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Introduction
“The beauty or ugliness of a character lay, not only in its achievements but in its aims and impulses, its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed.”
Tess is a pure woman. She is an embodiment of purity and virtuousness. Those who are products of conventional morality think that physical purity is essential for chastity or virginity and they deny Tess the title of a pure woman. Thomas Hardy himself is known to have faced a storm of adverse criticism when Tess of the d’Urberville is published with its subtitle of ‘a pure woman.’ He calls Tess a ‘poor wounded name’ and says that her book is to be lodged in his bosom. He defends Tess with many arguments in her favor. He expects the reader to view her with sympathy and love. He hopes that it is infinitely larger than forgiveness.
The Sub-Title
While speaking of this sub-title Hardy tells us that he has appended it after reading the proofs of its Wessex edition. At one place he regrets having put it there. But the subtitle - A pure woman - is still there. This is so because Thomas Hardy thinks that Tess is a pure woman. He is right when he maintains it. It is simply because ‘a woman’s natural worth is measurable, not by any one deed, but by the whole aim and tendency of her life and nature. Thomas Hardy also thinks that her innate purity remains intact to the very last. It is only a certain outward purity that leaves her when she yields to Alec and allows him to embrace her soulless body for saving the family from destitute conditions and starvation. Hardy’s conviction is based on the words of Jesus Christ himself for they enjoin us not to judge others as we do not want to be judged. The guardians of public morality should not attach a narrow and special meaning. Indeed woman’s virtue is man’s own invention. To him, the word ‘pure’ refers to something unbroken, unspoiled, unfollowed or perfect. That is why Hardy calls her an almost standard woman in the novel itself. The word standard means model. It refers to a quality to be aimed at, by comparison with which inferior examples are tested and rejected. We can call Tess an almost standard woman in this sense also. Purity is of the spirit. With a spiritual reference, we can call her a pure woman. We can apply the word ‘pure’ to Tess without any moral hitch or hesitation. Tess is pure even in morality of both of the mind and of the heart. Her behavior, her thoughts, her desires, on all perilous occasions with d’Urberville early and late, with Clare, with her other admirers are unimpeachably considered from the most critical code and point of view. Moreover, her shame and remorse are infinite. She has got a clear conscience.
Unconventional Morality
Whatever the Victorian moralists call her, Tess is a pure woman to all of us. The majority of us are inclined to say that she is pure in everything, in her intentions, in her life and in her nature as a whole. Tess herself is right when she says that once lost always lost is not really true of chastity. She speaks of the recuperative power of organic nature and says that it is surely not denied to maidenhood alone. She is not at all responsible for her reluctant affairs of admitting Alec’s advances for a few minutes. She has received her beauty and nature from Joan Durbeyfield. Her parents force her to go to Trantridge. The death of the horse Prince also sends her there. She wants to earn money so that she may buy another horse for the family. Fate works against her happy life. When she yields to Alec d’Urberville for the second time, she seems to relax. But she is now in the hands of circumstances. She is a mere corpse drifting with a current to her end. At this time she is not simply herself, for her mind is drugged and dead with weariness, pain and despair. Just as Alec is too late in making his proposal of marriage to her similarly Angel Clare is too late in returning to her. But for a little touch of incautiousness and submissiveness, she is not to blame in any result. If we judge her from the aim and tendency of her life, we are not to call her an impure woman but for her moral trouble with her seducer. Moreover, her sin also fails to demoralize her.
According to a great critic named C. Day Lewis, the story of Tess of the d’Urbervilles embodies a heroic attempt to bring light to mankind. There is in it an impassioned plea for warmth and charity towards women for a more enlightened view of the sexual relationship. When Hardy speaks of this thing he speaks to the mind of many people hesitating to express what they feel to be right. When Angel Clare goes abroad, he gets rid of the conventional morality of his native country. A fellow traveler impresses upon his mind that Tess is a pure woman and that he has been unjust to her. He accepts her as a pure woman in the end. He says that he is not to judge her with a particular act but with her will, aim or tendency.
Is Tess a Pure Woman
The expression ‘A pure woman’ is used as a sub-title of the novel. Hardy added the sub-title only as a second thought. After reading the final proofs he felt that the ultimate and final impression left by the heroine’s character was that of a pure woman. He defends Tess with many arguments in her favor. He expects the reader to view her with sympathy and love. “The beauty or ugliness of a character lay, not only in its achievements but in its aims and impulses, its true history lay, not among things done but among things willed.”
