Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
In his treatment of Alec and Angel in Tess of the D'Urbervilles,Thomas Hardy makes it clear that in Victorian times, there were really onlytwo ways in which men regarded women: as either concubines or angels.Hardy literally made Tess into Angel's angel, and he had literally madeTess into Alec's concubine. Tess was put on a rather shaky pedestal byAngel, and, in the end, dies over it, becoming, if not an angel, at leastan ethereal being. For Alec, Tess is the object of rape and eventuallyliterally becomes his concubine, as she is still married to Angel when Alecand Tess cohabit. Some critics have noted these two Victorian ways ofseeing women as delicately as a Victorian might: "While Tess is sexuallyexploited by Alec, and socially constrained by Angel's gaze," is the wayone critic noted it. (Grossman 1993) These tragic eventualities were foreshadowed in the very earlycontacts between Tess and the two men, reinforcing the Victorian conceptsof men and women. When Tess first meets Alec, it is in a pastoralsetting, and she may as well be a lamb for the slaughter, as Alec considersher a good bit beneath him. Alec, who has city money a
So he allowed his mind to be occupied with her, deeming his preoccupation to be no more than a philosopher's regard of an exceedingly novel, fresh, and interesting specimen of womankind. Still, in typical Victorian fashion, he tries to woo consent tohis advances out of her, literally feeding her ripe fruit and sending herinto a dream-like state as she became more and more in awe of Alec's charmand breeding. He overdoes the 'courtship,' however: When she could consume no more of the strawberries he filled her little basket with them; and then the two passed round to the rose trees, whence he gathered blossoms and gave her to put in her bosom. (Law 1997) On the other hand, Angel puts Tess on a pedestal from the start. To many critics, Hardy forced readers to see Tess as avictim, trapped in an abusive relationship, with "the despicable Alecd'Urberville as deserving of his fate. nd values, hasacquired a country estate and so presents himself as a country gentleman toimpress Tex. Hardy's narrator says: Tess was the merest stray phenomenon to Angel Clare as yet-a rosy warming apparition which had only just acquired the attribute of persistence in his consciousness. She obeyed like one in a dream, and when she could affix no more he himself tucked a bud or two into her hat, and heaped her basket with others in the prodigality of his bounty. (Dusseau 1994) At the end, when Alec is searching for his wife, Hardy again uses themetaphor of place to describe how inferior and craven at least these twoVictorian men-especially Alec-are. " (Hardy 359) Remembering thatopening scene, Tess did not tempt him, but Alec had to come to believe shehad, apparently, in order to justify his raping her.
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Acceptance Essays
