Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.47k reviews for:
Tessa d'Urberville: Historia kobiety czystej
Róża Czekańska-Heymanowa, Thomas Hardy
3.68 AVERAGE
3.47k reviews for:
Tessa d'Urberville: Historia kobiety czystej
Róża Czekańska-Heymanowa, Thomas Hardy
3.68 AVERAGE
Oddly enough I read this because of the 50 Shades of Grey references..... It was excellent. Tragic story with a tragic ending.
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I'm being a coward and rating this four stars, because the options either side felt too partisan. But that represents something of the rollercoaster I experienced reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which at alternate points I found frustratingly conceited and, perhaps more so, profoundly moving. Just the first two chapters are confounding, a few pages detailing a chance encounter between a man and a priest, the latter lackadaisical in revealing to the former his (unbeknownst) great heritage, then a chance non-encounter between the man's daughter and three brothers who first return in more than one hundred pages.
So it lacks the preamble expected of the era. Yet it pairs certain apparently modernist aspects of its storytelling with a prose style that seems set even further in the past. The writing is erudite, thought-through, technically competent and sometimes sweetly sonorous; it's also often stuffy, too mono-rhythmic, with word choice that suggests overuse of a thesaurus. In musical terms, this is what Bernard Shaw might have deemed Brahmsian (although I think Shaw was nonetheless fond of Hardy). To pursue that thought, something Wagnerian is therefore missing: an ugliness or imbalance or honesty. Yet there are glimpses of this, even side-by-side with the above. How about Hardy's depiction of the sun, which begins so weighty in his introduction of 'the masculine pronoun':
"The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal look, demanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression."
But the extension of that, metaphor in hand, is this beautiful personification of a dewy August day, evoking Sun gods of world mythologies and bursting vitality:
"His present aspect, coupled with the lack of human forms in the scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment. One could feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky. The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming-faced, mild-eyed, God-like creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that was brimming with interest for him."
It would be no platitude to say that Tess, as Harold Bloom described Moby-Dick, is less a novel than a long-form prose poem of Shakespeare's ilk. Hardy consistently entwines metaphor, and in particular scenery, so deeply within plotting that the pair become inextricable with regards to emotion. The essay at the back of my Penguin edition (by A. Alvarez) writes, 'On every important level, the landscape does not symbolize Tess's experience, rather it is that experience in different terms.' Consider Tess at her most despairing—"[she] put her hand to her brow, and felt its curve, and the edges of her eye-sockets as perceptible under the soft skin, and thought as she did so that a time would come when that bone would be bare. 'I wish it were now,' she said."—being awoken on the same page by the slaughter of some pheasants, "all of them writhing in agony, except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to bear more." She is snapped out of reverie after snapping, mercifully, the surviving pheasants' necks.
Cruel nature! Consider how she poses the "hobble of being alive" in natural terms only:
"The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven't they? - that is, seem as if they had. And the river says, - 'Why do ye trouble me with your looks?' And you seem to see numbers of to-morrows just all in a line, the first of 'em the biggest and clearest, the others getting smaller and smaller as they stand farther away; but they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they said, 'I'm coming! Beware o' me! Beware o' me!'"
Trees and rivers loom, but she lingers. For in her earliest years, too young, "she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing." Indeed: and here is no Eden.
Like the traditional Bildungsroman, our protagonist's major developments coincide with changes in setting. Alvarez notes that each stage of Tess's life is grouped into so-called phases, 'as though she were a natural phenomenon, like the moon'. And like the moon, these phases form a cycle, Tess at last returning to where she began—in multiple senses, if we consider that her companionship in Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment echoes that of the previous six, first with family then with Alec then with Angel then, finally, alone. This is not a Bildungsroman, then, it is 'Aristotle [turned] upside down'; the heroine's journey ends with Fulfilment in an ironic sense, not of herself personally but of Aeschylus, as an omniscient narrator poses in the taunting closing paragraph.
