Tess Critics

Question 1

Clementine Black (1892)

Answer 1

The novel’s essence ‘lies in the perception that a woman’s moral worth is measurable not by any one deed, but by the whole aim and tendency of her life and nature.’

Question 2

Gose (1963)

Answer 2

‘Tess is not merely a victim of Alec’s lust, nor of Hardy’s view of nature’s ironic and fateful law of cause and effect; despite her mother’s bad advice and her own physical weariness, she is finally responsible for her own nature and development.’

Question 3

Irving Howe (1966)

Answer 3

Tess derives from Hardy’s ‘reaction against the Victorian cult of chastity.’

Question 4

Michael Millgate (1982)

Answer 4

‘What finally destroys poor Tess is not, of course, her sexual betrayal by Alec but the more radical infidelity of the man in whom she voluntarily invested all her trust and love.’

Question 5

James Heffernan (1990’s)

Answer 5

‘To read Alec as a rapist is grossly to underestimate him. Like Satan, the role he jestingly but also revealingly plays, he seeks not to pinion the body of his victim but to master her mind, to exploit her weakness’.

Question 6

Peter Widdowson (1989)

Answer 6

Tess has no ‘character’ at all: she is only what others construct her as…’.