Tess from the d'Urbervilles

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Tess d'Urbervilles

Tess von den d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, also short in a new translation: Tess (in the English original: Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented ), is a novel by the English writer Thomas Hardy , which appeared in 1891 . Hardy's penultimate novel, followed by the heart in turmoil (ger .: Jew the Obscure ), is now one of the great classics of English literature, in his time the recording was mixed with critics and audiences, partly because Hardy's position, the rigid sexual morals of his Time in question.

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Part 1: The Maiden (Chapters 1 to 17)

Tess is the eldest child of John "Jack" and Joan Durbeyfield, simple and uneducated farm workers. One day John learns casually from Pastor Tringham that he is actually of noble origin. Tringham, whose hobby is genealogy, has found that "Durbeyfield" is a variant of D'Urberville , the name of a distinguished Norman family that has since died out. The pastor's careless remark immediately goes to John's head.

On the same day Tess takes part in the village's May dance, where she briefly meets Angel Clare, the youngest son of the Reverend James Clare, who is on a hike with his two brothers. He stops to dance and finds willing dance partners in several other girls. Even though Angel notices Tess' beauty, he doesn't ask her to dance.

Tess' father, boisterous about the news of his noble parentage, gets too drunk that evening to drive to the distant market that night, so Tess takes on this task, although she too is not in appropriate shape for the May dance. She falls asleep on the reins while driving, her carriage horse gets in the way of an oncoming vehicle and is killed. The loss of the only draft animal is an economic disaster for the Durbeyfields, and Tess feels guilty for the horse's death. So she gives in to her mother's insistence and agrees to visit Mrs. d'Urberville - a rich widow who lives in the nearby town of Trantridge. Tess should remind the relatives of the families there and get support for the Durbeyfields if possible. She does not know that Mrs. d'Urberville has no relationship whatsoever with the old d'Urbervilles; her late husband, Simon Stoke, a soldier of fortune from the north of England, had once taken over the title and name under dubious circumstances.

In Trantridge Tess doesn’t meet old Mrs. d'Urberville, but her son Alec, a cynical free spirit. Alec likes the beautiful Tess and gets her a job as a poultry keeper on the estate of the d'Urbervilles. He makes repeated advances, but Tess, though flattered, resists him. Late one evening, when Tess and other Trantridge villagers are returning home from an evening excursion into town, Tess and Car Darch, Alec's recently rejected lover, clash. Alec appears on horseback and "saves" her from the predicament. He doesn't bring her home, however, but rides aimlessly with her through the fog until they come to an old cave. Here Alec reveals to her that they have lost their way. Alec goes looking for help on foot, while Tess is left alone and falls asleep exhausted, covered with the coat he has given her. Alec returns alone after a while, and it is up to the reader to decide whether to subsequently rap or seduce her.

Part 2: Maiden No More (Chapters 17 to 20)

After a few weeks of confused flirting with Alec, Tess begins to reject him. Against his wishes, she returns to her father's house, where she hides in her room. The next summer she gives birth to a sickly son who has only a few weeks to live. On his last evening, Tess baptized him himself after the local priest refused to support him. She gives him the name "Sorrow" (worry). Her proud father locked the door to keep her from calling for the pastor. Tess buries Sorrow in unconsecrated earth and places flowers in a jam pot on his grave.

Part 3: The Rally (Chapters 20 to 24)

More than two years after the events in Trantridge, Tess, now twenty, is ready for a fresh start. She looks for work far from her village, where her past is unknown. She finds a job as a milkmaid on a farm in Talbothays, where she works for Mr. and Mrs. Crick. There she befriends three other milkmaids and again meets Angel Clare, who is studying the management of a large dairy farm as a kind of intern in Talbothays. The other milkmaids are longingly raving in love with Angel, but he is more and more interested in Tess, and the two fall in love.

Part 4: The Consequence (Chapters 25 to 34)

Angel spends a few days off visiting his family in Emminster. His brothers Felix and Cuthbert, both of whom have pursued church careers, notice Angel's rougher behavior, while he perceives his brothers as colorless and narrow-minded. After the evening service, Angel discusses his marriage prospects with his father. The Clares envision Angel getting married to Mercy Chant, a pious teacher; but Angel believes that a woman who understands farm life would be a more sensible choice. He tells his parents about Tess and they want to meet them. His father talks about his efforts to convert the local population and mentions his failure with a young do-go-lucky named Alec d'Urberville.

Angel returns to the Talbothay dairy farm and proposes marriage to Tess. That puts Tess in a painful dilemma. Angel obviously thinks she is a virgin and, even if she doesn't want to betray him, she shrinks from revealing her past to him for fear of losing his love and admiration. Her passion for him is so strong that after much back and forth she agrees to the marriage and "confesses" to him that she was so hesitant because she heard that he hated old families and disapproved of their origins as d'Urberville. But he is delighted with the news because he believes her noble origins would make Tess more acceptable to his family.

The closer the wedding approaches, the more agitated Tess becomes. She writes to her mother for advice; Joan recommends that she let the past rest. Her concern rises when a man from Trantridge named Groby recognizes her out shopping with Angel and harasses her with hints of her past. Angel notices this and falls into a rough temper with Groby, which is otherwise completely untypical for him. Tess decides to stop lying to Angel and writes him a letter explaining her past with d'Urberville; she slides the letter under his bedroom door. When Angel greets her the next morning with unchanged affection, she realizes that the letter has landed under the carpet in his room. Angel didn't read it. She destroys him.

