Introduction

           Thomas Hardy’s story entitled Tess of the d’Urbervilles is by and large taken into account as his most excellent novel. This is a brilliant story of seduction, betrayal, love and murder wherein Tess of the d’Urbervilles succumbs to narrative convention by punishing his sin but on the other hand, audaciously exposes this standard cessation of unforgiving morality as cruelly unjust. Throughout, the author’s most lyrical and atmospheric language frames his cataclysmic narrative.

           This paper focuses on the aspects of the story’s symbolism, the pattern or structure being followed in using symbolism and the author’s consistent way of viewing and presenting the world. The paper also focuses on the way the novel “tick” as far as the symbolism is concerned.

Tess of the d’Urbervilles

           Tess of the d’Urbervilles is so direct in its appeal and unambiguous in its story line that for many readers all commentary will be redundant. This is the story of an exceptionally gifted peasant girl of decayed aristocratic stock who is betrayed by two men, one of which is rich and sensuous, the seducer of her body and for a while of her emotions, through him, she has a child which dies in infancy. The other guy is the intellectual, free-thinking son of a clergyman whom she loves with her whole being and who abandons her when he hears, immediately after their marriage of her earlier violation (Stave, 1995). Subsequently, the husband comes to understand his moral and intellectual arrogance and searches for the girl, only to find that the extreme poverty of her family bias has driven her back to the other man. So strong is the girl’s love for her husband and so powerful her disgust at what the other man has force her to become that she kills the other man. Husband and wife then united but are however on the run from the police. They both spend a few days of loving reconciliation together before the girl is arrested, tried, sentenced to death for murder and executed.

           Furthermore, this plot is not particularly original in its framework and in the end cannot by itself account for the novel’s power. Two other elements in its creation have a significant role to play. First is the integration of the characters with their environment wherein hardy achieved more fully here than anywhere else (Stave, 1995). The second is the passionate commitment to the central character within which the novel is written. This combination offers the most deeply moving reading experience.

           On the other hand, several readers of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles believe that Alec who is logically Tess’s opposition throughout the novel. Oftentimes, the readers would lose perspective of not only the negative impact Angel has on Tess’s life but also the positive effort being put forth by Alec (Gatrell, Grindle, and Hardy, 1988). Furthermore, it seems that in the later portion of the novel, Angel and Alec had exchanged roles. Regardless of this trend, one must be on familiar terms with the fact that both men add to the turmoil in her life and push her to make decisions that will result in her demise. To start with, Alec is clearly Tess’s antagonist. Here Alec, robs Tess of her youth and idealism in the act of raping her. The chain of events, which are set off by Alec’s actions, ravages Tess. The naive Tess, with child, sets off for home. She must go to work to support her family and baby (Stave, 1995). Soon the baby grows sick and dies. Alec later insinuates that Tess's home setting was not good enough for his child and that it was the cause of the little one's illness. This adds even more guilt and confusion to her life that she finds hard to handle when confronted with this "monster" from her past. Alec is bluntly contrasted with Tess's "savior" Angel. In the beginning, Hardy's character Angel seems to be exclusively a part of the novel to end Tess's suffering. Their meetings of fate at the novel's open, and then later, seem to make the reader believe that the two were meant for each other. She does fall deep in love with Angel despite her loathing surrounding men. With several life lessons learned from her encounter with Alec, Tess is reluctant to fall truly give of herself to Angel, but she realizes to give herself up, is to receive love (Gatrell, Grindle, and Hardy, 1988). Angel shows her that love is not something forced or stolen. He is just a nice guy all around. Knowing Hardy's belief of fate allows a reader to quickly realize the story's outcome. Tess's trails inevitably are lost and she is ruined. Her life's foundation begins to crumble when she tells Angel about her experience with Alec. Not being equipped to deal with this, Angel flees the situation and the marriage. He says, "You were one person; now you are another… (I loved) another woman in your shape (Gatrell, Grindle, and Hardy, 1988)." This shows the reader that Angel's love was in no way genuine, and he, in fact, distanced himself from reality to obtain, who he thought was, the ideal pure woman. This seems to be more devastating to Tess than the rate itself. She had real emotions at stake in this relationship (Stave, 1995). She honestly loves Angel and she is betrayed by his deception. Angel true self now gives the reader a character to contrast with Alec. Alec did rape Tess, but he shows an extreme amount of remorse for his actions. His guilt drives him to aid with Tess family, something he recognizes is important to Tess. Later, Alec proposes to Tess when he learns of his dead child. No reader can deny that this action is motivated, a least in part, by guilt. However, Alec does show affection towards Tess and does care for her well being. All of these things Tess never truly received from Angel.

