Irving Howe's "At the Center of Hardy's Achievement"

For this blog I will be focusing on one essay in particular: Irving Howe’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles—At the Center of Hardy’s Achievement”.  A major theme in his essay is the protection and defense of women.  How opens his essay with “Thomas Hardy was endowed with a precious gift:  he liked women.”(Howe 406)  He acknowledges that some readers may not like Hardy’s novel and the way he chose to write it, and claims that Hardy himself is a character in the novel, which serves the role of the omniscient narrator who “does not care to pass judgment on his characters.”(407) Howe comes full circle to this observation in the end of his essay when he brings into discussion the idea of Hardy placing himself in the novel to watch over her, “like a stricken father.  He is as tender to Tess as Tess is to the world.  Tender; and helpless.”(422) Howe really stresses in this essay that Hardy is a talented author, but that the “secondary characters” have just as much to say and could serve just as much of a purpose as Tess herself, but that Hardy does not give them the opportunity to do so, particularly in his omniscient role, which is why he stresses the “helpless” in his character.

            I think it’s really refreshing to hear from a critic who is defensive of the author while acknowledging the current criticism surrounding their work; Howe even identifies some of Hardy’s faults, in his writing, such as the plainness of the plot, and it’s similarity to the popular literature at the time.  He says, “As for the plot, it seems in isolation a paltry thing, a mere scraping together of bits and pieces from popular melodrama:  a pure girl betrayed, a woman’s secret to be told or hidden, a piling on of woes that must strain the resources of ordinary credence.”(409)  Howe’s criticism is mingled in with his praise of Hardy’s work, which definitely an indication that he can understand that Hardy has imperfections in his work, but it can also be “one of the greatest examples we have in English literature of how a writer can take hold of a cultural stereotype and, through the sheer intensity of his affection, pare and purify it into something that is morally ennobling.”(408) I can really appreciate the opinion of a critic when they not only present the reasons they support an author’s work, but they also acknowledge its imperfections, and Howe does exactly this in his essay.

Critical Essays on Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles"

The three critical receptions that I will be looking at for this blog in regards to Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles are “From The Illustrated London News (January 9, 1892)” by Clementina Black, “From The Saturday Review (January 16, 1892)”, and “From The Spectator (January 23 1892)”, by R. H. Hutton.  Black’s article makes the claim that, “Mr. Hardy’s story, like Diana of the Crossways, is founded on a recognition of the ironic truth which we all know in our hearts, and are all forbidden to say aloud, that the richest kind of womanly nature, the most direct, sincere, and passionate, is the most liable to be caught in that sort of pitifall which social convention stamps as an irretrievable discgrace.”(Black 383)  The author of the excerpt from The Saturday Review of Janurary 16, 1892 makes the more critical claim that “The story gains nothing by the reader being let into the secret of the physical attributes which especially fascinated [Alec D’Urberville] in Tess.”(383) Hutton’s article in The Spectator argues that “to illustrate his conviction that not only is there no Providence guiding individual men and women in the right way, but that, in many cases at least, there is something like a malign fate which draws them out of the right way into the wrong way.”(Hutton 384)

 I would personally disagree with the post in The Saturday Review when he says later in the article that, “Mr. Hardy, it must be conceded, tells an unpleasant story in a very unpleasant way.”(384) Although I don’t particularly like Tess’ character, I really enjoy the story, and I think Hardy tells it beautifully.  Another point I disagree with in The Saturday Review article is the claim that “The story gains nothing by the reader being let into the secret of physical attributes which especially fascinated [Alec D’Urberville] in Tess. […] It is these side suggestions that render Mr. Hardy’s story so very disagreeable, and Tess is full of them.”(384) I think that the vivid descriptions of Tess’ appearance are necessary, as to understand her allure.  I agree with Black’s claim form earlier in the article that “The conventional reader wishes to be excited, but not to be disturbed,”(383).  However, I disagree with her claim that the “conventional” reader “detests unhappy endings, mainly because an unhappy ending nearly always involves an indirect appeal to the conscience,”(383).  I think that unhappy endings are more realistic, and far easier to believe that life is hard, and in that death is inevitable in the end.