hello my bookish friends out there in booktube land today we're going to be taking a look at tess of the derbyvilles and i hope you've got your scuba gear on because we're going deep [Music] hello my name is tristan welcome to my channel if you're new to this channel we focus here not just on overviews of books but we want to go deep to extract the marrow out of a book to really find the meaning and the message that the authors were trying to get across which is one of the massive things that identify as a classic i do just have to say that there will be some spoilers in this video however that doesn't mean to say you can't watch it before reading the book i went to see titanic and i knew exactly how that was going to end up in fact i met my parents going into the film when i had just finished it so i went back in and watched it two times on the truck i do like that film the book central character is tess derby field and in the first chapter of the book a person tells her father that the derby fields actually got their name as a derivative from derbyville which was an aristocratic family in the area in the middle ages now the father's a drunk tess lives at home with him and his wife and her brothers and sisters they live in poverty but with this knowledge of being derbeville's in the past they find out that there is actually an alec durbaville living in some great mansion nearby and they tell tess why don't you go and work there and surely he will help out the family when he knows our background tess goes along alec derbaville is a rake a scoundrel a cad a bounder and many other fruitier words which we could use in the 21st century but we don't on this channel he seduces her and he sexually assaults her used and now unchaste despite it not being her fault tess has to move away from the area she tries to set up a new life on a farm now she meets a young man whom she really respects who's very virtuous and he falls in love with her and they get married and then things fall apart once again when she's betrayed and she's left then in another bad situation and things just keep getting worse and worse for her she's just a woman of suffering until she eventually dies i won't tell you how she dies that's something you can find out by reading the book it won't be what you expect the story is how good you it cleaves one in twain and leaves you on the floor and despair agony and grief in an amazing way that you enjoy which if you've read it you might be thinking i sense there's more to this story than just the story and i can't put my finger on it now this is what this video we're going to take a look at at least from my perspective and if you've got the book go and get it off your shelf and um references i make i'll tell you what chapter they're in and see if you can find them and then judge for yourself what we're talking about the theme of the book can be found right at the end of chapter 37 if you want to look it up there's a quote put in here by hardy which is from the poet browning who says god is in his heaven and all is well with the world just look at the editing of that phrase at the end of chapter 37 thus he beheld her recede and in the anguish of his heart quoted a line from a poet with peculiar emendations of his own gods not in his heaven all's wrong with the world that is the main idea and thrust of the whole book what makes tess of the derbyvilles at times such a grueling book or at least it takes a heavy toll on our emotions i think lies in the fact that in this book we find an author in inner turmoil and that's expressed through his characters it's almost like hardy is thrashing about trying to find meaning in life because tess gets thrown back and forth by the whims of fate and also by the horribly twisted constraints of the society that she lives in an obvious one is the religious structure of the day but it's not just that there's also the philosophy of humanism which is explored in this um but humanism mixed with materialism of its day which of course was in the ascendancy in the latter 19th century and thomas hardy seems to be caught betwixt them between both of them hardy himself you would say was more of a he definitely lent to the humanist side of things it's almost like hardy himself is tussling with where is morality what is right what is wrong what's the meaning of life irrespective of your own personal beliefs this book is great because it's a good example of how you can study an author through his own words and if you put your own personal opinions aside you can see the the grandness of this topic but that's the theme god's not in his heaven so a question mark over religion and the existence of god and all's wrong with the world that humans even on a humanist level they haven't made an improvement either and this is what we're going to find epitomized in this book if you go to the end of chapter 11 in your book um the second to last paragraph has got a very interesting comment we have to remember that this is after alec durbaville has assaulted tess in the chase that's the forest the second to last paragraph towards the end of that paragraph it says but might some say where was tess's guardian angel where was the providence of her simple faith perhaps like the other god of whom the ironical tishbite spoke he was talking or or he was pursuing or he was in a journey or he was sleeping and not to be waked so what's being said here is tess portes she's innocent she's good she's pure she's tried to help her family she's been harassed by this guy alec and then he's assaulted her and hardy is saying where was the guardian angel then where was divine providence he mentions the ironical tishbite now the person he's referring to there is in the book of kings it's the prophet elijah and he says at a test of the gods um the god of israel and baal he says about baal not answering their prayers