Throughout there is a fascinating Naturism, tied to Tess's story, that is at once reactionary and socially progressive: a rebuke of the times in all senses, willing machinery to move backward and feminism to move forward, or at least in the sense of patriarchal society moving backward. Angel, in an autobiographical turn, has even moved away from the patriarchy of Christianity. His two brothers provide, respectively, satires of academia and of organised religion, where Angel wishes to return simplicity; they concede that "high thinking may go with plain living," to which he makes the deliberate example of Jesus Christ. Tess idolises this heterodoxy, although it is proven just as cynical (we return to this). Of course there is biblical symbolism all over, such as the cock crowing thrice to indicate a self-preserving lie—not coincidentally an example from nature. Alvarez again:
'In a way, the tragedy of Tess, "A Pure Woman", is also the tragedy of the old, "pure" Wessex from which she comes. Both are corrupted and betrayed by the modern world in its various aspects: Tess by Alec's parvenu hunger and Angel's narrow, icy enlightenment; the countryside and its customs by the relentless encroachment of the new society with its railways, its indifference, its new rich families taking over the old names and building their hideous new mansions, its gradual industrialization of the old methods of agriculture, typified by the demonic threshing-machine on which Tess is tortured.'
The novel's social function, put in these terms, is clear. In a way it subverts the widespread Victorian fantasy (a Dickensian one in particular) of coming in to fortune, which is suggested by that humorous opening chapter. Not only in its pessimistic narrative progression, but also in its worldview more generally: how modern is Tess's rebuke of meritocracy! There, in Chapter Four, speaking to her younger brother, a still-young-herself Tess describes an almost multiverse of possible worlds, "like the apples on our stubbard-tree." She supposes most of them splendid, yet a few blighted—including their own. And, crucially, notably, her brother calls this outcome "unlucky". "How would it have been if we had pitched on a sound [world]? … you would have been a rich lady ready-made, and not have had to be made rich by marrying a gentlemen?" Hardy robs agency from his character(s)—which raises its own issues, we shall soon discuss—in order to illustrate the cruel effects of worldly machinations beyond our control, luck or otherwise, particularly for (contemporary) women. And Tess perceives how her lot in life, her family, and actions by others conflated as actions of her own, have made her past insurmountable. She raises a very interesting philosophical debate between intent and action, and by which a person ought to be judged; she perseveres, and we admire her for it. But it is moot. At last that most heartrending of sentiments is expressed, the wish for her younger sister to live the life she could not, and with a clean slate.
In terms of complex, truly living female protagonists to the nineteenth-century English novel, none compare to those of Austen. Same goes for Tess, who would pray be even a Jane Eyre or a Cathy Earnshaw. It is hard to resist the temptation to discredit a character who is, at first, defined by her meekness and unworldliness—particularly when compared to the impetuousness of those Brontë heroines, or of (say) Lizzy Bennet—and in particular is hailed as a paragon of femininity for that fact. Even as Tess develops, and nobly presses on, we sense that she is helpless, and so does she. She is not an outspoken high spirit, as was Bennet; nor is she reserved in appearance but desperate for expression, as was Eyre; she is good down to her very core, that Purity referenced in the subtitle. She is not meant for this world, and it is an uncomfortable reality—for poor old Tess and for we as readers.
For so long Tess is just a lamb for the slaughter. A device. And in response Hardy tosses his hands up after that unspeakable crime committed against her, his own creation, supposing that maybe it was Providence, or even that her forefathers had perpetrated the same against a woman long ago, which he openly acknowledges as unsatisfactory. The author, too, is helpless, and this he channels into his protagonist. He looks from above at a violently misogynistic world and can only offer, 'Eh.' It is a bitter prospect. Indeed it is not an agreeable outlook, nor one readily suited to drama. This morality play has a sharp and incisive edge, yet the associated character is necessarily thin, beaten down and down again. Chapter Fourteen is an exercise in exaggerated miserablism, culminating in the almost farcical naming of Sorrow: and the result is a despairing nihilism, Tess including her birthday among anniversaries of the then-worst moments of her life. In the next moment she is freed, in a glorious affirmation of life found in the wallows of death, which Hardy puts forward in clunky words ("Almost at a leap Tess thus changed from simple girl to complex woman"). Yet this supposed leap is ineffectual, as previously discussed. The general trend is that which names Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays. If we compound this with Tess's sceptical belief in universal human experience at the macro level, the resulting critique looks very bleak for womankind entire:
"[W]hat's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember that your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'."
