Tess Of The D Urbervilles Analysis

INTRODUCTION The discussion of gender and sexual representation in literature has ancestral references that go back to the classical period of Greece. There we can find works like The Bacchae tragedy of Euripides and Lysistrata comedy of Aristophanes. However, it was not until the XVIII century that a systematic insurgency of women's rights began, headed by Mary Wollstonecraft. In 1792, this British author publishes A vindication of the rights of woman, which discusses that women must have an education commensurate with their position in society. In the XIX century, Thomas Hardy brings the gender issue to Tess of the d'Urbervilles, showing that the condition of women in Victorian England brings unique implications to their trajectory as an individual. The women in Tess of the d'Urbervilles are, in general, submissive to the patriarchal order of society. The supremacy of man over woman in life dramatises the crisis of values in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, placing the heroine, Tess, at the mercy of the masculine judgment. Tess is a victim of male prepotency. She succumbs to the abuses of Alec d'Urberville and afterwards adopts a servile posture towards her husband, even after being godforsaken and banned from social life. The crisis of values is then dramatised by

Thomas Hardy also reveals a dual perspective of Tess character. Critically, the author dramatises the representation of a naïve woman (“A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented” – as stated in the book’s subtitle), in order to ratify the injustices and difficulties faced by the feminine universe inserted in the inflexible Victorian society. The irony is established: despite the innocence of the character, she suffers the most different torments - she is raped, becomes a mistress and a single mother. Tess is definitely the paradox of an angel and a