The first essay which I found and read for this post is entitled “The Apprehensive and Suppressed Soul of the Fallen Woman in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles” and was written by Noorbakhsh Hooti who is a “Faculty of Arts” at “Razi University” in “Kermansha, Iran.” I chose this essay because I thought that it would be best to read someone else’s ideas about Tess on a topic that I feel most comfortable with, as well. Due to our class discussions and blog posts, Hooti’s project involves looking at “Hardy’s interest towards the downtrodden rights of the women of the Victorian Age” and how “Tess of the D’Urbervilles [displays] the predicament of woman” (630). What interest me the most about this essay is the passion in which Hooti uses to define the “brutal social injustice” that is taking place against Tess (634). She describes the male characters in the novel as “wanton,” and “sexually dominated cannibals,” which I think is really saying something about how she views the gender that is represented within the novel (634). Hooti writes with great passion and demand for women’s “own autonomy [and] identity” and that these can be “only feasible through education” which is a great plug for women’s rights during the time period (634). However, in spite of all of these great claims, I am not sure that I will use this essay, as it is only five pages long and lacks new insights or information that I can work with to form my own thesis within my midterm essay.
The second essay is entitled “Thomas Hardy and the Machine: The Mechanical Deformation of Narrative Realism in Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and was written by Zena Meadowsong. Meadowsong’s main project is pointing out the fact that perhaps Hardy’s work was not far off from “the lesser-read narratives” of the time (225). Meadowsong focuses on the “‘improbable’ use of chance and coincidence, ‘flat’ and ‘stagey’ characterization, melodrama, and an obtrusively over-elaborate style” that occur throughout Tess and these aspects “draw attention to the consequences of industrialization” (225; 248). I find this thesis to be rather intriguing, as the author explains that “Tess Durbeyfield is enslaved to a monster machine” and that “the fate of the novel’s heroine [is tied in] with the fate of the preindustrial world she inhabits” (248). This essay definitely presents a new reading of Tess that I haven’t thought of before, so I may use this essay for my midterm (it’s currently a toss-up between this one and the next…).
The third essay I found is entitled “’A Good Horror Has Its Place in Art’: Hardy’s Gothic Strategy in Tess of the d’Urbervilles” and was written by Jamil Mustafa of “Lewis University”. Mustafa’s project is to promote “Hardy’s enduring fascination with things loosely defined as ‘Gothic’” (93). More specifically Mustafa claims that “Hardy deploys his Gothic strategy to protect his female readers by enlightening them about the pitfalls as well as the pleasures of sex” (109). I find this topic extremely interesting, as I too, am a fan of all things Gothic (Gothic architecture is AMAZING, especially the churches, but that’s beside the point) but I also think that Mustafa brings up some very good claims and arguments in defending Hardy’s intentional use of the “Gothic mode” (109). I think many of the critics of Tess argue that Hardy was so out of touch with the character herself that he could not have possibly been able to write with a feminist mindset, but Mustafa argues that Hardy was “figuring himself as Tess,” which I can totally stand behind (107). Like I said before, I am having a hard time choosing between this essay and Meadowsong’s (second essay), but hopefully I will be able to make a decision within the next week.
