Paganism as an Alternative to Victorian-ism in Tess of the D'Urbervilles

The Victorian period is generally invoked as an era of strict morals, exaggerated class distinctions, and sexual repression - overall, an epoch of artificiality and appearances. Thomas Hardy, among other authors and artists of the time, objected to the censorship that these strict sensibilities imposed. In his Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Hardy uses elements of paganism as a direct contrast to the unnaturalness of the Victorian rules, values, and morals that are featured in the novel. Throughout the course of the narration, this is obvious in Tess's sexuality and spirituality and in how others perceive her.

Hardy opens the novel by showing the village "club walking," a sort of Christianized version of the pagan holiday Beltane, traditionally a celebration of fertility: "In addition to the distinction of a white frock, every woman and girl carried in her right hand a peeled willow wand and in her left a bunch of white flowers" (8). The white dress symbolizes Tess's innocence, while the flowers and the wand respectively represent the pagan Goddess and God. The ceremony indicates the persistence of the older, more natural religion, and thus sexuality, within and despite the staid confines of Victorian Christianity. However, Tess is unaware of the origins of the festival, much as she is unaware of her own sensuality. When Alec bedecks her with strawberries and flowers (much like a High Priestess would be dressed in elaborate nature costumes for a ceremony), she becomes "aware of the spectacle she presented to their surprised vision" upon returning to the public eye (39). Pamela Jekel writes that Tess's acceptance of Alec's costuming is "the clearest note of Tess's [sexual] ambiguity... obviously a symbol of nature forced before its natural ripening..." (169). The implication is that Tess is not just pagan, but symbolic of nature in and of itself. And what, in an age that valued industrialization and urbanization, was more outside conventions than nature? Even her later rape-seduction at Alec's hands seems to imply the same sort of relationship between she and Alec as the earth and industrialized society- as much as Tess and the earth give, Alec and mankind persist in taking. However, one cannot say that Alec's attraction to Tess is unrequited; Hardy makes numerous references to how flattered Tess is by his attentions and to how captivated she is by his looks. He seems to imply "that the physical attraction that Tess feels toward Alec is natural," urging "exclusion from the sphere of moral judgement. In a less artificial world Tess might have regarded her relationship with Alec as a freely available option" (Ingham 146). This "less artifical world" could be something like the earlier world, when paganism was predominant, or our modern world, where paganism and the sensuality traditionally associated with it are re-emerging.

When Tess returns to Marlott, Hardy emphasizes that she is the one who has been wronged rather than the one in the wrong by exploring her spiritual life. To escape the condemnation of her mother and other neighbors, Tess begins to spend time outside, communing with nature much as a practicing pagan would, where

                   she looked upon herself as a figure of Guilt intruding 

                   into the haunts of Innocence. But all the while, she was 

                   making a distinction where there was no difference. 

                   Feeling herself in antagonism, she was quite in accord. 

                   She had been made to break an accepted social law, 

                   but no law known to the environment in which she 

                   fancied herself such an anomaly. (85)

This clearly expresses that in natural, or pagan, circumstances Tess has committed no crime. Hardy is saying that it is only society, specifically Victorian society, that thinks of sex as wrong or immoral. When her un-baptized son, the aptly named Sorrow, falls ill slightly later in the narrative, Hardy has Tess baptize him herself, a scene which in its spontaneity bears remarkable similarity to a spell a modern-day pagan might perform. "Tess stood erect with the infant on her arm beside the basin... and thus the girl set about baptizing her child... The children gazed up at her with... reverence... She did not look like Sissy to them now, but as a being large, towering and awful - a divine personage..." (94-95). In bypassing the structure of the Church, Tess employs the pagan principle of communing directly with the divine and, in doing so, becomes divine herself. Patricia Ingham makes the additional note that the midnight baptism is not only a reflection on the over-involvement of the clergy of the Anglican Church in personal spiritual matters, but an indictment of the stigma that Victorian morality insisted on attaching to children born out of wedlock. "Hardy is moving towards beliefs subversive of the whole of established society as constructed by the State, the Church, and other institutions" (Ingham 146-147). Before moving on to the next phase of Tess's life, Hardy makes the final commentary, "She became... a woman whom the turbulent experiences of the last year... had quite failed to demoralize. But for the world's opinion those experiences would have been simply a liberal education" (99). In other words, what Tess has done and been through should be viewed far from being as scandalous as Victorian sensibilities would have us consider them; they should be regarded as necessary and beneficial to her development as a human being.