where is your god is maybe he's asleep and needs waking maybe he's got some concern that he's dealing with that's why he's not answering your prayer now that's what hardy is bringing up here where is god when those who suffer need him most even those who believe in him and i think that really strikes out at the church's teachings or failure to teach because there are certainly good answers in the scriptures to that question but hardy is asking it and is looking for a reasonable answer now say reasonable answer because at the end of the next chapter chapter 12 if you look there the very last sentence is this sort of unthinking statement that was prevalent in society in fact you can find this sentence used today um and it just didn't cut ice with hardy it's her mum talking to her when she said why didn't you warn me about bad men that they can do this to a girl this is what her mother says well we must make the best of it i suppose tis nature after all and what do please god and here we've got this very interesting thing it's nature for a man to do this that's odd and it's god's will if he lets it happen that's also very odd and so can you see how hardy and we are now saying yeah what is fair where was god but also is it nature for that we repel against the idea that that's just natural and so hardy has now set this stage for the idea of suffering and is there an answer to it is there a way to reform society in a way that's fair for everybody and he's going to look at not so much of religion because he'll point out his faults but he's going to look at the other philosophy that sort of survives for control in human society at this time to explain suffering and the meaning of life finishing off his idea of repugnance towards some of the religious teachings of the time if you look into chapter 14 you'll see tess in a horrible situation she's got pregnant by alec in that horrible scene she's had a baby and that baby is dying now she's tried to look after it she loves it and now it's dying and she's worried because it's not baptized it's not going to be able to see god because one it's not baptized and secondly it's a child born in sin according to the church and then she starts envisaging it and you'll find this in chapter 14. she thinks of the child this young baby being consigned to hell and being tossed up in the air by the devil on a pitchfork and tortured and tormented because it wasn't baptized because the church wouldn't let it in and because it was born in sin she asked a local pastor could he come quickly and baptize the child and he says no because it was born in sin and it's terrible and he can't just accept that now we revolt against that okay most people who are religious revolt against what happens there but the church back then evidently was quite strict and unforgiving it's very interesting what tess says to the curate she says then i don't like you she burst out and i'll never come to your church no more don't for god's sake speak as a saint to a sinner but as you yourself to me myself poor me now this is an interesting statement she's saying the the over piousness almost pharisaical attitude found in scripture by of the religious leaders of jesus day who looked down on others and this is something hardy cannot stand he hates the society that is so cruel to everybody that has the haves and the massive have-nots the bbc rendition takes a terrible liberty with this scene in it she says i don't like you nor your god did you notice that is not what tess said in this passage i don't like you the curate who's acting as saint to sinner and i won't come to your church no more i don't follow your creed your ideas are barbaric she doesn't say or hardy doesn't say i don't believe god he says i don't believe the church's representation of god and that's a massive difference but can you see this is how he set up the the problem there's the church the church of the day has failed to explain and give meaning to suffering and so we're thrashing around trying to find something else what's so beautiful about the character test and the way hardy writes her is she is um a representative of all suffering particularly all suffering women when he describes her eyes it's very interesting what he says he says they were neither blue nor brown nor gray nor lilac well they've got to be some color but by not being so particular about her image what um hardy's allowing us to do as a reader is to draw her in our mind she is a representative of a type and the type that are suffering the other thing hardy does with tess which is simply wonderful is he makes her a neutral ground between these ideas of man's philosophies humanism different religious creeds all that she's a neutral ground she is nature she is what is natural and we find this in chapter 18 of the book we find this probably the most commented on paragraph among amongst all critiques of this book it's at a point where tess has come to the dairy farm now she's she's escaped from where she was she's away from alec berberville and there's a man at the dairy farm whom she's beginning to be drawn to she hears him playing on his instrument as she's walking towards the farm and just listen to how she is described the outskirt of the garden in which tess found herself had been left uncultivated for some years and was now damp and rank with juicy grass which sent up mists of pollen of the touch and with tall blooming weeds emitting offensive smells weeds whose red and yellow and purple hues formed a polychrome as dazzling as that of cultivated flowers she went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth gathering cuckoo spittle on her skirts cracking snails that were underfoot staining her hands with thistle milk and slick slime and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which though snow white on the apple tree trunks made madder stains on her skin