The marriage went smoothly, although Tess notices many bad signs (a rooster crows in the afternoon and the old coach of the d'Urbervilles, the subject of a creepy legend, appears). Tess and Angel spend their wedding night in a former mansion of the d'Urbervilles, which now functions as an inn. Angel gives Tess diamond jewelry that belonged to his godmother and admits that he once had a brief affair with an elderly woman in London. Upon hearing this confession, Tess feels confident that Angel will be forgiven for her own misconduct, and tells him the full story of her relationship with Alec.

Part 5: The Woman Pays (Chapters 35 to 44)

Contrary to her assumption, Angel is appalled by Tess's admission. He spends the rest of the wedding night on the sofa. Even though Tess is deeply affected by his reaction, she accepts his sudden estrangement as deserved. After a few terrible, uncomfortable days together, she proposes a separation and tells her husband that she will return to live with her parents. Angel gives her some money and promises that he will try to make up with her past, but asks her not to contact him on her part until he visits her. After a brief visit to his parents' home, Angel takes a ship to Brazil to start a new life there. The official language rule towards the public is that Angel is looking for common livelihoods in advance and then wants to take Tess with him after his return to Brazil.

Before leaving, he meets Izz Huett, one of the milkmaids, on the street and, following an impulse, asks her to come to Brazil with him as his mistress. She agrees, but when he asks her how much she loves him, she confesses: “Nobody can love you more than Tess. She would have given her life for you. I can't do more than that. ”When he hears that, he gives up the thought and Izz goes home crying bitterly while Angel drives to Brazil alone.

So begins a bleak time for Tess. She returns home but does not find a proper place there. So she decides to join Marian and Izz, who have found a meager livelihood as maids on a desolate, poor farm called Flintcomb-Ash. On the way there she is recognized and insulted by a farmer named Groby - the man who had confronted her before in the company of Angels. This man turns out to be her employer. The three former milkmaids work very hard on the farm under terrible working conditions. The situation of Tess is made even more difficult by the fact that the farmer Groby is making life difficult for her as much as he can.

In winter, Tess uses a Sunday off work and walks all the way to Angel's family in Emminster. When she gets there, she meets Angel's conceited brothers with Mercy Chant, the woman whom Angel, according to his family, should have married. They don't recognize Tess, but she overhears the brothers' conversation about Angel's ill-advised marriage. Ashamed, she turns back. On the way back she hears an itinerant preacher and realizes to her horror that it is Alec d'Urberville, who was converted to Christianity under the influence of Reverend James Clare.

Part 6: The Convert (Chapters 45 to 52)

Alec and Tess are both very touched by the unexpected meeting, Tess out of horror, Alec out of a renewed passion. Alec begs Tess never to try again. However, it is Alec who soon comes to Flintcomb-Ash and asks Tess to marry him. She replies that she is already married. He comes to her at Candlemas as well as in early spring after a particularly hard day at work when Tess had to fill the threshing machine. He says he has given up preaching and wants her to accompany him. When he mocks their fictitious marriage and insults Angel, she beats him until blood flows. Soon after, she learns from her little sister, Liza-Lu, that her father John is sick and that her mother is dying. She rushes home to take care of her. Her mother gets well again, but the father dies suddenly and unexpectedly.

The family now has to leave the house because only Durbeyfield had a lifelong right of residence. Alec implores Tess that her husband will never return and offers the Durbeyfields to live on his estate. Tess declines this support. She had written a loving letter to Angel asking for mercy; but now she realizes for herself that Angel treated her wrongly. She scribbles a hasty note saying that she will do anything to forget him after he has treated her so unfairly.

The Durbeyfields plan to rent a few rooms in the town of Kingsbere, the old ancestral home of the d'Urbervilles. When they get there, they find the house already rented. They desperately seek refuge in the churchyard at a place popularly known as "the passage of the d'Urbervilles". Alec appears and presses Tess again. In desperation, she looks at the entrance to the crypt of the d'Urbervilles and sighs loudly: "Why am I on the wrong side of this door!"

Meanwhile, Angel fell seriously ill in Brazil and his attempts to set up a plantation had failed. He is returning to England. On the way, in his distress, he confides in a stranger who tells him it was a mistake to leave his wife. What she was in the past meant less than what she would become. Angel begins to regret what he did to Tess.

Part 7: Fulfillment (Chapters 53 to 59)

On his return to his family home, Angel awaits two letters: Tess' angry note and some enigmatic lines from "two benevolent people" (Izz and Marian) warning him to protect his wife from "an enemy in the form of a friend" . He sets out to find Tess and finally discovers Joan, well dressed and living in a pretty little house. After evading his inquiries, she finally confesses that her daughter lives in Sandbourne, an elegant seaside resort. There he finds Tess in an expensive pension under the name of Mrs. d'Urberville. When he asks about her, she appears in the finest clothes and remains dismissive to him. He tenderly asks her forgiveness, but Tess becomes angry. She tells him he's late. Thought he would never return, she finally gave in to Alec and became his lover. She asks him to go and never come back. Angel leaves and Tess goes to her bedroom, where she falls on her knees and complains bitterly. In an argument, she blames Alec for losing Angel's love a second time. The landlady, Mrs. Brooks, listens at the keyhole and hurries back as the argument escalates. Later she sees Tess leaving the house and notices blood dripping from the ceiling. She calls for help and Alec is found stabbed to death in bed.

