Welcome back, everyone! This week we are taking a look back to a classic, one in which I managed to find a song that I personally think is my best pairing yet. Now, I have a lot of opinions on this work, and I am going to hopefully manage to reign in my impulses to rant on these various topics. I personally have no one else who has read this book yet to bounce these ideas off of, so these thoughts have been festering for a good while. With that aside, the novel I will be turning my attention to this week is Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. This is a read I do not encourage one to binge in one sitting, because it will give you whiplash with all of the events that go down. I say this from experience, from the perspective of a master procrastinator that read this book and analyzed it all in one day for a school project I had put off for months. SPOILER ALERT: I chose this book out of the many available mainly due to my awareness of the ending in which, spoiler, Tess dies. I largely chose my books based on dramatic endings because I wanted to see how the events of the story unfolded to lead to unfortunate fates. However, I had no idea of the events of the rest of this book, and it would be an understatement to say I was shocked at the time, as the plot provides hit after hit. The song I have chosen to pair with this book I think presents said events in a view that matches with my own and breaks down Tess’s story into the true horror it became. That song would be “Eden” by Sara Bareilles.
As I get into the song, here is a warning for spoilers from here on. I intend to go into great detail about most major plot points, so if you plan to read it and want it to be fresh, maybe revisit this later. And with that stated, let us get into the analysis…
“Let me paint a picture for you then I’ll have to teach you to see it
Illustrate the remnants of the life I used to live here in Eden
Rolled a lucky pair of dice
Ended up paradise
Landed on a snake’s eyes, took a bite, and ended up bleeding”
Okay, so, let me paint a picture for you. Say you are an innocent girl just living in her little cottage town, doing just fine, and your parents pressure you into going to visit supposed relatives in hopes of landing a fortune. Sounds good, right? Well, that is where you are wrong, because this is quite literally the beginning of the end for our girl. She really pulls the short end of the stick for the rest of her life, and while the odds would not put that in her favor, she apparently is just really good at landing snake eyes. Regularly, Tess is put in terrible situations, finds a place to restart and renew herself, just to once again find herself in the pits. This cycle continues until the end of the book, and it genuinely leaves a sour note on the whole story. It feels as though the book thinks it ended things well, but the people who get to live a good life at the end do not deserve it, especially in the wake of the injustice enacted on Tess.
“You know if I could change anything, I think I would start with the name
The truth is all those angels started acting the same
And I know there’s no going back now ’cause
Life in Eden
Life in Eden changed”
So here is where the real headache will begin: the existence of the character Angel Clare. This verse cemented into my brain that this song was perfect for this book due to the line “all those angels started acting the same.” Despite Angel’s name insinuating him to be the perfect, ideal man, he is genuinely the worst character to ever grace a novel I have had the displeasure of reading. The reader can pick up from the very beginning of Angel’s appearance in the story that whatever his deal is, it will not end well for Tess. For more context into what makes Angel so horrid, we must address the first major transgressor in the novel: Alec d’Urberville. My journey with Tess of the d’Urbervilles began in my AP Literature course in which we had to write journals on novels by pulling quotes from the text to apply to the chapters of How to Read Literature Like a Professor. It is because of Tess that I fully understood the chapter “It’s All About Sex,” because Hardy’s version of censored sexual relations is Tess asleep in the woods. I did not pick up on any textual clues; they are in the forest, and then all of a sudden in the next chapter Tess has a child. I was stuck flipping back and forth in shock, comprehending this turn of events for a while (again, be able to give yourself a break reading this book, because I simply had to trek on with this knowledge, barely accepting it). To put a finer point on this event, Alec sexually assaults Tess in the middle of nowhere, after it is established that several characters are aware that this will occur, and they let it happen – presumably because they believe she deserves it if she is too ignorant not to realize that Alec is essentially notorious for this. Basically, everyone in this book is an awful human being, but somehow Angel still takes the cake. I will stand on my soapbox insisting Angel Clare is the worst character ever, mainly because you expect all of the other characters to be terrible. Angel, on the other hand, is set up to be this accepting and loving man, a blessing to Tess’s strenuous life. Then, he decides to not only reject her but straight up abandon her, ultimately leading Tess to her own demise, on top of basically being a rapist apologist. This whole series of events manifest after Tess and Angel get married, wherein Tess wants to be completely transparent with Angel about her whole life’s story to him, and he wants to do so as well. Angel describes a time in which he had an affair with a woman, expressing that holding in this secret brought him great shame. Tess, believing Angel would be understanding of her past since her “sin” matches his own, tells Angel of her past with Alec. Shockingly to no one, Alec reacts terribly and leaves to another continent to distance himself from this occurrence, instating the belief that his past transgressions can be forgiven due to being a man, while Tess cannot because she is a woman. And let me be perfectly clear, what happened to Tess was not a sin, but a crime. This book may be set in a time where it would not be viewed as such, but she was clearly assaulted, and Angel is a horrid man for not thinking so. Therefore, all of these “angels,” or essentially everyone in her life that should have been there to protect her, is acting the same, disregarding her struggles and refusing to accept her as she is. Her life had many opportunities to become a paradise, or at least be set up to move on and heal from her past, but everyone fails her consistently.
