Hardy a Pessimist
In Tess of the d’Urbervilles Hardy gives
the impression that human beings are helplessly struggling hard for existence
but their hopes are thwarted by hostile power. Tess in the novel suffers a lot.
She is very sensitive by nature. When the family horse is killed, she holds
herself responsible for the accidents and feels the necessity of doing
something for the family. She goes to the Trantridge estate, Meets Alec and is
ultimately raped by him. It is a fault of her that she allows her chastity to
be violated. Her another fault is that she fails to disclose the secret of her
past to Angel before her marriage. She also lives with Alec as his mistress and
later on kills him in cold blood.
Alec is the villain of the novel. He
sets Tess’s suffering in motion. He is a thorough going sensualist who takes
pleasure in girl hunting. When she goes to the Trantridge estate of the
d’Urbervilles to work, he meets her for the first time and is very much
attracted to her. Later on, he manages to rape her very cunningly. As a result
she gives birth to a child and it died after a few days of its birth. After
being deserted by her husband, she again meets him and he makes her to live
with him as his mistress by convincing her that her husband would never return
and by offering financial security for the family.
Angel Clare also increases the suffering
of Tess. He represents society with its conservatism and its double
standard-one principle for men and other for women. After their marriage, he
tells Tess of his forty-eight hours’ dissipation with a woman in London and
asks her forgiveness. She forgives him and tells him of her own misadventure
with Alec and asks him to forgive her. But Angel is devastated by Tess’s
confession of her seduction and the subsequent birth of her son and says; “O
Tess, forgiveness does not apply to thy case” He refuses to live with her and
leaves for Brazil.
Fate in the form of chance and
coincidence plays a hostile role in the life of Tess. Early in the story,
Prince, the horse of the Durbeyfield Family is killed in an accident and it is
chance that forces Tess to seek employment at the d’Urbervilles household.
Chance and coincidence play yet another impish trick on Tess, when she decides
to visit Angle’s parents at Minster.
At the end of the novel Tess stabs Alec
to death for deceiving her. She is arrested and hanged as a punishment for
murder and Hardy says that “justice was done and the President of the Immortals
had ended his sport with Tess.” Hardy here means that the supernatural powers
had deliberately been hostile to Tess and had been responsible for contriving
all her misfortunes leading to her execution. Thus, Hardy presents a gloomy
view of life. Hence he can be called a pessimist.
No comments:
Post a Comment