Extracts from the SoW for Tess

1. Year 12
Paper 2 – Section B
Comparative Prose
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
(1891)
AQA English Literature A

2. Thomas Hardy
1840-1928
Novelist and poet
Hardy was a Victorian realist, influenced by the Romantics
and highly critical of what he considered to be a declining
society. He was particularly focused on rural society and
his novels explore tragic characters struggling against their
social circumstances and passions.
Hardy was born in Dorset. His father was a stonemason;
his mother was well-read and educated him until he went
to school from the ages of 8-16. He could not afford a
university education so trained as an architect. He moved
to London but felt socially inferior and acutely aware of
class divisions. He became interested in social reform,
including the plight of women in an unequal society. He
was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
His first wife’s death affected him greatly and, although he
remarried, he wrote poetry to cope with her death. When
Hardy died he stated he wished to be buried with his first
wife however the executor of his will insisted he be buried
at Poet’s Corner. A compromise was reached – his heart
was buried with his wife; his ashes in Westminster Abbey.

3. Prostitution in Hardy’s England
Victorian England may seem very strict and moral on the surface but
drug taking, violent crime, prostitution, adultery and pornography all
went on, only hidden under a more genteel surface.
It was usually accepted or even expected that men had sex outside
marriage but women who did this were called ‘fallen women’ and
considered ‘ruined’. They were often shunned by polite society,
banished from their families, or left without support, money or
connections.
Opportunities, rights and support for women were so limited that many
poor women felt they had no option but to turn to prostitution to make
enough money to live. However, there wasn’t usually much sympathy
or understanding for their circumstances. Prostitution was seen as a big
problem, not only as a nuisance in society, but as a threat to morality.
Although prostitution was not spoken about in polite society,
prostitutes and adulterous and otherwise ‘fallen’ women were popular
subjects for Victorian art and literature. This sort of art and literature
often conveyed a message or lesson which aimed to reinforce Victorian
values and warn against sexual temptation.

4. Historical Background
Hardy centres Tess in and around Dorset, an agricultural region which, by the time that
Hardy was writing, had already undergone considerable economic and social change. There
was no longer a ‘peasantry', but a society structured by class relations and social mobility.
The rural economy was dependent upon urban markets - Dorset, which was a pastoral
county, did especially well out of this - and by the 1890s had just been through a long-term
depression brought about by shifts in the global economy. As a result of this depression,
employment had declined drastically and wages had fallen, especially in the south and east
of England where arable farming predominated. Gross output fell even In Dorset, despite
its specialisation in dairy production, and some tenant farmers in Dorset refused to bind
themselves to anything longer than a one year lease. Thousands had left the countryside in
search of work, and a series of education acts passed from the 1870s onwards added to the
process of depopulation. There were eighteen thousand agricultural labourers in Dorset in
1871 and only twelve and a half thousand by 1891. The Dorset agricultural labourer lived,
generally, in appalling conditions, some of the worst, in fact, in the country, while class
relations were among the most embittered of the time.

6. BILDUNGSROMAN
In 5 bullet points, outline how Harry Potter conforms to the stereotypical
conventions of a bildungsroman.
Tradition of the BILDUNGSROMAN – a novel dealing with the education,
maturity and development of a young protagonist (implicitly male).

7. BILDUNGSROMAN
Is Hardy saying that this Victorian realism of the bildungsroman is impossible
for a female protagonist?
Tradition of the BILDUNGSROMAN – a novel dealing with the education,
maturity and development of a young protagonist (implicitly male).

8. Genre
Given the stress on fate, coupled with the biological and sociological
pressures that are placed on the characters, the novel might be
categorised as NATURALIST. Naturalism expresses a post-Darwinian view
of life in which human beings are seen as fundamentally no more than
specialised animals, subject to natural forces such as genetics and
environment. Naturalists see the novel as a kind of experiment and claim
a degree of scientific accuracy for their work. Typical subject matter is
the miserable and poverty-stricken, or those driven by animal appetites
such as hunger or sexuality. Life is seen as a squalid and meaningless
tragedy.
However, this is unworkable given the poetic descriptions, mythical and
philosophical elements that are also found within Tess. Neither is Tess a
realist novel. Realists aimed to present ‘things as they are’ and in the
nineteenth century most realist novels consisted of a detailed
representation of life and depiction of human nature as it really is.
'Realism', Hardy said, 'is not art'. Though the novel is easily paraphrased,
is sometimes expository (descriptive), and though most of its
foreshadowed discoveries and turning points are tied up by the end it
does not have the happy ending of a Victorian realist text; Instead 'Liza-
Lu steps in to take Tess's place by Clare's side as Tess herself is hanged.
Tess is about isolation and separation, the condition of modernity.
Hardy's 'realism' simply becomes a way to chart Tess's FEMALE
BILDUNGSROMAN: her joy, stoicism and humiliation.

