How would you describe Tess' character?

[wishiwasausten]

Hi I've got to write an essay about what Tess was thinking as she was on her way to be executed and after discuss what her character was like and how she was as a person. I think she was a woman deprived of the ability to be truly happy and helplessly falling into traps of love and deception.
I also wonder was she quite a determined woman as although she was stripped of her status she fought on yet unsuccesfully, eventually accepting her fate after she murdered Alec.

Unfortuanately now I've got writer's block and I don't know what to put, can any peoples out there help me please?

Thank-you

[kiki1982]

I would like to think that Tess was not aware of the evil a man could mean (if you know what I mean). Girls did not know so much then as they do now and Tess blames her mother for not warning her (ch XII). I think, like in the case with Alec, she is pretty smart but lacking in experience.

It is indeed so that she could baptise her baby like a priest (at least that is what is taught). What Tess is lacking there of course, and that is also why she does not understand the ‘no’ to a Christian funeral for Sorrow, is experience in the matter: because Sorrow is firstly an illegitimate child and secondly not baptised by a priest, it would be frowned upon to burry him (?) in the churchyard. Of course Tess did everything right, but man always makes his own (unsaid) rules and that is what Tess didn’t know and what obviously frustrated Hardy.

The case with Angel was a sad one… She really started off well (by saying that she would never marry because of her secret), but then it went wrong when he, in his youthful silliness, persuaded her. Although, she as the naïve girl does not want to lie and really doesn’t take the advice of her mother (which she then at least gets) and tells him about her secret. Certainly also because she feels strengthened by his avowal. Little does she know of course that her mother was right in telling her not to tell him: she as a woman of the world knows that Angel will take offense and that he would never know if he wasn’t told. Although that remains debatable because there are people around, of course, who do know and who could maybe tell if drunk. But then again, they were going to Brazil…

So Angel leaves her and tells her that, if she is in need, his father will give her money. That is of course out of the question as Tess is too proud to take it. She’d rather fall down dead than go and ask for money in the house of her father-in-law. When she then finally gets her courage together, the two brothers and Miss Chant display their prejudices against the poor and of course Tess’s pride is hurt, resulting in her not going to that house anymore.
After that, she can’t fall any lower and Alec turns up again to make the trouble complete. He of course blames her for seducing him again, because he does not want to admit to himself that he cannot deny himself anything. Admittedly, he wanted to marry her first, but after he knows that she is not available, he cannot stay away from her. Thus he strays away from the straight and narrow again and ventures to conquer her once more, blaming it on her and her husband who is not caring for her as he should. Tess does not want to fall for him a second time and makes a promise to herself (now she knows what trouble Alec can mean), but in the end, deeply in trouble with her and her family on the streets, and no sign of Angel or a letter of his, there is only one thing to do: go with Alec and save her family from starvation and deprivation.

I don’t think she expected Angel back again. If there had been one little sign of hope, she would never have consented. But she had nothing from Angel (of course due to the post-problems and the father-in-law’s neglect) and thus her hopes were reduced to Alec. As Angel returns she needs to send him away, but feels it is her duty as a wife to be with him. Alec does not understand it and still blames Angel for Tess’s situation. Tess can’t take it and kills the man who was always the problem between her and Angel: Alec. Of course she is happy! Who wouldn’t be after such a burden has been got rid of?

I don’t know what she thought… Of course she, like all the readers, must have known that she would be hanged for it (as we now know what will happen), she wasn’t stupid. No matter if it was justified or not. What judge would listen to that? That is what Angel knew as well. But I think that is not what was the real deal for her. Alec had (reportedly) forced himself literally into her and he had always followed her around, literally and figuratively. He had always been with her. That child, its death, the deprivation afterwards, the failure with Angel, the sheer misery after that, her having to send her beloved Angel away after he has come back when all hope was lost… It is all connected with Alec. And so for herself, in order to have peace, he needs to die. If she stays with him forever, she cannot have peace although in great riches. She knows ‘they’ are coming to put her in prison and to eventually hang her, but that is not the point: she needs to get Alec out of the way to have peace with herself.

I think she accepted what was going to happen to her, because she did it for herself. In a sense, she already had peace before the priest came into her room to give her the last rights. When she asks Angel to take care of her sister, she really means to take care of her as a ‘guardian’ angel. She knows Angel is not going to hurt ‘Liza-Lu, like Alec did with her, but she knows, if anything, that he is going to guard her for other ‘evil’ men. When she asks that of Angel, she is already preparing for death and takes upon herself the mother-role for ‘Liza-Lu, mother-counsel that was never offered to her in time.

Does that help?

[wishiwasausten]

Yes thank-you it has given me a better insight to aspects of the book i never considered like the matter of Liza-Lu. Sorry I didn't reply earlier I have been caught up lately with work.

It was great to read your opinion and it will definitely help me.