thus she drew quite near still unobserved of him what do you think of that i had to read that a few times there's a lot been said about this that it's it's tested sexual desire waking up and all that kind of stuff fooey is what i say to that and i think it's just more about our our day and age that sex is read into every book um i think that says more than anything else about our system this is not what what hard is driving at because the theme of the book is god is not in his heaven and all is wrong with the world it's got nothing to do with love affairs it's that's the mode of exploring as we'll come to when we realize who it is she's fallen in love with what hardy does in this beautiful beautiful passage for me he paints up a very pretty scene a very picturesque scene a thoughtful scene you can see tess moving along now she's frequently referenced as something to do with nature she is called part of the landscape when she walks her her newfound friend claire his name is the one that she ends up falling in love with he calls her artemis demeter now artemis is the god of the hunt of wild animals of moon of chastity demeter is the goddess of the harvest so the earth and its bounty tess is clearly being described here as this neutral nature in all its beauty and with this do you notice he refers to weeds with offensive smells cuckoo spittle on her skirts slug slime cracking snail shells damp rank juicy grass oddly it's quite picaresque what he's describing but he's using very normally horrible things slug slime and snails i think what he's saying is with tests we're not judging take judgment away these somewhat ugly things are actually beautiful in their environment and some of the arbitrary constructs of society's morals have made certain people appear ugly when all they are is natural i think that's really what he's getting at here and this is the important thing about tess she is a type and she is neutral hardy knows that life is beautiful but it's what's been imposed on life and how people are treated that's so harsh and horrible can you see that so now let's move on to the man she falls in love with because it's really here that we begin to see hope ascend and then a tumbling down of an ivory tower as it were as hardy explores not a religious side of society but the more philosophical side of society remember this is during the days or past the days the industrial revolution and it seems humans can conquer the earth humans can do anything they want humans are clever humans will sort everything out it's this idea of constant progress which here in the book the majority of this exploration by hardy is going to be focused on that side we can see religions have made an awful mess of things notice he doesn't say god she says i don't like your church not your god like the bbc said where they read into it deliberately with an angle let's see what he does with this character angel claire is his name he was brought up by religious parents his brothers went to university to study divinity he was meant to go and study divinity but he lost his belief and is far more interested in human philosophies humanism materialism and now he's aware of this dairy farm because instead of becoming a priest or learning to be a priest he's going to set himself up as a farmer and he's learning his trade by by working at a farm now isn't it interesting don't you think excuse me my chair's all over the place though that his name is angel do you remember right at the beginning when we saw tess um just assaulted like she was by alec remember the question that hardy raised where was her guardian angel now she's moved away from that area she's starting a fresh in an area where no one knows her and who would be the man that she meets but a man called angel and in chapter 31 we find an interesting statement about angel claire that he wants to look after her to take care of her and one of the sentences that he used is he wants to keep her under his care what's his name angel what's he wanting to be a guardian he has come in as tess's guardian angel and because he's quite deliberately someone who has left the teachings of the church because he finds them unreasonable and he thinks they're faulty and although he appreciates he does appreciate the morality of the church in principle he's now vaunted by hardy as this alternative guardian angel the guardian angel of the church for such tests maybe the guardian angel of human progress can take care of her now their relationship is really good you can see this natural love between angel claire and tess but there's a definite worrying idea that begins to develop quite early on it's not dreadful but there's a faint hint of the ominous about it just something doesn't fit right and that is angel claire idealizes tess there's a problem with idealizing something is it sets one up for a fall it can lead to grand disappointment now tess wants to tell angel about her past with alec she needs to be honest with him to move forward he actually says there's no need to tell me about your past i mean what what on earth can you have done you're wonderful idealizing so she writes a note to angel explaining uh what happened between her and and alec durberville but when she pushes the note under his door it goes under the door and under the carpet so he doesn't find it and in the morning when he comes down from his room to join them all in the farm she's waiting for him to be angry and he's absolutely fine and she says could it be that her doubts were childish that he forgave her that he loved her for what she was just as she was so there's hope and remembering who angel claire seems to be representing there's hope in humans finally getting it right for western man to solve the problem of suffering and to ascend higher than limiting morality as a as imposed by uh an elite click at the top but there is a problem