Aprodu Catalina-Andreea

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Tragedy and irony in the fate of modern humanity as constructed in Tess of the DUrbervilles by Thomas Hardy

This paper is intended to analyze thoroughly how social principles, improper behaviours, fate and love contribute to the protagonists tragedy and how far they affect Tess DUrbervilles. Thomas Hardys novel, Tess of the DUrbervilles, originally subtitled `A Pure Woman`, is about Tess of the DUrbervilles tragic dilemma between her seducer, Alec and her named husband, Angel, both of whom intrude into epic form Hardy describes Tesss life from about the time she is 16 or 17 to 21. The plot centres solely on the female protagonist. The reader not only observs her actions but also understands her motivations, her continual struggles, and her efforts to overcome circumstances and events caused by province and fate. In Tess DUrbervilles, Hardy adresses Victorian belifs about class, morals, patrairchal society, conventionality and the influence of fate or chance in individuals lives. The novel begins with Tess father learning of his lineage in the DUrbervilles family and thus feeling that work is beneath him. It is fate that Tess is the first born of her family, creating feelings of responsibility for its members. Blaming herself for the loss of the familys livelyhood. Tesss guilt causes her to acquiesce to parental pressure to seek help from the rich Mrs DUrbervilles, her supposed relation. Fate intervenes and Tess meets the son, Alec DUrbervilles, before she meets his mother and consenquently Alec presents her as just a servant. Ironically, Alecs family isnt aristrocratic; they only purchased the name because no one claimed it. It allows them to disassociate themselves from their past. Meeting Alec first proves paramount in directing Tesss future. Alex seduces and rapes her; she returns home disgraced, pregnant and unmarried. The child fathered by Alec dies, and Tess flees to a plane where her past is unknown to try to find happiness. Working as a dairymaid at Talbothays Dairy, Tess encoutners Angel Clare. Angel is ironically named, as he proves to be no guardian to Tess and also because he claim to have rejected religion. Angel is there to become a dairyman after deciding not to follow his father into the clergy. Tess and Angel fail in love and decide to marry even though Tess is concerned about the past and worries about confessing all to Angel. On the eve of their wedding, Tess slides a letter of confession under the door, but as fate would have it the letter slips under the carpet and Angel never receives it. Realizing Angel didnt read her letter, Tess convinces him to exchange confession on their wedding nighe. Angels tells of a previous indiscretion and is forgiven by Tess, but when she reveals her past victimization, Angel rejects her, an act of power interesting to feminist critics. Angels actions show that he is a product of Victorian convention, hypocrisy and double standards. His sensibilities are offended because Tess isnt the pure and virginal womanhe belived her to be. The story continues with Angel in South America. Tess, dependent on herself to make a living, is working under deplorable conditions at another farm. Finally, in desperation, she sets out to appeal to Angels parents for help; fatefully, she overhears Angels brothers discussing his marriage and tragically misjudges the character of Angel;s parents by the negative comments of his brothers, causing her to abandon her plan. On her return trip, fate once more intervenes and Tess encounters Alec, who convinces her that Angel will have return. He pleads with her to come with him; she refuses, but as her circumstances and those of her family worsen, she eventually succumbs to his pressure. At long last, but not until after Tess has joined Alec, Angel returns to Tess who tells him he is too late. In anger and

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frusttration, Tess kills Alec for once again destroying her life and her only chance at happiness. She spends a few blissful days in hiding with Angel, but the novel ands tragically: Tess hangs for her crime. Hardy employs numerous gothic elements in his work through omens, symbols and biblical references. A sign painter appears throughout the novel, painting signs with biblical warnings and foreshadowing events to follow. The day Angel proposes to Tess, he sees the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake. Symbolizing impending evil. A cock crows in the afternoon on their wedding day, as Peter denied Christ before his crucifixion. Angel;s fateful decision to spend their wedding night at the old DUrbervilles mansion prove to be unfortunate. The two life-size portraits of her ancestors upset Tess and symbolize the treachery that will follor. These portraints also keep Angel from entering the room later to reconcile with Tess. Perhaps the most prophetic is the scene in which Angel tells Tess that her situation might be different if The man were dead.pointing out the effect her past would have on their children, and foreshadowing the ultimate demise of Alec. Hardy reveals the double standars of hypocrises of his time. He adressed Tesss sexuality and presented her as a sensual protagonist, thus redefining the role of woman. As an independant and passionate woman, Tess represented a new characterization of woman, threatening the accepted Victorian model of women in society; but these characteristics resulted in her isolation and execution. Hypocritical Victoria values play a vital role in the heroines loss of innocence and death. When Tess stabs Alx in the heart, her action symbolizez retribution and rebellion against a system that had already judged her gulity, though she committed no crime. Subsequently she ends up in the hands of the authorities and becomes victim to another hypocritical value of the Victorian, that one must pay for their sins. Fate or providence proved true in Tesss case. She was destined to die with the DUrbervilles curse. Defeated by the irony of an unaccepting society, she took the law into her own hands. While Alexs payment for his sins seemed fair, Tesss only crime was that of being a woman cought in a hypocritical value system. Irony is a term which is usually associated with Hardy. Cosmic irony can also be termed as the irony of fate. Hardys novels are not only about this world, they portay the whole cosmos. There is a strong feeling of a hostile deus ex machina in Hardys novels. The irony of Fate refers to those literary works in which fate assumes the shape of an active participant in the drama of human life and becomes a part of the dramatic person.In Tess, thereare several instances of this type of irony, M.H. Abrams explains Cosmic irony or the irony fate exists, when God, or destiny, or the universal process, is represented as though deliberately manipulating events to frustrate and mock the protagonist. This is a favourite structural device of Thomas Hardy. In his Tess of the DUrbervilles, the heroine , having lost her virtue because of her innocence, then loses her happiness becaus of her honesty, finds it again only by murdered, and having been brifly happy, is hanged. The greatest irony of structure in Tess lies in its subtitle `A Pure Woman.In the very first chapter, she becomes a `fallen woman due to her innate sexuality and half-reluctant complicity to the so-called seduction and she is disdained and refused by the social community. Her deviation from the well accepted ethical restrictions for women decides her tragic destination. This is the inevitability of her tragedy. Later on, she also chooses to commit adultery rather than seeking help from her in-laws who would most surely have helped her, had she met them. If we look at our heroine without sympathy, we find that she is a party to the pre-marital sex, that she commit adultery, that she is guilty of murder; and yet Hardy chooses to call her `pure which is paradoxically ironic. 2

