Tess of the d'Urbervilles

One of Hardy's major classics.  Really upset the critics; even its sub-title, "A Pure Woman", was enough to annoy people.

A small-village part-time carrier, with tendencies to idleness and drink, discovers his ancestors were a well-to-do lot.  John Durbeyfield is the offspring of the d'Urbervilles, who came across with the Conqueror.  The problem is, he's dead poor.  What he does have is a very attractive daughter, Tess.  When John's wife Joan (Austenesque, as an unthinking, idle mother), discovers a family of Stoke-d'Urbervilles  living a way off, she sends Tess off to "claim kin". 

Unfortunately for Tess, the "kin" are in fact midlanders who've taken the name because it sounded good.  And her "cousin", Alex, takes full advantage of Tess's inferior position. 

After running home, and having the baby who (inevitably) dies, Tess goes off to work as a milk-maid where she falls in love with, and marries, the (in?-) appropriately named "Angel".  The wedding fails on the wedding night when Angel finds out about her past, and Tess ends up wandering again to find somewhere to live and something to support her. 

A chance encounter with Alex (who is miraculously now a born-again Christian) and a trip to the seaside set the scene for a really tragic end. 

A couple of themes in Tess: 

The contrast in religious and philosophical attitudes; Tess's unthinking mixture of paganism and Christianity becomes won over to Angel's atheism.  Alex goes from immoral debauchery to extreme evangelicalism - and back again.  Hardy often refers to the paganism of the milkmaids - appropriately, since in Latin "pagus" is literally the people who live in a village.  Angel's dad is an old-fashioned evangelical; Angel's brothers are liberal clergymen. And throughout it all there are the Christian (Old and New Testament) and Classical references.  But Hardy's theme seems always to be that if there is a God, he is an uncaring one. 

The old ways giving way to new ones: "Between the mother, with her fast-perishing lumber of superstitions, folk-lore, dialect, and orally transmitted ballads, and the daughter, with her trained National teachings and Standard knowledge under an infinitely Revised Code, there was a gap of two hundred years as ordinarily understood."  The old ways of living in the country are changing; people moving more often, the pace of harvesting changes as industrial methods are brought in, to the point where, in the threshing scene, it's not the machines serving mankind but the other way round. 

Tess and the Old Testament 

Apparently it is believed that there are 60-70 references to the Old Testament in Tess.  There are quite a lot of references to the New as well.  I only found the following.  Note that some of these references are actually Hardy referring to Shakespeare referring to the Bible.... 

Chapter

"Tess"

Bible

Comments

I

 "how are the mighty fallen"

2 Sam 1:19

David's lament on the deaths of Saul and Jonathon

IV

"Better to drink with Rolliver in a corner of the housetop than with the other landlord in a wide house"

Prov 15:17

"Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."

XI

"the ironical Tishbite"

1 Kings 18

Elijah, asking what the god Baal is up to when he doesn't answer his prophets

XI

"sins of the fathers"

Ex 34:7

"Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear [the guilty]; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth [generation]."

XII

 "the serpent hisses…"

Gen 3

  

XII

"thou shalt not commit - "

Ex 20:14

...adultery

XII

"dust and ashes"

Gen 18:27

"And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which [am but] dust and ashes:"

XIV

"Aholah and Aholibah"

Ezek 23:4

Unfaithful Israel and Judah, portrayed as women

XIV

"Sorrow, I baptize thee…

Gen 3:16

"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire [shall be] to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

XV

"d'Urberville, like Babylon, had fallen"

Rev 14:8 (Dan 4:30)

A New Testament quote, but the Revelation passage is looking back to passages such as in Daniel, where Babylon is the embodiment of godless evil.

XVI

"O ye Sun and Moon"

Psalm 148:3

"Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light."

XVIII

"Angel"

Various

"Angel" in Greek means "messenger". But in the Old Testament, an angel can be God's messenger, or God himself. Which, in a way, is what Angel seems to become to Tess.

XVIII

"strumming upon an old harp"

1 Sam 16

King David played upon a harp. There are references to Angel being like David (or rather, of Tess being like Bathsheba) later in the novel.

XVIII

"the road to dusty death"

Psalm 22:15

"My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death."

XIX

"the man of Uz" - "my soul chooseth strangling…"

Job 1:1, 7:15

Job suffered and let God know about it.

