Q.1. Discuss the character of Tess. To what extent is she a helpless victim? When is she strong and when is she weak?
Ans: Tess is a young woman who tends to find herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. She is a victim, but she is also, at times, irresponsible. She falls asleep while taking the beehives to market, which ends up killing the family horse. Prince. She decides to visit the d’Urbervilles in Trantridge, giving rise to all her future woes, partly out of the guilt and responsibility she feels toward her family. She wants to make. good, but in trying to help her family she loses sight of her own safety and her own wants and wishes. She becomes Alec’s victim in the forest. She probably should have known not to put herself in such a situation, but she has few other options. Here, it seems as though she is destined to rely on others, even when they are unreliable.
But Tess is also a strong woman throughout the novel. She stands up for herself and refuses to crumble under pressure. She chastises herself for her weakness after her sexual escapade with Alec. If we agree with her claim that this indiscretion is a moment of weakness, we probably also feel that such weakness is not unlike that of most human beings. She is hard on herself for letting herself become a victim. At the burial of her child, Sorrow, she weeps but collects herself and moves on as a stronger woman. Overall, her determined attempts to escape her past primarily reflect her strength.
Q.2. Discuss the role of landscape in the novel. How do descriptions of place match the development of the story? Does the passing of the seasons play any symbolic role?
Ans: The landscape always seems to inform us about the emotion and character of the event. When the novel opens at the village dance, the sun is out and the day is beautiful. This celebration is where Tess and Angel meet, even if only briefly. The weather turns as Tess returns home, where the scene is less elegant. Throughout the novel, many of the bad events occur in a dark and deep forest, and Alec and Tess interact numerous times in such a forest.
Also Read:
- Character Analysis of Tess in Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles
- Is Tess a Pure Woman? Justify the Subtitle of the novel: Tess: a Pure Woman
The seasons bring changes to the story as well. At Talbothays Dairy, the summer is full of budding love between Tess and Angel. When they profess their love for each other, it begins to rain, but neither one cares: the weather cannot affect them. When they separate, Angel goes to Brazil and finds the farming extremely difficult, while Tess goes to work at the farm at Flintcomb-Ash, where the work in the rugged, depressing stubble fields is harsh and gruelling.
Q.3. Hardy rarely questions public morality openly in Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Nevertheless, the novel has been taken as a powerful critique of the social principles that were dominant in Tess’s time. How does Hardy achieve this effect? Why might we infer a level of social criticism beneath Tess’s story?
Ans: Our sense that Tess of the d’Urbervilles implicitly criticizes Hardy’s society owes much to Hardy’s use of a classical tragic plot ending in an undeserved punishment. Tess’s story contains many features of Greek tragedy, as Hardy’s reference at the end of the novel to Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound reminds us. The classical tragic hero, according to Aristotle, is noble and dignified, and is punished on a far greater scale than his small sins warrant, with death. Tess too is highborn and honorable, and her momentary submission to Alec brings her a far greater suffering than she deserves, as even Alec comes to realize. In addition, as is usual with the demise of tragic heroes, Tess’s execution feels more significant than a mere death-it feels like a great and noble sacrifice to some higher power’s will. But in her case, the higher power is not the gods, but Victorian social forces. It is the Victorian cult of aristocratic lineage that drives Tess to seek the patronage of Mrs. d’Urberville and meet her seducer Alec. It is the unfair class system that allows a rich nobleman to impregnate and abandon a lower-class girl without consequences. It is also the Victorian myth of the pure virginal bride that unfairly keeps Angel from accepting Tess as his wife, despite his own besmirched sexual history. These social injustices bring undeserved suffering to Tess, as the ancient gods brought undeserved suffering to the tragic hero. It is thus the tragic structure of Tess of the d’Urbervilles that causes us feel indignation at the unfairness of Victorian society, without the need for any outright denunciations by the author.
Q.4. What is the significance of the character of Prince?
