LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 10 : 8 August 2010
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         K. Karunakaran, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.

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Ignorance -
A Maiden Spoilsport in Thomas Hardy

Tissaa Tony. C., M.A, B.Ed, M.Phil.

Cover page of the novel

Introduction

Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles moves the hearts of its readers in India like no other novel in English literature. Prescribed as a non-detailed or detailed textbook for many undergraduate and post-graduate classes, young readers are totally absorbed in reading it. Numerous newspaper reports on the sexual misuse and rape of domestic servant girls certainly make us all relate to this Hardy's story and feel great sympathy for all those who are abused. Written with the background of Victorian age, the novel somewhat depicts the lot of poor girls in current times in India.

Tess is the archetypal anti-heroine. That is, she does not win major battles or influence political decisions; instead, she inhabits her own small world and tries to cope with the fate that life has dealt her. By the end of the novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, she is a complete, whole character, but the scale of her influence in her own world, Wessex, is small, indeed. Tess is a simple country girl/woman who had a basic education growing up, but had little exposure to the wiles of the world outside Marlott. Her weakness is her innocence; she is unschooled "in the ways of the world" and therefore unable to protect herself. Tess chides her mother for not telling her full truth about a less-than-kind world: "Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk?"

Entrapped Ignorance

Various powers, like those of nature, fate, and men, rule over the heroine of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, her subjection to these powers culminating in the motif of her victimization. The motif of victimized Tess, in turn, through its recurrence and the polysemous usages of nature, demonstrates both the multiplicity and the interrelations of those powers ruling over her.

The Victorian times and attitudes victimize Tess, despite the fact that she possesses high morals and standards. Her family, social, and economic background provide the reader with a perspective of living as a poor woman during the Victorian Era. Another avenue Hardy uses to show the unfairness of life for a poor woman during these times is two men who victimize Tess, Angel Clare and Alec d'Urberville.

According to Patricia Strubbs, "It is when he [Hardy] shows men and women shaped or bound in their relationships by external events, by class or environment that Hardy is at his most compelling. He is then showing us what it means to live in a particular time in a particular kind of society" (85).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Ethnic Relations and the Media - A Study of the Malaysian Situation | Lexical Borrowing: A Study of Punjabi and Urdu Kinship Terms | Novel as Contemporary Indian History - A Glimpse of Works by Manohar Malgonkar,
His Contemporaries, and Precursors | Gender Issues in Teacher Training Materials of ELTIS (English Language Training for Islamic Schools) - A Study from Indonesia | Mind Your Vocabulary! | Semantic Variations of Punjabi Toneme | Contemporary Indian Women Writing in English and the Problematics of the Indian Middle Class | Thought Boundary Detection in English Text through the 'Law of Conservation of thought' for Word Sense Disambiguation | Theme of Isolation in the Select Works of Canadian Women Playwrights | Developing an ESP Course for Students of Applied Sciences in Pakistan | Socio-cultural Context of Communication in Indian Novel - A Pragmatic Approach to Inside the Haveli | Socio-cultural Context of Communication in Indian Novel - A Pragmatic Approach to Inside the Haveli | An Overview of Face and Politeness | Technical Language Lab and CALL - A Descriptive Report | Teaching Composition to Adult Learners of ESL - Strategically Bridging Learner Deficiency and Metacognitive Proficiency through Emotional Intelligence - A Case Study of Indian and Libyan Situations | A Comparison of Students' Achievement in the Subject of English - A Pakistani Context | Code Switching and Code Mixing in Arab Students - Some Implications | A Descriptive Analysis of Diminishing Linguistic Taboos in Pakistan | "Who's that Guy?" - A Discourse Representation of Social Actors in a Death | Contributions of Anna to Tamil Culture and Literature | Ignorance - A Maiden Spoilsport in Thomas Hardy | Classical Language Issues for Teulugu and Kannada | A PRINT VERSION OF ALL THE PAPERS OF AUGUST 2010 ISSUE IN BOOK FORMAT. This document is better viewed if you open it online and then save it in your computer. After saving it in your computer, you can easily read all the pages from the saved document. | HOME PAGE of August 2010 Issue | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR

Tissaa Tony. C., M.A, B.Ed, M.Phil.
Department of English
Kumaraguru College of Technology
Coimbatore - 641006
Tamilnadu, India
tissaatonyc@yahoo.com

 
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