Public Controversy
The Victorian society had its rigid moral principles and so the public of Hardy’s times did not accept the sub-title easily. They had their definite conceptions of what was moral and what was immoral. The standard of morality in the case of women was very narrow. If a woman once lost her purity, she forfeited all claims to purity. She was not allowed to read books dealing with sex.
Hardy’s Defence
Hardy lived in the latter part of the Victorian age. He was somewhat modern in his outlook. Moreover, the outlook of his age had also begun to change. Tess is undoubtedly a pure woman and an embodiment of purity and virtuousness. Those who are the products of conventional morality think that physical purity is essential for chastity or virginity. Hardy wanted to broaden the outlook of the people and thus in the preface of the novel he said—
“Respecting the sub-title, to which allusion was made above, I may add that it was appended at the last moment, after reading the final proofs, and being the estimate left in a candid mind of the heroine’s character—an estimate that nobody would be likely to dispute. It was disputed more than anything in the book. Melius fuerat ran sesibere. But there it stands.” Hardy brings in both Nature and Christianity to support his argument that a woman is not impure or polluted if she falls into sin. It is not the conventional, social on religious judgment on Tess but the more relevant issue of motives. On this ground, “Tess is as pure as the holiest angel as her heart is pure; her motives and desires are pure”.
Alec’s Advances
Examining the life and character of Tess, before her seduction by Alec, it is very clear that Tess cannot be accused of encouraging Alec’s amorous advances. In her dealings with Alec, she shows an instructive modesty and shyness. She is not happy when Alec feeds her with strawberries; and when Alec kisses her on the second journey of the slopes, she “undoes” the kiss as far as such a thing was physically possible. She even, decides to walk the last few miles, rather than sit next to him.
Her Seduction
Tess is the victim of the blackest act of treachery. Alec, a tactful man, pursues her with his tactics which leave her bewildered and defenseless. She is violated when she is exhausted and falls asleep and does not understand the true significance of the act. She is not well-prepared to resist the culpable passions which she does not yet know much about. Still, she distrusts him because she has to put up with his familiarities and is afraid of what they may lead to. Alec subtly wears down her mental defenses by making a calculated use of his assistance to her family. All this however cannot force her to submit to Alec consciously but the painful influences of his generosity towards her family are felt by her.
The Surrender of Tess
Tess being innocent is unable to see the danger into which her inevitable softening at such kindness will lead her. On her journey home from Chase Borough she is physically exhausted and falls asleep. On being delayed in reaching home, she feels suspicious and demands to be put down on the ground. Alec leaves her for the moment but comes back to violate her.
“Everything else was blackness alike. d’Urberville stooped and heard a gentle regular breathing. He knelt and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears...But might some say where was Tess’s guardian angel?...why was it that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive?...As Tess’s own people down in those retreats are never tired of saying among each other in their fatalistic way: “It was to be? There lay the pity of it.”
This description shows us how Tess who is innocent and ignorant of the ways of the world is trapped and seduced by Alec. She is not aware of the true significance of the act. She upbraids her mother for failing to warn her of the traps set by scheming villains like Alec.
Later Relations with Alec
Though Hardy has not been very clear in describing it. From Chapter 12. we can make out how Tess stays “some few weeks” after her seduction. The language used by Hardy clearly offers the idea that sexual relationship did exist between Alec and Tess after the seduction. However, the few weeks of indulgence, as it has been described showed her the worthlessness of Alec and she realized that she was tempted into sexual passion with a man she did not love. She “suddenly despised him and disliked him and had run away. That was all.” Hardy significantly uses the last phrase to show that though she remains Alec’s mistress even after the seduction, she does not betray or pollute her spirit.
Her Impurity
The Victorian Society could never accept the idea that a woman should be called pure even when she had been seduced while a virgin and had a child. Though, Tess became guilty of ‘this immoral act’ only because of the irony of Fate. She appeals to Angel Clare to forgive her:
“What have I done—what have I done! I have not told of anything that interferes with or belies my love for you. You don’t think I planned it, do you? It is in your own mind what you are angry at, Angel, it is not in me. O, it is not in me, and I am not that deceitful woman you think me!”