tess will later say i think it's about four pages later oh my love my love why do i love you so she's talking to herself about angel for she you love is not my real self but one in my image the one i might have been hardy is observing that people still set up ideals of how things should be not as they are and that we all as humans are prone to making constructs that everybody must fit into again going with this idea and all of this is in chapter 33 by the way angel claire talks of tess as a celestial person one of the classic divinities it's interesting this classical divinity his education his reason his intellect is painting this grandiose picture of tess much like the humanism of the day was painting a grandiose picture of nature we need to follow nature it is perfect we should take every lead from nature the problem with angel is he also likes the fact that she's a derbyville he does like the idea that she has a good lineage even though she comes from a poor family the lineage is good he actually looks forward to surprising his parents who are a little bit opposed to her to start with he looks forward to bringing tesla and saying and she's a derbeville so she's a lady he's not actually pulled away from the societal constraints he's built this wonderful theoretical vision but the actual change for those at the top is nothing they're still interested in pride of place in advancement in position in society and that will of course mean others are kept at the lower level so we recognize that although there was great hope early on with angel claire being her guardian angel that there may be cracks beginning to appear in his foundations and that's borne out as we go along in their relationship they decide that they're going to get married and they tell the farmer and his wife are very happy there's just this remarkable little thing that happens in the story as they're talking about setting up their new life with this farmer and his wife listening a crows and it cuts short the conversation they have and they head away does that make you think of anything a crowing remember what jesus said to peter on the night he was arrested peter said i will never leave you lord and jesus said i tell you the truth peter before a crows you would disown me three times it's just a lovely foreshadowing a very subtle one that when they're talking about their future of being married a crows it's a signal that the guardian angel claire is going to betray or disown his good tests tess is still a bit worried by his conduct that maybe he hadn't got that letter she had written to explain her past and so she tries to tell him again and he says no no no there is nothing you could do that would damage my opinion of you again he's idealizing but she says to him look i need to tell you he says i tell you what on our marriage night you can tell me and i can share my deep and dark secrets with you and angel claire on that wedding night tells tess that he had a 48-hour debauchery with a woman in london and that he is chased he is clean he's determined to be that way it was just this one-off thing when he was confused and tess is so excited she says now i know you can forgive me now i know and she tells him about alec durberville and he loses it tess is suddenly broken from this perfect ideal and has become normal has become tainted it's not how angel wants her to be and what we get here is the absolute hypocrisy of man against a woman and this is something that both sides are guilty of you see when alec durbaville assaulted tess tess is viewed as unchaste alec is not condemned by the church of his day nor by the aristocracy to whom he belongs although that's a tacit allowance that a man may break the morals but he can be forgiven angel claire he engages in 48 hours of lust and he knows he can be forgiven he can tell tess knowing that he can have forgiveness the society of his day will accept him the religion of his day if he wanted to do would accept his penitence but tess can't she didn't spend 48 hours of lust with alex she spent well she was assaulted in a short time but she is broken and filthy and impure and no good anymore i mean that is chronically hypocritical and hardy points this out but remember what is he really pointing at the church of his day has allowed terrible hypocrisies to come along and their answers for suffering are trite other philosophers and academicians and all those kind of people in the in the age of progress they are beginning to espouse a theory in which they are better than the old standards but ultimately they're exactly the same they still are conscious of position remember angel likes the fact that she's a derbeville and they're still got these moral codes which apply for some but not for others you can see hardy tussling with this thought of where is fairness at all it's not simply that god is not in his heaven it's that all is wrong with the world humans don't fix it human endeavors have not created a fairer society these perfect ideals and theories that were being produced quite a lot in the late 19th century were just not cutting it they were just as hypocritical and base as what they were supposedly replacing enough angel himself recognizes the contradiction in his own his own take on things but he can't look at tess the same and she says why can't you just forget that this was a past thing you know he knows it was a treachery against her and she says why can't you let go of that and she says you know the principle is i'm i am chase now like like you were chased even though you had even though you had a past but he says it is not a case of principle it is a case of respectability stuck in the same trap that's the problem that any other philosophy compared to the previous philosophies or ideas of the church of his day are just as bad as each other around this point that we come to that quote of brownings