Angel left Sandbourne discouraged. Tess rushes after him, says she killed Alec but hopes for his forgiveness: she murdered the man who ruined their lives. Angel doesn't believe her at first, but eventually forgives her for looking so feverish and tells her that he loves her. Instead of going to the coast, they go inland with shadowy plans to hide until the search for Tess is over and they can flee abroad. They find an empty property and stay there for a few days in sheltered bliss until their presence is discovered by a housekeeper.

They continue on their way and get to Stonehenge in the middle of the night , where Tess lies down on a prehistoric stone altar. Before she falls asleep, she asks Angel to take care of her young sister, Liza-Lu. She explains that she hopes Angel will marry Liza-Lu after her 'Tess' death, even if this was still illegal at the time and was seen as a form of incest . At dusk, Angel realizes that they are surrounded by police officers. He realizes that Tess really committed the bloody act and asks the officers not to arrest Tess until she wakes up on her own. When she opens her eyes and sees the cops, she tells Angel that she is "almost glad" because she no longer has to live with his contempt.

Tess is taken to Wintoncester prison. The novel closes with Angel and Liza-Lu, who watch from a nearby hill as the black flag indicating Tess's execution is hoisted over the prison. Angel and Liza-Lu take each other by the hand and go on their way.

Characters of the novel

main characters

  • Tess Durbeyfield - The heroine, eldest daughter of a poor family of farm laborers; a fresh, pretty country girl.
  • Angel Clare - son of an Anglican minister; Tess' husband and true love. He sees himself as a free spirit, but his morals turn out to be conventional: He casts Tess away after the wedding night when she confesses that she is no longer a virgin, even though he too had sex before marriage. He works at the Talbothay dairy farm to gain practical experience because he wants to buy a farm himself.
  • Alec Stoke-d'Urberville - Cynical and free spirited son of Simon Stoke and Mrs. d'Urberville. He rapes or seduces Tess when she is no more than seventeen and later persuades her until she agrees to become his lover again. In the meantime he is famous as a penitential preacher, so essentially changes his attitude twice.
  • Jack Durbeyfield (Sir John d'Urberville) - Tess' father, a carter in Marlott (modeled after the village of Marnhull in Dorset), lazy and drunk. When he learns that his family is of aristocratic origin, he works less and less and felt as if he were an aristocrat.
  • Joan Durbeyfield - Tess' hard working mother with a practical approach to life. This includes using her daughter for her own ends.

Minor characters

  • Mrs. Brooks - owner of The Herons, the inn where Tess kills Alec.
  • James Clare - A Charitable and Moral Pastor; Angel Clare's father.
  • Mrs. Clare - Angel Clare's mother, a kind woman. She wants Angel to marry a pure, virtuous, and truly Christian woman.
  • Felix Clare - Angel's brother, candidate for the parish office.
  • Cuthbert Clare - Angel's other brother, classical philologist.
  • Mercy Chant - The young lady chosen by Angel's parents to be the perfect wife. She then marries Cuthbert.
  • Richard Crick - Owner of Talbothay Dairy Farm, which Angel and Tess work for.
  • Car Darch (The Dark Car) - One of Alec's former lovers, dumped in favor of Tess.
  • Eliza Louisa (Liza-Lu) Durbeyfield - Tess' younger sister who is very similar to her. Shortly before she was arrested, Tess asked Angel to marry her. Tess says she got "all the good of me and none of the bad".
  • Farmer Groby - Tess's employer in Flintcomb-Ash, a rude man who knows about her relationship with Alec. Groby is knocked down by Angel when Angel thinks Groby hurt Tess in her honor. He later becomes Tess' tormentor in Flintcomb.
  • Jonathan Kail - A Talbothay milkman who reports to Angel and Tess at the d'Urberville house after the wedding that Retty Priddle attempted suicide, Marian got completely drunk and Izz Huett was walking around depressed.
  • Abraham, Hope & Modesty - son and daughters of the Durbeyfields.
  • Mrs. Stoke-d'Urberville - Alec's wealthy mother, a blind widow.
  • Izz Huett, Retty Priddle, Marian - milkmaids on the Talbothay farm. Izz is sensible, Retty is soulful and Marian is plump, but everyone is in love with Angel Clare and they do not fare well after marrying Tess.
  • Parson Tringham - Elderly pastor who tells John about his noble ancestors.
  • Sorrow - Tess and Alec's illegitimate child who only lived for a few weeks.

Works history connections and narrative design

Written around 1889/90, the novel was first published in 1891 as a sequel in a Bowdlerized version in the journal Graphic and then appeared in a three-volume edition.

