THOMAS HARDY, TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES: A PURE WOMAN FAITHFULLY PRESENTED. “...the woman whom every man, young or old, must fall in love with...”
Having read the last page of the novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891)1, by the English writer Thomas Hardy (*1840-†1928), I remained in my seat, shaken and sad, though also moved. A lentissimo movement of a yet unknown symphony followed, whispering “… there is a beauty and a concealed serenity in that novel that would soon soothe you...”
I did not expect such an ending, albeit I had seen a film-version2 decades before, which for one or another reason faded into oblivion. Previous to Tess I had already enjoyed some of his other major works, Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). Jude the Obscure (1895) was to come after Tess.
An acquaintance was generated, perhaps even a sort of provisional friendship with the author, a confidential connivance, a steely cautiousness on my side notwithstanding: Hardy tends to lean towards unexpected dire twists, unforeseen tragedies, sudden eruption of demons (inside and outside). He possessed a howling ability to darken the clouds at the most unexpected moment, transforming, in a couple of minutes, a tranquil spring-dawn embracing valleys and soft hills, gentle brooks and quiet ponds, into a stormy mountainous hostile territory, marked by cliffs and tumultuous rivers, populated by ravens, snakes, and ferocious wild-cats. All the previous concern the paysage of the turbulences accosting the soul.
The next day (20.10.2018) I sent a lengthy email to a London correspondent, a fine connoisseur of the English authors of that epoch:
“...was Thomas Hardy also a true “Pantheist”? My knowledge of Hardy’s biography is very fragmentary, incomplete, and hence I am going to risk a dissection of his soul, as it was initially and how it did evolve, based on my readings so far, which includes “Tess”, whose last lines I crossed on Sunday night.
I remained hours afterwards shaken and pensive. But I did sleep quite well. That is bound to be the effect of a work of art. He knew, of course, “das A und O” (as we say in German, referring to the order of letters of the Greek alphabet) of the Bible, of many other religious texts, and of the discussions going on at that time within the Lutheran confraternity. I assume that he was a true believer, even though in this novel questioning and scepticism materialize often, more or less veiled. Schopenhauer himself makes an appearance. A “true Pantheist” believes that every single manifestation of nature is a sign of divines. All the more: When sole intellectual disquisitions fail to convince you of the existence of a supreme divinity, nature will always give you the right answer. Or at least, accompany you in the ever-winding and at times bumpy road towards that “wall” which separates earthly time from the eternal one.
If one takes “out” the description and eulogies of landscape in “Tess” (the deification), what remains is a somewhat complex and perverse “horror story”, with some brief and fragile romantic interludes. “
Looking back now at those comments, I feel the urge to relativise their somewhat abrupt conclusions. There is more than just a splendid panegyric of nature, which is rendered at times à la J.M.W. Turner‒whom Hardy greatly admired‒at times sort of bathed by French “impressionism”. Nature, and not only “landscapes”, seems to flow, we, the readers, feel as if we are being transported by a “swimming, meandering nature”, or gliding through clouds sky-above, hence enjoying a bird’s-eye view, as if we had been transformed, for a brief instant, into a God’s surrogate.
There are wondrously sculptured characters, with a pictorial grand-master precision but also tenderness, alive in flesh and soul, struggling to avoid their imperfections, vested interests and secretly-held dreams pushing them into quick-sand. Above all, there is an outstanding portrait of a young woman who is going to confront many adverse thunderbolts arrowed by Destiny, emerging, at the end, as one of the finest literary constructions, body and soul, of a female heroine in the world literature of the 19th century. A status unsought, never dreamt of by the personage in question. Nor by the author himself.
The heroine of the novel is Tess Durbeyfield, a country-girl of sixteen, whose family is then convinced by a parson that the name “Durbeyfield” is a corruption of “D’Urberville”, hence descending from an ancient Norman “lineage”. In an attempt to overcome poverty, Tess is sent to visit the “Mrs. D’Urberville” in order to claim a “blood” link with the supposedly aristocratic lady, whose husband just adopted the name in order to hide his very humble origin.
“Dialect” is the clearest signal of how a person situates itself in the world, and Hardy is one of the English authors who best handles it:
“Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience. The dialect was on her tongue to some extent, despite the village school: the characteristic intonation of that dialect for this district being the voicing approximately rendered by the syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in human speech. The pouted-up deep red mouth to which this syllable was native had hardly as yet settled into its definitive shape, and her lower lip had a way of thrusting the middle of her top one upward when they closed together after a word.
Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her nine sparling from her eyes, and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then.”3
Another constant: Almost everything comes from nature, and belongs to it…
“On these lonely hills and dales her quiescent glide was of a piece with the element she moved in. Her flexuous and stealthy figure became an integral part of the scene. At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed they were. The midnight airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightly-wrapped buds and barks of the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach. A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness in the mind of some vague ethical being whom she could not class definitely as the God of her childhood, and who could not comprehend any other.”4
At first the novel encountered a mixed reception. It was rejected by three editors, It had been heavily censored, first by Hardy himself, in order to obtain permission for publication. Nowadays it is considered as one of the masterpieces of English narrative of its epoch: ...thirteen theatre adaptations, first one in 1897, one opera, nine film versions (including two lost “silent-movies), five television adaptations …”
Tess would there meet Alec, the son of “Mrs. D’Urberville”, who feels very attracted to the young lady, would accost her, drug her, and finally rape her in a wood. Out of that forced act, a baby will be born, named “Sorrow”, who will live only some months.
Russian edition.
Let me come back to the letter forwarded to the London correspondent:
"I will certainly not attempt herewith a full appraisal of a work which has generated hundreds of essays, books, reviews, master and doctoral theses and tutti quanti. It is exuberantly (some might say “too much...”) loaded with pathos, symbology, Romanticism and sensual aspirations, constant interaction with sacred texts and works of art, the search for love and purity, and the persistent struggle to overcome “sin”, whether committed by oneself or inflicted upon. Being also aware of the many different “editions”, and the bites of censorship. Chapter XIV (erased by the censors as well as the „scene in the wood”, when Tess becomes “no longer a maiden”) is a jewel. The description of the surrounding first, and then the enactment of the “baptism” of Tess’s “clandestine” child (“Sorrow”), before death arrives, with the help of her sisters and brothers, is one of the most moving chapters I can recall in the European narrative of the 19th century. At that point, we are unaware of “how is all going to end”, thus we do not know that that woman has already become a „saint“. In a very humble, improvised, unwanted, pastoral way: “et in arcadia (excelsis) ego...”
At times one is assaulted by the suspicion that Hardy was at heart keener on novelising nature, his “Wessex”, than on constructing intertwined characters, whose destinies follow the patterns of billiard-balls being carambolaged by fierce strokes. Those characters would appear at first rather as an appendix, necessary “extras” for the re-enactment, the glorification of nature. They do show face and backbone, and make use of the instrument of spoken language, but they end up swallowed by nature. Yet the necessary distance having been taken, we conclude that the balance had been restored, and our first-impression must be corrected: The characters are enhanced by nature‒and vice-versa.
Herewith the beginning of Chapter XIV, one of the most beautiful in the novel. As if we were being invaded gently by cotton-clouds, letting tender rays of sunshine through:
“It was a hazy sunrise in August. The denser nocturnal vapours, attacked by the warm beams, were dividing and shrinking into isolated fleeces within hollows and coverts, where they waited till they should be dried away to nothing.
The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal look, demanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression...”5
Hardy then precise the group of men and women harvesting the field:
“...reaping-machine left the fallen corn behind it in little heaps, each heap being of the quantity of a sheaf; and upon these the active binders in the rear laid their hands – mainly women, but some of them men in print shirts, and trousers supported round their waists by leather straps, rendering useless the two buttons behind, which twinkled and bristled with sunbeams at every moment of each wearer, as they were a pair of eyes inf the small of his back.
But those of the other sex were the most interesting of this company of binders, by reason of the charm which is acquired by woman when she becomes part and parcel of outdoor nature, and is not merely an object set down therein as at ordinary times. A field-man is a personality afield; a field-woman is a portion of the field: she has somehow lost her own margin, imbibed the essence of her surroundings and assimilated herself with it.”6
It is here that we learn that a baby has been born. The unfortunate creature is sickly, it had not been baptised, as the local parson, and those who “knew”, considered it unfit to be received by the Church. The “girl-mother”, as Hardy described her, aware that her child has few minutes left on earth, organises an improvised “baptism”, by lighting candles up, pouring water into a washing-stand, and awakening all his brothers and sisters. The next-sister would hold the Prayer Book open. And Tess would become, in a rustic way, the truest possible representative of God on earth:
“The ecstasy of faith almost apotheosized her; it set upon her face a glowing irradiation, and brought a red spot into the middle of each cheeks, while the miniature candle-flame inverted in her eye-pupils shone like a diamond. The children gazed at her with more and more reverence, and no longer had a will for questioning. She did not look like Sissy to them now, but as a being large, towering and awful – a divine personage with whom they had nothing in common.”7
But a new life would emerge, step by step, the hope for love not totally undiminished. We meet Tess again in “Phase the Third” of the Novel (there are “seven”), “between two and three years after the return from Trantridge”8, when she leaves home for the second time. “Two silent reconstructive years” for Tess, after which she is hired as a dairymaid.
