[HARDY-Ll] Tess and sleeping scenes

[JoAnna Mink]

Keith's remarks re how the two most important (my words) sleeping scenes bracket the text nicely tie together the various themes and images we've been discussing.  It's fascinating how literary, artistic, and cinemagraphic images intertwine with and illuminate the novel.  I'll just comment on his last bit re Angel and Liza-Lu:  "But it is inevitably an anti-climactic subsidence after the remarkable moment of closure provided by the power of Tess's sleeping form to hold the world in attentive suspension, until she rises with the sun into the formalities of arrest that her quiet authority, rather than overt police action, is made to choreograph: "'I am ready,' she said quietly.""  (That's a sentence I wish I had written!)
 
To the best of my recollection, the 1999 film ends just this way.  I've loaned my DVD and can't check the accuracy of my memory, so I hope I'm right.  Of course, in film, there's the over-voice to give the "President of the Immortals" bit and to tell us that Tess was, indeed, executed. This is one instance where the 1999 film got it right and, in fact, improved on Hardy's text.
 
Keith's and Rosemarie's comments have added other aspects to this image which I hadn't foreseen.  Great discussion.
 
Cheers,
JoAnnaJoAnna S. MinkProfessor Emerita of English
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