Previously, two magazines, to which Hardy had offered the manuscript for continued publication, had completely refused to print the novel because the editors had described the unadorned frankness and verbosity with which Hardy Tess' seduction by Alec and some other obnoxious scenes in the first version as appeared inappropriate and not worthy of publication. Hardy then decided to drastically shorten and rework the manuscript. The version finally printed in Graphic therefore contains neither the night in "The Chase", which was so fateful for Tess' life, nor a report on the following weeks on Trantridge. In this first serialized version, Tess becomes the victim of a fake marriage with Alec. In this way, a popular motif in the trivial and entertainment literature of the time is included in this print version of the novel, which made it possible for Hardy to depict the illegitimate relationships between men and women in a form that did not threaten to fall victim to censorship.

In the subsequent first edition of the book, Hardy reinserted the deleted parts in the Bowdlerized publication and reversed the changes in the plot. In this version, however, the heroine only succumbs to the seduction of Alec in a state of exhaustion and, since Alec also gives her alcohol while she is exhausted, is only less responsible for what happened. It was not until the second revised edition that Hardy published the events in the forest of "The Chase" without a fundamental restriction of Tess' responsibility for her own behavior.

In this revised publication of the novel, however, the real fault for Tess's disaster lies in the external circumstances that have conspired against the protagonist, and above all in her unscrupulous seducer Alec. As far as the narrator in the novel lets the reader know, Tess is not subject to temptation, but to the unfavorable circumstances. As an author, Hardy is therefore very keen not to subject Tess to charges of sensuality or even erotic curiosity in order to protect her from being condemned by the reader. The provocative subtitle of the novel A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (English subtitle: A pure woman ) clearly expresses this in advance.

If Tess were to be judged according to the simple but clear medieval categories of sin at the central points of the event , then - according to Hardy's intention and the subtitle of the novel - she could at best be accused of a lack of worldly wisdom ( prudentia ), i.e. H. an inadequate experience in the malevolent ways of the world or, as the novel says in Chapter XI, "a slight incautiousness of character" , but not the sin of the flesh or lust .

In terms of work and literary history, Hardy's novel, written on the threshold of the penultimate turn of the century, in all its different versions stands in striking contrast to a general tendency in the history of novels of this literary epoch.

In contrast to Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles , in other renowned novels at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, for example in the works of Henry James , Marcel Proust and James Joyce or other well-known authors, there is a clear tendency towards genre history Conveying the illusion of a comprehensive autonomy of the represented fictional world and its characters, as it were to be established independently of the author or the intervening narrator. This is achieved either through a quasi drama-like immediacy or objectivity of the narrative representation, for example in James ' The Ambassadors or The Awkward Age and similarly in Proust's research , or through an apparently unedited self-disclosure of the protagonist or narrator in Joyce' Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man .

While Hardy had already approached this rather dramatic or objective form of the novel in his novel The Return of the Native , written in 1876/77, in his two last works Tess and Jude the Obscure he again falls back on a genre-wise older type of the novel, in which the mediating narrator has extensive power of disposal with regard to the depicted fictional world. In view of the narrator's comprehensive and superior knowledge of the world, the characters in turn lose to a large extent the specific independence or maturity they had just achieved in the aforementioned works.

Hardy can only use or dissolve the tensions that result from this position of novel design in Tess in a fruitful form.

As the heroine of the novel, the protagonist Tess represents the embodiment of a timeless basic human experience; their fate, as portrayed in the novel, is a classic theme of Western literature. While many other novelists, for example in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa Harlowe or Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth , but also in the poetry of William Wordsworth, suggest a more liberal or more indulgent understanding of the reader, with Hardy in Tess the fronts harden again. Much more violent than its predecessors protested Hardy against the intransigence or hardness of a moral moral law , that the error by Tess as a "sin of no forgiveness" denounces. Likewise, the subtitle Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (Eng. Title: Tess von den d'Urbervilles: A pure woman ) announces the intended unequivocal shock intention of the author and includes in a nutshell the narrative problems of this novel .

With the epithet pure in the title, Hardy places the main character Tess in the context of the self-righteousness of a conventional moral judgment through his indignation as an author ( "saeva indignatio" ) and ties his protagonist to a moral-moral phenomenon even before her first appearance in the novel, whose ubiquity of the title character denies that individual autonomy as a character in a novel as well as as a moral being that is generally accorded to characters in the other modern novels of the time.

The subtitle is symptomatic of Hardy's form of narrative presentation in this novel: As an author, Hardy often lets his own judgment and his own interpretation of the motives or causes of the narrative run ahead of the events through his authorial narrator. This not only causes a partially puppet-like or manipulated representation of the novel characters in their movements, motifs and actions, but also affects the reader's own freedom of judgment or decision-making.

For example, the pessimistic interpretation of the fate that lies ahead of the Durbeyfield children is anticipated near the end of the third chapter in the description of the Durbeyfield Ship before the onset of the first major disaster. At this and numerous other places in the work, a characteristic feature of the narrative situation of the novel becomes apparent: As the author, with his seemingly omniscient narrator, Hardy tries to supplement or revise the consciousness content of his characters by describing the states of consciousness, especially his title character, with his own As the author, reflections and comments were mixed up without adequately showing this as corresponding authorial insertions or additions. The dividing line between the narrator and his characters, as drawn extremely sharply in other novels of the time by Henry James and many other contemporary authors, Hardy repeatedly blurs in his novel.

