Belma Sarajli

HOW DOES TESS COMPLICATE/INTERROGATE/DISTURB THE VICTORIAN IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD AND SEXUALITY?

It is needless to say that Hardys most successful and most beloved novel, and moreover its heroine, does complicate, interrogate, and disturb Victorian ideals of womanhood and particularly sexuality, because it has been Hardys intent to shake these ideals from the grounds. Therefore he created Tess, whom he himself cared very much for and watched over; he was her self-made vigil. Hardy himself had said that he could never fully explain what she had meant to him. Firstly, Tess eludes classic rules by being who she is- a milkmaid, and also a heroine of a tragedy. Hardy broke the fist rule by making Tess a simple peasant, because individuals from the lowly masses were not considered interesting or deserving enough to be main characters of a tragedy, probably since their lives were thought tragic in the essence, and therefore it was needless to carve their petty existence in stone, or write a novel about it. However, Hardy defied that rule and decided to deliver the prim and proper Victorians a bold, yet simple, a beautiful, yet shy girl, but even then with a twist to her. Tess was not to be ordinary and dull; she was to be full of life and energy, adorned with beauty and morality, and a natural sense of what is right. For Hardy, she was the true woman, and he created her pure and wonderful, and then set her on a voyage through the double standards of Victorian rules, established Victorian ideals of womanhood, and rigorous Victorian opinion on sexuality. Secondly, Tess disturbs Victorians ideals of womanhood since she is pure in the real sense of the word; she has no carnal knowledge before she meets Alec and she is so very nave and gullible that se does not even understand the ways of conduct between and man and a woman or when she is being seduced or even raped. In that time, a woman was supposed to be as meek as lamb, but also as canny as a fox to know how to escape a mans ungentlemanly advances. Tess, alas, lacked in the latter since her simple, hardly educated mother had not instructed her on the ways of the world. Furthermore, Tess complicates the life for the highly (questionably) moral people around her when she returns home unwed and with a child, gives birth to Sorrow, baptises her herself, and finally buries her in the land that hasnt been consecrated. According to practice

and rules of the time, a bastard child could not be baptised; the house in which it was born was under shame, and it certainly could not be buried without a priest. Nevertheless, Tess continued to live through all those difficult and testing times and even dared to make her own destiny and path in life. Lastly, Tess interrogates the Victorian ideals of womanhood and sexuality and strict and double standards and rules of life in those times. She was raped by Alec, and still it is considered her fault that she bore a child, and moreover it is only her shame and guilt that she is not chaste and innocent when she marries Angel. Tess, as simple and dear as she is, asks Angel and herself how come it is not the same for a man and a woman if they enter marriage not as virgins; why could Angel not forgive her for her loss of innocence if she so readily and openly forgave him for the same thing; why does she have to bear alone her cross for which she did not ask, but which was forced upon her. Unfortunately, she would still be in want of answers today since patriarchal and traditional societies have not changed their views on these topics drastically; women are still judged differently than men when it comes to sexual freedoms. As for Tess, she, in a way, got her answer when she was, figuratively, sacrificed at the altar of Victorian values and ideals of female sexuality.