Tess

5 Pages 1263 Words

Chance and coincidence – whole theme of fate is largely communicated through this. This narrative technique highlights the inevitability of her fate and her tragedy. Such as the cock crowing thrice on the wedding night. Irony – title and subtitle. Narrative is ironic – especially last chapter. The development and interest of the plot relies heavily on the irony in Tess of the D’Urbervilles . The title and sub-title are just the beginning of the irony in the narrative. The fact that Hardy refers to Tess as being part of the D’Urbervilles rather than Durbeyfield is ironic we find out because she is actually more of a D’Urberville than Alec is. The sub-title “A pure women” is ironic because it leads us to question whether she actually is a “pure” woman in terms of convention. Unwittingly through Hardy’s irony we are questioning aspects of the plot that through his clever use of technique and language we are noticing and questioning the greater social questions that Hardy so cunningly disguised. Uses the microcosmic to demonstrate the general Tess is on numerous occasions directly representative of not only the women of the time, but also of the pastoral community as a whole. Hardy does this by way of graphic imagery and significant symbolism. For example where Tess and Izz are returning to work at Flintcome-Ash Farm, Hardy cleverly portrays them all as being of the same kind. “Tess, with the other women workers, in their whitey-brown pinners…” By presenting them as a “concourse” all attired alike they represent an entire league of women, all the women of the era. In this passage a man, an “indistinct figure: this one black”, represents the enemy, the devil, and the evil of industrialization. His appearance described as a creature of “Trofet” – or hell is sent to “discompose its aborigines” or Tess and the other “natives”. Hardy has generalized this small-scale industrialization and mankind ...