"Cliff Notes - Tess of the D'urbervilles" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

THOMAS HARDY: THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES

Some writers draw little from their birthplace. For Thomas Hardy,
however, the Dorset region of England (known in his novels as Wessex)
where he was born, raised, and lived nearly all his life, was the
vital wellspring and setting of most of his novels. Born in 1840, he
spent his childhood in a fertile rural region, full of old folk
superstitions, ballads, and fatalistic beliefs. At the same time,
modern industrial life was creeping into Dorset and its old-style
agrarianism (farming life) was fast fading. In many ways, Thomas
Hardy lived between the old world and the new, trying to fashion a
truce between the two in his fictional creations.

The Victorian Age in which Hardy lived was alive with contradictions
and conflicts. While people were supposed to live in accordance with
the Bible and its ethics, they all too often took the sacred words in
a harsh, literal sense rather than with a spirit of mercy and
compassion. At the same time many of these social and religious
dogmas did more to keep the poor serving the new wealthy middle
classes than to promote the good of humanity. We'll see how unjustly
Tess is treated by a society that obeys the letter rather than the
spirit of the law. We'll also see in Hardy's novel how money and
power can cause people to compromise human dignity and liberty.

Like the fictional d'Urbervilles, Hardy's family had been prominent
in the past, with a number of philanthropists, famous generals, and
barons. But by the time Tommy, as his parents called him, was born,
his family, like Tess', had lost its wealth, power, and prominence.
Hardy's father, a mason and house-builder, was a craftsman. His
mother's family members, once part of the landed gentry, were now
poor servants.)

From his mother, Hardy inherited a fascination for old, extinct
families, a love of classical books, and a certain plainfolk fatalism
in which "what will be, will be." His father was a boisterous man who
loved playing the fiddle with Tommy at church affairs and local folk
festivities, like the ones we'll see in Tess. Hardy's love for music
is obvious in the melodic, ballad-like quality of his finest works.
The story of Tess is very much like the oldtime ballads Hardy heard
as a Dorset boy. These traditional songs abound with fair young
maids murdering their seducers and star-crossed lovers lying
dead--but still embracing--under greenwood trees.

The Hardys were avid churchgoers, and the Bible was probably Tommy's
first reader. You'll notice when you read Tess that Hardy quotes the
Bible extensively. Like Angel Clare, a major character in Tess,
Hardy was originally bound for the clergy, but his family's economic
needs, as well as his own religious doubts, caused him to become an
architect instead. He loved Shakespeare and followed with interest