protection because she isn't a virgin - 
any less monstrous? If Alec is not guilty of a 
technical rape (or at least, could not have been 
proved guilty of one), does that make his conduct 
anything other than vile? Surely the answer to 
all these questions is, No. So aren't we in 
danger of fetishizing virginity? I don't mean 
that it's a trivial issue: having surrendered 
once, a woman might understandably (and sadly) be 
more easily persuaded to surrender a second time; 
but it's not this one act, and the question of 
whether her consent is 30%, 49% or 51%, that 
defines Tess.

Unless, perhaps, your name is Angel Clare.

Phillip
-- 
Was man nicht erfliegen kann, muss man erhinken ...
Die Scrift sagt, es ist keine Sünde zu hinken

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


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