Male cruelty in tess in tess of the durbervilles a novel by thomas hardy

She is beautiful and irresistible to men. She is also young, innocent, and uneducated — unaware that the world is rife with lust, cruelty, and vanity.

A bad guy who is fabulously talented in bed and a good guy who fumbles sex can complicate life for a girl.

I ought to have my head examined for undertaking a review of Tess of the d'Ubervilles, the next to the last of Thomas Hardy's novels. My purpose in considering the idea was that I might perhaps persuade one other person to read this novel who might not otherwise.

I am all about service to my fellow man. However, there are strange aspects of this novel that when discussed in remove from the novel itself can make it sound off-putting. I will mention a few of those without emphasizing them.

They involve weird twists in the plot handed us through the vehicle of some strange scenes. On the other hand I do not wish simply to offer diamond-like passages from this novel, although that is tempting.

Male cruelty in tess in tess of the durbervilles a novel by thomas hardy

But let us take a shot here. Tess is the eldest daughter in a poor family in 19th century England. The novel follows events in her life from the time she is sixteen until she is approximately 21, let us say.

There are a multitude of detailed plot outlines of this novel to be found elsewhere on line. The only valuable supplement to those that I can offer is to say bluntly what those plot outlines say in such a roundabout way that it loses impact or can be missed entirely.

Tess is one hot looking sixteen-year-old female human being. It is out of the fact that Tess is one hot looking sixteen-year-old that all the action of this novel arises. At the time of her first seduction, or rape, she is described as one who has a "coarse pattern" laid over her "beautiful feminine tissue.

She is a pretty young girl with that look about her that drives men wild—that look about her being something rarely encountered in a girl so young. I would rather put it this way. When Hardy writes about her when she is in relatively unspoiled natural surroundings, it is apparent that she herself is very much at home in and a natural part of those surroundings.

Hardy places our hot looking sixteen-year-old girl in an environment with some problems. It is an environment wherein the Victorian morals of society are so completely at odds with the nature of men and women generally, and particularly in the realm of sex.

Second, she inhabits a rural area of England where the quality of life is slowly deteriorating. Hardy does not impose upon us with some heavy-handed social commentary at all. Rather, this social commentary is portrayed seamlessly along with the characters and the action.

As an example, there is a great contrast between the portrayal of Tess's life as a milkmaid early in the novel, which is idyllic and almost lyrically described, and her life later in hard labor on a farm, the slave of a threshing machine.

You must notice stuff like this if you are going to do big time literature. But let me get back to the sex because I know that is what probably piqued your interest. For women heterosexual sex requires men, as much as women may at times regret this.

Hardy supplies the men here in the form of two male knotheads named Alec and Angel. She is raped by the wealthy Alec who drugged her with a delicious strawberry, and has his child, which immediately dies.

She falls in love with the decent Angel who lacks wits but is under the mistaken impression that he has them in spades. She marries Angel, only to be abandoned by him when he finds out about her past.A short summary of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Alec’s act of abuse, the most life-altering event that Tess experiences in the novel, is clearly the most serious instance of male domination over a female.

But there are other, less blatant examples of women’s passivity toward dominant men. An Analysis of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d’Urbervilles Set in the late s in a fictional county called Wessex, England, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, is the story of Tess Durbeyfield, an innocent sixteen year old girl who grows into a complex women as the result of fate.

Holmberg, Mona, ‘Tess, a victim of her society’, in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles’, Lulea University of Technology, Department of Language and Culture, 8. Morgan, R., Student companion to Thomas Hardy, Greenwood Press, London, " In her relations with both Alec and Angel, Tess is the victim of her own conscience rather than of male cruelty and censure".

Comment on this view of Hardy's portrayal of . Thomas Hardy's Tess Of The D'Urbervilles Tess Of The D'Urbervilles was written by Thomas Hardy, in This is a tragic victorian novel, in which Thomas Hardy has shown how fate, chance, and coincidence can affect a life and how much things can change.