Tess of the dUrbervilles

This research examines the way in which Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles functions as a social commentary on 19th-century British society. The research will set forth the social context in which the novel is set and then discuss how it deals with such issues as the role of gender in determining the quality of human experience, economic realities, religious consciousness, and the sense of British national identity, with a view toward identifying meanings latent in the portrayal of social customs and practices in the text.

The burden of circumstance has a profound effect on the emotional makeup of the characters in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and the text combines social criticism with a description of the emotional impact of events and circumstances on characters. Indeed, it is partly in reaction to social circumstance that the psychology of characters is resolved. That a critique of the power of social circumstance is the main impetus behind the novel may be discerned from the fact of Hardy's prefaces to the text. In the 1891 preface to the first edition (xxvii) he cautions "any too genteel reader"--i.e., the typical member of the middle-class British public--that the book may reveal some disturbing truths that should not be ignored. In an 1892 preface, Hardy rearticulates an intent to upset received wisdom when he cites his "plan of laying down a story on the lines of tacit opinion, instead of making it to square with the merely vocal formulae of society" (xxix). His

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-with the rich d'Urbervilles" (97). However, the vicar's refusal to give her baby a Christian burial--it is baptized only by Tess, not the vicar--is the most prominent example of social judgment. The hole-in-the-corner burial shows concern with keeping up appearances, which makes a sham of Christian charity, and it helps persuade Tess out of organized religion and orthodox doctrine. What is at least as important as the sense of social isolation Tess feels is that she internalizes "shreds of convention" as an enormous Guilt (Hardy's capitalization) that the text suggests is unnecessary: "She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly" (84). But this is not yet enough to send her toward a final catastrophe. Gradually, Tess moves toward an introspection that transforms her "from simple girl to complex woman" (97). More than this, she emerges from seduction, abandonment, unwed pregnancy and motherhood, and social-position vagueness more or less psychologically whole: Let the truth be told--women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an interested eye. While there's life there's hope is

Category: Literature - T