We are going to be instructed as to the tiniest detail of the dairy industry, including the most delicate aspects of milking a cow:
“In general the cows were milked as they presented themselves, without fancy or choice. But certain cows will show a fondness for a particular pair of hands, sometimes carrying their predilection so far as to refuse to stand at all except to their favourites, the pail of a stranger being unceremoniously kicked over.”9
Gemma Arterton, “the milkmaid”, starring in Tess of the D'Urbervilles in 2008 Photo: BBC
Tess would meet Angel Clare, an apprentice gentleman farmer, and both would fall in love with each other, a slow process which unfolds at the rhythm of the change of seasons, described by Hardy at a high poetical level, including the resulting alterations in the innermost of the two young people. Angel’s father is a clergyman, and he needs to be sure that Tess is a devout country creature. She is very hesitant to accept Angel’s marriage proposal, aware that her past, sooner or later, must be exposed to her future husband.
“Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess’s being. It enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her – doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep in hungry subjection there.
A spiritual forgetfulness co-existed with an intellectual remembrance. She walked in brightness, but she knew that in the background those shapes of darkness were always spread. They might be receding, or they might be approaching, one or the other, a little every day.”10
It happens when they are just married, and Angel is taken aback by Tess’s confession, unable to surpass the prejudices and conventions of the epoch, and decides to go to Brazil.
“But – where’s your wife, dear Angel” cried his mother. “How you surprise us!”
“She is at her mother’s – temporarily. I have come home rather in a hurry because I’ve decided to go to Brazil.”
“Brazil! Why they are all Roman Catholics there, surely!”
“Are they? I hadn’t thought of that.”11
Yes, “In Brazil there are all sinners…”
Tess would return to her family, yet misfortune and destitution are unfathomably lurking around. The depraved Alec does reappear, offering Tess to take care of her and her family. There is no other option.
Angel will return to England, convinced that he should rescue life with Tess, but it is too late. A new tragedy will explode, both Tess and Angel running away, stumbling onto Stonehenge, where she will be arrested by the police looking for the murderer of Alec. Aware that she will be condemned to death, she urges Angel to marry “Liza-lu”, the eldest of her siblings, and look after her.
Let us get back to the email of 2018:
“Perhaps the key question being put forward by Hardy in this novel: Can a woman, who as a teen has been tainted by violent intimacy and premature and short-live motherhood, later again forced into a veiled form of “sexual-servility” in order to nourish her family of origin, and then turned into a murderer (a justifiable one, if such a status were to be considered ethical and legal), become a saint? Hardy’s answer, from the subtitle in the first edition, “A Pure Woman”, seems positive. For my part: I do hope so.
A last query on this subject. While writing this novel, did Thomas Hardy fall in love again with his wife, or with another woman? He admitted many times that, while progressing in the writing, he fell more and more in love with Tess (as we all did…):
“I am so truly glad that Tess the Woman has won your affection. I, too, lost my heart to her as I went on with her story.”12
The preciseness in the physical description, the changes in body and soul as she progresses from a maiden into a full woman, her way to move and to smile, the whole aura… it would surely imply that there was someone serving as a model. It could also have been a “collage” of two or three “models”. The only way to construct such a heavenly, moving portrait of a woman is to be in love with her. In theory it is possible to construct such a flesh-and-bone figure out of thin air. But that is a privilege granted only by God, and very rarely, to the greatest artists. If such were to have been the case, then herewith my sincerest congratulations to the author of this novel for having been privileged with an outburst of divine grace…”
There have been many attempts to trace the “milkmaid” who might have inspired Hardy, 13apparently with some success. Yet the combination of sensuality, sexual-attractiveness, and above all, the undiminished quest for meaningful spirituality, could only have come from the innermost of the author. And it shall remain there, perhaps, a mystery as ever.
Hardy was no doubt aware of Tolstoy, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Лев Николаевич Толстой) )*1828 – †1910), – I dare to state, off-hand, that Tolstoy was also aware of Hardy. Both seem to plough through the same fields, harvesting from the deepest layers of nature and the psyche (in the original Greek sense of the word) of human beings. And both are incessantly trying to define their relationship with God.
