TESS MORE SINNED AGAINST SINNING

Tess: More sinned against than sinning
Tess Of The DUrbervilles
MA / BS English
University of Sargodha


The main emphasis of the subject "Tess: More sinned against than sinning" is that the protagonist who is sinned against more than commits sin is ultimately the victim in the narrative. In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Tess is usually judged on the purity of her intentions, and how much she was taken advantage of. A conservative reading from the era would seem to suggest that the fact that Tess lost her virtue would be enough to describe her as a ‘fallen woman’ “whose fornication, adultery and crime of murder marked her as outrageously ‘impure’ in conventional terms.”

Tess of The D'Urbervilles is one of the first ten greatest novels in the various languages of Europe. It is the masterpiece of Thomas Hardy. When Tess was first published it had an immediate success and it has remained a 'best-seller' ever since. It is an epic novel, for it is convened only with the life and tragic death of a country maid named Tess Durbeyfield. It is the best manifestation of Hardy's creative genius. It deals with Hardy's philosophy of realism. It illustrates Hardy's theory of will. Fate plays an important part in its scheme of things but we are aware of its working only when Hardy steps forward and begins to give his comment. This novel is the story of pure women who is loved by a man whom she hates and who deserted by a man whom she loves with her soul. Tess tragedy is a specimen syllogism in the cruel reasoning of universal fate. " Her tortured life, unnecessarily sensitive, is nothing but the symbolic language, wherein the premises of Fate are quietly and ruthlessly worked out."

Fate that haunts Tess, is cruel, merciless and relentless, " it swallows her up ultimately! " The story of Tess of the D'Urbervilles is deeply, insistently set in time and place. Tess is a pure woman, but she is not the manifestation of some Platonic conception of womanhood. She is a English country girl, the product of a particular place and time. Tess is a Durbeyfield, dairy produce, who lives in the second half of the nineteenth century in that part of southern England that Hardy called Wessex. The very word Wessex at once fictional and historical, tells us something of the nature of the author's creative imagination, so steeped in history and sense of place. The history and geography of southern England, are just a necessary background to Tess's story, they are integral to it, evening at every turn and level into the essence of the situation that Hardy describes. Tess's "fall", is integrally bound up with the social situation of the Durbeyfields. Tess represents an explicit attempt to replace a more marginal figure, the fallen woman as sign. She is an explicitly sexual being, her appearance described with the same directness as Graces feelings : " she had ..... a luxurious of aspect, a fullness of growth, which made her appear more of a woman than she really was."

The present novel bears witness to Hardy's power of creating women characters successfully and well. Tess is a sensitive passionate and earthly figure. There is in her a flowering of the flesh, a physical element which believes in the purity of her spirit and intensions. She is ruined to death while struggling against the gaunt of circumstances. Tess passes through a school of suffering and emerges a woman, almost divine and godly. Mr. and Mrs. Durbeyfield are her parents. They are created to show heredity moulds the character of a man or woman and how this character become his or her fate. She goes to Tantridge only when she is compelled by her mother. She does not like it but she realizes her responsibility and works as farm-keeper. Alec comes to take her from her home to Tantridge. On the way he kisser her against her will. After some days he pitilessly seduces her. After four month she returns home. In due course she gives birth to a baby named sorrow. This is her only sin. But she cannot be blame for it. She falls a helpless victim to her circumstances. She has nothing to do against the evil desighns of a reckless youth. But she has been an unwilling sinner. She hates Alec and rejects his offers again and again. She comes back to him only when she is convinced by hi, that Angel will not return. But as soon as Angel comes to her, she stabs Alec to death. The only sin she does is to accept Alec. But even here she is compelled by her circumstances. Her father has died. Alec has been helping her family and repeating his proposal. She writes to Angel again and again but gets no reply. If Angel came a little earlier she would never accepted Alec.

The most cruel treatment is meted out to her by Angel. She loves him and can sacrifice even her life for him. She writes a letter to him clearly stating her affair with Alec but unfortunately Angel does not get it. After they get married she tells him about it and begs pardon but Angel does not hear anything and reacts as a deaf ear and deserts her. Angel does a great injustice to her. He deserts her although her innocence. The punishment she gets is undeserved. Although she knows that Angel has passed a cruel sentence on her, she obeys him as a faithful wife. Tess remains loyal to him to the last moment. But she is made a plaything by Fate. The invisible hands of Fate draw her to her tragic en. When she is hanged , Hardy says, " Justice was done, and the President of the Immortals in Aschylean phrases, had ended his sport with Tess".

Odds are infinity to one against her chance of liking happily in this vale of tears. She knows well that she is washed down into the gulf of rain and death. Thus this masterpiece of Thomas Hardy brings the prose tragedy to a very high point to artistic perfection. From first to last, Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one relentless onward movement. The human narrative the surrounding nature, the accompaniment of intellectual and emotional significance, all weave inextricably together, and go forward dominated by a unity of purpose. They write in a single epic statement, formidable in its bare simplicity, of the conflict between Personal and Impersonal, the conflict, which is the inmost vitality of all Hardy's noblest work.