What can be said of Tess's lack of depths generally can also be said of her love: for all the text's insistent it doesn't glow, perhaps purposely. Theirs is an interesting dynamic. She is desperate to do anything to please him (an unfortunate symptom which occurs even today, and never in men), taken to the extremes of martyrdom. Her faith is in him, more so than Him; it should seem twisted that Tess is by rights forced to call him Angel. "You are not my servant; you are my wife." The difference appears minimal. He fetishises her lower class, her purported pastoral purity, then enjoys her suffering when faced with his own hypocrisy. Hardy himself is apparently fed up with Angel, and Alec too, almost forcing them out of the narrative, and out of Tess's life. But she can't escape—and, again cowardly, I can only throw my blame at the author.
Then there is an extraordinarily beautiful ending that truly deserves the term Shakespearean. Free alas.
So it lacks the preamble expected of the era. Yet it pairs certain apparently modernist aspects of its storytelling with a prose style that seems set even further in the past. The writing is erudite, thought-through, technically competent and sometimes sweetly sonorous; it's also often stuffy, too mono-rhythmic, with word choice that suggests overuse of a thesaurus. In musical terms, this is what Bernard Shaw might have deemed Brahmsian (although I think Shaw was nonetheless fond of Hardy). To pursue that thought, something Wagnerian is therefore missing: an ugliness or imbalance or honesty. Yet there are glimpses of this, even side-by-side with the above. How about Hardy's depiction of the sun, which begins so weighty in his introduction of 'the masculine pronoun':
"The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal look, demanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression."
But the extension of that, metaphor in hand, is this beautiful personification of a dewy August day, evoking Sun gods of world mythologies and bursting vitality:
"His present aspect, coupled with the lack of human forms in the scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment. One could feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky. The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming-faced, mild-eyed, God-like creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that was brimming with interest for him."
It would be no platitude to say that Tess, as Harold Bloom described Moby-Dick, is less a novel than a long-form prose poem of Shakespeare's ilk. Hardy consistently entwines metaphor, and in particular scenery, so deeply within plotting that the pair become inextricable with regards to emotion. The essay at the back of my Penguin edition (by A. Alvarez) writes, 'On every important level, the landscape does not symbolize Tess's experience, rather it is that experience in different terms.' Consider Tess at her most despairing—"[she] put her hand to her brow, and felt its curve, and the edges of her eye-sockets as perceptible under the soft skin, and thought as she did so that a time would come when that bone would be bare. 'I wish it were now,' she said."—being awoken on the same page by the slaughter of some pheasants, "all of them writhing in agony, except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to bear more." She is snapped out of reverie after snapping, mercifully, the surviving pheasants' necks.
Cruel nature! Consider how she poses the "hobble of being alive" in natural terms only:
"The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven't they? - that is, seem as if they had. And the river says, - 'Why do ye trouble me with your looks?' And you seem to see numbers of to-morrows just all in a line, the first of 'em the biggest and clearest, the others getting smaller and smaller as they stand farther away; but they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they said, 'I'm coming! Beware o' me! Beware o' me!'"
Trees and rivers loom, but she lingers. For in her earliest years, too young, "she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing." Indeed: and here is no Eden.
Like the traditional Bildungsroman, our protagonist's major developments coincide with changes in setting. Alvarez notes that each stage of Tess's life is grouped into so-called phases, 'as though she were a natural phenomenon, like the moon'. And like the moon, these phases form a cycle, Tess at last returning to where she began—in multiple senses, if we consider that her companionship in Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment echoes that of the previous six, first with family then with Alec then with Angel then, finally, alone. This is not a Bildungsroman, then, it is 'Aristotle [turned] upside down'; the heroine's journey ends with Fulfilment in an ironic sense, not of herself personally but of Aeschylus, as an omniscient narrator poses in the taunting closing paragraph.
