Hardy criticizes the conventional Victorian view of woman as not only not rooted in nature, but as a violation or forcible mutilation of woman's nature by man. This struggle between man an woman is taken as representative of an even more fundamental opposition between Will and Representation, between Nature's elemental unstructured forces and Man's appropriation and misuse of these forces. Woman is seen as emotional timid passive and malleable one with nature a conduit for powerful and dangerous natural forces potentially violent The traditional roles of Maid Bride Wife/Mother Widow and the values that go with them are male attempts to channel and control the basic forces of nature as represented in woman. They represent male inadequacies and fears. The Will is energy, force, reality apart from human structuring; it is the matter of our perceptual construction of our worlds. It is outside of time, unstructured, unfragmented, uncompelled by external forces. The Phenomenal world is constructed by human activity by the imposition of human structure onto the basic force and matter of will. It is rigid, structured , temporal, governed by necessary law imposed by man's cognitive structures. Woman, in the person of Tess, who is pure woman, represents will. Man, in the polar opposites of Alec and Angel, represent the human structuring of the will. Three Themes to look for: Unconsciousness: The workings of Immanent will are unconscious. Transition, Time, and Motion: Time and transition are the structurings of will within representation. Blood and Penetration: The structuring of will in representation often involves violence and control. The eruptions of will within the realm of representation can also often be violent or dangerous.
Brennecke, Ernest, Jr. Thomas Hardy's Universe. London, 1924.
Immanent Will:
1. The will is one and immanent.
This means that it is not merely a collection of physical forces; there is unity and the world. it also means that it is not transcendent, in another world, but omnipresent in and through all things.
2. The will is groundless and autonomous.
The expressions of will follow immutable laws of necessity and are not governed from without by design or mind.
3. The will is unconscious.
The will is not intelligent, mindful, or designing.
4. The will is aimless.
The will is not purposive in the normal sense and does not aim at any goal comprehensible to humans.
5. The will is indestructible.
It will persist through eternity, manifesting itself in various forms and cycles.
Boumelha, Penny. Thomas Hardy and Women: Sexual Ideology and Narrative Form. New Jersey, Barnes and Noble, 1982.
1. Author's portrayal of Tess appropriates her as an object within consciousness in a way that none of the characters are allowed to do. He enters into her mind and thoughts, making them more distinct and ordered than they are. The repeated imagery of penetration, puncturing, and pricking are part of this erotic attachment of the narrator for Tess.
2. Woman is portrayed as unthinking, passive, driven by emotions, hence the importance of scenes of unconsciousness, dream, and sleep for Tess and her vulnerability.
3. There is a carriage or transportation them that is central in the structure of the narrative.
Howe, Irving. Thomas Hardy. New York, Macmillan, 1967.
1. Tess is seen a new type of proto-Christian Heroine. She has an inviolable purity of Spirit and Charity that is capable of rising again from the ruins of many worldly assaults.
2. The role of the narrator is seen as a type of compensation for the indifference of the world portrayed. It is a creative, sympathetic commentary and restructuring of the random structure of Tess's trials. The lines from Shakespeare that preface the novel, "Poor wounded name! My bosom as a bed/ Shall lodge thee." are seen as referring to Hardy.
Lawrence, D.H. "A Study of Thomas Hardy" in Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D.H. Lawrence, ed Edward D. Macdonald. New York, Viking Press, 1936, pp. 482-88.
1. Woman is seen as a pure manifestation of the elemental forces of nature. Woman gives but doesn't receive.
2. Man is seen as a bridling or redirecting of those forces into higher expressions. Man takes and redirects force into higher expressions.
3. Angel is seen as sacrificing his womanhood by denying the bodily nature of man and attempting to recreate it as an ethereal ideal.
4. Alec is seen as sacrificing his manhood by refusing to redirect the force and energy he gets from woman into higher expressions and into giving to others. Tess's attraction to Alec is explained by the fact that he most deeply acknowledges and draws out the force and bodily vitality that is at the source of her nature.