Society of Luggage:Tess of the D’Urbervilles Week 9 Class & Empire Year 3

Thomas Hardy

Wessex

Hardy’s Land

Born in Upper BockhamptonDorchester (recast as Casterbridge in the ‘Mayor of Casterbridge’) Well educated – trained as an architect and moved to London in 1862 Marries Emma Lavina Gifford – her death became a life’s preoccupation. Remarries though... Heart buried with first wife and ashes interred in Poet’s corner.

Hardy as a writer Key texts: Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (1891) Jude the Obscure (1895) The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)

Class Inversion in the novel Durbeyfields D’Urbervilles Family Stokes purchased the title Descended from nobility

Inversion Stokes/ D’Urbervilles Loss of noble values Tess and the spirit of nobility

Noblesse Oblige The Dictionnaire de l’Académie française defines it thus: Dictionnaire de l’Académie française Whoever claims to be noble must conduct himself nobly. (Figuratively) One must act in a fashion that conforms to one's position, and with the reputation that one has earned.

Nobility of the Heart Tess FatherTruthAlecHorse

Nobility of the Heart Tess and her sacrifice: Father drunk Tess drives the cart Horse fatally injured, Tess now has to work to replace the valuable commodity Agrees to claim kin with D’Urbervilles but meets Alec and works on poultry farm. Is seduced/raped by him. Baby ‘Sorrow’ dies as a result Reconnects and marries Angel Clare but feels she must tell him the truth – Angel leaves

Sorrow So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid. In spite of the untoward surroundings, however, Tess bravely made a little cross of two laths and a piece of string, and having bound it with flowers, she stuck it up at the head of the grave one evening when she could enter the churchyard without being seen, putting at the foot also a bunch of the same flowers in a little jar of water to keep them alive. What matter was it that on the outside of the jar the eye of mere observation noted the words "Keelwell's Marmalade"? The eye of maternal affection did not see them in its vision of higher things. (Burial Scene Chapter14)

Nobility of Heart Nobility of the heart is not diminished through the generations. It is indestructible Amelioration: Hardy believed that we must be realistic in a cruel world but that love can make a difference

Christianity in the novel The Trinity of Clares – Parson discards gifts; farcial operation Tess and paganism – Stonehenge and her last moment of freedom; May procession however, she is reclaimed by Christian Justice Sorrow’s Burial – performs the rite herself Dystopian and Utopian communities: The D’Urberville estate versus Crick’s Farm

The Myth of the Rural Idyll Et in Arcadia Ego: Poussin, Nicolas 1637/38

Tess Short BBC trailerfilm clip Proposal scene 2008 BBC production Final scene from 2008 BBC production