But Angel Clare hardly understood the appeal of these words and living under the Victorian skies he had the same narrow conception of morals. This is made clear by Hardy in the observations he makes about the character of Angel Clare:
“But over them both there hung a deeper shade than the shade which Angel Clare perceived, namely’ the shade of his own limitations. With all his attempted independence of judgment this advanced and well-meaning young man, a sample product of the last five and twenty years, was yet the slave to custom and conventionality when surprised back into his early teachings. No prophet had told him that he was not prophet enough to tell himself, that essentially this young wife was as deserving of the praise of King Lemuel as any other woman endowed with the same dislike of evil, his moral value having to be reckoned not by achievement but by tendency.”
With this background of traditional morals, Angel Clare found it impossible to accept Tess as a pure woman. He abandoned her under the influence of Victorian morals. He went to Brazil where his outlook was broadened. He began to think the question of woman’s chastity in a wider context. He concluded that he had been both hasty and cruel in his judgment against Tess. He was convinced that Tess was pure. His conception of morality changed in Brazil. It is clear from the following lines:-
“During this time of absence, he had mentally aged a dozen years. What arrested him now as of value in life was less its beauty than its pathos. Having long discredited the old appraisement of morality. He thought they wanted to readjust. Who was the moral man? Still more pertinent by, who was the moral woman? The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievement, but in its aims and impulses, its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed.”
Her Purity
The question whether Tess is a pure woman or not can be answered only when we answer appropriately the question: Who is the moral woman? There can be simply ‘chastity of the Lady; without any chastity of the mind and the soul? Thus a person may be chaste and pure in body, but thoroughly impure in mind and soul’. The famous H.G. Wells has distinguished these two types of persons by calling them ‘prostitutes of the body; and prostitutes of the mind and soul. A prostitute of the body is not so immoral as the prostitute of the mind and soul. Tess was not at all guilty of the latter crime. She was the purest specimen of a woman in feelings and in the purity of her heart. She lost her physical chastity no doubt but it was all by accident. Then why should she be punished for a crime for which she was hardly responsible? She loved Angel Clare with rare devotion and inspite of all the cruelties he heaped upon her, she continued to be faithful to him. For the sake of true love she underwent all difficulties and sufferings. Tess remains a glorious example of that love which is the ultimate aim of human life.
Aesthetic Meaning of Pure
The word pure which has been used for Tess has an aesthetic meaning also. It means unbroken, unspoiled, unadulterated, unflawed, perfect. Tess is really pure in the sense that she has a perfect, unspoiled, unflawed and unbroken soul. The purity of a character does not lie in its outward beauty or ugliness but in its aims and impulses.
Tess Murders Alec
When Angel returns home from Brazil Tess realizes that Alec has been lying to her about the remotest possibility of her husband returning home and thus compelling her to live with him. She accuses Alec by saying that lie has torn my life into pieces.” Alec taunts at her and she is unable to take any more. In a violent fit of retaliation, she does him to death with a kitchen knife, the first thing she can lay her hand on. Thus, by killing Alec, Tess at the symbolic level has avenged herself upon her wrong doer and fulfilled the basic condition of her reunion with her husband. She is a mere corpse drifting with a current to her end. At this time she is not simply herself, for her mind is drugged and dead with weariness'pain and despair. Just as Alec is too late in making his proposal of marriage to her similarly Angel Clare is too late in returning to her. But for a little touch of incautiousness and yielding she is not to blame for any result.
Conclusion
The question whether ‘Tess’ or ‘A Pure Woman’ is a better title is solved
when we have studied that one stands for the other. These are two names of the same character rather two names of the same person. C. Day Lewis is of the opinion that the story of Tess embodies a heroic attempt to bring light to mankind. There is in it an impassioned plea for warmth and charity towards woman for a more enlightened view of the sexual relationship. When Hardy speaks of this thing, he speaks the mind of many people hesitating to express what they feel to be right. When Angel Clare goes abroad, he gets rid of the conventional morality of his native country. A fellow traveler impresses upon his mind that Tess is a pure woman and that he has been unjust to her. He accepts her as a pure woman in the end. He says that he is not to judge her with a particular act but with her will, aim or tendency. Thus, Thomas Hardy is right in calling Tess a pure woman. The subtitle of the novel, though an afterthought, stresses the essential purity of its heroine. Though she is fallen, she is to be judged not by her moral trouble but by her intentions, her life and nature seen as a whole.
When we weigh and consider all these things, we come to a conclusion that Thomas Hardy is right in calling Tess ‘a pure woman’. The sub-title of the novel, though an afterthought, stresses the essential purity of its heroine. Though she is fallen, she is to be judged not by her moral trouble but by her intention, her life and her nature seen as a whole.