Ans: When Tess dozes off in the wagon and loses control, the resulting death of the Durbeyfield horse, Prince, spurs Tess to seek aid from the d’Urbervilles, setting the events of the novel in motion. The horse’s demise is thus a powerful plot motivator, and its name a potent symbol of Tess’s own claims to aristocracy. Like the horse, Tess herself bears a high-class name, but is doomed to a lowly life of physical labour. Interestingly, Prince’s death occurs right after Tess dreams of ancient knights, having just heard the news that her family is aristocratic. Moreover, the horse is pierced by the forward- jutting piece of metal on a mail coach, which is reminiscent of a wound one might receive in a medieval joust. In an odd way. Tess’s dream of medieval glory comes true, and her horse dies a heroic death. Yet her dream of meeting a prince while she kills her own Prince, and with him her family’s only means of financial sustenance, is a tragic foreshadowing of her own story. The death of the horse symbolizes the sacrifice of real- world goods, such as a useful animal or even her own honour, through excessive fantasizing about a better world.
Q.5. What is the symbolic significance of the d’Urberville family Vault?
Ans: A double-edged symbol of both the majestic grandeur and the lifeless hollowness of the aristocratic family name that the Durbeyfields learn they possess, the d’Urberville family vault represents both the glory of life and the end of life. Since Tess herself moves from passivity to active murder by the end of the novel, attaining a kind of personal grandeur even as she brings death to others and to herself, the double symbolism of the vault makes it a powerful site for the culminating meeting between Alec and Tess. Alec brings Tess both his lofty name and, indirectly, her own death later; it is natural that he meets her in the vault in d’Urberville Aisle, where she reads her own name inscribed in stone and feels the presence of death. Yet the vault that sounds so glamorous when rhapsodized over by John Durbeyfield in Chapter I seems, by the end, strangely hollow and meaningless. When Alec stomps on the floor of the vault, it produces only a hollow echo, as if its basic emptiness is a complement to its visual grandeur. When Tess is executed, her ancestors are said to snooze on in their crypts, as if uncaring even about the fate of a member of their own majestic family. Perhaps the secret of the family crypt is that its grandiosity is ultimately meaningless.
Q.6. In what fashion does Hardy present Brazil?
Ans: Rather surprising for a novel that seems set so solidly in rural England, the narration shifts very briefly to Brazil when Angel takes leave of Tess and heads off to establish a career in farming. Even more exotic for a Victorian English reader than America or Australia, Brazil is the country in which Robinson Crusoe made his fortune and it seems to promise a better life far from the humdrum familiar world. Brazil is thus more than a geographical entity on the map in this novel: it symbolizes a fantasyland, a place where dreams come true. As Angel’s name suggests, he is a lofty visionary who lacks some experience with the real world, despite all his mechanical know-how in farm management. He may be able to milk cows, but he does not yet know how to tell the difference between an exotic dream and an everyday reality, so inevitably his experience in the imagined dream world of Brazil is a disaster that he barely survives. His fiasco teaches him that ideals do not exist in life, and this lesson helps him reevaluate his disappointment with Tess’s imperfections, her failure to incarnate the ideal he expected her to be. For Angel, Brazil symbolizes the impossibility of ideals, but also forgiveness and acceptance of life in spite of those disappointed ideals.
Q.7. What are Joan Durbeyfield plans for Tess?
Ans: Joan Durbeyfield finds her husband in the illegal ale house on the outskirts of town. Apparently she has learned that there is a rich lady out by Trantridge (at the other end of the valley) named D’Urberville. Other than sharing the name there really is no proof of kin but she wants to send Tess over to “claim kin”. Her hope is to wrangle some money out of the old lady by claiming family. Mrs. Durbeyfield wants to begin a relationship with the rich old Mrs. D’Urberville because she thinks Tess will make such a good impression on her.
Q.8. Explain the quote.
“Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess. And the d’Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained there a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on”.
