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How is Tess of the D'Urbervilles considered a modern tragedy?
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Tess of the D'Urbervilles is considered a modern tragedy because it depicts a random, indifferent universe without divine justice, where Tess suffers due to societal cruelty rather than fate or personal sin. Additionally, it addresses modern issues such as gender, sexuality, and identity, portraying Tess as a tragic hero whose flaws and societal definitions lead to her downfall.
In a traditional tragedy, it is fate, sin, or a combination of the two that ushers in the tragic events. For example, in Oedipus Rex, the gods have decreed that Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother, and much as he tries to avoid this fate, Oedipus cannot. The tragedy, in fact, provides the comfort of proving that the gods are in control. In the same vein, the plague that hits Thebes is not random but a direct punishment for Oedipus's sin—in Antigone, it will be for Creon's sin.
Likewise, in a play such as Hamlet or Macbeth , the tragic events result from evil, be it the corruption in Denmark or the entrance of supernatural witches into Scotland. The assumption is that there is a benign force in the universe (God) who is in charge and whose will is only temporarily thwarted. In the...
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end, in all these plays, people get their just desserts and evildoing is punished, reaffirming that God or the gods are in heaven and all is right with the world.
Not so for Hardy. Hardy was a naturalist, influenced by the Darwin, who did not believe an ordered providence had the world in its control, punishing the wicked and rewarding the virtuous. Tess depicts a random universe with no god. In Hardy's universe, humans are up against an indifferent nature that couldn't care less what happens to them. Tess is an innocent and pure woman who is punished and made to suffer for no good reason. She suffers not because the gods have fated it be so, not because she has sinned, but because her society is cruel and her universe is without the least interest in her. Her purity and blamelessness don't save her. They don't matter. We cannot depend on the good triumphing or life working out right in the end. This is a bleak vision that foreshadows the modernism of the twentieth century.
Tess, as a tragic hero, is someone whose flaw—her willingness to trust? her weakness in the face of hard decisions?—leads her to catastrophe. This novel can be considered a modern tragedy because it has to do with the modern issues of gender, sexuality, and identity.
- Gender: Tess is defined by the males in the novel as a sexual object. For Alec, she is a something to be used; for Angel she is something to be exhalted, but in both cases neither man is able to understand Tess for who she is, other than an object of desire.
- Sexuality: Alec's rape of Tess is only one example of how sex is problematized in the book. Tess's misguided decision to confide to Angel on their wedding night that she is not a virgin is even more psychologically damaging for Tess than her rape. In a society in which women are equated with sex, and in which sex can only safely occur within to confines of marriage, Tess's abandonment by her husband effectively alienates her from herself, reducing her already reduced ability to act on her own. She cannot accept Alec when he proposes, unattractive as that proposal might be, because she is already married.
- Identity: The book deeply problematizes the concept of "identity." in fact, for Tess, her identity is something is assigned to her, rather than anything intrinsic to her selfhood. Her father tells her that she is a d'Urberville instead of a Turbeyfield. Alec defines her as a sex obect. Angel defines her as morally and sexually pure. Tess tragically lacks the strength of will to resist these characterizations. Perhaps it is only at the end of the novel, when she finally acts, that she chooses her own identity: murderer.