Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840. He had a formal education; his father apprenticed him at the age of sixteen to an architect. Later Hardy practised architecture in London but he gave this prospect to devote himself to writing.

Far from the madding crowd, Return of the native, The mayor of Casterbridge, Jude the obscure, Tess of the d'Ubervilles.

This novels are called "Wessex novels" and take this name from the rural areas where they are set.

For him Wessex represents a link between past and present.

Hardy's wish to represent life in some of its most sombre and cruel aspects in contrast with the Victorian's readers who represented life as they thought it ought to be.

Most of Hardy's novels are set in the countryside and show his affection for the vanishing agricultural world in the face of increasing urbanization. A deep pessimism characterises all is work. But while in his earlier novels he tends to lament the universe's indifference to man, in Tess, and later novels he recognises that man-made laws are partly responsible for the unhappiness and sufferings inflicted on the individual. Tess is also indictment of the object treatment of women in general- and lower class women in particular- in Victorian society. There is also a religious question; in fact Hardy doesnt' believe in the esistence of a loving God and his view of life is pessimistic and fatalistic. For him the forces wich govern the world seem to enjoy inflicting endless suffering on a helpless and harmless creature like Tess.

Tess of the d'Umbervilles

Tess of the d'Umbervilles is the tragic story of a beautiful country girl who finds work in the house of a rich man, Alec d'Umberville. He takes advantage of her innocence and seduces her. She leaves him and has a child who dies soon after birth. She falls in love with Angel Clare and marries him but he rejected her when she confesses her past mistake. Their separation lasts a long time. In the meantime, Tess goes back to her old seducer to save her family from poverty and starvation. When her husband repentant, finally returns, she kills Alec out of despair. She is sentenced to death for murder.

Tess' tragedy is caused by two men, Alec d' Umberville and Angel Clare. Alec is the rich whom law will not punish for seducing a peasant girl, while Angel is the young man of progressive views who is a slave to sexual prejudice and hypocrisy. By the time Angel eventually understands the depth and strength of  Tess' true love, it is too late. This novel is in contrats with the moral code of his time, because shows a woman, Tess, as a victim of men's injustice. Moreover this work is characterized by a strong pessimism about the cruel aspects of Victorian Age.

TEXT 1

After all this, her family's poverty drives Tess away again. She goes to work in a dairy farm, an d here knows Angel Clare. Immediatly they fall in love each other but tess isn't able to open her hearth to him because she is afraid in the memory of her past seducer. However at the end Angel proposes to her and she acceptes, but she writes to him a letter in which she tells her past, she hopes that he reads it, but the wedding day she discoveres that it isn't happened, but the wedding takes place nonetheless.

EXERCISE:

-Tess goes into her room in the afternoon. Tess and Angel leave the Farm.

-The wedding appears to be neither joyful nor cheerfull.

-The narrator voice has two functions: 1- to describe feelings whose intensity cannot been show trought actions and words. 2- to create a sombre atmosphere anticipating the unhappy outcome of Tess' story.

-In this passage there are some premonitory incidents: 1- the couple's marriage recalls the legend of the d'Uberville's coach. 2- the cock's crow in the afternoon, by a popular beliefe, was supposed to mean bad luck. 3- Tess' love for Angel is so strong to be considered idolatry and therefore "ill-omened".

TEXT 2

Tess tells Angel her past in the evening of their marriage. Immediatly he appears enable to forgive her and for this he leaves her and starts to travel over seas. Meantime Tess finds work in a far country where nobody knows her, but in which she meets her past seducer, Alec d'Uberville. So she becames the object of his attenction and the need of money of her falily obliges her to return in his arms. Meanwhile Angel has understood his mistake and jets back to her, who he finds with Alec d'Uberville. In that moment Tess out of her kills Alec to return with her usband. They spend together some day of happyness before the police arrests her. She is found guilty of murder and hanged.

EXERCISE:

-Dawn is approaching.

-In ancient times Stonehenge was used for sacrifice to the sun.

-Tess falls asleep on one of the stones of Stonehenge.

-She abandoned her religious belief to conform her usband's ideas, so she has no hope of meeting him again after that.

-Personification is used, and the landscape seems to stand as a judge watching the final moment of Tess' destiny.

-The policeman standing around Tess as she sleeps, are like the priests waiting to perform a sacrifice.

-Tess is like victim.

-The sun wakes her up.It is the signal for the sacrifice that is her arrest.

-She is injustely punished for a crime she has committed against her will.

-She was led to do it by a series of unlucky circumstances.

-Tess is the victim of tragic destiny.

-Tess is deprived of all hope of life after death.