which has been amended where god is not in his heaven and all is not right in the world hardy is called you can see this is an author who wants good reason and is a well-read author but he can see the flaws clearly in the the ancient religious systems and he can see the flaws and cracks in the modern ideas which many are vaunting and ignoring in his time because in theory they think it's wonderful let's just live as nature but you know what they won't just accept nature as it is they want to make it conform to sort of several pigeonholes just like angel claire wants tess to fit in this perfect little ideal box now what's very interesting at this point is alec goes back to his mum and dad now remember they are religious and he's not totally against them he he respects the values and morality and as he said to tess i don't need to be a christian to have good values to be moral and that's very true of course but when he goes back to his mum and dad he starts talking of tess again and they don't know all this background and beforehand they wanted him to marry a good christian girl who went to church a lot her name was mercy chase but he was determined to marry tess now what's interesting about his mum and dad is they'd just been doing a little bit of bible reading and in the bible reading they're done it was proverbs chapter 31. and this this chapter is known as the capable wife chapter for those who read the bible a lot it defines what a good wife is and nowhere in that chapter does it say she belongs to a good family nowhere in that chapter of the bible does it define any expectations of where a woman comes from or what she's been it just describes a woman who is hard-working who is respectable who tries her best who looks after her husband her house her children and that she is beloved by all in her household she she's almost on a pedestal and is deeply respected by her husband and children and the mum says you know what if tess is like this it matters not where she comes from who she is and this is a very interesting observation for hardy to put into the book because he's making a strange admission one which absolutely pulverizes the bbc's horrendous misapplication of tess's words because what hard is saying here is the bible is actually all right here the bible's got some sensible things religion doesn't what religion's done with it this making up of grand schemes over things of a clique who defines society for their own favor that's a problem tess should be able to carry on acceptably but societal moors are damaging it that's where a lot of the suffering is coming from i really must stress this now about what great writers do today there is a propensity for people with any ideological inclination to set up a straw man character a person who holds the opposite opinion and they're ridiculous and you just knock flat down their argument and triumph and it's good guy bad guy a really good writer who is truly honest who is truly probing will make their best arguments against both sides and this is what hardy does he's made a good argument against the church of his day but he makes a good argument against humanist philosophy as well a philosophy where god does not exist he says why shouldn't i rebel against society but that would be viewed as wrongdoing that would be reviewed as wrongdoing by both sets the humanist and the religious hardy brings this test about a little scene where um tess angel claire has gone deserted he's going to go to brazil and tess goes and works on this turnip farm i think it's actually i think it's in a swede field so we'll just take a look at this look at the description and see if you can get the struggle hardy is having himself with finding what is good what is bad what is just why is that suffering what is the meaning where do we go from here every leaf of the vegetable having already been consumed the whole field was in color desolate drab it was a complexion without features as if a face from chin to brow should be only an expanse of skin the sky wore in another color the same likeness a white vacuity of countenance with the lineaments gone so these two upper and nether visages confronted each other all day long the white face looking down on the brown face and the brown face looking up at the white face without anything standing between them but the two girls crawling over the surface of the former like flies how do you get the sense of this we have this desolate set of nature and in the middle of this white sky and brownfield are just two girls but it says crawling like flies now this raises a big question if all we are is like flies why be concerned about justice and fairness and injustice and love and lovelessness do flies worry about justice and love and fairness and this is a strength of hardy he's being brutally honest his inclination is definitely towards the humanist way of doing things but he himself is struggling when he gets the questions that this raises if there is no god in his heaven and again looking at this we have to become an impartial reader we may revolt when our own biases are put to the test we may fob them off and say well that's been answered um we can't do that hardy is being a brilliant writer and a brilliant thinker because he's being so honest with himself and this idea of animalism and just nature is taken further tess later bumps into of all people alec derbaville again but this time he's gone through a dramatic change after his atrocious dealings with um tess he decided to put things right in his life and he's become like very religious almost fanatical and he's going around preaching the good word and he bumps into tests and he starts walking with her and his old passions are aroused because he did want to marry her he actually did like tests but he was just so self-centered tess says to him that she's lost her faith her belief and he asks