Introduction
The Victorian age is at once identified generally as a time of nostalgic perfection and rigid oppression. It is the age of change and social advances as well as the age of the strict social structure and a severe regard for the customs of the past. Under the reign of Queen Victoria, the Industrial Revolution came of age, blossomed, and brought sweeping change across the country and the world. Life switched from being primarily dictated by the land one owned to a social structure based on commerce and manufacturing. In this switch, there was a great deal of dissatisfaction with the teachings of the church and a general concern about whether people shouldn’t return to the pagan or nature-based traditions of the past. Thomas Hardy seems to be supporting a return to pagan concepts in his use of events and omens to predict the progress of Tess’ life in his novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
Main body
When Tess is first introduced within the novel, she is participating in a May Day Celebration. Hardy indicates “The forests have departed, but some old customs of their shades remain” (Ch. 2) of which this celebration is one. To help emphasize this point, Hardy also includes mention of the symbolic accessories that make up the celebration: “In addition to the distinction of a white frock, every woman and girl carried in her right hand a peeled willow wand, and in her left, a bunch of white flowers” (Ch. 2). The celebration is comprised of a dance in which the young women from the inner circle and in which only women participate. This moving circle of girls and women, with Tess, singled out by her red ribbon, is not only a celebration of spring and the renewal of the cycles but represents the beginning of Tess’ cycle of life as she finally joins in the dance. It is significant that it is at this point that Tess’ father finds out that he is distantly related to a very old and noble family, through a character known as Pagan d’Urberville. This ancient connection, to both family and religion, is incompatible with the Christian morals and ideals of Tess’s modernizing world. “Tess herself realizes the incongruousness of the distant past in relation to her own present as she scorns her ancestors and ‘the dance they had led her’ (Chap. 16)” (Rogers, 1996).
From the May Day Dance and the discovery of her relationship to Pagan d’Urberville, Tess moves on to see if Mrs. d’Urberville, who is believed to be a wealthy relation, might help Tess find a better position in the world and thus help her family. The lady in question lived in a modern house on the outskirts of The Chase, which is described as “a truly venerable tract of forest land, one of the few remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primeval date, wherein Druidical mistletoe was still found on aged oaks, and where enormous yew-trees, not planted by the hand of man grew as they had grown when they were pollarded for bows” (Ch. 5). It is within this setting that Alec d’Urberville. Encircled by a dark expanse of shadowy trees, he takes advantage of Tess’s innocence and robs her of it. “The one particularly exigent connection between man and nature is that of sexuality. Like other natural forces, the sexual impulse is essentially amoral; it influences human destiny without regard for human notions of appropriateness” (Bonica, 1982: 859). While this event will shape the rest of Tess’ life, a natural interpretation of the event does not hold Alec as evil or Tess as impure.
However, despite Tess’ continued determination to move beyond her past, her past continues to haunt her and she finds herself lying down in exhaustion at one of the most ancient and pagan landmarks known to man – Stonehenge. Like the life-changing event that occurs within the darkness of the ancient wood, Tess seems to sense the change coming as she and Angel approach Stonehenge after she’s killed, Alec:
‘What monstrous place is this?’ said Angel.
‘It hums,’ said she. ‘Hearken!’
He listened. The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp. (Ch. 58).
Ralph Harrington (2005) points out that this single note, the one-stringed harp, is itself a signal of warning to the pagan concepts of Tess as a sign that there are few options left to her now as compared to the many notes and possibilities she had found when she had first found Angel playing his harp. This dark circle of stones, themselves devoid of the life energy represented by trees, emphasizes the direction that one option would lead Tess. Exhausted, she flings herself down on the one supine stone she finds near her. Finding it warm and inviting compared to the cold of the grass and field and sheltered from the cold wind by an upright pillar, she finds a tremendous peace and drifts into a restful sleep. “The stone upon which Tess rests is an altar, but also prefigures a grave, with all the ominous associations of a final resting place, ‘so solemn and lonely’” (Harrington, 2005). Anyone familiar with this ancient landmark quickly realizes which stone Tess must be resting upon, the stone that is widely believed to have served as an altar, thus transforming Tess into a heroine through her willing acceptance of fate rather than continuing as a fugitive.
As these events have revealed, Hardy substantiated many of the old beliefs within the pagan culture by allowing them to unfold as would have been predicted through the appearance of omens. One example of this is seen at Tess’s wedding when a rooster crows three times in the afternoon. Not only is this against the natural order of things, roosters are supposed to crow in the mornings, and thus a bad sign, but it also blends pagan tradition with Christian ideology in being the signal of Jesus’ betrayal. Another symbol of the pagan ilk relating to Tess’ marriage is the mistletoe that Angel brings in and hangs over the marriage bed. According to Harrington (2005), the mistletoe has long been a symbol of fertility and romance, neither of which will be found within this marriage. Angel’s final act of crushing the dried and shriveled sprig in the fire grate is symbolic of his crushing the life out of their marriage as well as any chances for Tess to survive. Finally, the Cross-in-Hand monolith that Alec forces Tess to take an oath upon because he felt sure it was an old broken-down cross turns out to be a ‘thing of ill omen’. According to an old shepherd that Tess encounters: “It was put up in wuld times by the relations of a malefactor who was tortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung. The bones lie underneath. They say he sold his soul to the devil, and that he walks at times” (Ch. 45). As Harrington (2005) points out, the monolith here shares several characteristics with Stonehenge in that it is not from a local quarry and it has a shape carved into it. While the shapes in Stonehenge appear to be a dagger or a sword, the shape here is in the shape of a hand. However, Tess’ connection with this stone symbolizes her near fate, to die by hanging, a fate she recognizes. “She felt the petit mort at this unexpectedly gruesome information, and left the solitary man behind her” (Ch. 45).
Conclusion
Throughout the story, Hardy seems to be indicating that one should return to the old pagan beliefs of the land as they can provide significant wisdom. This is done through the progression of events, in which Tess moves from light to darkness through dancing and moving circles of young girls to stationary circles of ancient life to immovable circles of lifeless stone. It is also demonstrated through the inclusion of omens that accurately predict what is to come, such as the afternoon crowing of the cock forecasting the barrenness and destruction of the marriage. However, the fact that Tess, the character most closely associated with the pagan traditions as a near embodiment of Nature herself, is destroyed at every turn hints that there may be a deeper message in what Hardy was trying to communicate.
Works Cited
- Bonica, Charlotte. “Nature and Paganism in Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.” ELH. Vol. 49, N. 4, (1982).
- Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 2005.
- Harrington, Ralph. “The Shadow of Stonehenge: Paganism, Fate and Redemption in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.” GreyCat.org. (2005). Web.
- Rogers, Sharon. “The Medievalist Impulse of Thomas Hardy.” Cross Connect. University of Pennsylvania, 1996.