A Student

Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Rare Flower of Wessex

January 5, 2010

J. Jones

7th
 Student 1

Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Rare Flower of Wessex

Thomas Hardy’s impassioned characters face tragic circumstances in his novels and the

characters in Tess of the D’Urbervilles are no exception. Most critics agree that the novel

exemplifies Hardy’s use of imagery and his socially defiant characters. The novel’s imagery

describes the English countryside setting, which mirrors aspects of the personalities of Tess and

several other characters. Tess Durbeyfield is an ill-fated but charming young woman. She is

presented as a pagan fertility goddess who controls nature, has a power over humans, and

remains strong even when hindered by the conservative norms of Victorian society. In a pagan

view, the Victorian sexual rule she breaks is irrelevant: she is still innocent among nature and its

creatures. Throughout the novel, Hardy portrays her emotions through the rich imagery of the

landscape.

Poet and novelist Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorset, England. Hardy’s father

was a stonemason, and his mother was an educated woman. His mother taught him until he

attended a formal school at age eight. His education ended at the age of sixteen when he became

an architect apprentice. Hardy ended his career in architecture for health reasons and began

writing novels. After the death of his wife in 1914, he began to write poetry. His novels are set in

the English countryside of Wessex and involve characters hindered by the social constrictions of

Victorian society. Tess of the D’Urbervilles exemplifies this plot scheme.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles is the story of Tess Durbeyfield, an atypical young woman who

defies the social norms of the Victorian era. A young girl living in a small farming village, she

comes from humble origins, but the reader can tell immediately that she is not the average

farming girl. Enstice notes Tess’ extraordinary characteristics, “It is early established that Tess is

a girl with a larger view of life than the ordinary field girl” (Enstice 112). Tess is distinct among
 Student 2

the other girls of the village during the May-Day dance. Hardy describes her as a girl with unique

beauty beyond her years:

Phases in her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along today, for all her

bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her

cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves

of her mouth now and then. (Hardy 21)

Tess becomes more captivating as the story progresses and she gracefully faces her misfortunes.

Stave describes Tess’ enchantment: “Something about her haunts the imagination; she is at once

child and woman, strong and fragile, masterful and timid. In her, myth and history fuse. We are

presented, on the one hand, with a very tangible English cottage girl and, on the other, with a

goddess figure of immense stature” (Stave 101).

Early in the story, her family discovers it is related to the D’Urbervilles, a family holding

a large estate. Tess is sent to claim kin at the D’Urberville estate and meets Alec D’Urberville,

who is described as her distant cousin. He pushes his love on her and receives resistance. He

finally takes advantage of her while escorting her home late one night. Tess is exhausted and

impassive as Alec takes her into the forest. It is then unclear whether Tess is raped by or

consents to Alec. She becomes pregnant and does not give in to the pressures of Victorian

society. Staves describes Tess’ pride: “Pregnant with his baby, she not only refuses to marry him

but will not even inform him of her condition, even though he has assured her that he will

provide for her financially in such circumstances” (Stave 102). Tess does not want to be attached

to Alec for reasons of practicality: “Hate him she did not quite; but he was dust and ashes to her,

and even for her name’s sake she scarcely wished to marry him” (Hardy 87). Tess’ pride is

strong and allows her to keep her dignity despite her mistake.
 Student 3

Tess breaks a major social taboo in the Victorian era, and Hardy obviously uses her

unique situation to satirize the arbitrary standards of the era. Tess cares for her baby in public

and does not show shame. It is easy to tell from Tess’ thoughts and actions that she is not

devoutly Christian. She thereby resists Victorian society. However, when her baby becomes ill

on a stormy night, Tess herself baptizes it shortly before it dies. Morgan explains: “Tess enacts

her own desire to liberate the innocent soul from damnation, to bury guilt and sorrow purged of

all stain” (Morgan 103). Tess Durbeyfield thus figures as Hardy’s defiance against Victorian

culture. Tess retains her innocence in a culture that condemns her. Bonica explains that Tess is

considered innocent in nature: “The point is that human notions of innocence and guilt are

entirely irrelevant in nature… Judging Tess and nature according to Christian values renders

both guilty. Judging Tess and nature according to pagan values renders both innocent” (Bonica

854). He presents Tess as an independent person with a strong connection to nature. Her

independence and connection to nature help her to prevail over misfortune.

Throughout the novel, Tess has an attachment to nature like that of a pagan fertility

goddess. She seems to receive her strength from the natural surroundings and its creatures. The

pagan beliefs Hardy presents in the novel are introduced with the mayday festival where Tess’

being is differentiated from the other girls by a red ribbon in her hair. Stave laments,

Tess is the least human of the Hardy women characters. From her introduction in the

novel at the pagan mayday fertility ritual, where she is set apart from the other women by

her red hair ribbon, Tess functions as differentiated and marked, as one whose experience

and consciousness are essentially different from those of her would-be peers. (Stave 102)

Tess has supernatural features that present her as a pagan fertility goddess who possesses powers

that control nature and humans. She has control over the weather and the nature that surrounds
 Student 4

her. It responds to her moods and feelings throughout the story, emphasizing Tess’ goddess

qualities. Enstice describes Tess as a goddess representing the relationship between humans and

nature:

It is in Tess’ person that we find the major embodiment of the harmony between man and

nature…, The land itself, and the working of it, is very obviously subservient to Tess

herself in this novel, and Hardy therefore allows Tess to take the weight of imagery

designed to emphasize the connection between man and nature. (Enstice 129)

When Tess is strongly in love with Angel Clare, the countryside mimics her feelings:

July passed over their heads, and the Thermidorean weather which came in its wake

seemed an effort on the part of nature to match the state of hearts at Talbothays Dairy.

