Confused

[Charm]

I have read the threads for this book and im really confused cuz people are saying she stayed with alec after the rape? is it true and apparently she married him? someone explain pleasssseeeee and also....

Im not sure what chapter it is but when angel and tess are married and go the cottage thing they tell each other their faults and angel tells tess his and then tess tells angel hers,... and angel is shocked but im not sure why he wants to be apart so much? what was so bad that tess apparently did????????


Help me please ! :)

[Candida]

Ok....
Lets start with t basics :p

First u have2 remember that 'Tess' is a victorian novel....& Vic. standards are a world apart from ours.....a simple misjudgement in our times was a major question on t character of t female in those. Angel can forgive himself for a mistake ( men will be men) but not Tess ( a woman has2 hv impeachable character)....the typical double standard life of the victorians. TYo top it all Angel came from a family of priests,so the mistake becomes even more glaring to his beliefs.

Alex did rape Tess and by any stds tess should have stayed away from him....but the girl is her best judge and feels that Alex stood by her in her time of need (he pays for the renovation of Tess' paternal home; gives them monthly allowance, allowing them to lead a pretty well provided for life), so she compromises with her own self and starts to live with Alex. Again being more mature towards her responsibilities to her family she feels it the least she can do for them. :(

[Luna1968]

Hardy leaves the actual actions of Alec and Tess up to the readers imagination at the end of phase 1. The closest thing to physical contact between them is, "he knelt, and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears." (57 Norton 3rd ed) In phase 2, she suddenly has a baby. So, obviously there was some kind of sexual act between the two. Now, was it rape, or was it a seduction? As Tess was asleep at the time, it seems more like rape. But, the fact that she does stay with him for a little while afterwards, indicates that it might have been a kind of seduction. The specific passage stating the length of her stay is, "It was a Sunday morning in late October, about four months after Tess Durbeyfield's arrival at Tantidge, and some few weeks subsequent to the night ride in The Chase." (58 Norton 3rd ed) So, she stays a few weeks after the rape/seduction. In film versions, she is seen riding in a boat with him with fine clothes or otherwise spending time with him - obviously unhappily. So, the reader must first take into consideration the mindset of Tess. She is a young girl, completely vunerable and unaware of the ways of the world, maybe curious about men and sexuality, and certainly ignorant about men. Even if Hardy meant for the encounter to be a seduction, Alec most certainly took advantage of her and probably used forceful persuasion (given the nature of his unrelenting character.) As such, she probably felt traped and unable to say no to him.
Regardless of whether it was rape or seduction, she pulls herself away from Alec and tries to start a new life. After her marriage to Angel, a contemporary response to their mutual wrongdoings is that they are equal. But, in Victorian mindset they were not. Even today, it is still stereotypical to think of a young man who pimps around town as "manly" but a woman who does the same as "sluty." This double standard was even more prevelent at the time. However, why Angel turns Tess away after she forgives him, has more to do with Angel's character than historical standards. He has built her up to be something so pure, of nature itself, comparing her to Greek goddesses - he is incapable of forgiving her. To him, everything is black and white - which is forshaddowed in how he reacts to the church. He cannot see her as pure being who maybe just had a tramatic event earlier in her life. She is a dirty human being, and he cannot love anything less than his angelic version of her.