This is particularly noticeable at those points in the novel where, for example, when describing the external world or describing other characters, the narrative perspective could easily be designed in such a way that it reproduces observations or perceptions from the perspective of the protagonist; Hardy, however, rarely undertakes such a direction of perspective in a consistent manner. In the scene in which Tess meets her future seducer and tormentor for the first time, the girl's feelings and premonitions are not presented directly from her point of view, but, initially hardly noticed by the reader, largely faded out with the transition to an authorial perspective . So it seems unlikely that Tess, as a shy, self-conscious country girl , is able to perceive "touches of barbarism" or "a singular force in the gentleman's face" from her point of view in the external form or physiognomy of the supposed aristocrat .

Hardy's authorial manipulation of the depicted world of novels aims at a clear equation or identification of Alec with the stereotypical figure of the stage seducer ( "swarthy complexion, black mustache, bold rolling eyes" ), but not at a description of what Tess in her youthful Would be able to perceive inexperience.

This superior, anticipatory typing, which Alec imposes the outer habitus of the “stage villain” even in his first appearance in the novel , prevents in the middle part of the novel, despite attempts to the contrary, a liberation from the associated discomfort or odor and ultimately also affects the reader's sympathies for the title character Tess in the penultimate part of the work, in which the protagonist's desperate life leads her back to Alec.

This tendency of the narrator in Tess to anticipate the events with his judgments or comments and to restrict the characters in their individual peculiarities through excessive typification in order to make his concerns as the author stand out as clearly as possible, on the one hand springs from Hardy's deeply felt indignation at the prudery and harshness the conventional Victorian moral concepts, but on the other hand it is also an expression of the pessimistic philosophy of life of the older Hardy and his very narrow commitment associated with it.

The new theory, which Hardy has not yet mastered, of the origin, development and future of life in a world with which Thomas Robert Malthus , Charles Darwin and numerous other writers and scientists had disturbed their age finds its mental expression . In his novel, Hardy rejects the previous confidence and trust in the healing power of the natural world, which William Wordsworth , for example, had previously drawn with his optimistic formula of “nature's holy plan” , and instead creates a disturbing pessimistic view of the world and nature in his work with the inherent fateful or painful laws.

The particular narrative situation chosen by Hardy for the novel raises clear content-related problems in central places. If the reader can follow Hardy's moral classification of his title character after the initial events in "The Chase" without contradiction, the reader learns little from the authorial narrator about the protagonist's motives for her return to Alec, her seducer, and the weeks she spends in Trantridge before she can muster up to escape from Alec. Their behavior is evidently determined by their consideration for their parents and siblings, whose well-being seems to depend on their stay in Trantridge. Even if the reader is not left in the dark about this, he hardly learns anything about the emotional or moral sensitivities of the heroine during these weeks.

The communication of the narrative by an authorial narrator, who is essentially omniscient and independent of the presented event and whose point of view is also largely identical to that of the author, arouses well-founded expectations in the reader, reliable and decisive Areas to be informed comprehensively or at least sufficiently. It is precisely at this point that the narrative situation in Tess becomes extremely problematic due to the omissions or the unjustifiable censorship of the authorial narrator. Similarly, this applies equally to Chapter XII of the novel, when during Tess' escape from Trantridge, the previous weeks are inadequately hinted at, so that the reader is barely or not at all in a position to form his own judgment.

Also in the penultimate section, in which Tess returns to Alec under the pressure of the misery of her loved ones and the hopelessness of her love for Angel, the narrator withholds from the reader any information that could shed light on how Tess manages to cope with this situation and give yourself one more time to your former seducer without breaking inside. Since the narrator has in the meantime made the reader aware of the moral integrity of the title character in the deepest levels of her being, this lack of information also raises serious problems for the interpretation of the entire meaning of the novel.

Purely hypothetically, two possible explanations for these fades or omissions by the authoritative narrator are conceivable, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive: On the one hand, Hardy, as an author, could have submitted to the possible moral dictates of the Victorian censorship and let his narrator skip the possibly offensive passages; on the other hand, he was possibly very careful not to endanger the drawing of his heroine as a "pure woman" in spite of all the events depicted .

With regard to the fictional reality outlined in the novel, this withholding the whole truth from the reader means, from a literary critical or artistic point of view, a deficiency that cannot be overlooked, which Hardy as the author himself and the narrative technique he has chosen can be attributed to.

Hardy's choice of content and material from the rest of the life story of his protagonist, which is conveyed to the reader by the narrator, is similarly problematic.

Of course, every author who intends to tell the entire life story of his hero or heroine, or at least a longer part of it, is forced to make a selection of the material. The criteria for this selection are, however, an essential, meaningful element of representation. Henry James has already found a discussion-worthy formula for this problem of representation in his romantic theoretical notes, which are groundbreaking for the modern novel. In essence, he demands that the newer novel must offer “life without rearrangement” in its fictional world , thus conveying to the reader the illusion of complete autonomy of the represented world in accordance with the tendency mentioned above in the modern novel.

Hardy was well aware of these romantic theoretical considerations by Henry James even before the writing or revision of his novel Tess von den d'Urbervilles , as is proven by a traditional statement by Hardy from August 1890. His remodeling interventions in the fictional reality of his characters in Tess are obviously not the result of a lack of reflection on the possibilities of contemporary novel designs, as with numerous older authors, but the result of a conscious, well-considered strategy.