“No way to make the pain play fair
It doesn’t disappear just because you say it isn’t there, so
When they ask why’d she go you can say ’cause
Life in Eden
Life in Eden changed
Life in Eden changed”
The unfortunate circumstance engrained in Tess’s being is that she, as a woman, will never be treated fairly or looked at with any real respect in society. The society she herself is a part of is the major flaw within this story, as it cannot support her even if one person decided to be on her side for once. No matter how people try to ignore her past, those scars are not just going to go away. They had the potential to heal and fade, but no one is around to support her, so the wounds keep getting reignited until her only choice is to turn back to Alec. Alec, having come back for her, insists he is the only logical source by which to live any semblance of normal life in a society where women are largely viewed as property. At the beginning of this novel, the scenery was bright, vibrant, and wonderous, but as the plot tears her to pieces, it becomes dull and barely coherent as she simply goes through the paces, losing herself along the way.
“Walking in the garden was a serpent-shaped heart and he told me
What is broken cannot show, and less than beautiful is worse than unholy
Idolized my innocence
Stole it from me in the end
Now I’m wide awakened and still paying for the poison they sold me”
One of the earliest red flags about Angel as a character is that he quite literally always idolizes her innocence. Whenever he is in a scene when he is courting her he acknowledges how beautiful and pure she looks, and as the reader, knowing she is not pure in the eyes of God, you know this is more than likely to end poorly. Everyone she comes across in the story continuously saps the life out of her. While the idea of “innocence” really is not all that important in the context of virginity, any innocence or joy she could have applied to live has been stolen and trodden upon. She naively thinks someone may finally accept and love her, waiting out on Angel to return for years even, but she eventually resigns herself to being with Alec again as a last resort. After Angel belatedly returns, Tess realizes Alec had lied about Angel never returning, thus making her supposed only option null and void. In a rage, she kills Alec both for wronging Angel by taking her, and for wronging her time and time again. In the final pages of the novel, she is, in a sense, awakened, seeking out what she wants in her life, but knowing it will all have to come to an end as the murderer of Alec must be brought to justice. But who will ever bring her justice? The very concept that she could have ever had a “happily ever after” is a lie that could never be fulfilled, and her incessant hope to finally reach it is a poison that has eaten her soul alive.
“There was a time when I was taking all best that
This place was even better than as good as it gets and now
Looking back from the outside in
I think I was choking on the air in Eden
Choking on the air in Eden”
I think that it is safe to say that even as she dies, Tess never fully escapes the mindset that she is a woman of sin. Throughout, she has moments of clarity, as she has been choking all her life to keep down the hurt and reality of the life she lives, only for it to bubble back up and breaks the surface in order to ruin her life again. Alec had no right to Tess, and he deserved the fate he met, but Tess did not. Her death is an example of killing women into art, as her death signifies her finally being released from the curses put upon her life. Tess dying is in her purest state since the beginning of her story. She kept trying to be optimistic about her situation, hoping for the best, or at least “as good as it gets,” but even she realizes she must die and hopes all those around her are able to move on and forget her sorrows, just as she tried to with her own child’s death (I do not think I will ever get over Hardy making her name her own child Sorrow before its death. It is a little on the nose.). Overall, it is not a suitable end for this tortured soul, but in a way, she is at least finally free from her plagued life, which was supposed to only ever be her perfect paradise.
Unfortunately, this is not the best of reads. It is extremely emotionally draining and has left me spiraling since having encountered it. However, it has still stayed firmly in my memory as one of the better books I have read in school, simply because of how complex its composition and character dynamics are. Trying to understand the perspective of everyone you meet throughout this novel is a fulfilling experience once you get absorbed into the story and motives of these individuals. It is so carefully crafted to include so many tiny details involving the development of characters’ mindsets and psyche, especially as they make breakthroughs or gradually spiral downhill. Becoming a part of this time and the story that is crafted around it was genuinely a fun, intriguing experience that has stuck with me until today. I am happy I was able to find a song that captured the emotions I felt as I encountered this novel for the first time, and hope my fascination with this story can be passed onto you.
-Lauren Lotarski, Blogger.
Tess of the d’Urbervilles – William Hatherell
Lauren Lotarski – Poetry Editor & Copy Editor: Lauren is a sophomore at Lewis University majoring in Psychology and English with a concentration in Literature and Language. She is also employed at the university library. In her free time, she likes to read, draw, knit, and consuming general popular media like movies, TV shows, and video games. Some of her favorite authors are Leigh Bardugo, Charles Dickens, and Neil Gaiman. She hopes to improve upon her writing and knowledge of literature during her time at Lewis and applying it to her future endeavors.