Ans: This passage is the last paragraph of Chapter LIX at the close of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Its tired and unimpassioned tone suggests the narrator’s weariness with the ways of the world, as if quite familiar with the fact that life always unfolds in this way. Nothing great is achieved by this finale: the two figures of Liza-Lu and Angel “went on” at the end, just as life itself will go on. Ignorance rules, rather than understanding: the d’Urberville ancestors who cause the tragedy are not even moved from their slumber, blithely unaffected by the agony and death of one of their own line. Tess’s tale has not been a climactic unfolding, but a rather humdrum affair that perhaps happens all the time.
In this sense, there is great irony in Hardy’s reference to the Greek tragedian Aeschylus, since we feel tragedy should be more impassioned, like the Prometheus Bound referred to here. Prometheus dared to steal fire from the gods for the benefit of men, thus improving human life, but he was punished by eternal agony sent by the president of the gods. Aeschylus’s view of that divine justice was ironic-just as Hardy’s justice is placed in ironic quotation marks-since it seemed deeply unjust to punish Prometheus so severely. Our judgment of Prometheus’s crime matters immensely. Yet Tess’s suffering, by contrast, seems simply a game or “sport,” as if nothing important is at stake. It is hard to know whether Tess has brought any benefits to anyone, though Angel’s life has been changed and Liza-Lu may grow up to be like her sister. In any case, Hardy hints that Tess’s life may have a mythical and tragic importance like that of Prometheus, but it is up to us to judge how ironic this justice is, or what her life’s importance might be.
Q.9. Is Tess a pure woman or a fallen woman?
Ans: Tess is a pure woman. She did not cower and hide after what Alec did in the woods to her. She survived when angel left to go to Brazil right after their wedding when he did not want to have anything to do with her because of Alec. She is a survivor all the way till she was executed for murdering Alec.
Q.10. Why did Joan Durbeyfield want Tess to visit old Mrs d’Urberville at Trantridge?
Ans: With their horse Prince dead and buried and the family’s prospects looking pretty dim, Joan Durbeyfield has an idea. Tess will go to the d’Urbervilles at Trantridge to claim kinship and seek help. Tess does not dispute the plan- intimidating as it seems-because it was she who caused the death of Prince.
Q.11. Why was Tess alone with Alec in the woods at night?
Ans: Tess goes to town with friends on occasion. Alec, who constantly hits on Tess, offers a ride home from town. Tess refuses. When her friends pick her up there is an ugly incident. Tess is accused of making fun Car (a girl that doesn’t like Tess) and a row ensues. Alec comes galloping along to take Tess to “safety”. Actually he takes Tess to the forest and rapes her.
Q.12. Why did Tess have to take the beehives to market?
Ans: Normally her father John takes them to the market. John, however, spent the night at the tavern (as he often does) and is too sick to make it to market the next day. He sends Tess and brother Abraham to the market instead.
Q.13. How did the accident happen to Prince and the Waggon?
Ans: Tess and Abraham are going to market to sell the beehives. Their father is too sick from drunkenness to go. Abraham falls asleep in the cart and, with nobody to keep her awake, so does Tess. A mail cart with quiet wheels speeds down the road and skewers their horse Prince. Tess wakes up to find her horse dying on the road.
Q.14. Why was Tess sad at the May-Day dance?
Ans: The arrival of the three brothers creates much excitement among the girls at the dance. They treat the affair like something out of Cinderella. They think a prince has come to whisk them away. Tess is sad when she is not asked to dance.
Q.15. What had Parson Tringham discovered about the Durbeyfields?
Ans: Parson Tringham informs John that he has noble blood. Tringham, an amateur genealogist, has discovered that “Durbeyfield” is a corruption of “D’Urberville”, the surname of a noble Norman family, now extinct. The news immediately goes to John’s head.
Hello, Viewers! Besides being the Founder and Owner of this website, I am a Government Officer. As a hardcore literary lover, I am pursuing my dream by writing notes and articles related to Literature. Drop me a line anytime, whether it’s about any queries or demands or just to share your well-being. I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for stopping by!