Phase 1 Discussion:  Discussion leader=Erick

The Character of Tess

     -She shows a great amount of pride.  Is that stuck up or ennonbling?  She definitely shows a great amount of independence and pride in herself.

     -Tess may show too much independence.  She doesn't like to accept help from anyone, and is all about self-help, which may be a critique of the Victorian self-help philosophy.

     -She seems immature like when she gets a ride for the first time from Alec:  she didn't like him going too fast and deliberately got out and refused to get back in.

The Noble Title:

     -Tess's family takes the noble title too seriously.  nothing has changed for them, yet they think that they are now destined for greatness

     -We know that the so called D'Urbervilles are not even related to the Derbyfields

Foreshadowing:

     -Tess calls their world a blighted one; compares worlds to apples, which gives a rotten apple picture; allusion to Adam and Eve?

     -"Out of the frying pan and into the fire" pg 67.  She leaves the rowdy group only to leave with Alec, a worse decision

     -Tess pricks her finger on one of the roses Alec gave her and takes it as a bad omen no to trust him

Society:

     -Alec is described as having "touches of barbarism".  Shouldn't barbarism be gone in this progressive society?  Has progress and industry made us worse and more bestial than before

     -"It was to be" philosophy.  Its not fair for it to happen to Tess.  There's no reason for it, it just happens.  This philosophy also has a fatalistic tone to it and blind acceptance without doing anything to change it.  It asks where Tess's guardian angel was; paints a picture of a pessimistic and an unjust world.  It asks whybad things happen to good people

Phase 2 Discussion:  Discussion leader=Liz

Religion

Tess seems to reject the local institutions of religion because they have rejected her. She baptizes her baby at home, she tells the Vicar that she won't come to his church anymore, and she exclaims "I don't believe God said such things!" to the man painting religious admonitions on fences. Tess doesn't reject her belief in God, however. She shows real concern at the thought that her baby might die unbaptized.

Hardy uses many biblical/religious allusions, like the comment that Tess is a "stranger in no strange land," a reference to Moses.  

Hardy's depiction of religion reminded us of Stace and final causes; he doesn't put forward any reason or justification for Tess' suffering. "It was to be," and God provides no consolation.

Nature

Hardy describes internal emotional states with natural scenes. The world is a "psychological phenomenon" and the wind creates "bitter reproaches" in Tess' distressed mind. After Sorrow dies, the fall and winter are cold and lonely; in spring, Tess gains new hope when she decides to go work on a dairy farm. Hardy spends a paragraph on the plight of the animals living in the wheat field; as the mechanical reaping machine draws nearer, their habitat grows smaller and smaller until it disappears and the villagers kill the animals. The unrelenting advance of the mechanical machine continues Hardy's criticism of urbanization and industrialization; the innocent creatures get killed in the end. This is similar to Tess, who was harmed by Alec d'Urberville, a man of the city and of business.

Nature is almost a religion; more so than organized religion. Hardy considers sun worship as a "sane religion." Tess feels like nature rebukes her, but really she is in harmony with nature. She becomes an organic part of the field as she works to bind sheaves of wheat. Her distress comes from society's disconnect with nature; it is not mankind Tess shuns, but the "world," the society built by mankind and its oppressive conventions. The world is "terrible in the mass," but "pitiable in its units."

Tess is like the Hester Prynne of the English Countryside: she is alienated for her sin, but she still holds herself with dignity and has her own sense of justice.  

Phase Three Discussion

Discussion Leader Alexa 

3/23
Nature:  Again Hardy describes Tess's emotional state with scenes of nature.  The tone shifts from hopeless to optimistic from Phase Two to Phase Three.  Similarly, the description of nature shifts from a cold and lonely winter to "a thyme scented, bird-hatching morning."  Tess feels a renewed sense of hope as she hears "a pleasant voice in every breeze, and in every bird's note seemed to lurk a joy."  
-As Tess leaves her home for the second time, she is matured by the experience that was forced upon her.  
-p. 103: Nature controls Tess; she cannot help but be affected by nature.  "The irresistible,universal, automatic tendency to find sweet pleasure somewhere..."  Every experience that Tess encounters is capable of changing Tess.   
Tess's journey to the dairy farm marks a new beginning.  Her serene surroundings correspond with her elevated mood and optimism.  Phase Three glorifies nature, which sounds romantic by showing preference to nature over religion.  Hardy is questioning the institution of religion through Tess.  Tess is unsure about God and his wishes and therefore feels a deeper connection to the nature that surrounds her.  

-Hardy also shows a preference for pastoral life because Angel sees it as having independence with intellectual liberty without the "ache of modernism"

-"There are more ladies than lords when you come to peel them."  This could refer to Angel, that he might be not so perfect.  It shows that people put up this nice facade while hiding their true selves from people.

Angel: Because of her experience with Alec D'Uberville, Tess is guarded around men.  But when she meets Angel Clare, she begins to wonder if she should let her guard down around him.  She worries that her past will stand in the way of her future.  Hardy might be trying to say that imperfection makes us human.  His relationship seems coomplicated with Tess because he holds her in such high esteem, like a goddess, but then feels differently about her because of her imperfections.  He still loves her, but he seems delusional in his descriptions and it might be setting him up for a big let down.

-"Fatalism is a strong sentiment" in the country.  Comes back to this idea; why do they accept this idea?

-Imperfect upon the wouls-be-perfect is sweet because it gives off humanity.