This strategy followed by Hardy in the design of his novel, however, leads straight to the central paradox of his novel. His plea for the high moral integrity of a simple soul is presented by a narrator who - borne by doubts about the moral and moral judgment of his readers - feels obliged not only to the personal perspective of his title character, but also to the expected reactions of the readers to manipulatively influence the story being told.

This not only leads to a break with the more recent romantic tradition, but also to a genre-historical patronizing of the reader by the narrator, which is no longer justifiable, as well as a restriction of the illusion that the characters of the novel are granted full autonomy of their existence. If an author wishes to contribute to the narrative as such in the form of an authorial narrator, he is obliged to the reader to clearly show his views on the events and motives of his novel characters as personal and thus subjective utterances and comments and thus on a par with the readers or at least the more insightful ones among his characters. The persuasiveness of a novel is essentially based on this illusion of the objectivity of the represented fictional reality and its characters.

In Tess , however, the personal internal view and the authorial external view continually overlap, ie the perspective of the title character and that of the authorial narrator. The boundary that separates the two is often not discernible. The continuous interventions of the narrator to supplement the perceptions of the heroine from his point of view create a contradiction to the impression that an impartial reader has to make on the basis of the described behavior of the title character. This authorial manipulation in Tess is ultimately at the expense of the persuasiveness of the fictional world of novel characters, who are rarely given the opportunity to think and act independently. In this respect, the tendency towards such manipulations by the narrator, which is probably due to the unbalanced conflict between the novelist Hardy and the moraliser Hardy, affects the effectiveness and expressiveness of the novel for the reader at crucial points in Tess .

Despite the narrative design features listed so far, which in Hardy's work are mainly attributable to the older romantic tradition, his novel nevertheless also shows features that are more likely to be assigned to the more modern romantic tradition. These include, above all, the vehemence of the protest against a narrow-minded interpretation of the Victorian code of ethics and morality that only pays attention to external respectability, as well as his committed plea for a more liberal assessment of the protagonist accused of social (class) boundaries and secular justice. Hardy also shows a progressive side in his artistic representation. A number of scenes are largely free of authorial reflections or comments. At these points Hardy's storytelling can fully unfold through a haunting charge of the atmospherically dense description of the situations and locations with symbolic meaning.

In these passages, which take on a kind of choral function, the events and events in the novel are tellingly framed by adding additional meaningful accents that cannot be overlooked. An outstanding example of this can be found u. a. in the scene with the description of the nocturnal collision of the vehicle driven by Tess, the Prince, the only horse of the Durbeyfields, with the mail wagon. Much more vividly than through the previous and subsequent comments by the authorial narrator, the first pale gray of the morning, which allows Tess to recognize the full extent of the catastrophe, brings Tess' feeling closer to the reader that her own life and that of her family are determined by a fate that is completely indifferent to human suffering.

Hardy's storytelling is even more convincing in the drama with which the confessions of Tess and Angel are portrayed on their wedding night. This scene is overlaid by an abysmal irony that manifests itself in the fact that compared to his brothers much more liberal and unconventional Angel does not succeed in breaking free from the double standards with regard to the sexual behavior of men and women. Here, too, the external props frame the scene like a silent but expressive chorus; at the end of the scene the gaze is directed to Angel, deeply disturbed, who stares uncomprehendingly at his surroundings.

At numerous points in the novel, Hardy also skilfully masters the technique of handling implicit commentary, which in many ways has become groundbreaking for numerous newer novels. This is shown most effectively in his descriptions of nature and landscapes. In the atmospheric character of the landscapes through which the protagonist's path leads, the course of her fate curve is also symbolically reflected. The harshness of the turning point that fate has taken for Tess can be seen in symbolic dramatization, for example in the contrast between the fertile landscape of Froom Vale, where Tess meets Angel, and the wind-whipped, desolate plateaus of Flintcomb Ash, where Tess has to live a meager, hard existence after Angel has left her. Likewise, the action in the novel is charged equally atmospheric and meaningful by the seasonal transition from spring to summer on Talbothays and from autumn to winter in Flintcomb Ash.

In addition, Hardy also inserts design elements of mysterious, almost supernatural origins into his images of nature, such as the "strange birds from behind the North Pole" , which settle in the fields of Flintcomb Ash Farm as harbingers of a severe winter and as eerie messengers northern regions in atmospheric-symbolic exaggeration help to evoke a dark and indefinite sense of the connection between the gloomy nature and the hopeless fate of the protagonist.

These exotic birds as a foretaste of hard fateful hours for Tess are foreign bodies in this landscape, just like Alec d'Urberfield, Tess' seducer and tormentor, a stranger in Wessex is the offspring of an immigrant, nouveau riche family that is now adorned with the name of an old-established family . In contrast, the native element, the traditional land and its rural inhabitants, represent a haven of moral strength that is at the same time a source of compassion and indulgent understanding. As the mother of an illegitimate child, Tess is an unhappy, but by no means guilty creature in the natural moral and moral sense of these people. For Hardy, the tension between civilizational complexity and rustic simplicity contains the contrast between conventional, i.e. H. Morality dictated by society and “natural” morality, whereby in Hardy both natural law and Darwinian natural law conceptions are mixed up. The restlessness in her conscience and her feeling of guilt often move Tess to lonely hikes in the great outdoors.