It is important to note how Tess's unflagging positive attitude, especially where Victorian society would have her downtrodden or ashamed, affects the way she is perceived. It is this attitude, this fortitude and persistence of character, which allows the reader to sympathize with Tess rather than detest her. It is not long after her infant's death that Tess, in response to her family's financial needs, departs Marlott to go work at Talbothay's dairy. it is at Talbothay's that Tess meets Angel Clare, a parson's son, who, though a well-read and philosophical man, has chosen to go into agriculture rather than religion. He notes "what a fresh and virginal daughter of nature [Tess] is" (121). In Victorian terms, this is merely ironic, but when regarded through the perspective of paganism, it is one of the most apt statements made about Tess in the course of the novel. She is a virgin in the same way Nature is virginal - her virginity is self-renewing. Although she has been seduced, she is still an innocent, mostly thanks to her positive attitude. Later, when exploring their mutual attraction, Angel perceives her in an even more pagan sense - as a goddess. "She was... a whole sex condensed into one typical form. He called her Artemis, Demeter, and other fanciful names..." (131). The two marry before Tess divulges her previous involvement with Alec. When she comes out with it, Angel, despite his attempts at freethinking and an affair of his own, is disgusted with her. Hardy reveals here one of the double-standards of Victorian society, typified by a divorce law which allowed a man to "divorce his wife for even a single act of adultery; [whereas] a wife needed to prove not only adultery by her husband but also some aggravating factor such as incest, bigamy, sodomy, bestiality, or extreme cruelty" (Ingham 57). He abandons Tess, becoming "the slave to custom and conventionality..." (267). But this only reveals yet another of Tess's pagan qualities: despite Angel's abandonment, her family's financial straits, and her own needs and hardships, she remains loyal to him and continues to work for his betterment, just as nature remains faithful to and continues to work for man. "The essence of goodness that such a devotion implies" serves to reprimand both Angel and the society that approves his actions (Jekel 160). However, Tess is human; faced with her family's homelessness and finally despairing of Angel's return, she allows the still persistent Alec to support her and whisk her off to the city.

Angel eventually rethinks and casts off the fetters of Victorian-ism in favor of more natural pagan standards, much as Hardy would have his readers do. "The old appraisements of morality... wanted readjusting... The beauty or ugliness of a character lay... not among things done, but among things willed" (348). Making Tess, a woman who never set out to offend anyone, above reproach: it is only the unnatural societal standards she is held to that paint her as a villain. Angel returns for her, and the two proceed to spend several days on the run, until Tess is arrested at Stonehenge for Alec's murder, and is summarily hanged. This can be interpreted as poetic justice since she gets what Victorian sensibilities would see as her just desserts - she, a pagan, is 'sacrificed' on a pagan altar - but it also serves as an indictment of a society that, with its unnatural expectations, drives an innocent woman to her death. Yes, Tess is a sacrifice - but it is Victorian sensibilities doing the sacrificing.

Works Cited

• Casey, Ellen Miller. "'Other People's Prudery': Mary Elizabeth Braddon." Literature Resource Center. Vol. 111. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. web. 7 April 2010.
• Cohen, William A. "Sex, Scandal, and the Novel." The Victorian Web. Duke University, 1996. Web. 7 April 2010.
• Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbervilles. New York City, New York: Signet Classic, 1999. Print.
• Ingham, Patricia. Thomas Hardy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print.
• Jekel, Pamela L. "Tess Durbeyfield." Thomas Hardy's Heroines: A Chorus of Priorities. United States: Pamela Jekel, 1986. 156-177. Print.