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

all the newest evolutionary creeds, as well as the determinist
philosophies of his times. You'll see all these influences in Tess.

Hardy was always a shy, reclusive individual who loved the solitary,
nature-filled life of the Dorset countryside. He never felt at home
in cities. He became seriously ill and depressed during both his
extended stays in London. Even as a boy he was fascinated by the
grotesque, which figures largely in the ancient forests and
d'Urberville crypts of Tess. He observed two hangings in his
childhood. He viewed one hanging avidly from the top of a hill with
a telescope. This hanging is memorialized in Tess.

Roman and Druidic ruins were all around Hardy in Dorset, and their
rough majesty and wild paganism sent his vivid imagination soaring,
as we'll see in the Stonehenge sequence of Tess. Primitive edifices
turn up throughout Tess, forcing us to see Hardy's characters within
an historic and universal framework. Hardy took great pride in
restoring old churches, in which 500 years of varying architectural
styles might be present in one building. His work on such churches
may have taught him how to combine and intermix several eras in his
literary works. Throughout Tess, history ties everything together.
The characters are forever floating back and forth between daily
humdrum existence and noble pasts.

Hardy's job as an architect entailed meeting many colorful local folk
who spoke the rich and rough Dorset dialect. Hardy uses this dialect
in Tess to represent the common folk and lend a special, lyrical
rhythm to the novel. Tess herself, like Thomas Hardy, spoke the
dialect as well as the Standard English that was just beginning to be
taught in the schools. Like Angel, Hardy was emotionally tied to
rural England, but was too well educated to feel he completely
belonged there.

Everyone, after reading Tess, has to wonder if there was a real-life
model for its fascinating heroine. No one knows for sure, but there
is some well-founded conjecture that Tess is based on Hardy's
beautiful, mysterious cousin, Tryphenia Sparks. Hardy may have once
been in love with Tryphenia, who died just months before Hardy began
writing Tess. After her death, Hardy wrote impassioned poems to her
on the theme that "absence makes the heart grow fonder." Angel Clare
expresses similar sentiments in Tess.

In 1872 while Hardy was still wavering between careers in
architecture and writing, he met and married Emma Gifford, a woman
from a higher social class than his own. He'd recently published his
first novel, after years of rejection, and would soon write his
now-famous Far from the Madding Crowd (1874). The Mayor of
Casterbridge was published in 1886, followed by several less
ambitious works. In 1891 he published Tess of the D'Urbervilles and,
in 1895, his last novel, Jude the Obscure. After the notoriety of