[Hardy-l] Tess, confused

[Keith Wilson]

Phillip Mallett's latest e-mail -- with the sensitivity of its reading of textual detail and sheer moral clarity of its sense of the real, and very important, issues at stake in this discussion -- has briefly drawn me back into the debate.  He has given much of the textual detail that provides the evidence for the ongoing, post-Chase relationship, evidence that it's difficult to believe doesn't seem irrefutable to a careful reader.  But for what it's worth, I'd just like to throw in a piece of relatively well-known extra-textual evidence for what Hardy had in mind in relation to the whole situation, regardless of what term one chooses to apply to the finally unknown specifics of the sexual episode in the Chase.  That evidence is found in a letter (29 October 1891) to Thomas Macquoid, written during the serialization of Tess. Hardy writes
 
I am glad you like Tess -- though I have not been able to put on paper all that she is, or was, to me.  Clare's character suffers owing to a mock marriage having been substituted for the seduction pure & simple of the original MS. -- which I did for the sake of the Young Girl.  The true reading will be restored in the volumes. (CL I: 245-6)
 
The volumes -- the three volumes of the first book edition of Tess -- appeared a few weeks later with what Hardy himself seemed clearly to have conceived of as an original seduction restored in place of the faked marriage that Alec had deceived Tess with in the serial issue (and whose existence, of course, had made Angel appear to serial readers an even more cruel and sanctimonious prig than he does in the book version).
 
Best,
 
Keith
 
 
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