Written in 1866, The Ruined Maid had been written rather early into Hardy’s writing career, creating an insinuation to modern readers of his advanced views on women as he forces his contemporary readers to reconsider conventional values regarding female chastity.
This had also been written 10 years after Hardy witnessed the hanging of Martha Brown, who had been executed outside Dorchester Prison after being convicted of the murder of her second husband, who Brown had caught committing adultery. With Hardy’s subsequent recount of this harrowing occurrence 70 years later, it is evident that there had been a lingering and perennial awareness of this beautiful woman and her unfortunate end. One could therefore say that The Ruined Maid, and Tess are differing interpretations and criticisms of Victorian perspectives towards women – yet Hardy ultimately forces his readers to reconsider such conventional values, revealing the hypocrisy of a society that allowed its men this sexual freedom it shamed and condemned in women.
‘O ’Melia, my dear, this does everything crown! / Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?
And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?’ – / ‘O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?’ said she.
The maid, whom Hardy names ‘Melia, represents an unconventional, seemingly unabashed “Ruined Maid” as the title suggests; a morally ruined, a prostitute/kept woman. Here, Hardy illustrates two alternatives for a working class country girl: the ‘virtuous’ life of destitution wherein absolute poverty imposes an animalistic existence (“hands were like paws then”), or a financially and materialistically comfortable life as a prostitute that is condemned and rejected by society.
In Tess, the protagonist is herein ostracised by society, her illegitimate child, Sorrow, therefore prevented from being baptised or buried in a Christian churchyard. Tess is also ultimately rejected by Angel Clare, her past, despite the circumstances, completely ruining his perceived image of her.
The conception of tragedy in Tess of the d’Urbervilles rests on an assumption of inevitability. Customary morality and religious ethics of Victoria era constituted the most important factor that determines this tragedy; a victim of her time, Tess is a modern woman persecuted by ageing morals – in the world’s eyes, “she is a sinner, a fallen woman, the mistress of a dependent by other, and finally is a murderer.” (Zhang, 1986)
A significant factor that develops this tragedy is Tess’ hamartia, her tragic flaw despite her inherent purity being that she is complicit to her own misfortune due to her sense of duty and responsibility, her self-sacrificing nature along with the sense of the inevitable of the tragedy force the readers to feel utmost pathos. Tess’ desire and feelings of responsibility toward her family propels her to visiting the D’Urbervilles, initiating her unceasing suffering. Tess’s personality also has contradictory qualities of pride and independence of spirit, as well as a passivity and submissiveness towards other people and her fate, this fact accelerating her tragic end. Tess therefore represents the culmination of Hardy’s perceived image of a troubled, beautiful woman, who had been forced an unfortunate life as a result of the unkind society she lived in.
Aristotle’s dramatic theory illustrated this notion of fate and destiny as the catalysts to such tragic events, this inevitability of suffering an inescapable force for humans.
In Othello, Shakespeare examines the “enormous pressures operating within society to ‘prove love a whore.’” As a play, Othello encompasses many things however, one could ultimately state that it is a study of one’s loss of faith in, and rejection of the Female – in Othello’s case, Othello’s wife Desdemona, and in Tess, Angel Clare’s feelings towards Tess.
Convinced of his wife’s corruption, Othello makes a sacred oath never to change his mind about her or to soften his feelings toward her until he enacts a violent revenge. At this point, Othello is fixed in his course, and the unfortunate ending of the play is inescapable. Othello’s accusatory behavior, tinged with bitterness, foreshadows Othello’s violent rage at the end of the play. Both Shakespeare and Hardy signaled in their works the mind’s telling loss of power, showing in their male characters, Angel and Othello, how they came to hate the women they loved when they were no longer certain they knew them. The point which Shakespeare endeavors to make, that is, that the hero’s loss of faith in the Female coincides with the beginning of unhappiness in his life is best depicted in the following lines:
“Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul,
But I do love thee, and when I love thee not,
Chaos is come again.”
Tess furthermore shows parallels to Othello as a domestic tragedy due to its focus on filial and marital conflict, the issues seemingly relatable to the contemporary reader, the visible disintegration of the relationships in both texts creating another element of tragedy.
In 1929, Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, had been found reading Tess. It was here that he credited Hardy of his “intuitive” understanding of psychoanalysis (Oberndorf, 1953). Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality argues that human behavior is the result of the interactions among three component parts of the mind: the id, ego, and superego. This “structural theory” of personality suggests great significance in the past conflicts, mainly unconscious, among the parts of the mind shape behavior and personality.
Tess of the D’urbervilles incorporates this theory unknowingly, with the severity of Tess’s conscience evident in her excessive guilt over the unintended consequences of her actions: Tess regards herself “in the light of a murderess” for causing the death of the family’s horse. Similarly, after ending her liaison with Alec, Tess regards herself as “a figure of Guilt intruding into the haunts of Innocence“, although Alec had set a “trap” for her. Tess’s guilt over her transgression continues to plague her throughout the book, as she continually attempts to dissuade herself from securing Angel’s affection, because she “could never conscientiously allow any man to marry her now“.
Due to the fact that Tess’s sense of guilt remains, relentlessly plaguing her actions and thoughts—whatever the extent of her culpability—one could suggest that it emanates from a masochistic ego (the rational, pragmatic part of our personality, it balances the demands of the id and superego in the practical context of reality) as opposed to a sadistic superego (concerned with social rules and morals—similar to what many people call their ”conscience”). Nevertheless, evidence that Tess is impelled by a waxing unconscious need for punishment is wanting until her marriage to Angel, after which she seeks from others punishment for specific acts.
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