why and she says because a better man than you says so now i found that interesting because tess doesn't say well these are the reasons she says the church failed me and this man angel claire he was just as upright in fact he was better in many respects and he was very learned and he said that i didn't need those old beliefs that's not a good argument at all but it's understandable at least from tess's perspective she's been so abused that she's moved away from one area and hardly recognizes this is the the idea of a lot of people in his day they've moved away from a system the church system which has failed to give them answers it fails to improve their lot and is hypocritical and they've gone to the new philosophies of men because they're clever and look at the big engines and things that they can build so they must know more but it's too straw man what hard is doing is he's saying i can see a problem with both here and it leaves him the author in a torment and that comes through with tests and it makes this book so vivid and vital it reaches down into the soul and squeezes your heart and your lungs when questioned about what um angel has taught her tess tells alec all the inconsistencies of religion that angel has mentioned and alec listens to these arguments and he says little did the man know by taking away the basis of belief he brings her back into my clutches because he decides well with that reasoning i can renounce the church too but that brings up a particular problem alec derbeville speaks to tess again when he finds her of this farm and he brings up this conversation they had previously had where he had learned angel claire's explanation away from religion and angel clara phrased that as you can have morality without a dogma without an underlying and underpinning reason and he says this to her he gets talking again he says about having what they call an ethical system without any dogma i don't see my way to that at all tess says why you can have the religion of loving kindness and purity at least if you can't have what you call it dogma listen to what alex says and it's a biggie oh no i'm a different sort of fellow from that if there's nobody to say do this and it will be a good thing for you after you are dead do that and it will be a bad thing for you i can't warm up hang it i am not going to be responsible for my deeds and passions if there's nobody to be responsible to and if i were you my dear i wouldn't either can you see what hardy is guessing at this is no just glib phrase in a story hardy is tussling with his own view if religion is wrong and there is no god in his heaven then no one is responsible to a higher power and to say well you can still be good and just and loving kindness and all that is true people are without a belief in god good and just and can be fair and have that instinct but what heart is saying is on what is it grounded if there is no one to judge one's course afterwards why on earth be responsible why not do whatever you want if you were just two flies crawling over the surface of the earth with just this little existence well then i don't need to be kind to others it doesn't matter if there's injustice suffering is not a question at all why are we complaining why are we arguing about it you see hardy realizes if you take god out of the picture there's no foundational pedestal for morality and this disturbs hardy you can see it in his writing he's the the words towards the end of this book are fairly quivering and trembling with tumultuous thought as hard as pulling all of this together so can you see what tess is really getting at when i say test test of the derbyvilles is getting at it's we're seeing through story an author tussling with massive ideas about life and trying to draw some kind of conclusion although in the derbyvilles he does not get to a conclusion and that's the sort of sad thing about all of this hardy had a hardy at least had a trust that humans might now that they've got the industrial revolution the renaissance has brought about a certain development and advancing of the development of science which had begun in the middle ages he's thinking maybe humans could do something better they've come up with these brilliant theories and ideas and notions which angel claire depicts but he can see that it's all undermined and by world war one when that broke out for thomas hardy the idea of human progress was gone he just got on with his life he like tess was good and pure and kind he really championed the cause of those who suffered but he never seemed to get to the end of the thread to draw a conclusion one way or the other so tess in that sense is painful because the book when it finishes does it finish with hope i don't think it does it just finishes as if life moves on so that was what i thought of test of the derbyvilles um i hope that this has been enlightening to you and that you've been able to engage with it you don't have to agree with me by the way um you may come at it from a different angle and as with all literature we find a lot of ourselves in it remember good literature will confront us and chastise us but only if we're unbiased readers and when we're unbiased and let it move around and just listen to the thoughts of the author we don't have to agree with the author at the end but just listening to that perspective broadens one's understanding of oneself and so there we go we've tested the derbyvilles what do you think if you love classic literature and you want to learn more about classics going in depth and reviews like this and shakespeare 2 is a standalone topic which i also discuss then please hit the subscribe and ring the bell and although these videos are a bit longer just save them so that when you've got the time to go over them you can watch them in full thank you very much and i wish you well in your own reading journey