PHASE THE THIRD: THE RALLY
NATURE AND THE FROOM VALLEY
"The Rally" is the next stage in Tess's development [rally: a
renewal or recovery of strength, activity, health, etc.]. Just as, in
the world of plants and lower animals, life renews itself in the
spring, so life is renewing in Tess. As Tess journeys to the Froom
Valley, she "felt akin to the landscape" (page 102). Though she may
feel cut off from society and the community at Marlott, she is still a
part of nature and subject to its laws, including the renewal of life.
Thus, Tess still has a chance for survival and fulfillment, in nature.
D.H. Lawrence ascribes the wonder and beauty of Hardy's
novels to his view of nature and the superiority of its laws to
society's laws:
The vast, unexplored morality of life itself,
what we call the immorality of nature, surrounds us in its eternal
incomprehensibility.... And this is the quality Hardy shares with the
great writers, Shakespeare or Sophocles or Tolstoi, this setting behind
the small action of his protagonists the terrific action of unfathomed
nature; setting a smaller system of morality, the one grasped and
formulated by the human consciousness within the vast, uncomprehended
and incomprehensible morality of nature or of life itself, surpassing
human consciousness.
THE FROOM VALLEY
The twenty year old Tess journeys again, this time to the lush Froom
Valley, where nature fulfills itself on a large scale. It is known as
the Vale of the Great Dairies, in comparison to Tess's home, the
fertile Vale of Blackmore, which is known as the Vale of Little
Dairies. As she walks, she is mastered by "The irresistible, universal,
automatic tendency to find sweet pleasure somewhere, which pervades all
life" (page 103). This tendency, which Hardy also calls the appetite to
joy, fills Tess with "vitality" (another word for sexuality?), which
she represses (page 126). The appetite for joy is a mechanism nature
uses for reproduction.
Nature's fulfillment becomes so intense that it even
becomes painful; the udders of the cows are so full of milk that the
veins stand out and they leak.
THE SEXUAL DRIVE AND THE THREE MILKMAIDS
 The intensity of
nature's push to regeneration or reproduction sweeps every living being
along. It is an imperative force which drives Izz Huett to kiss the
mouth of Angel Clare's shadow. Its mercilessly grip torments Izz,
Retty, and Marion one hot summer night:
The
air of the sleeping-chamber seemed to palpitate with the hopeless
passion of the girls. They writhed feverishly under the oppressiveness
of an emotion thrust on them by cruel Nature's law–an emotion which
they had neither expected nor desired. The incident of the day had
fanned the flame that was burning the inside of their hearts out, and
the torture was almost more than they could endure. The differences
which distinguished them as individuals were abstracted by this
passion, and each was but portion of one organism called sex. (page
147)
Though they may find Angel personally attractive and romantic, they are
driven in this passage by an impersonal sexual drive. Angel is the
object of their passion because of the urgency of a physical sexual
drive; because they are overwhelmed by the same sexual passion, Hardy
says they are part "of one organism called sex." Hardy's view of nature
encompasses its joys and its hardships; he lyrically describes nature's
joy and fruition and also depicts nature's harshness and inexorability;
the three maids in their passion experience both these aspects of
nature, which is "ecstasizing them to a killing joy" (page 147).
THE SEXUAL DRIVE, TESS, AND ANGEL
Because Tess and Angel are subject to nature's drive to joy and
fulfillment, they are swept away by biological forces in their
courtship, "converging, under an irresistible law, as surely as two
streams in one vale" (page 129).
The expression of that drive takes different forms in Tess and Angel.
