Hardy's Realism in Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Tess of the D’Urbervilles Distorted Stereotypes As children, people grow up with stories about a perfect princess who was put through a tough time, but was rescued by her prince charming, a perfect man. Tess of the D’Urbervilles is a story about a girl, though she is certainly not a princess, who falls in love with a boy that leaves her and breaks her heart. The author of the book, Thomas Hardy chose to create his story around three characters that are not so stereotypical.

Hardy uses distorted stereotypes in his two main male characters, Alec and Angel. These distorted stereotypes were used by Hardy to make his novel more realistic. They were also used in order to poke fun at the people of Hardy’s time that thought rural England was great. Hardy distorts stereotypes to change the way people of rural England thought and to make his book more realistic. Hardy distorted stereotypes as a way to make his book more representative of what life is actually like.

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Hardy’s two main male characters Alec and Angel are far from stereotypical.

Alec was a jerk that raped and impregnated Tess while Angel left Tess after hearing of her impurity even though he had just confessed that he was impure. Both men betrayed Tess at tough moments in her life. Hardy used these two male characters to show that not every storybook character has to be like in a fairytale; that characters can be like normal people, with faults such as unreliability and the ability to hurt someone.

At one point in the book Tess writes to Angel, “Oh why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do not deserve it,” in an angry worded letter (415).

Angel’s cruelty of character that Hardy added to make him less stereotypical shines through in this quote where Tess is crying that he has treated her wrongly. This cruelty adds realism to Angel and Alec. Stereotypical characters that are normally read about are too good to be true. They lack realism and make the story less believable. By making Alec and Angel have very dark sides Hardy made his story much more plausible. Being more realistic makes it so these two characters are much more relatable to readers. These flaws in their personalities gave the characters more dimension.

The characters became more interesting to readers through Hardy not using stereotypes. Hardy used the characters Alec and Angel as a way to make his story more truthful to the way life is. Hardy also uses distorted stereotypes as a way to oppose the way people of his time thought of rural England. Hardy also uses distorted stereotypes as a way to oppose the way people of his time thought of rural England. The people of Hardy’s time thought that rural England was beautiful and that anyone living there would have an equally beautiful life; they would love to live in a place where life is seemingly perfect.

Hardy countered this misconception by making two of the main characters, Alec and Angel, symbolize the upper class and men. In that time period, men and the rich did whatever they wanted to women and the poor, no matter how immoral. Hardy stresses in his book that this was incredibly wrong and unfair and should not have happened as often as it did. He wanted those ignorant of this problem to learn more about it and realize how badly it needed to be solved. Alec and Angel represented the monsters of society who lorded over those that they felt entitled to command.

In the respect that the two men represented the higher social class they also had a very different view on old names. While Alec took on the name of D’Urberville, Angel thought old names were useless saying, “I do hate the aristocratic principle of blood before everything, and do think that as reasoners the only pedigrees we ought to respect are those spiritual ones of the wise and virtuous, without regard to corporal paternity” to Tess (228). This belief of Angel’s emphasized how non-stereotypical the men were since they had different beliefs than Tess did about her old fashion name.

Alec’s name also gave him an excuse to use Tess since she came to him for help. Another way Hardy countered people’s conception of rural England was by having Tess go through many hardships during her life in rural England and not having any help from Alec and Angel. Alec and Angel hurt Tess in her times of need and cause her to have even more hardships. Their personalities emphasized how hard living in rural England was. The two men’s personalities stressed how rural England was not much different than life in the cities; it was simply in a rural location.

There were still hardships and people who were imperfect. Hardy uses Alec and Angel to accentuate how rural England is not as perfect as people thought it was. Hardy altered male protagonist stereotypes to depict how rural England really was and to make his novel more realistic. The distorted stereotypes used by Hardy helped readers connect with the novel and made his story more believable. Hardy used changed stereotypes to show how people in his time thought that rural England was much better than the cities however in reality it was not much better, in fact could have been worse.

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