Review: "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" By Thomas Hardy

I have almost finished reading much of the major fiction of Thomas Hardy this summer.  I just completed a re-reading of Tess of the d'Urbervilles.  As I recall, the last time I read this novel was in the mid-1970s while I was in the U.S. Coast Guard.  All I can say is that this has to have been one of the most intense novels that I believe that I've ever read.  Reading this book rivals the literary and emotional experiences I have had with Hardy's The Return of the Native, Charlotte Bronte's Villette, Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, and Tolstoy's masterpiece, Anna Karenina.  In my opinion, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is one of the monumental literary achievements of the entire Victorian Era.  A stunning novel!

A tragedy in six parts, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is set in Hardy's fictional Wessex in southwestern England.  The novel follows the beautiful Tess Durbeyfield from the age of about sixteen until she is about twenty or twenty-one.  The story's plot revolves around Tess and the two men that feature prominently in her life; the first is Alec Stoke-d'Urberville; and the second, Angel Clare, is the youngest son of a country parson.  Like in all of Hardy's novels, names are everything.  For example, it turns out that even Tess's name, 'Durbeyfield,' is simply a corruption, over time, of the name of her noble d'Urberville ancestors who now reside in their stone vaults in the church-yard in Kingsbere.

With all the recent reviews of Hardy’s novels that I have written this summer I am sure that I am beginning to sound like a broken record, but Hardy’s descriptions of the pastoral lives of the Wessex simple folk are ever so beautiful and enchanting.  With his descriptions I always feel like I am right there experiencing the moment with the characters of the novel.  Even in the scenes loaded with human drama and pathos there is always the touchstone to the natural environment.  Hardy’s literary signature seems to be his ability to relate, and even bind together, the natural environment with the environment of real human emotion.

This is a novel of double-standards and sacrifice and the young and noble Tess is the unfortunate recipient of the negative consequences associated with the actions and feelings of both Alec and Angel.  Tess becomes, if you will, the Magdalen continually seeking redemption from those who probably can't, or won't grant it.  Based upon Hardy's own view of the Victorian society, it was highly unlikely that the Magdalen could be absolved or redeemed, and I believe that that realization must have affected him profoundly.  In reading this novel, I have come to believe that Hardy loved Tess more than any other woman that he "invented" and wrote about; you can almost feel his love for this "pure woman" emanating from each page.  Hardy wrote in one of his notebooks in 1895 that “Love lives on propinquity, but dies of contact.”  For me, this relatively short sentence completely illuminates the common thread and theme that links every one of Hardy’s novels and much of his poetry.

Symbolism, visual imagery, and allusion are all deftly used by Hardy as this 'folk tale' is recounted; and at times it does feel like a nightmarish and horrifying folk tale told around the fire on a dark and stormy night.  There are numerous references to Milton's Paradise Lost, the Book of Genesis, and several of the Pauline letters of The New Testament.  This is a harsh and unforgiving world that Tess finds herself in, with 'Punishment' the watchword and little in the way of 'Hope' or 'Happiness' looming on her horizon.  Mixed with the religious, there are also numerous examples of pagan symbolism and rituals; all of which contribute to the colored pigments that Hardy has applied to the canvas of Tess's life as the sacrificial victim of her society.

Having now read most of Hardy's novels, and a good number of his short stories, I can make the observation that Hardy likes to include a 'witch' in his tales.  There are good witches and bad witches, but they are all here in Hardy’s Wessex, including: 'Bathsheba Everdene' (Far From the Madding Crowd); 'Eustacia Vye' (The Return of the Native); 'Lucetta Le Sueur' or ‘Elizabeth Jane’ (The Mayor of Casterbridge); 'Felice Charmond' (The Woodlanders); 'Tess'; and, finally, 'Sue Bridehead' and ‘Arabella Donn’ (Jude the Obscure).  Think about it for a momentl; but each of these women absolutely bewitches and intoxicates one or more of the male characters in each of the novels; generally with tragic and disastrous results.  And Tess is no different.  Both Alec and Angel are completely besotted with Tess, and almost continually blame her for being a 'temptress'; the 'Eve' to their 'Adam.' 

I have to say that both, Alec and Angel, infuriated me to no end throughout much of the novel.  While Tess, with her simple ways and innocence, makes bad decisions (with Fate's kind help, I might add), these two men are the basest, most cowardly and hypocritical, and end up becoming two of the most despicable male protagonists in fiction, in my opinion.  Each of these men, at numerous times, could well have done the right thing and brought Tess salvation and full redemption, as well as given her the love and affection that she so desired and deserved.

Finally, even when Angel Clare comes to his senses and realizes what Tess is, and what she means to him, it is Tess, herself, that says, near the end, "It is too late...Too late, too late!" 

For Tess it truly is too late!

***

Now it is on to Jude the Obscure.

[My review was based upon the Everyman's Library hardcover edition of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, published in 1991 by Alfred A.Knopf.  The black and white photograph accompanying this review was taken by me on Christmas Eve in 2006 in a cornfield near my daughter's home in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Somehow, this image reminds me of the fields and tree-lined borders of Hardy's Wessex countryside.  'Click' on the image for a larger view.  Enjoy!]

Review: "The Return of the Native" By Thomas Hardy

Every once in a great while you read a novel that just knocks you back onto your keister.  Well, for me, this was just one of those novels.  I finished reading Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native several days ago, and it made such an impression upon me that I turned to page one, and began it all over again!  The first impression?  Wow!  Upon finishing it for the second time?  I concur with the first impression.