9. John Ruskin – Of Queen’s Gardens
Manchester Lecture (1865)
GREEN TASK: Summarise Ruskin’s attitudes
towards men and women in the essay. How does
he categorise each gender and their stereotypes?
BLUE TASK: Compare Ruskin’s representation of
gender to Hardy’s in the novel. How does Ruskin’s
writing help to inform our understanding of the
protagonists?
PINK TASK: Argue why society can be seen as
‘unjust’ to nineteenth century women? What is
Hardy trying to communicate about the role of
women?
HOW CAN YOU LINK THIS TO HARDY’S ATTITUDES
IN ‘THE RUINED MAID’?

10. ‘NOVELS OF
CHARACTER
AND
ENVIRONMENT’

11. GREEN TASK: Using this description
of the setting, explain why you think
Hardy romanticises nature.
BLUE TASK: Can you link these
natural references to the genre of
the text? Think REALISM and
VERISIMILITUDE.
Pink Task: How does nature reflect the female role? Be prepared to
argue your ideas.
“the sun blazes down
upon fields so large as to
give an unenclosed
character to the
landscape, the lanes are
white, the hedges low and
plashed, the atmosphere
colourless.”

12. Hardy’s Use of the Natural World
His novels are set within the semi-fictitious landscape of 'Wessex'. The reader
can easily identify the scenery and towns described in the narrative located
within the southwest of England, which incorporates Dorset and the surrounding
counties. The specific sense of place detailed in Hardy's fiction is very important
as it provides a realistic, rural backdrop against which his many characters live
out their lives and struggle against their circumstances.
In Hardy's fiction, the natural world is often described in great detail, rendering it
more significant than a mere setting against which the narrative unfolds. Hardy
establishes a reciprocal relationship between environment and character; an
interaction which serves to demonstrate the changing position of humans in the
post-Darwinian Victorian period. Hardy's narrative voice depicts the natural
world in the same way the appearance of different individuals are described, and
vice versa. This technique removes the sense of authority from human hands,
placing humans within the natural world rather than ruling above it.

13. Hardy, Paganism (Christian term for religions other than their own)
and Nature
In an essay detailing Hardy’s use of paganism
in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Charlotte Bonica
says that part of the reason for Hardy's
incorporation of these pagan elements is
because he believes that there is an “innate
and inescapable human need to make sense
of the universe in humanly understandable
terms” (Bonica 849). Hardy uses nature and
the ideas of paganism as a source of finding
life's meaning. Bonica sees this combination
of nature and paganism as an alternative
belief system. She says “At the heart of the
country people’s paganism is the tendency to
see congruence between two events and
situations in their own lives, and phenomena
in the natural world”

14. CHARACTER
AND
QUOTATION
QUEST

15. “Poor darlings—to suppose
myself the most miserable
being on earth in the sight
o’ such misery as yours!”
she exclaimed, her tears
running down as she killed
the birds tenderly.

16. “Don’t you really know, Durbeyfield, that you are the lineal
representative of the ancient and knightly family of the
d’Urbervilles, who derive their descent from Sir Pagan
d’Urberville, that renowned knight who came from
Normandy with William the Conqueror, as appears by
Battle Abbey Roll?” “Never heard it before, sir!”

17. Clare came close, and bent over her. “Dead, dead, dead!” he
murmured. After fixedly regarding her for some moments with the
same gaze of unmeasurable woe he bent lower, enclosed her in his
arms, and rolled her in the sheet as in a shroud. Then lifting her from
the bed with as much respect as one would show to a dead body, he
carried her across the room, murmuring, “My poor poor Tess, my
dearest darling Tess! So sweet, so good, so true!” The words of
endearment, withheld so severely in his waking hours, were
inexpressibly sweet to her forlorn and hungry heart. If it had been to
save her weary life she would not, by moving or struggling, have put
an end to the position she found herself in. Thus she lay in absolute
stillness, scarcely venturing to breathe, and, wondering what he was
going to do with her, suffered herself to be borne out upon the
landing. “My wife—dead, dead!” he said.

18. Under the trees several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage
dabbled with blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a wing,
some staring up at the sky, some pulsating quickly, some contorted,
some stretched out—all of them writhing in agony except the
fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the
inability of nature to bear more. With the impulse of a soul who
could feel for kindred sufferers as much as for herself, Tess’s first
thought was to put the still living birds out of their torture, and to
this end with her own hands she broke the necks of as many as she
could find, leaving them to lie where she had found them till the
gamekeepers should come, as they probably would come, to look for
them a second time. “Poor darlings—to suppose myself the most
miserable being on earth in the sight o’ such misery as yours!” she
exclaimed, her tears running down as she killed the birds tenderly.

19. As soon as she drew close to it she discovered all in a moment that
the figure was a living person; and the shock to her sense of not
having been alone was so violent that she was quite overcome, and
sank down nigh to fainting, not however till she had recognized
Alec d’Urberville in the form. He leapt off the slab and supported
her. “I saw you come in,” he said smiling, “and got up there not to
interrupt your meditations. A family gathering, is it not, with these
old fellows under us here? Listen.” He stamped with his heel heavily
on the floor; whereupon there arose a hollow echo from below.
“That shook them a bit, I’ll warrant,” he continued. “And you
thought I was the mere stone reproduction of one of them. But no.
The old order changeth. The little finger of the sham d’Urberville
can do more for you than the whole dynasty of the real
underneath. . . . Now command me. What shall I do?”

