Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

242
Thomas Hardy
which the matrons seem not to have profited. As we know, the troubadour
period later perfected a form of matrism which, while it undoubtedly
turned men’s minds to the Virgin Mary in another world, concomitantly
civilized their behaviour to the Lauras and Beatrices of this. ‘It may be
questioned’, Burckhardt wrote of the Holy Virgin, ‘whether, in the north,
a greater devotion was possible.’ Under such matrism women certainly
began to emerge more as fellow-beings than they had for some while
before, thus making the Portias and Rosalinds of a later century possible.
‘The period soon became one of enhanced status for women. They were
given an education similar to that of men, and were regarded as their
equals, even if it was held to be proper for them to work by influencing
men rather than to engage directly in politics.’ 25
Such is stressed here since Hardy has been called, by Lord David
Cecil, one of the last of the heroists. Two strains meet in Tess, the
Gea-Tellus or all-powerful fecundator (queen in the original sense,
one shared with quim) and, of course, the all-too-human equal and
companion of man. For it is likely that Bachofen’s famous study overstressed
the feminine quotient in the alleged early matriarchies of the
Mediterranean basin. De Beauvoir shows herself uncomfortable with
the Bachofen view:
‘These facts have led to the supposition that in primitive times
a veritable reign of women existed: the matriarchy. It was this
hypothesis, proposed by Bachofen, that Engels adopted, regarding
the passage from the matriarchate to the patriarchate as “the great
historical defeat of the feminine sex”. But in truth the Golden
Age of Woman is only a myth. To say that woman was the Other
is to say that there did not exist between the sexes a reciprocal
relation: Earth, Mother, Goddess—she was no fellow creature
in man’s eyes; it was beyond the human realm that her power was
affirmed, and she was therefore outside of that realm.’ 26
With Molly Bloom, Tess very much wanted to be within that
realm; she earnestly longed to be a fellow creature in man’s eyes here
and now. By this route we can come logically back to Lawrence and
his twin insights concerning her plight. For she is very strong physically
and quite unafraid of Groby at the end: ‘To have as a master this
man of stone, who would have cuffed her if he had dared, was almost
a relief after her former experiences.’