           Although to a given person the offence of rape ranks fare above any offense that Angel committed, one must remember Tess's perspective. She is crushed when Alec rapes her. However, it is much harder for Tess to recover when Angel helps her to heal the pain of the past, only to tell her he loved a fantasy that she could never live up to. The constant betrayal of trust in her life causes Tess to lose faith in her fellow man. This, in turn, pushes her to commit the crime, which is the end of her.
          

           Tess Durbeyfield is undoubtedly the source from which the energy of the novel springs (Weber, 1940). Tess is an exceptional woman, a Durbeyfield by social status, but a d'Urberville of the spirit. Hardy wanted to be certain as we begin reading that we should be sensitive to the ironies involved in her birth. Hardy's attitude to noble families was ambivalent. Hardy himself was delighted to be on friendly terms with Lords and Ladies, and was equally aware of the opportunities for refinement of mind and spirit offered, however inequitably, by the aristocratic life. One distinction in general terms that Hardy seems to have made, both in fiction and in life, was between the women and the men of the aristocracy. The pattern of upper-class life, he implies, is such that the women do tend to be refined in spirit, while the men tend to be bathed in blood-sports and violent behavior. Whether we agree with him is a different matter. Hence Tess, without the nurture, inherits nobility of nature from her knightly ancestors. Alec Stoke-d'Urberville, whose money-lender father has attached the decayed name to his own, inherits with his father's wealth the power and sensual brutality that go with the medieval robber baron's name. He employs this violent power on Tess, and Hardy notes that the ironic 'justice' thus involved may be good enough for Jehovah in his eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth frame of mind, but is hardly satisfactory in a humane society. Tess also inherits the pride traditionally associated with noble families, and on the clash between her pride and her social and economic position much of the process of her tragedy depends. Angel Clare can call her 'the belated seedling of an effete aristocracy' when he is building up a case against her to support his instinct to abandon her, but her pride does not allow her to respond to the phrase's manifest inappropriateness even as an insult. She strikes Alec d'Urberville with a heavy leather glove just as her medieval forbears would have wielded in anger a mailed fist. In the end she exacts her own form of justice on Alec. She has the strength, pride, and fineness of spirit that Hardy associates with the superior gentry, the passion and the violence. On the other hand, she is born into the family of a poor rural tradesman, into a group of 'waiters upon Providence', and she inherits many of their social attitudes, including their fatalism. Her beauty comes from her mother of no name, not from her father--remember the horrible d'Urberville portraits at Wellbridge Manor--as does her intimacy, conscious and unconscious, with nature (Weber, 1940). Thus she is simple Tess Durbeyfield, but she is 'of the d'Urbervilles' as well, and the combination creates the rare passionate proud sensitive open strong beautiful girl/woman who supports the novel. It also creates the many tensions in her character that lead her to the gallows. The most obvious are those between humility and pride, and between innocence and sensuality; but Hardy makes it clear that there is also conflict within Tess between acquired conventional belief and instinctive independence of mind, and between ignorance and education. It might be said that ultimately the tension within her character is one between obedience and rebellion.

Symbolism of the Story

           The story tells more about the main character named Tess who is a pure woman thus the symbolism of this story is focused on to women. Their purity, their rights in the world, their feelings to be thought of by everybody especially to the male species. There are so many cases about men being abused by their husbands, being forced into marriage where love is not included, etc. you name it. It gets so frustrating. The story focus on the symbolism on to the respect of women.