20. “Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals (in
Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess. And the
d’Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs
unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves
down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained there a
long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to
wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose,
joined hands again, and went on.

21. ADDING A
LAYER OF
ANALYSIS
FOR A01/2

22. You have all been given a range of extracts taken from the novel
to analyse Hardy’s use of authorial techniques and methods.
Exploring the language of Tess and
Angel’s relationship
You should all be able to comment on, identify and explain the
effect of the following:
1. Devices and authorial techniques
2. Individual word choices
3. Methods used to reflect Hardy’s use of setting
4. Themes
5. Symbolism

23. Need some additional methods used by Hardy
throughout the novel?
You should all be able to comment on, identify and explain the
effect of the following:
1. Seasonal change and variation
2. The lexical field of farming and agricultural work
3. Biblical analogies: consider how these religious references are
significant to both Tess and Angel
4. History and ancestry: how do both characters view Tess’ connection
to the ancestral line of the D’Urbervilles?
5. Superstition and fate: how does this link to the setting and people
of the agricultural communities?
6. Natural imagery and symbolism
7. Juxtaposition between tradition and modernity
8. Magical symbolism
9. Scientific language

24. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Assessment Preparation
‘Female characters are typically
presented as being on a journey
from innocence to experience.’

25. How can you link this quotation to Tess of
the D’Urbervilles?
Can you use it to consider Hardy’s overall
message?

26. Homework Expectations
• Weekly or
fortnightly tasks
will be posted on
the blog
• Clear deadlines
will be given on
the blog and
during class time
• You are required
to evidence your
engagement
with the online
material through
posting a
comment.

27. Exemplar

28. Begin to explore how Hardy presents Tess on a journey from
innocence to experience
Consider Hardy’s use of symbolism in the text and make thematic
connections
Analyse the effect of Hardy’s language/methods in some key
passages linked to innocence and experience
Recap the assessment objectives and reflect on the success of a
student response
What’s the plan for today?

29. RECAPPING HOMEWORK TASK
HELPING YOU WITH AO3 AND AO5
GREEN TASK: Summarise Ruskin’s attitudes
towards men and women in the essay. How does
he categorise each gender and their stereotypes?
BLUE TASK: Compare Ruskin’s representation of
gender to Hardy’s in the novel. How does Ruskin’s
writing help to inform our understanding of the
protagonists?
PINK TASK: Argue why society can be seen as
‘unjust’ to nineteenth century women? What is
Hardy trying to communicate about the role of
women?
HOW CAN YOU LINK THIS TO HARDY’S ATTITUDES
IN ‘THE RUINED MAID’?

30. End
HARDY’S USE OF SYMBOLISM IN THE NOVEL
GREEN TASK: Summarise the significance of these symbols in the novel. What
does Hardy use them to represent? Why are they important?
BLUE TASK: Try and explain the significance of these symbols linked to THEMES
and CHARACTER. How does Hardy use them to explore wider issues in the
novel? Can you link them to CONTEXT in any way?
PINK TASK: Can you comment on the STRUCTURAL importance of these
symbols in the novel? Where do they appear?
What do they reveal about Tess’ journey from innocence to
experience?

32. GROUP GROUP MEMEBERS ‘EXPERT PASSAGES’
1
Kirsty
Rebecca
Wesley
4,5,6,8
2
Nikolina
Sam
Josh
Izuara
2,4,5
3
Stacey
Poppy
Annabelle
Adam
1,3,7
4
Brooke
Chloe H
Michelle
1,2,5
5
Bella
Davina
Chloe
3,6,7
You will have 15 minutes
in your groups to analyse
your ‘expert passages’.
You MUST focus on A02
and Hardy’s use of
language and literary
devices.
How does Hardy use
language to explore Tess’
journey from innocence
to experience?
PINK TASK: Can you use the
extracts to begin to make any
connections to Atonement?

33. Need some additional methods used by Hardy
throughout the novel?
You should begin to identify and explain the effect of some of the
following methods used by Hardy:
1. Seasonal change and variation
2. The lexical field of farming and agricultural work
3. Biblical analogies: consider how these religious references are
significant to Tess’ journey from innocence to experience
4. History and Ancestry
5. Superstition and Fate
6. Natural imagery and symbolism
7. Colour symbolism
8. Juxtaposition between tradition and modernity
9. Magical and Pagan symbolism
10. The role of the omniscient narrator

34. IDENTIFYING THE ASSESSMENT OBJECTIVES
GREEN TASK: Identify where this response hits the assessment
objectives. Can you begin to consider the student’s areas for
development?
BLUE TASK: PLUG THE GAP: Where you have identified the
student’s areas for improvement, can you offer suggestions
about how they could develop and improve their response?
Perhaps you could even begin to re-write a section of their work?
PINK TASK: AO4: Where could you begin to make connections
with Atonement? How can you compare both texts when
analysing the themes of innocence and experience?