This is the fourth in Hardy's series of eight 'Wessex' novels, all being set in his native countryside of southwestern England.  Originally, The Return of the Native was serialized in twelve monthly installments in Belgravia magazine in 1878.  Interestingly, Belgravia magazine was edited by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (of Lady Audley's Secret fame) and her husband, John Maxwell.

The Return of the Native takes place over the course of a year and one-day, and the setting of the novel is entirely on the fictional Egdon Heath of Hardy's Wessex.  In fact, Egdon Heath with its rolling hills and dense warrens of scrubby, spiny, and brown furze should absolutely be considered one of the main characters listed in the novel's Dramatis Personae.

The novel, as Hardy originally intended and envisioned, is a tragedy in five parts; however, he was persuaded by the editors, for serialization purposes, to add a final sixth book (Aftercourses).  Hardy even includes a disclaimer at the start of this sixth book suggesting that the reader choose the ending for the novel that he or she deems appropriate.  Hardy was not a fan of adding the sixth book to the novel.

The first fifty pages, or so, of the novel feels like something out of the Britain of the Druids.  Hardy's description of the Egdon Heath, the late fall weather, and the magical, almost pagan, customs of the people surrounding their bonfires next to the ancient Celtic barrows on the night of November Fifth was simply spell-binding.  And it just gets better! 

Early on we are introduced to the novel's primary protagonists.  There's the seemingly-Mephistophelean Diggory Venn, the Reddleman, covered in red, from head-to-toe in the ochre he uses to mark the flocks of sheep; the beautiful and good-hearted Thomasin Yeobright; the handsome 'failed' engineer, now inn-owner, Damon Wildeve; the solid and steady matron of the heath, Mrs. Yeobright; the 'Queen of Night,' the darkly beautiful 'wayward and erring heroine,' Eustacia Vye ("to be loved to madness, was her great desire"); and, finally, the 'Native,' who has returned to the heath, the only child of Mrs. Yeobright, Clym Yeobright.  The novel travels through the four seasons of the year with these six characters locked together in a tale of passion, drama, pathos, and tragedy where, in typical Hardyian fashion, only Fate, Chance, and Irony exert any control whatsoever.  Like a moth is drawn to a flame, the reader is inexorably drawn into the tale, and recognizes with a growing horror that a full release can only be attained through reaching and experiencing the novel's shocking climax.

The novel contains more than a superficial nod to the great choric scenes of the Greek Tragedies, and includes the gatherings of commoners like many of Shakespeare's dramas.  Hardy's characters' dialog is spare and clipped, but each word is chosen carefully and packs an emotional wallop.  The descriptions of the environment, the role of the humans in it, and the interactions between the characters reminds me of the great modern American novelist, Cormac McCarthy.  The Return of the Native is Hardy's Naturalism at its finest; and becomes an almost poetic homage to the interaction of the human species with one another as well as with the Earth Mother herself.

Hardy chose an ode from Keats's epic Endymion as an epigraph to lead off the novel.  Nothing could describe this novel better--

"To sorrow
I bade good morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind.
I would deceive her,
And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind."

(Endymion, Book IV, 1817)

***

Finally, I want share one of Thomas Hardy's poems that directly speaks to his beautiful novel, The Return of the Native.  This poem is entitled, The Moth Signal--

The Moth-Signal
(On Egdon Heath)

'What are you still, still thinking,
  He asked in vague surmise,
'That you stare at the wick unblinking
  With those great lost luminous eyes?'

'O, I see a poor moth burning
  In the candle-flame,' said she,
'Its wings and legs are turning
  To a cinder rapidly.'

'Moths fly in from the heather,'
  He said, 'now the days decline.'
'I know,' said she.  'The weather,
  I hope, will at last be fine.

'I think,' she added lightly,
  'I'll look out at the door.
The ring the moon wears nightly,
  May be visible now no more.

She rose, and, little heeding,
  Her husband then went on
With his attentive reading
  In the annals of ages gone.

Outside the house a figure
  Came from the tumulus near,
And speedily waxed bigger,
  And clasped and called her Dear.

'I saw the pale-winged token
  You sent through the crack,' sighed she.
'That moth is burnt and broken
  With which you lured out me.

'And were I as the moth is
  It might be better far
For one whose marriage troth is
  Shattered as potsherds are!'

Then grinned the Ancient Briton
  From the tumulus treed with pine:
'So, hearts are thwartly smitten
  In these days as in mine!'

[Published in Satires of Circumstance, 1914]

Friday's Philology

Twice, maybe thrice, I have encountered the word "perfervid" used in Thomas Hardy's beautiful novel, The Return of the Native (1878). Hardy uses the word, each time, in describing the actions or thoughts of one of his protagonists, the beautiful, dark-haired and -eyed, Miss Eustacia Vye. 

perfervid - (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) Literary extremely ardent, enthusiastic, or zealous

[from New Latin perfervidus, from Latin per- (intensive) + fervidus fervid]

perfervid - characterized by intense emotion; "ardent love"; "an ardent lover"; "a fervent desire to change society"; "a fervent admirer"; "fiery oratory"; "an impassioned appeal"; "a torrid love affair."

Anyone who has read The Return of the Native will undoubtedly see that this word certainly applies to Eustacia Vye, 'The Queen of Night.' Hardy describes Eustacia with the following words, "To be loved to madness--such was her great desire." That must be perfervidness!

Say the word perfervid out loud, and feel it on your tongue and lips. To me, the word just becomes an evocative portrait of passion and ardent desire. Cool, huh?

[The photograph used in this posting is of the actress, Catherine Zeta Jones, who played 'Eustacia Vye' in the 1994 Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Hardy's The Return of the Native]