The beautiful and doomed
One of my all-time favorite novels is Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. I read it in high school, and I still remember every turn and twist of the plot.Â
Tess of the D’Urbervilles is about a pretty young country girl named Tess Durbeyfield. She comes from a poor family and her father drinks too much. One day, he runs into the parson, who addresses him as “Sir Johnâ€. He demands to know why the parson keeps calling him “Sir Johnâ€. The parson explains that while looking into the family trees of his parishioners, he discovered that the Durbeyfields are descended from a line of famous knights called D’Urberville. Little does the parson know that this bit of historical trivia is going to screw up Tess’s life forever.
There’s a wealthy landowning family called D’Urberville in another county; Tess’s parents conclude that they must be relatives. What they don’t know is that the rich people are not really D’Urbervilles—they only bought the name for social-climbing purposes. The Durbeyfields—who are the real D’Urbervilles—decide to send Tess to their “cousins†in the hope that they will help her find a good job or a proper husband. This is the part in Tagalog movies where the parents decide that their pretty daughter is their ticket out of poverty. In any case, her leaving means they have one less mouth to feed.
So obedient little Tess goes off to meet the fake D’Urbervilles. What do they do with their supposed cousin? They hire her as a maid. The D’Urbervilles’s son Alec, who is sort of attractive but a heel (cad, walanghiya, manyak), takes one look at Tess and that’s it, she’s doomed. Guess what happens next.
You Are What You Read: Thomas Hardy. In Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
October 10th, 2008 at 09:56
Interesting. I love Joseph Heller novels (Yossarian is one of my heroes). And his version of King David in “God Knows.” I also love Portnoy’s Complaint. I wonder what that say about me.
I had this impression that Hardy novels are like Hawthorne’s. You know, books that rival the most potent sleeping pills. I once tried slogging through The Scarlett Letter. I was halfway when I decided to stop torturing myself.
But hey, I’m going book-hunting tonight. Maybe I’ll wander into the Classics section.
Book hunting on a Friday night. That says something about my current social life too, does it.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:05
i used to be hardy girl myself. had my hardy phase right after college. my favorites include “a pair of blue eyes” and the worthy-of-a-carlitos siguion-reyna-treatment, “far from the madding crowd.” hardy really makes really interesting characters–elfride swancourt, gabriel oak, tess, jude (though i didnt like this novel), that marchmill lady from the wessex tales, etc.
October 10th, 2008 at 15:06
I rushed out and bought this book after reading this entry. Then I read the full column in the Star. I have to say this: I can understand that in the time in which the novel is set (and that in which it was written), not all names were what they are today. I also know that some feminine names (and some clunky male names eg. ‘Fitzwilliam Darcy’) came about under the auspices of traditional naming practices of the day (such as ‘Shirley’). I do not know the contemporary status of the name ‘Clare’, but, even of itself, it seems very…female. I can even understand that being a pastor, Angel Clare’s father wanted to bestow a name that conveys the idea of the bearer coming ‘trailing clouds of glory’. Even so, what prospects await a young man with not one, but two feminine names attached to him? Could not the nuances of Clare have been balanced by something more manly? What about Gordon? Or Roderick? Or Stirling? Or even Max Power? Give the kid a chance!
Just a thought.
October 23rd, 2008 at 12:00
I must admit I’ve only read 1 Hardy book and that’s Far From the Madding Crowd, but since I am a sucker for British period pieces, I’ve seen the A&E adaptation of Tess of the D’Urbervilles .. the one with Justine Waddell as Tess. I don’t know how faithful it is from the book but I find the story unnecessarily tragic. That Angel character is so narrow-minded and unforgiving… and Tess, well she didn’t have to kill the manyak guy… but then again I haven’t been raped so I wouldn’t know the anger that she must have felt. Touching story though.