           Furthermore, the story focused also on Tess’ purity is being used in their polemic terms of ethics and religion published it seems certain that Hardy appended the description to the title-page of the first edition (it did not appear on the manuscript or the serial versions) as a challenge to the standards of contemporary readers. It is, by the way, one of the paradoxes of Hardy's nature that in his fiction he often, under the power of his creative activity, challenged conventional moral or religious or social attitudes in this way, and just as often was shocked and hurt when he provoked thereby an outraged response from people holding such conventional views. In this instance, at any rate, the provocation offered by 'pure' was so great that very few commentators, Victorian or more recent, seem to have considered that Hardy almost certainly had in mind an alternative meaning of the word (Craik, 1994). Though some would hold it to be unimportant whether Hardy consciously made use of the ambiguity inherent in the word 'pure', it is hard to imagine that the poet, the meticulous reviser always looking for the precise phrasing of his ideas, should not have intended the reader of his title-page to consider Tess also, or even primarily, as essential woman, wholly woman, as pure woman (Weber, 1940). Thus again Hardy establishes duality through these alternative versions of the character who is at once Tess Durbeyfield and Theresa of the d'Urbervilles: she is also to be seen as an emblem of purity on the one hand and as an emblem of the quintessential female on the other. And as we read further into the title-page the source of this duality becomes clearer. The pure woman Tess of the d'Urbervilles is to be 'faithfully of the legendary sculptor Pygmalion who fell in love with his own sculpture. This Hardy lets the girl enter his imagination and, possessing a fertile inventiveness, he gives her a life a past, present, and future.

           The story also gives lesson to the character portrayed by Angle Clare where he was Tess’s protector, defender, comforter, lover--but one who ultimately failed in all those roles, since in the end he could not prevent her from dying, or the vision of her departing from him as he wrote the last words. Nevertheless, he will lodge her name in his bosom, and he will write her name at the top of his manuscript; he will follow the name with the description 'pure woman'. And he has the consolatory satisfaction of having imagined himself into his fiction. As this character he loves, rejects, and finally protects, defends, comforts, and more fully loves the girl. Less willingly he admits that he is also Alec d'Urberville who lusts for the girl and uses her, but before the close of his imaginings the girl has killed this aspect of himself, though at the cost of her own life--one of the reasons why Thomas Hardy will lodge Tess's name in his bosom with love. At first this manuscript remains locked in the most secret place known to this Thomas Hardy. But after a period of reflection he wants to let it free, to let others experience the intensity and beauty of his vision. And so he gives it to a very close relative who also happens to go by the name of Thomas Hardy (Weber, 1940). This second Thomas Hardy, rather than a visionary and fertile creator, is a cultivated gentleman, a critic of art and life, a local historian, something of a philosopher--indeed, he combines so many accomplishments that his acquaintances sometimes wonder that one man can compass so much, and are not surprised when one of his interests clashes with another and apparent contradictions result (Craik, 1994). This latter Thomas Hardy is moved by the narrative he reads, and suggests that it should have a wider audience. He is also sure that it will not do as it is, that it will not attract the attention of the middle-and upper-class book-buying or book borrowing public; and so, with the full assent of his relative the first Thomas Hardy, he proceeds to edit the girl and her life. To the original manuscript he adds many touches: references to poetry, painting, sculpture; passages of philosophical summary of sometimes conflicting import; fragments of local history, social history; snatches of religious theory; but most significantly his experience as a man of the world drives him to place the girl in a broad social context and to wrap her story with an argument about her purity, using as his key the phrase 'pure woman' that he found on the first page of the manuscript, adding to it only an indefinite article.

           Though the central action of Tomas Hardy's novel "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" centres on Tess, the other characters are not lacking in interest and individuality. Undoubtedly, Tess's life is marked by two contradictory temperaments, those of the sensual Alec d'Urberville and the intellectual Angel Clare (Craik, 1994). Both characters are described with artistic detail to show a blend of weakness and strength governed by fate. Both are flesh and symbol complementing the other in the fall and rise, rise and fall again of Tess herself, and both play crucial roles in shaping her destiny.

