Tess of the DUrbervilles Essay -- English Literature Essays

Tess of the D'Urbervilles Tess of the d’Urbervilles is subtitled ‘A pure woman’ and this is how Thomas Hardy sees and portrays her throughout his novel. As the novel progresses the reader is introduced to many aspects of Tess as she grows from being a child on the verge of adulthood to a mature and experienced woman. In some parts of the book Hardy describes Tess as very passive but in other parts of the novel she is shown as a powerful and even godly sort of woman. The character of Tess is first shown near the beginning of the book as a proud and shy young girl. She is very loving of her family and holds them in high regard especially her parents even though they sometimes do feckless, irresponsible things such as when her father went to Rolliver’s (a pub) before going on an important delivery to â€Å"get up his strength for his journey†. At the club-walking at the beginning of the book Tess is shown to be just an ordinary, innocent country girl â€Å"not handsomer than some others† but it is also indicated that she is very attractive. The white dress she wears symbolises purity and virginity and Hardy suggests that this purity comes from lack of experience as he describes her as â€Å"untinctured† by it. She is also shown to be very protective of her father and when she is teased by her friends about him it appears that she is quite sensitive and not resilient to embarrassment. At this point Tess is a â€Å"mere vessel of emotion† and she still has a local dialect but with some educated speech. Tess is more responsible than her parents as she takes the beehive delivery herself when her father is too hung-over to do it. She is, however, contrary to her ordinariness marked out from the rest of her friends and fellow country girls from the very start of the book by a red ribbon in her hair. This doesn’t seem very significant at first but as the story progresses the colour red is mentioned several times to describe her and single her out from the rest. Some other examples of this are the blood of Prince (the family horse) which splashes on her white dress after he dies, her red mouth which is described as a flower a couple of times throughout the novel and Alec when he is described as â€Å"the blood-red ray in the spectrum of her young life†. The colour red, in general, is also frequently used to symbolise danger, passion, death and anger. Tess at this point in the nove... ...the same chapter. This happened at twilight, which the time between night and day that Hardy believed people became very sensitive to the world around them. Hardy has mentioned this theory of his before when Tess returns to Marlott after getting pregnant with Alec d’Urberville’s child. It is silent around that time and Tess seems to enjoy silence and not think of it as the absence of sound. As Tess noiselessly walks up to Angel, who is portrayed as a genuine stereotypical angel playing a harp â€Å"in the attic above her head†, she is described using the imagery of birth, growth and nature seems to be in a sort of hallucinatory, erotic ecstasy. This chapter also uses synaethesia to describe how she felt as she heard the music coming from Angel’s harp such as â€Å"the harmonies passed like breezes† and â€Å"his notes made visible†. In my opinion I think that this novel is quite depressing and the reader feels sorry for Tess as her misfortunes are usually not her fault. Personally I think that Tess is quite weak and if she had not been so weak she could have taken control of her life like she did at the end when she murdered Alec instead of being as passive as she was throughout the novel.