TESS, VICTIM OF HYPOCRICY TESS OF THE d’URBERVILLES, THOMAS HARDY

Abstract

Thomas Hardy is distinguished by his contemporaries for the fact that the subjects of his novels are taken from the rural environment in the agricultural region south of England. He calls his homeland Dorset, Wessex, in memory of former King Alfred the Great. Themes and subjects of his novels are attractive and dominant. In all of his most popular novels, Hardy describes, outlines, and portrays human beings who are faced with powerful attacks of devastating and mysterious forces. He was a serious novelist who sought to present the view of life throughout a novel. Frequently, his themes and subjects mix with the sequence of events that have extreme and fatal consequences, while he rarely fails to inspire the reader with his deep mercy to the characters who suffer in their live; he often cannot afford to reach the highest degree of tragic element. The author sends an indictment to his time: he firmly rejects the duality of morality according to which the behavior of a man and the behavior of a woman is differently estimated. Thomas Hardy’s world as a writer is completely realistic, even transparent because he is a rare master of description of the environment. His characters are creatures of their environment, presented in their mutual relationships, often with sharp psychological observations. “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” is based on a familiar motif, that of a fallen woman, where Tess represents the prejudices of the Victorian society. In the novel, Hardy portrays an innocent poor girl of a country, a victim of the combined forces of Victorian patriarchal society, of the hypocrisy of social prejudice and gender inequality, which shows his deep sympathy for Tessa, the protagonist of the novel, a symbol of women devastated without mercy in a world dominated by males. He shows that Tess is an example of the devastating effect of society's pressures on a pure girl, and that Angel and Alec are personifications of destructive attitudes towards women.