Hearing Angel play the harp, Tess is drawn through a weed-overgrown
garden "rank with juicy grass, which sent up mists of pollen at a
touch, and with tall, blooming weeds emitting offensive smells–weeds
whose red and yellow and purple hues formed a polychrome as dazzling as
those of cultivated flowers" (page 123). Cuckoo-spittle stains her
skirt, she steps on snails, and thistle-milk and slug-slime rub on her
arms. These vivid, specific details are an excellent example of Hardy's
ability to make us see the scene or person he is describing; because of
their physicality, I have always thought an artist could use them to
create a painting. With these details, Hardy realistically paints
nature's variety, its simultaneous ugliness and beauty, repulsiveness
and attracting force. They also show Tess's integration into nature; at
this point she is not separated from nature by society's morality or by
Angel's intellect or thinking.
The sensuality and sexuality of fulfillment in late
summer are overwhelming and even painful; it is then that sexual desire
masters Angel. Notice, in the first paragraph, the intensity of
ripeness so full it seems about to burst . Sexuality is implicit in
words like "rush of juices," "fertilization," and "impregnated." Is
there a sense of orgasm in the first paragraph and the release after
orgasm in the second paragraph?
Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of
the Froom Vale, at a season when the rush of juices could almost be
heard below the hiss of fertilization, it was impossible that the most
fanciful love should not grow passionate. The ready bosoms existing
there were impregnated by their surroundings.
July passed over their heads,
and the Thermidorian weather which came in its wake seemed an effort on
the part of Nature to match the state of hearts at Talbothays Dairy.
The air of the place, so fresh in the spring and early summer, was
stagnant and enervating now. Its heavy scents weighed upon them, and at
mid-day the landscape seemed lying in a swoon. Ethiopic scorchings
browned the upper slopes of the pastures, but there was still
bright-green herbage here where the watercourses purled. And as Clare
was oppressed by the outward heats, so was he burdened inwardly by
waxing fervour of passion for the soft and silent Tess. (pages 148-9)
In the second paragraph the parallel between high temperatures and the
heat that sexual desire produces is obvious. What does a phrase like
"Ethiopic scorchings" suggest about Angel's feelings? Why is he
"burdened" by his growing passion for Tess? Does the reference
to"fanciful love" clash, however mildly, with the rest of the
paragraph? A fanciful love originates in the imagination or is
nourished in the mind, not in nature. The expression of this is
indirect; Hardy does not simply, explicitly say, "The most fanciful
love grew
passionate." Is it appropriate that a somewhat convoluted or complex
sentence describes a love generated in the mind? Does the use of two
negatives, "impossible" and "not," suggest some resistence to the
natural drive, which must overcome fanciful love by force? Is Angel's
love "fanciful," at least to some extent?
NATURE AND THE WORKERS AT TRANTRIDGE
The positive or wholesome effect nature may have on those who work on
the soil and are still connected to nature can be seen in the farm
laborers at Trantridge. Though they are a rougher, harder drinking
group than the folk at Marlott and the workers at Talbothays Dairy,
they retain their connection to nature. At the dance, their harmony
with nature allows them to be swept up by natural sexual force. They
become "a sort of vegeto-human pollen" (page 61), part of the
generative movement that sweeps through nature and connects all life,
plants and animals, human and non-human alike. Uninhibited by false
social laws, they are carried along by the sexual urge; they repeatedly
change partners until they are "suitably matched" (page 62). In this
they contrast with Marion, Izz, and Retty, who are fully aware of the
social differences that separate them from Angel. The dance passage
uses the
image of pollen to express natural or uninhibited human sexuality. The
pollen metaphor recurs in the courtship of Tess and Angel; as Tess
listens to his harp, "the floating pollen seemed to be his notes made
visible" (page 123).
Drunk as the Trantridge workers are on their way home,
they each perceive a halo of light around themselves, the effect of the
moonlight. Their
erratic motions seemed an inherent part of the
irradiation and the fumes of their breathing a component of the night's
mist; and the spirit of the scene, and of the moonlight, and of Nature
seemed harmoniously to mingle with the spirit of wine. (page 67)
Their integration into nature could hardly be stated more directly nor
more lyrically. Hardy comments that drunkenness could "scarce injure
permanently" these "children of the open air" (page 67).
DISCUSSION OF TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES
|