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Hardys pessemistic outlook, his belief in fate and chance, and other philosophic impression impinge on and disturb the traditional accepted structure of the novel. He describes novel as `simply an endeavor to give shape and coherence to a series of personal impression`. We must keep there factors in the mind while looking at the novel as a tragedy. The structure of the novel is affected by these factors. The novel Tess of the DUrbervilles is a tragedy of Tesss life. She has to pass through the series of sufferings which does not have a logical relationship with her life. Traditionally, tragedy springs from hamartia, a fatal flaw in the character of the protagonist; but Tesss does not have such flaw. She suffers without doing anything wrong; being a woman in patrichal society seems to be her only fault. Tesss tragedy is not logical outcome of events. The narrative does not have any cause-and effect relationship. The events take place as they were pre-determined. Within the novel, Tess is doubly fixed, first as a woman and second within Hardys philosophy. Right from the beginning, Hardy seems to be aware of Tesss fate. Tess tragedy can be understood in terms of gender. A womans destiny is always fixed in the male dominated society. Tess, as a woman becomes an agent of her destruction. Like any other women of the society, she is impulsive, emotional and sensitive. These qualities prove to be her weaknesses. In classical tragedy, the tragic heroine has the chance to make a choice, and she makes the wrong choice. In Hardy, however, the tragic character never has the chance to make a choice. There are things that she cannot change, and the particulars of her life constitute the antagonist. In fact, a series of relatively minor and logically unrelated events are responsible for the tragic fate of the character. In Tesss case, beginning with the death of the only horse of the family, her mothers not being educated and not educating Tess properly, Angels not selecting her from among the dancers, her fathers being informed by Parson Tringham that he descends from a noble family, the dUrbervilles, all contribute to Tesss downfall. In conclusion, Tess epitomizes a country girl who is ruined by social prejudice and male dominance centered on the double moral standard of sexuality applied to men and women in the late nineteenth century. Like a straw on the torrent of ethic prejudice, she is easily engulfed by the evil power of the society. She is the victim of narrow-mindedness toward the concepts of chastity and virginity, and she is also the sacrifice of male dominance in patriarchal Victorian society. Tesss tragedy is the archetype of womens tragedies which are involved with sexuality. Different societies regulate different criteria of accepted women. Woman is culturally constructed, rather than biologically defined. Tess is the reflection of the society and the representative of the women trodden at the bottom of society in certain period of English history. Tess is doomed to perish under the great social injustice towards marriage and sexuality. Her tragedy is triggered by her fathers dream of family glory and closely related with two mens betrayals and two falls, which form the fabric of the story. Alec and Angel are reincarnations of the destructive double moral standard, personifying the unjust moralities on women. They are the embodiment and vehicle of combined social forces during the social transformation of England. They cooperate to destroy Tess as a fallen woman, a kept mistress and a murderess, respectively by physical invasion and spiritual oppression. Many critics observe that Tess is a novel which challenges the existing social ordera defence of the fallen woman as a victim of social prejudice. In Victorian Society, the progress of the moral success of an acceptable woman goes from virgin to conventionally married mother. Tess, as a girl mother and obliged mistress, strays from the well-accepted way of her society. She is predestined to tragedy. It is the invisible pressures emanating from rigid social convention and unfair ethic principles that shape her tragedy and drive her to her end. 3

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She is victimized by the combination of social prejudice and male-dominance in patriarchal Victorian society. Tesss story, to some extent, reflects the rigidity of convention, the harshness of social law and the prejudice of morality in maledominated patriarchal society. Tess deserves the reputation of the best tragedy the highest tragedy, which is defined by the author. In the worldly view, Tess is a fallen woman; however, she is essentially pure and naturally unstained. Tess is a pure woman as Hardys subtitle describes. Tess is tragic but pure.