Throughout there is a fascinating Naturism, tied to Tess's story, that is at once reactionary and socially progressive: a rebuke of the times in all senses, willing machinery to move backward and feminism to move forward, or at least in the sense of patriarchal society moving backward. Angel, in an autobiographical turn, has even moved away from the patriarchy of Christianity. His two brothers provide, respectively, satires of academia and of organised religion, where Angel wishes to return simplicity; they concede that "high thinking may go with plain living," to which he makes the deliberate example of Jesus Christ. Tess idolises this heterodoxy, although it is proven just as cynical (we return to this). Of course there is biblical symbolism all over, such as the cock crowing thrice to indicate a self-preserving lie—not coincidentally an example from nature. Alvarez again:
'In a way, the tragedy of Tess, "A Pure Woman", is also the tragedy of the old, "pure" Wessex from which she comes. Both are corrupted and betrayed by the modern world in its various aspects: Tess by Alec's parvenu hunger and Angel's narrow, icy enlightenment; the countryside and its customs by the relentless encroachment of the new society with its railways, its indifference, its new rich families taking over the old names and building their hideous new mansions, its gradual industrialization of the old methods of agriculture, typified by the demonic threshing-machine on which Tess is tortured.'
The novel's social function, put in these terms, is clear. In a way it subverts the widespread Victorian fantasy (a Dickensian one in particular) of coming in to fortune, which is suggested by that humorous opening chapter. Not only in its pessimistic narrative progression, but also in its worldview more generally: how modern is Tess's rebuke of meritocracy! There, in Chapter Four, speaking to her younger brother, a still-young-herself Tess describes an almost multiverse of possible worlds, "like the apples on our stubbard-tree." She supposes most of them splendid, yet a few blighted—including their own. And, crucially, notably, her brother calls this outcome "unlucky". "How would it have been if we had pitched on a sound [world]? … you would have been a rich lady ready-made, and not have had to be made rich by marrying a gentlemen?" Hardy robs agency from his character(s)—which raises its own issues, we shall soon discuss—in order to illustrate the cruel effects of worldly machinations beyond our control, luck or otherwise, particularly for (contemporary) women. And Tess perceives how her lot in life, her family, and actions by others conflated as actions of her own, have made her past insurmountable. She raises a very interesting philosophical debate between intent and action, and by which a person ought to be judged; she perseveres, and we admire her for it. But it is moot. At last that most heartrending of sentiments is expressed, the wish for her younger sister to live the life she could not, and with a clean slate.
In terms of complex, truly living female protagonists to the nineteenth-century English novel, none compare to those of Austen. Same goes for Tess, who would pray be even a Jane Eyre or a Cathy Earnshaw. It is hard to resist the temptation to discredit a character who is, at first, defined by her meekness and unworldliness—particularly when compared to the impetuousness of those Brontë heroines, or of (say) Lizzy Bennet—and in particular is hailed as a paragon of femininity for that fact. Even as Tess develops, and nobly presses on, we sense that she is helpless, and so does she. She is not an outspoken high spirit, as was Bennet; nor is she reserved in appearance but desperate for expression, as was Eyre; she is good down to her very core, that Purity referenced in the subtitle. She is not meant for this world, and it is an uncomfortable reality—for poor old Tess and for we as readers.
For so long Tess is just a lamb for the slaughter. A device. And in response Hardy tosses his hands up after that unspeakable crime committed against her, his own creation, supposing that maybe it was Providence, or even that her forefathers had perpetrated the same against a woman long ago, which he openly acknowledges as unsatisfactory. The author, too, is helpless, and this he channels into his protagonist. He looks from above at a violently misogynistic world and can only offer, 'Eh.' It is a bitter prospect. Indeed it is not an agreeable outlook, nor one readily suited to drama. This morality play has a sharp and incisive edge, yet the associated character is necessarily thin, beaten down and down again. Chapter Fourteen is an exercise in exaggerated miserablism, culminating in the almost farcical naming of Sorrow: and the result is a despairing nihilism, Tess including her birthday among anniversaries of the then-worst moments of her life. In the next moment she is freed, in a glorious affirmation of life found in the wallows of death, which Hardy puts forward in clunky words ("Almost at a leap Tess thus changed from simple girl to complex woman"). Yet this supposed leap is ineffectual, as previously discussed. The general trend is that which names Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays. If we compound this with Tess's sceptical belief in universal human experience at the macro level, the resulting critique looks very bleak for womankind entire:
"[W]hat's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember that your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'."
