A semi-occasional something or other on my reading list, also cross-posted at
Wandering the Midwest. We both have Kindles, and we’re in love with them. This is officially a thing.
Title of book: Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, published 1891
Title of Review: Poor Tess!, or This is My Scarlet Letter momentSynopsis: Tess is a sweet and responsible English girl (she can’t be more than 15 or so) with a pair of useless drunks as parents. She works very hard to maintain their status quo of crushing poverty and occasionally attend school and care for her siblings. Her useless drunk of a father, John, encounters the parson one day, and the parson informs him that John’s a descendant of the long-dead noble line of the d’Urbervilles, and refers to him as ‘Sir John.’ Sir John, being a useless drunk bastard, takes this occasion as an opportunity to cease working and spend money he doesn’t have. He entices his useless drunk of a wife to join him, and, long story short, he oversleeps for his important trip to sell turnips or something in a nearby town, and Tess’s useless drunk of a mother urges Tess to take the trip in the middle of the night with a small sibling that will be no help. Tess falls asleep while steering the horse, the postman collides with her carriage(?), and the horse dies. As it is the family’s only horse, Tess feels guilty enough to allow her parents to pimp her as a chicken-tender to a family of d’Urbervilles in a nearby town in the hopes that she can marry a rich distant cousin. She comes home knocked up because the distant cousin (who is not a distant cousin, but the son of a nouveau-riche family that just borrowed the name) is a pushy, rapey, psychopath and he refuses to marry her. The baby dies. And then things get fucked up. Tess is kinda a
Riot Grrrl of her day.
Favorite moment: The intro conversation between the parson and John Durbeyfield sets the tone for the entire book. It’s almost Shakespearean, and it makes me wish I’d studied this book in college.
Least favorite moment: Pretty much any scene involving Tess and another person.
Line I highlighted (this may be my favorite aspect of the Kindle. Get one): “experience is as to intensity, and not as to duration.”
Arbitrary rating scale: This book gets 4 out 5 stars and 5 out of 5 feminist awakenings
What a more traditional review would talk about: Hardy’s clear affection for the pagan-esque rituals of agrarian life, and his thoughtful exploration of religious hypocrisy and the ways that it can supersede the lack of individual religious belief. There’s a religious debate that runs through this book that I don’t quite understand, but I bet that it’s fascinating if you have the proper historical context.
The Review:The synopsis above covers roughly the first third of this incredibly fucked-up book. I refuse to give you a full synopsis because I want you to read it, and wallow in all its fucked-up glory. The ending is amazing and completely insane, it’s like one of those really pretty songs that you sang as a kid, and then you grew up and realized that the whole song is about dead people. This is the
Scarborough Fair of literature. Seriously, read it.
What the hell does the title of my review mean? Well, my mother once told me a story about how my grandmother said that reading The Scarlet Letter is what made her a feminist. I read that book as a junior in high school and I was already a feminist, but I absolutely understood the outrage (which may not even be true, cuz god knows every story about my family is an elaborate version of the telephone game). So this book just reawakened all of my (not necessarily dormant) feminist fury. Why do Tess’s parents ship Tess off? She’s the oldest, but she’s also incredibly pretty. They want to sell off their prettiest asset so that they can continue to be shitty people without having to worry overmuch. A solid 25 percent of the book is about the street harassment Tess faces for the high crime of walking down the road while pretty. After her baby dies, she meets a man and falls in love. He’s smart and avant-garde and full of fresh ideas, but when he finds out about her history, he gives her 50 pounds and takes off for Brazil. Because he’s an asshole. Every speck of happiness within her reached is smashed against the rocks because she had the temerity to be raped by an asshole. When Tess finally decides to be the actor instead of the acted upon, the resulted is as desperate, pathetic, and warped as you would expect from a person that’s only allowed to exist at the mercy of a league of shitty people that never have to pay for anything that they do to her. Also, it’s violent and awesome and a little punk rock. I’m so glad I watched
Sucker Punch in the middle or reading this book. They’re a great combo. It took me a long time to read this book, because I was furious at everyone in it not named Tess. I’m so very glad I read it though, and if you have a Kindle (or a Kindle app) it’s free. Go get it.
