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Hardy and James<br />

311<br />

Hardy presents this new world largely through the eyes and inner thoughts<br />

of Tess. She is an uneducated farm labourer who speaks in the local<br />

dialect of her region and who possesses sharp insight, natural intelligence<br />

and deep feelings. Tess is one in a line of such heroines in Hardy’s<br />

novels, including Bathsheba Everdene in Far From the Madding Crowd<br />

(1874) and Grace Melbury in The Woodlanders (1887), whose natures<br />

make them outsiders in their own society as they fall victim to forces and<br />

changes, economic, social and sexual, which are outside their control.<br />

Here Grace finds herself alone: the world of nature awakens before<br />

her eyes, but with an air of mystery and uncertainty, related to her<br />

own emotional turmoil:<br />

It was even now day out of doors, though the tones of morning<br />

were feeble and wan, and it was long before the sun would be<br />

perceptible in this overshadowed vale. Not a sound came from<br />

any of the out-houses as yet. The tree-trunks, the road, the outbuildings,<br />

the garden, every object, wore that aspect of mesmeric<br />

passivity which the quietude of daybreak lends to such scenes.<br />

Helpless immobility seemed to be combined with intense<br />

consciousness; a meditative inertness possessed all things,<br />

oppressively contrasting with her own active emotions. Beyond<br />

the road were some cottage roofs and orchards; over these roofs<br />

and over the apple-trees behind, high up the slope, and backed<br />

by the plantation on the crest, was the house yet occupied by<br />

her future husband, the rough-cast front showing whitely through<br />

its creepers. The window-shutters were closed, the bedroom<br />

curtains closely drawn, and not the thinnest coil of smoke rose<br />

from the rugged chimneys.<br />

Something broke the stillness. The front-door of the house she<br />

was gazing at opened softly, and there came out into the porch<br />

a female figure, wrapped in a large cloak, beneath which was<br />

visible the white skirt of a long loose garment like a night-dress.<br />

A grey arm, stretching from within the porch, adjusted the cloak<br />

over the woman’s shoulders; it was withdrawn and disappeared,<br />

the door closing behind her.<br />

(The Woodlanders)

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