Conclusion

           For many readers, Hardy's crowning achievement is his creation of Tess Durbeyfield, who has become one of the most memorable women characters in all of literature. Something about her haunts the imagination; she is at once child and woman, strong and fragile, masterful and timid. In her, myth and history fuse. We are presented, on the one hand, with a very tangible English cottage girl and, on the other, with a goddess figure of immense stature. She exists in time while she remains timeless. The novel itself is equally haunting and moving. Michael Millgate assesses it accurately when he says it "resonates with allusions to larger, more universal patterns which lie beyond its own world". J. Hillis Miller is like-minded, claiming, "The idea of a present which is a repetition or reincarnation of the past recurs through the novel". But while Miller interprets this repetition primarily on the personal level--as it is played out in the lives of Tess and her family, it also functions archetypically. Reading the character of Tess in mythic terms takes no great leap of the imagination. Even critics who do not deal primarily with the mythic implications of the novel will make claims such as Katharine Rogers does when she refers to Tess as the "least human" of the Hardy women characters. From her introduction in the novel at the Pagan Mayday fertility ritual, where she is set apart from the other young women by her red hair ribbon, Tess functions as one differentiated and marked, as one whose experience and consciousness are essentially different from those of her would-be peers, as one whose life is fated to enact a story already narrated and concluded. Read mythically, she becomes emblematic of the Great Goddess, the informing spirit of a Pagan consciousness. Hardy emphasizes her mythic (i.e.,nonhistorical, nonhuman) nature by endowing Tess with qualities that culture, particularly Victorian culture, claimedwere alien to a woman's nature. One such quality is her queenly pride, which reveals itself first at the very beginning of the novel, when she attacks her friends who ridicule her drunken father (Weber, 1940). After the unfortunate incident involving Prince, when Tess is coerced by her parents to "claim kin," it is her pride that causes her to hesitate. When, in her encounter with Alec, he insists she use the surname "Durbeyfield," rather than "D'Urberville," the name he has appropriated, Tess responds with dignity, "I wish for no better, sir". Pregnant with his baby, she not only refuses to marry him but will not even inform him of her condition, even though he has assured her that he will provide for her financially in such circumstances. "Any woman would have done it but you", says her mother, who apparently recognizes her daughter's extraordinary nature. Once Tess has borne the child, she goes to work in the fields "with dignity, and had looked people calmly in the face at times, even when holding the baby in her arms". It is this same pride that serves to sever her from Angel Clare once he learns of Tess' involvement with Alec. When her young husband rejects her, the text emphasizes that had Tess "been artful, had she made a scene, fainted, wept hysterically, in that lonely lane, notwithstanding the fury of fastidiousness with which he was possessed, he would probably not have withstood her". That Tess' pride--dignity, if we will--is often read as a flaw in her character, especially in this scene, reveals the double standard that characterizes a patriarchal culture. What is seen as unnatural, and therefore reprehensible, in Tess would be admired in a man; similarly, the behavior expected of Tess (fainting, weeping hysterically) would be considered irrational and weak in a man. The cultural construction of womanhood, which places limitations on women's behavior, is challenged by Hardy's characterization of this extra-ordinary woman. In addition to her pride, Tess, like Bathsheba and Eustacia before her, possesses a strength--both physically and psychologically--that distinguishes her, especially in a culture that defined woman as essentially weak. Several times throughout the novel, Hardy portrays Tess' inner strength as compelling an otherwise uncaring person to respond to her strongly and sympathetically, even against his or her will. One such instance occurs after Tess has baptized her dying baby herself, taking onto herself the authority of the minister of God (Gatrell, Grindle, and Hardy, 1988). Yet, when she informs the parson of what she has done, her strength of character impresses him so tremendously that he assures her against his reason that her action is acceptable. The narrative voice reveals satisfaction as it states, "The man and the ecclesiastic fought within him, and the victory fell to the man". Similarly, Tess' physical presence is so strong that one glance at her completely unravels Alec. Even as he is preaching a sermon, he is so shaken by seeing Tess that he is stricken dumb until she averts her gaze from him, and, even then, he lapses into confusion and becomes incoherent. It is this same power, inexplicable and even terrifying, that leads Alec to insist that Tess swear never to tempt him. Finally, it is this power, a power not permitted women in history, that leads Tess to her mythic death, since it is what allows her to avenge herself in a very unambiguous way on Alec by killing him (Gatrell, Grindle, and Hardy, 1988). History wins, in a sense; women with a power such as Tess' are denied presence in the world.

Bibliography:

Craik, R. (1994). Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Journal Article: Explicator, Vol. 53

Gatrell, S., Grindle, J. and Hardy, T. (1988). Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Stave, S. (1995). The Decline of the Goddess: Nature, Culture, and Women in Thomas Hardy’s Fiction.           Westport, CT: Greenwood Press

Weber, C. (1940). Hardy of Wessex, His Life and Literary Career. New York: Columbia University Press