Tess- a victim of her family
One does not decide what family one is born into. The innocent child, Tess, cannot be blamed for being born into a poor family. Tess is a victim of her upbringing, the situation of her father and mother as well as the knowledge of her ancestors, who were rich and prosperous. The fact that they had existed did not help Tess. However, it would have been a different story if she had been born into a wealthy family. Tess is the eldest of the family’s children and being a girl in that time was more complicated. As Joan Perkin in Victorian Women says: “Girls learned early in life that they were less important than boys, and the welcome a girl could…show more content… Any child was an extra mouth for a poor family to feed, but also a potential wage-earner”.
Tess of D’urbervilles recounts the narrative of Tess Durbeyfield, a common laborer young lady who is compelled to claim family relationship with the rich stoke at Trantridge. Despite the fact that Tess could helpfully be named as a common “fallen lady” who not just has premarital sexual relationship and gives birth to an illegitimate child but also later ‘cannily’ marries a gentleman without telling about her past, the author has an exceptional sympathy for her.
The Durbeyfield family with its three women-Tess, her mom Joan and her sister Liza Lu, is poor yet large. These three ladies of the family speak to three distinctive sorts of ladies. The mother Joan experiences destitution at the same time, due to her lack of ability and obliviousness, she does not improve such monetary condition nor correct her husband, Joan a drunkard who is poorly paid. She overlooks her husband and depends on Tess. “As Tess grew older, and began to see how matters stood, she felt quite…show more content… It is clear that “the bad” means succumbing to the violation by Alec, being his mistress and giving a birth to an illegitimate child―that is, her way of life as an fallen woman in the Victorian era. Her words, which tell Angel to educate Liza-Lu to be an ideal woman for him, can mean that Angel as a husband should subject her sister under the system of patriarchy. Here is a hint that Tess values spiritualized and virginal woman―an ideal female in the Victorian age called an angel in the house―rather than a woman who is such an unconventional woman as Tess herself. Her wish to accompany Angel with Liza-Lu as a clamp between him and Tess is equal to her giving up herself soiled with “the bad.” In this time, at last, not only the narrator and Angel but also Tess herself gets rid of her body, “flesh.” There remains a problem in Tess of the