What can be said of Tess's lack of depths generally can also be said of her love: for all the text's insistent it doesn't glow, perhaps purposely. Theirs is an interesting dynamic. She is desperate to do anything to please him (an unfortunate symptom which occurs even today, and never in men), taken to the extremes of martyrdom. Her faith is in him, more so than Him; it should seem twisted that Tess is by rights forced to call him Angel. "You are not my servant; you are my wife." The difference appears minimal. He fetishises her lower class, her purported pastoral purity, then enjoys her suffering when faced with his own hypocrisy. Hardy himself is apparently fed up with Angel, and Alec too, almost forcing them out of the narrative, and out of Tess's life. But she can't escape—and, again cowardly, I can only throw my blame at the author.
Then there is an extraordinarily beautiful ending that truly deserves the term Shakespearean. Free alas.
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
why is my all time favourite book also the saddest book i’ve ever read?? first things first, i ADORED this book. it took me so long to read because i had to read it for school in lessons and i somehow managed not to spoil it for myself at all. i was sobbing at the entirety of this book. why does she only have like two seconds of happiness?
tess is such a perfect heroine for this book. she has the most morality and yet is punished the most. i feel so bad for her as she suffered at the hands of everyone, even angel although he did try to protect her in the end. she did not deserve her fate at all and im so glad hardy repeatedly made that point. also she ate when she killed alec. was hoping that would happen the entire time.
alec. ew. hate him. rot in hell.
angel is a complex character. it’s clear that hardy does not want us to hate him overall because he’s a product of his time and struggles to break social constraints and a part of him truly does love tess but unfortunately he is a victim of social pressures of the time. of course i hate that he went away from tess for her “sins” and i do believe we shouldn’t still like him at that point and yes he did have a large part to play in tess’ tragic end but he still did what he could given the situation so overall i do relatively like him and do to some extent sympathise with him.
tess’ family - parents especially - are horrible for manipulating her and relying solely on her just because she’s the oldest. yes, they’re in poverty and desperate and do what they can to survive but for gods sake they’re her PARENTS. they repeatedly took advantage of her and played on her strong moral compass and her obligation to her family.
hardy is such an incredible author who was - for obvious reasons - deemed controversial when he published this book. the criticisms he makes about society and institutions such as the church who should help those in need are completely valid. he was a revolutionary author with such a powerful and moving book that i will love forever. i’m forever grateful to my teacher that she chose this book for us even if i was crying my eyes out at the end.
tess is such a perfect heroine for this book. she has the most morality and yet is punished the most. i feel so bad for her as she suffered at the hands of everyone, even angel although he did try to protect her in the end. she did not deserve her fate at all and im so glad hardy repeatedly made that point. also she ate when she killed alec. was hoping that would happen the entire time.
alec. ew. hate him. rot in hell.
angel is a complex character. it’s clear that hardy does not want us to hate him overall because he’s a product of his time and struggles to break social constraints and a part of him truly does love tess but unfortunately he is a victim of social pressures of the time. of course i hate that he went away from tess for her “sins” and i do believe we shouldn’t still like him at that point and yes he did have a large part to play in tess’ tragic end but he still did what he could given the situation so overall i do relatively like him and do to some extent sympathise with him.
tess’ family - parents especially - are horrible for manipulating her and relying solely on her just because she’s the oldest. yes, they’re in poverty and desperate and do what they can to survive but for gods sake they’re her PARENTS. they repeatedly took advantage of her and played on her strong moral compass and her obligation to her family.
hardy is such an incredible author who was - for obvious reasons - deemed controversial when he published this book. the criticisms he makes about society and institutions such as the church who should help those in need are completely valid. he was a revolutionary author with such a powerful and moving book that i will love forever. i’m forever grateful to my teacher that she chose this book for us even if i was crying my eyes out at the end.
Currently crying, will write a more in depth review after I’m recovered
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment
Moderate: Child death
Minor: Rape, Blood
Interesting. The present-day feminist in me was appalled by certain circumstances (I will not give anything major away), but I understood the time period and Tess' circumstances. I did, however, like this a LOT more than Madame Bovary simply because Tess had a mind of her own and didn't blame everything on others or her social status.
The book was long-ish, with two volumes making up its entirety, but I enjoyed the lengthy description. This isn't something I would normally read, but I would recommend it to those who like tragic, Victorian-era England, countryside love stories and long descriptions of farmland.
The book was long-ish, with two volumes making up its entirety, but I enjoyed the lengthy description. This isn't something I would normally read, but I would recommend it to those who like tragic, Victorian-era England, countryside love stories and long descriptions of farmland.