Tess of the d'Urbervilles:
A pure woman (pulled down to ruin by family and love) The subtitle of Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles' is "APure Woman." By choosing this title, the author suggests that the ideassociety has about purity are fundamentally misguided. Society says thatTess is not pure because she is not a virgin. However, Hardy suggests thatTess is the only pure and good human being in any of the societies in which At first, Tess only wishes to help her family's fortune, doing herfather's bidding against her better instincts, by going to work for Alexd'Urbervilles. However, at the end of her tenure with him she is "a maidno more" in Hardy's words, after experiencing sexuality with thissupposedly distant relation. Hardy is quite cagey about whether whattranspires between Alex and Tess is a rape or not. Tess tells Alex thatthe "sin" was more his than hers. But although this opacity may befrustrating to a modern reader, her reaction suggests that it does notmatter in society's eyes whether she was raped or yielded willingly. Inthe view of society, all that matters is that Tess is no longer a virgin. What is even more devastating, however, i
Ironically, her claim to an old name would never haveimpressed Alex, had she not been a beautiful young girl who could be takenadvantage of. The novel is structured upon two revelations-the first about Tess'ancestry, the second about Tess' status as a woman who has engaged insexual relations. com/read/tess-of-the-durbervilles-254. Despite it all, she remains a good woman, "How wickedly mad I was!Yet formerly I never could bear to hurt a fly or a worm, and the sight of abird in a cage used often to make me cry. html) Angel's rejection of Tess, more than even Alex's deflowering orseducing of Tess, thus creates the circumstances for her downfall and turnsher into the murderess she never would have become, if society had notpressed Angel Clare into thinking of her purity as so important. It also matters,whether Tess is a virgin or not in the eyes of Angel Clare, the man shecomes to trust and love later in the novel. Angel refuses to appreciate this until it is, in thewords of the novel, "too late. However, although Tessforgives him for his transgression, he cannot forgive her. Thus, Tess' goodness and her beauty is taken advantagetwice-first by her family, who places her in Alex's hands in hope ofenriching their own coffers, and second by Angel, who gives her hope for abetter life, encourages her to trust him, and then cruelly discards heruntil it is too late. However, a woman who has sexually transgressed, in the Victorian moralcode, is no longer herself. What is so hypocritical aboutthe way that Tess is regarded as a sexual being, too, is that Angel himselfadmits that he too, in his past, has sinned. However, after going away to seek herfortune, she found herself again involved with another man, Angel, whoimpresses upon her image, his idealized structure of what a village maidshould be. Society does not judge either of these wealthy menharshly, but Tess is penalized, first with her social status, then with herlife.
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