At the end of phase three, Hardy starts to describe the change in weather in the summer.  The summer gets hotter as tess and angel grow closer. The cows are going into the shade to cool off and that presents a natural opportunity to bring tess and angel together. Tess goes to milk Little Pretty and angel follows her behind the hedge.  When angel grabs tess in a close embrace, the cow becomes agitated, showing that nature may slightly be against them.

March 24, 2011

Phase Phour:  Discussion leader=Hannah

Tess talks about how she does not want to learn about history because she does not want to know what she will become.  She says that they are the same as the people in the past. 

Angel has taken more of a dominating role and tess has been falling into his trap.  He is deciding what to do and tess is just following.  Angel reflects on his way to his parents house trying to figure out if he actually loves Tess or is he just in love with the chase and how she looks.  He calls her demeter and artemis and is putting her on a pedestal and he is wondering if she will still be perfect as his wife.  He is not sure if he will see her in the same light especially after she tells him about her past.  He isnt sure if when he gets her he is still going to want her. It is ironic how angel is impressed wit tesses maturity but her maturity is a result of her being raped and going through her struggle with alec.  The contrast between alec and angel are so stark between the two of them.  Angle hates the city and does not like the "original" families and alec is obsessed with it.  The thing they do have in common is being infatuated with tess.  Throughout the whole phase the universe is screaming at tess to tell angel about her past.  None of the characters has been able to match tesses strength.  There is a bit of superstition and fate working against her with the crow crowing three times before the wedding happens.  Is the crowing a premonition of the three tragedies?  There is a thumping and struggling coming from angels room on page 210 and tess runs up to see what is going on.  He makes up a completely unbelievable story of fighting in his dream with a man that pursued tess.  She should have gone into the room and confronted him. Angel basically says that anything he cannot do, tess cannot do it either.  He may get mad after she tells him he was raped he may feel that it is a part of him too because they are one in the same.  He is also endearing in a way by basically saying that tess is his charge and he likes her for being independent.  He wants to take care of her.  The two girls are said to be killed at the hands of fate, yet they deliberately killed themselves.  They determined their own fate, they are accepting their fate but also creating it.  The fate is that they fell in love with angel and then killing themselves  was the only option they had left.  We cant imagine that they can be this upset.  They are fatalists and they may feel that they are not meant to be with angel but they could be fated to be with someone else.  They dont hate tess for angel loving her but they hate themselves because they feel it is their fault that angel does not love them.  There is a bit of foreshadowing in phase three when retty says that she would rather die than admit angel does not truely love her. 

Tess sees herself in the D'Urbervilles. She realizes that she is just like them. 

March 28th, 2011

Phase 5:  Discussion ledaer=Liz

-ANGEL IS A FILTHY HYPOCRITE!!!!!  He is the one deciding if their relationship is ended or not, Tess gets no say in it.  Tess is th eone blamed and Angel has no culpability.  "And yet nothing had changed...nothing in the substance of things.  But the essence of things had changed."

-"Beauty to her, as to all who have felt, lay not in the thing, but what the thing symbolized"

-Angel built up such a high expectation of Tess that naturally he would be dissapointed because she is only human.  Critique of the age?

-Tess idolizes Angel.  It is quite ridiculous.  He abandons her and yet she still has full devotion to him; she has lost all self-respect and become subservient to him.  Yet in relation to everyone else she wants to be independent and only get what she deserves from her work.

-"Yet such is the vulpine slyness of Dame Nature".  Continues to show that the world is not a good place and can be cruel and out to get you.  M. Sully-Prudhomme:  "You shall be born"-makes it seem like it is a punishment to be born and brought into this world.

-"Some might risk the odd paradox that with more animalism he would have been the nobler man."  Angel would have been the nobler man to stay with Tess and love her body than to leave because of his spoiled idea of her.  "Corporeal prescence is sometimes less appealing of corporeal absecence."  This is how Angel thinks of Tess:  he loves his vision of her more than her actual self.

-"Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity...sustained her."

-"an arbitrary law of society had no foundation in nature."

March 29th, 2011

Phase 6 and 7:  Discussion leader=Erick

-Hard to believe that Alec has truly converted from his old ways.  He seems like he is a hypocrite.  Tess hit it on the head when she said people like Alec to ther harm to other people and get their pleasure out of it and then convert themselves in order to get salvation for what they've done; it is a shallow and false conversion.  It is an ironic contrast from Alec's past.  "the greater the sinner, the greater the saint."

     -This is an example of that facade of religious purity that permeated Victorian society

-There is more pagan imagery with Alec, describing Tess as a Cyprian image that excites Alec's "altar", and the fact that Angel and Tess rest and are caught at Stonehendge, a pagan altar building(Here Angel and Tess feel safe and at home)

-How can Alec ask Tess not to tempt her?  He's blaming her for causing him to fall into sin.  It's not her fault that she looks the way she does, and how dare Alec for trying to blame her for that.

-Hardy shows more superstition when Tess swears upon the Cross-in-Hands, a thing of ill omen.  Since Tess swore on it, something terrible is about to occur.

-"How can I pray for you when I am forbidden to believe that the great Power who moves the world would later His plans on my account?"  Tess shows a lack of faith in Christitanity/anything supernatural and a blind devotion to whatever Angel tells him.  Her arguments convince Alec to regress to his old ways, showing how superficial his conversion was.

-Angel finally reliazes that he loves Tess for who she is and forgives her, but its ironic that when he comes to this realization that it is too late and Tess has moved on.

-"and yet these harshnesses are tenderness itself when compared with the universal harshness".  Once again Hardy shows a discontent with the world