Two names which I believe must be mentioned as having been shaken to the bones by the novels by Hardy, if only by this one. The first is the Norwegian Knut Hamsum (*1859-†1952), in particular his novel Pan (1894). The second-one is the French Jean Giono (*1895-†1970), his “Pan” trilogy, or “Provence-trilogy”, Colline (1929), Un de Baumugnes (1929) and Regain (1930).
One is tempted to classify this novel by Hardy as a “pastoral tragedy”, and let it be such perhaps, though let us not rest there. As a literary construction is a masterpiece, yet such a masterpiece can only emerge out of a writer who not only does know how to tell a “story”, rather more out of a writer who is trying to define his dialogue with God, aware of the balsam that, may God not happen to provide a quick answer, nature shall offer some consolation. Let me reproduce parts of an email send to the same London correspondent, though earlier, as it deals with the reading of Far from the Madding Crowd:
“Thomas Hardy is not only a fine “architect” of novels. He is also an accomplished “constructor”, a skilful “builder”. Carpentry, masonry, plumbing and all other relevant aspects are lively and efficiently dealt with. He had at his disposal a superb collection of “baits”, and he knew which one to apply on which “hook”. Then he displays all those hooks, like a magnificent archipelago underneath the strata of the novel, pulling the strings at the right moment, on the right spot. And it works. Some days ago I said, “well, I will read five pages and then take a break”. When I came back to reality, I already swallowed twenty. On Sunday I said, “well, I am going to read two or three chapters, and then take a break”. I could not stop until I had finished the book.
Yet his machinery is not preposterously evident, neither artificial, nor noisy. It is very well oiled, thanks mainly to the Leitmotive provided by nature, which vibrates unasked for, making even a single leaf falling from a tree an object of art – and of desire. Thanks also to a poetical power, reaching at times a breathtaking elan. I can well understand now why, after the scandal generated by Jude the Obscure, he abandoned novels and devoted himself only to poetry. But that is an altogether different epoch, to which I hope to come, much later.
A profound and elegant connoisseur of women, and of their inner world. Almost always pushing the most intimate human feelings and anguishes to their limit, inner Gratwanderei, as we say in German. And at times with a slight tendency to perversity, like an old witch inhabiting a wretched cottage, hastily concocting a lethal aphrodisiac. Poetry and splendid humour are enough to keep the pestering odours away. The two just mentioned factors can work only when a writer shows that he has a high respect, and an admiration, for the unpredictability of the conditio humana.
I wonder how much did Tolstoy learn from him, and vice-versa. Hardy was deeply in love with his countryside, where he was born, and knew every single detail of it, be sheep, trees or birds. And that is probably the most powerful force driving his writing, and it is the only source of true artistic achievement, particularly for writers. Very few attain such heights. It reminds me, to some extent, of the “young” Jean Giono, above all of his Provence trilogy, (Colline, Un de Baumugnes, Regain), which I began reading in 2005 and finished in the Provence itself, not far away from Avignon. Giono was a convinced pantheist, letting his characters evolve and mingle with the surrounding landscape in such a way that it becomes difficult to separate human beings from the rest. There is a “freshness” and “vitality” in him, like to the ones in Hardy. Though Giono’s novels are shorter, like swift strokes of a painter, urged “to make haste”.
We only know that there is a “horror-story” in a novel when we approach the end of the text. One may even say that the whole is a “horror story”. The force and the beauty of the writing being such, the female-heroine having been raised to the status of a “Pastoral Saint”, the tremendousness of the horror that explodes before our eyes right at the end strikes us like a thunder-lightning. And then it disappears, effacing the division between earth and heaven.
If “horror” should then be there at the end, let us consider it as “one of the most beautiful “horror-stories” ever written…”
1We use the Penguin Classics Edition, Edited and Notes by Tim Dolin, with an Introduction by Margaret R. Higonnet. 2003.
2Tess, directed by Roman Polanski (1979), with Nastassja Kinski in the main female role.
3Pg. 15-16.
4Pg. 85.
5Pg. 86, “Maiden no more, XIV”...
6Pg. 87-88. Our underlying.
7Pg. 95.
8Pg. 101.
9Pg. 133.
10Pg. 195.
11Pg. 261.
12 Collected Letters I, 240. Quoted in the “Introduction” by Margaret R. Higonnet, Penguin,
13“Revealed: The 18-year-old milkmaid who inspired Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles”. Daily Mail, 18.09.2008.
