Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Apollo, Dionysus, and Stonehenge

Abstract

Triggered by Hardy’s account of Stonehenge in Tess of the d’Urbervilles and his subsequent support of the purchase of the monument for the nation, this paper explores the mythological structure of the novel. Seen from one point of view, the narrative turns on a dialectic between Apollo and Dionysus where Angel Clare is allied to the sun god, Apollo, and Alec d’Urberville to the chthonic god of the underworld, Dionysus. Hardy’s interest in solar mythology is well known. Less well explored is the pattern of light and dark, summer and winter in this novel, a pattern that corresponds to the annual rise and fall of the power of these two ancient gods. Though we might expect that this mythical polarity might have derived from Nietzsche, it is more likely that Hardy found something similar in the work of Walter Pater and in Heinrich Heine.