The air of the place, so fresh in the spring, and early summer, was stagnant and

enervating now. Its heavy scents weighed upon them, and at mid-day the landscape

seemed lying in a swoon. (Hardy 151)

Her recognition of her love for Angel Clare is her high point in the novel and also the point in

which the imagery is exuberant and vivid.

Tess’ strong sexuality is like that of a fertility goddess. Hardy does not make it a fault in

Tess, though. Stave views Tess in opposition to the Victorian society that rejects her: “ She is not

at fault for her sexuality…. Tess is doomed by a culture that cannot accept the sexual. Tess, as an

incarnation of nature, must be sexual” (Stave 103). When Alec violates Tess, her sexuality is

seen as fitting because she is peacefully asleep and at home in the forest: “Above them rose the

primeval yews and oaks of the chase… and about them stole the hopping rabbits and hares. But,

some might say, where was Tess’ guardian angel? Where was the providence of her simple
 Student 5

faith?” (Hardy 77). Through Tess, Hardy shows his own doubts in the beliefs in Christianity, an

unnecessary religion for a pagan goddess like Tess.

Hardy’s imagery does more than create a beautiful setting: the agricultural imagery aids

the characterization of Tess. The different locations and relative imagery each represent a phase

in Tess’ life as she matures, both physically and emotionally. Marlott, the village where Tess is

born and lives as a youth, is described in the beginning of the novel with similarities to a young

Tess:

The village of Marlott… -an engirdled and secluded region, for the most part untrodden

as yet by tourist landscape painter…. This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which

the fields are never brown and the springs never dry. (Hardy 18)

This description of Marlott describes not only the land, but also the pure Tess that is introduced

soon after. As Tess matures, the descriptions of the environment correspond to the descriptions

of hers. The setting of Tess of the D’Urbervilles is the agricultural, English countryside that Tess

thrives in, and the bulk of imagery in the novel describes this setting. “Instead of the colourless

air of the uplands the atmosphere down there was a deep blue. Instead of the great enclosures of

a hundred acres… there were little fields below her of less than half-a-dozen acres, so numerous

that they looked from this height like the meshes of a net” (Hardy 287). Hardy strives to provide

thorough descriptions of the agriculture that is so important to the story and, most importantly to

Tess.

While the imagery plays a role in characterizing Tess, it is also beautifully intricate and

breathtaking. Hardy takes one of the minutest aspects of the setting and takes a few paragraphs to

describe the aspect. Grimsditch praises Hardy’s consummate skill: “His ears are open to every

slight sound; he sees (and makes us see) every delicate shade of colour, and he constantly creates
 Student 6

the illusion in the reader’s mind that he is in the actual spot described” (Grimsditch 41). Hardy’s

description of spider webs illustrates his skill:

Looking over the damp sod in the direction of the sun a glistening ripple of gossamer

webs was visible to their eyes under the luminary, like the track of moonlight on the sea.

Gnats, knowing nothing of their brief glorification, wandered across the shimmer of this

pathway, irradiated as if they bore fire within them; then passed out of it line, and were

quite extinct. (Hardy 280)

The imagery Hardy provides to describe nature in the novel emphasizes its importance to the

story. The imagery enhances the story, underscores the relationship between man and

agriculture, and characterizes Tess.

In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Hardy masterfully presents the story of a field girl who

faces tragedy and remains a powerful being, even when faced with a Victorian culture that

censures her. Controlling her environment and the people around her, Tess Durbeyfield becomes

a pagan fertility goddess. Her strong sexuality is accepted by nature and its creatures, but

rejected by humans. Hardy uses Tess’s natural innocence as an indictment against the cultural

norms of his time. Not necessarily a tragedy in the terms of Aristotle, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

is a tragic novel praising the unconventional and “the more rare and beautiful flowers that grow

in the garden of Wessex” (Grimsditch 71).

 Student 7

Works Cited

Bonica, Charlotte. "Nature and Paganism in Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles." ELH 49.4

(1982): 849-62. JSTOR. Cherokee High School Library, Canton, GA. 11 Oct. 2009.

<http://www.jstor.org/stable/2872901>.

Enstice, Andrew. “Wessex Vignettes: Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” Thomas Hardy: Landscapes of

the Mind. New York: St. Martin’s, 1979. 111-52.

Grimsditch, Herbert B. “Landscape and Country Life in General.” Character and Environment in

the Novels of Thomas Hardy. New York: Russel and Russel, 1962. 41-56.

Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles. New York: Oxford UP, 1983.

Morgan, Rosemarie. “Passive Victim? Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” Women and Sexuality in the

Novels of Thomas Hardy. London: Routledge, 1991. 84-110.

Stave, Shirley A. “Tess of the D’Urbervilles: and Nature Became Flesh, and Dwelt Among Us.”

The Decline of the Goddess. Westport: Greenwood, 1995. 101-21.