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TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES
(THOMAS HARDY)
,.
“Tess of the D’Urbervilles: The ‘Pure Woman’ ”
by Geoffrey Wagner, in Five for Freedom:
A Study of Feminist Fiction
Introduction
In his wide-ranging discussion of Tess of the D’Urbervilles,
Geoffrey Wagner examines Thomas Hardy’s portrayal of
femininity and its relation to the views of D.H. Lawrence and
Simone de Beauvoir, as well as biological and anthropological
debates regarding gender difference. Writing “in a culture
which constantly took offence at the reading of erotic betrayal
as prototypical of religious betrayal, and/or vice versa,”
Hardy’s novel explores how society “executes Tess, as it did
Camus’s Meursault, and for not entirely dissimilar reasons. In
neither case is the murder the guilt; the revolt against convention
is the real guilt.” Thus, for Wagner, Hardy’s novel criticizes
the double standard of an unjust, male-dominated society
where feminine sexuality is held to be taboo and “the female
is the victim of the species.”
f
Wagner, Geoffrey. “Tess of the D’Urbervilles: The ‘Pure Woman’.” Five for Freedom:
A Study of Feminist Fiction. 1972. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 1973. 183–93, 196–211.
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