Those who conclude that Alec was a rapist are probably far less likely to sympathise than a reader who perceives the scene in the Chase as a seduction.
That's the thing, Tara: seducing someone denotes leading them astray, to pull the wool over their eyes; intentionally deceiving them, to purposefully set out to do something that the other party - in normal circumstances - would never think to partake in, and as you’ve quoted she was
temporarily blinded by his ardent manners.
Alec tempts Tess (the Eve, fallen woman of the novel) - he seduces and beguiles a naive child of sixteen to fall for his tricks: he makes her eat a certain fruit, throws around sweet nothings of presents and financial aid: he becomes the spoiler - do you see where this is going with the language I'm using, many of them are Hardy's own, a strong reference to
Paradise Lost and The Fall – Tess is essentially paying for the Original Sin, she pays because of her sex.
She doesn't scream and scratch and try to get away (where would she go anyway, look where he brought her to) like you'd expect -- in her own words, she
succumbed to him against her will, and as you've quoted
had been stirred to confused surrender awhile --- it's rape.
Tess, throughout the novel encapsulates a type of fatalism where she knows her time in this world is coming to an inevitable end, and as a result, she's passive: she almost feels no pain, hurt or misery. She knows that like a changing and disappearing Wessex she'll not be here much longer. She
is Wessex, she is at one with the flora and fauna, her heathen nature prompts her to tell Angel that
I do know that our souls can be made to go outside our bodies when we are alive. Please read the following few lines and paragraphs in the book and tell me that the rape scene isn’t played back in your mind.
Tess hates herself for everything - she blames herself for events and incidents that she had no control over and certainly had no right to be burdened with. She is consistent in this regard, so I'm somewhat bemused by oft repeated lines like:
an odd reaction if it were a rape
The only oddity - when you take into account that Tess isn’t just everyone – is that Hardy’s different phases/chapter names symbolise her change in attitude, outlook, misfortune and fortitude and the latter is certainly a curious paradox when you take heed of her fatalism. The narrative is sprinkled with instances where someone or the narrator himself states that she isn’t the person she once was. She is constantly metamorphosing.
she would hate Alec the abuser rather than herself for something beyond her control?
She learns to stand up to this cad towards the end, but events - again - spiral out of her (what little she has) control, and as a consequence somehow fate deems it necessary for him to hound and buy her.
And she does try to hate him, but she hates herself much more for her
weakness and her
succumbing to his
tricks. More of this in this thread:
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1186342/board/thread/117832192?d=117847337& amp; amp;p=1#117847337
We never hear an explicit interpretation from Tess's point of view of what really happened
We don’t need to, it’s clear in my eyes from what little titbits Hardy offers us that it was rape. Hardy’s use of language - not only in the narrative, but the language and tone used by his characters in certain passages - strongly hint at an act of violation.
Take this as an example: Angel (who cannot hold his emotions in any longer, gives in to Tess’s beauty and aura), springs up and darts over to an oblivious Tess; he clasps her in an embrace, she becomes lifeless and so
yielded to the
inevitable, and as soon as she realises it’s only Angel, then she becomes herself again – there are several instances where she flinches at touches such as this.
And if you’re not satisfied, then read the passage just before and after Tess stabs Alec: she erupts with furious anger and an outpouring of what she should have said to him all along.
Alec genuinely repents of his actions; he may never be a good man, but is capable at least of wishing to be one. Angel's flaws come from hypocrisy. Alec's actions are selfishly motivated - but he possesses the self awareness to acknowledge his shortcomings, as opposed to Angel whose protestations of modern enlightment belie his mysogonistic and patriarchal mindset. Both men treated her appallingly, but Angel's treatment of Tess was particularly brutal in that he failed to recognise Tess's confession in showing her to be as pure and honest as the author insists.
Apart from the obvious acts of cowardice and hypocrisy by both men, I completely – politely, of course – disagree with this.
Alec perhaps is ‘capable of wishing’ to be a good man, but he can never become one: he WILL revert to type and does so, as illustrated by his short tenure as a man of God. He doesn’t possess any capabilities to acknowledge his shortcomings, he lies constantly; the only thing he craves to possess is Tess herself, and he loses composure at one stage and we see the snake reappear – he hisses forth that he mastered her once, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t again. He does this all the while with a firm grip around her and shakes her violently; oh and and the following line about the threshers? Well, I'll leave you to figure that one out.
Alec, to further illustrate the role of the serpent, refers to himself as
the Old Other One and to Tess as
Eve.
Izz, Marian and Retty manage to see him for what he is and warn both Angel and Tess of this (paraphrase)
bad man.
Angel (let’s get this straight, I don’t particularly care for him either, but I only bear him due to the fact that Tess really, truly does love him) – he goes to Brazil, wastes away almost to the point of death, he realises the folly of his ways and that he has made a grave mistake – he is urged on by Izz that Tess loves him utterly – Angel realises that what Tess has endured doesn’t really matter after all ---- but, oh so tragically, as Tess cries out to him near the end it's
Too late, too late! Will Angel revert to type? I don't think so, as his transformation is consistent in its change (mentally as well as physically - he's almost a different man), unlike Alec's where it clearly fluctuates. Angel knows that he made a serious error, his chance at atoning will come.
The line when she lies asleep at Stonehenge when the approaching policemen come to take her away, he implores them to let her sleep her last on this earth peacefully, is so very potent.
Tess still loves him, confides in him and makes him promise to take to Liza-Lu. After all the *beep* he put her through I highly doubt he'd would do it again.
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