From the special narrative situation of the novel, however, there is a tendency of the narrator, even in such passages, to ascribe an individual being or a real validity to the elements in the Naur, which can actually only represent a symbol or an analogy or metaphor. In this respect, the boundary between personal and authorial areas or between actual and improper statements is seldom clearly observed in Tess even at such points.

In all likelihood there is a cross-work connection in Hardy's novel in this context with the problem of which the Victorians are very troubled, which ethical consequences are to be drawn from the evidence of nature and the newly discovered natural laws.

In contrast, the formal structure of the novel is clearly structured with blocks that are firmly attached to one another. The headings of the seven books in the novel clearly indicate the seven phases in which the short, unhappy life of the title character comes to an end. The events with the exception of protean dense and convincingly conversion Alec motivated; Even the numerous coincidences that seem to have a decisive influence on the course of the plot (such as the letter pushed under the door of Angel's chamber with Tess's confession, which gets under the carpet and therefore cannot be found by Angel), are not mere coincidences but are to be understood as the intervention of a capricious Fortuna in the life of the heroine.

Even the murder of Alec shows sufficient motivation, insofar as it can be understood as the last desperate attempt by the tormented and disastrous protagonist to rebel against her fate. In this regard, this primitive, bloody ritual of rebellion also exposes the inhuman callousness of the world order. In the end, Tess' atonement follows after a brief, already clearly overshadowed, happiness vision of a new relationship between Angel and her.

The final scene of the novel, with the clear emphasis on the symbolic contours, gains its meaning through a ritually elevated tableau: Tess, already surrounded by her captors, is asleep on the prehistoric stone age of Stonehenge . This mysterious monument, which Wordsworth had previously chosen as the setting for the ominous nocturnal encounter scene in his late long poem Guilt and Sorrow (1841/42), had not only become a tourist attraction in Hardy's time, but was primarily considered in the artistic work The epitome of the power of association and symbolism. Together with the choking final image, which contains a variation of the composition motif typical for Hardy of the "Figures in a Landscape", the end of the novel may show traces of an overcharacterization of the situation and mood, but does not diminish the poignant impression for the reader when reading the Romans.

Symbols and themes

Hardy's works often deal with the suffering of modernity , and this theme can also be seen in Tess . He describes the modern machinery in agriculture with infernal images; In the dairy farm, too, he notices that the milk that is sent to the city has to be watered down because the stomachs of the city people cannot tolerate whole milk. Angel's civil claims lead him to cast off Tess, a woman whom Hardy portrays as a kind of Eve from Wessex, in harmony with the natural world. When Angel leaves her and goes to Brazil, the attractive young man becomes so sick that he looks like a "yellow skeleton". All of these occurrences are typically interpreted as signs of the negative effects when man separates himself from nature, both in the creation of a destructive machine and in the inability to reconnect with unadulterated nature.

Another important theme of the novel is the sexual double standards that Tess falls victim to. Although, in Hardy's opinion, she is actually a good woman, she is despised by society for losing her virginity before marriage. Hardy takes over the part of Tess's only true friend and lawyer by giving his book subtitled "a pure woman faithfully presented" (English: a pure woman faithfully presented ), and it Shakespeare's words, "Poor wounded name! My bosom as a bed / Shall lodge thee ”(German roughly:“ Poor wounded name, my chest as a bed, should be your hostel ”, from: Two gentlemen from Verona ).

Numerous pagan and biblical references make Tess appear as an earth goddess or as a sacrificial lamb. At the beginning of the novel, she takes part in a ceremony for Ceres , the Roman goddess of the harvest, and when she baptizes her child, she quotes a passage from Genesis . At the end, when Angel and Tess come to Stonehenge , which was considered a pagan temple in Hardy's time, she lies down on the prehistoric stone altar and thus fulfills her fate as a human atoning sacrifice in a ritually exaggerated tableau.

Several symbolic incidents show Tess as the personification of the love for nature, fertility, but also exploitation: Tess' misfortune begins when she falls asleep on the reins of her father's wagon and so causes the death of the horse; in Trantridge she tends the poultry; Tess and Angel fall in love with fertile dairy cows in Talbothay and the well-described Froom Valley; On the way to Flintcomb-Ash, out of pity, she kills some badly injured pheasants to end their suffering.