XIX

"Abraham"

Various in Genesis

Abraham ended up with a lot of sheep

XIX

"his spotted and his ring-straked"

Gen 30:32

"I will pass through all thy flock to day, removing from thence all the" speckled and spotted cattle, and all the brown cattle among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats: and [of such] shall be my hire." - Jacob (Abraham's son) when looking after Laban's sheep

XIX

"the Queen of Sheba"

1 Kings 10

Not renowned for being poor - just not as wise as Solomon.

XX

"Adam and Eve"

Genesis 3

  

XXIII

"a time for everything"

Ecclesiastes 3

"A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;"

XXIII

"Three Leahs to get one Rachel"

Gen 29

Jacob served 7 years to marry Rachel; but Laban gave him Leah to marry instead. So he had to serve another 7 years for Rachel.

XXVII

Eve… Adam

Gen 3

  

XXXI

"She walked in brightness, but she knew that in the background those shapes of darkness were always spread"

Isa 59:9

"Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, [but] we walk in darkness."

XXXVI

"The intuitive heart of woman knowethe not only its own bitterness"

Prov 14:10

"The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy."

XXXIX

"Words of King Lemuel…. Who can find a virtuous woman?"

Prov 31

XXXIX

"Like the prophet on the top of Peor"

Num 23:28

Balaam, who was paid to curse Israel but could only bless them.

XXXIX

"No prophet had told him… King Lemuel"

Prov 31

XLI

"All is vanity"

Ecc 1:2

"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all [is] vanity."

XLV

"the old Adam"

Romans, looking back at Gen 3

Yet another New Testament reference, referencing the Old

XLV

"fleshly tabernacle"

2 Peter, Exodus

The NT writers take up the OT concept of "tabernacle" (a non-permanent temple) to apply to their bodies.

XLVI

"… the gins and nets that the wicket may set for them"

Ps 140:5

"The proud have hid a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a net by the wayside; they have set gins for me. "

XLVI

"Angels of Heaven"

NT, looking back at Genesis

"And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it."

XLVI

"I thought I worshipped on the mountains, but I find I still serve in the groves!"

Various - eg 2 Chron 33:3

Groves were the site of pagan worship; the "high places" weren't normally so bad, as the children of Israel normally worshipped God there (albeit in an individualistic way). Best of all was "Mount Zion", the temple in Jerusalem.

XLVI

"Maddening mouth since Eve's"

Gen 3

XLVII

"creature from Tophet"

Jer 7

Within the valley of Hinnon (later "Gehenna"), where the Israelites sacrificed their children to the god Molech by burning them. So by analogy, the dark place.

XLVII

"chaos"

Gen 1

Chaos = the Void, = the sea-monster Rahab

XLVII

"stern prophet Hosea"

Hos 2:7

  

XLVIII

"Jacob's ladder"

Gen 28:12

  

XLVIII

"the punishment you have measured out"

Various, eg Jer 30:11

"For I [am] with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished."

XLIX

"Abraham might have mourned over the doomed Isaac…"

Gen 22:2

When God tested Abraham by telling him to sacrifice his son.

XLIX

"the gleaming of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abi-ezer"

Judges 8:2

L

"paradise"

Gen 3 (Rev 2)

The concept of heaven as a garden; NT looking back at Gen 2-3

L

"everything under the sky"

Ecc 3

"To every [thing there is] a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:"

LI

"Egypt… land of promise"

Genesis/Exodus….. Judges

Jacob and his family went to Egypt; under Moses they left and went to the Promised Land. But the Israelites wanted to go back, suddenly claiming life in Egypt (where they were slaves, and their sons were murdered at birth) was much better than life in the desert.

LII

"the little finger of the sham d'Urberville…"

1 Ki 12:10

"My little [finger] shall be thicker than my father's loins." - Rehoboam taking over when his father Solomon dies.

LII

"Canaan… Egypt"

  

See above

LIII

"children of the soil"

Gen 2

A reference to Adam, who is made from the dust of the earth?

LIII

"wife of Uriah"

2 Sam 11:3

Bathsheba, with whom David slept - he then made sure Uriah got bumped off.

LIV

"how are the mighty fallen"

2 Sam 1:19

The theme of the book, really

LV

"prophet's gourd"

Jonah 4

The gourd grew up and gave Jonah shade, then suddenly died.

LVII

"it came to me like a shining light"

Prov 4:18

Ironic allusion? - "But the path of the just [is] as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day."

LVIII

"did they sacrifice to God here?"

Exodus, and various others.