Tess as a motif in modern culture

  • Art Garfunkel named his first post “ Simon & Garfunkel ” solo album Angel Clare, after the character of the same name.
  • American writer Christopher Bram wrote a novel called In Memory of Angel Clare (1989).
  • The English comedy group Monty Python mention Tess of the d'Urbervilles on their record Monty Python's Matching Tie and Handkerchief (1973) in the play "Novel Writing".
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles is mentioned at the end of MR James' short story The Mezzotint (1904).
  • A hidden allusion to Tess of the d'Urbervilles can be found at The Streets on Original Pirate Material . Mike Skinner is known as an admirer of Thomas Hardy.
  • In Red Dwarf , the character Arnold Rimmer owns an audio book version of the novel.
  • Margaret Atwood refers to the novel in her short story called My last duchess, published in Moral Disorder (2006).
  • One of the characters in Kate Morton's novel The Forgotten Garden consults the book in hopes of learning about the secrets of married life.
  • In Martha Grimes ' detective novel Help the poor Struggler (German: " Inspector Jury clears the fog "), the murderess unwittingly reveals her real first name by quoting from a passage in the novel.
  • In John Irving's Owen Meany, it takes Owen a lot of persuasion to get his friend John to read the book. Later, when John was teaching English to his own students, Tess was the subject of the class.
  • In EL James ' 50 Shades of Gray the book is given to the protagonist as a gift, thus referring to the overcoming of the bourgeois morality that the giver hopes for.

Adaptations

theatre

The novel was successfully brought to the stage twice.

  • 1897: A production by Lorimer Stoddard was a huge hit on Broadway for actress Minnie Maddern Fiske, revived in 1902 and filmed in 1913. There are no longer any copies of the film.
  • 1946: A stage version of Ronald Gow ran successfully in the West End with Wendy Hiller as Tess.

Opera

1906: An Italian version of the opera by Frederic d'Erlanger premiered in Naples , but an eruption of Mount Vesuvius prevented further performances. When the opera came to London three years later, Thomas Hardy, then 69 years old, was one of the premiere guests himself.

Movie

The novel was filmed at least seven times, including three for the cinema and four for television.

literature

  • First published: Tess of the d'Urbervilles . In: Graphic, XLIV, July – December 1891.
  • German version: Tess, German by Helga Schulz, dtv. ISBN 978-3-423-13702-7 .

Secondary literature

  • Franz K. Stanzel : Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles. In: Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English novel - interpretations . Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin, 2nd edition 1971, ISBN 3 503 00701 6 , pp. 34-48

swell

  1. ↑ The website of the German Historical Museum counts Tess among the most important literary events of 1891, [1]
  2. ↑ Cf. Hardy's remarks in the preface to the 5th edition, 1892: "... there have been objects both to the matter and the rendering."
  3. ↑ See Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act 1907 in Wikipedia.
  4. ^ See Franz K. Stanzel : Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles . In: Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English novel - interpretations . Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2nd rev. Edition Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-503-00701-6 , pp. 34–48, here p. 38.
  5. ↑ See more precisely Franz K. Stanzel : Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles . In: Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English novel - interpretations . Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2nd rev. Edition Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-503-00701-6 , pp. 34–48, here p. 34.
  6. ↑ See more precisely Franz K. Stanzel : Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles . In: Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English novel - interpretations . Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2nd rev. Edition Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-503-00701-6 , pp. 34-48, here pp. 35 f.
  7. ↑ See more precisely Franz K. Stanzel : Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles . In: Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English novel - interpretations . Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2nd rev. Edition Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-503-00701-6 , pp. 34–48, here p. 36 f.
  8. ↑ See in detail Franz K. Stanzel : Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles . In: Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English novel - interpretations . Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2nd rev. Edition Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-503-00701-6 , pp. 34-48, here pp. 35 f.
  9. ↑ See in detail Franz K. Stanzel : Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles . In: Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English novel - interpretations . Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2nd rev. Edition Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-503-00701-6 , pp. 34-48, here p. 37 f.
  10. ↑ See in detail Franz K. Stanzel : Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles . In: Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English novel - interpretations . Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2nd rev. Edition Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-503-00701-6 , pp. 34–48, here pp. 38–40.
  11. ↑ See in detail Franz K. Stanzel : Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles . In: Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English novel - interpretations . Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2nd rev. Edition Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-503-00701-6 , pp. 34-48, here p. 41 f.
  12. ↑ See in detail Franz K. Stanzel : Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles . In: Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English novel - interpretations . Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2nd rev. Edition Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-503-00701-6 , pp. 34–48, here pp. 42–44.
  13. ^ See Franz K. Stanzel : Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles . In: Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English novel - interpretations . Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2nd rev. Edition Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-503-00701-6 , pp. 34–48, here p. 45.
  14. ^ See Franz K. Stanzel : Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles . In: Horst Oppel (ed.): The modern English novel - interpretations . Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2nd rev. Edition Berlin 1971, ISBN 3-503-00701-6 , pp. 34-48, here p. 46 f.
  15. ^ The Streets: Mike Skinner Is Helping to Redefine what the Streets Are All About. (Interview) . Guardian. May 1, 2003. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved December 5, 2008. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bookrags.com
  16. ^ Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1913). - IMDb .
  17. ^ Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1924). - IMDb .
  18. ↑ Tess . - IMDb .
  19. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1836987/
  20. ^ Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1952) (TV). - IMDb .
  21. ^ ITV Play of the Week - "Tess" (1960). - IMDb .
  22. ↑ Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1998). - IMDb .
  23. ^ Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy's classic novel for BBC One. - BBC , January 21, 2008.
  24. ^ David Wiegand: Compelling Performances Rescue Tess . In: San Francisco Chronicle , Jan. 2, 2009.
  25. ↑ Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Vibrant Young Cast Line-up for Dramatic Adaptation of Hardy Classic for BBC One. - BBC , March 17, 2008.
  26. ↑ Tess of the d'Urbervilles (2008). - IMDb .

Web links

Wikisource: Tess of the d'Urbervilles  - Sources and full texts (English)