Hardy's Reading in Schopenhauer: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

conceptions, the certainty of his death .... Against the mighty voice of Nature reflection can do little. (I, 362-63) Because all of Nature is a reflection of Will, man, Nature, and existence itself are one unified entity. This organic conception of existence is impressed upon us by Hardy in Tess, and it complements the timeless universality of the impression Hardy creates in the novel as well. Hardy personifies Nature and implies that Tess is part of it as it is part of her. And both are Will, blind striving compulsion. We are told that Nature reflects Tess's own sadness: "the occasional heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad soul" (p. 34). 7 Kelly: Hardy's Reading in Schopenhauer: Tess of the D'Urbervilles Published by Digital Commons @ Colby, 1982 190 COLBY LIBRARY QUARTERLY Later Tess's perception of nature increases her suffering since it mirrors her guilt: "The midnight airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightlywrapped buds and bark of the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach. A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness ... " (p. 108). All things are reflections of other things because the world is one phenomenal expression of the Will to live, its inherent sorrow, and its potential peace. Hardy writes that Tess occasionally attains peace through communing with Nature. He points out that her recognition of the oneness of Nature and man somehow bestows moments of contentment in her troubled life: "On these lonely hills and dales her quiescent glide was of a piece with the element she moved in. Her flexuous and stealthy figure became an integral part of the scene. At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story" (p. 108). But these respites are rare. More often Hardy refers to "cruel Nature's Law" (p. 187). These bitter references to cosmic indifference as reflected in Nature's Law are first noticeable in Hardy's third layer of composition (Laird, p. 74). Laird notes that "during the later layers of the manuscript, we find that the object of the author's bitter comments on cosmic indifference is designated by a variety of names" (p. 75). The variety (Nature, the night, the will, the President of the Immortals) can be explained by the fact that Hardy was portraying the pervasive nature of the Will and by the fact that he was intent on conveying a general impression and not a system of philosophy wherein particular, narrowly defined terms would be more necessary. In Tess everything is a part of the universal harshness permeated by the Will. This idea is apparent in the following passage as it was emended by Hardy: Men are too often harsh with women they love or have loved; women with men. And yet these harshnesses are tenderness itself when compared with the harshaess universal harshness out of which they grow; the harshness of the position towards the temperament, of the means towards the aims, +[1] of today towards yesterday, of hereafter towards to-day. (Laird, p. 76) In the following excerpt as well we see that Hardy's emendations clearly indicate his sense that Tess is one with Nature. The passage also reinforces the blind, pulsating, pleasure-seeking impulsion of the Will: In reality~she see-saw of her breath Fer the first time she felt that she was drifting into acquiescence. Every ~Aevery i*H5e her in revolt wave ofAblood, every pulse singing in her ears, was a voice that joined with Nature te-f:a.¥e against her scrupulousness. (Laird, p. 124) This oneness with Nature is stressed often in Tess and subtly conveys to the reader Hardy's point that although Tess often feels' 'herself in antagonism" to Nature, she is "quite in accord" (p. 108). 8 Colby Quarterly, Vol. 18, Iss. 3 [1982], Art. 6 http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq/vol18/iss3/6 MAR Y ANN KELL Y 191 The birds from the north which visit Flintcomb-Ash not only reinforce the idea that Tess is as helpless as a bird, but the haunting description of their arrival also suggests the idea of the Will's chaotic compulsion in Nature: After this season of congealed dampness came a spell of dry frost, when strange birds from behind the North Pole began to arrive silently on the upland of Flintcomb-Ash; gaunt spectral creatures with tragical eyes-eyes which had witnessed scenes of cataclysmal horror in inaccessible polar regions of a magnitude such as no human being had ever conceived, in curdling temperatures that no man could endure; which had beheld the crash of icebergs and the slide of snow-hills by the shooting light of the Aurora; been half blinded by the whirl of colossal storms and terraqueous distortions; and retained the expression of feature that such scenes had engendered. These nameless birds came quite near to Tess and Marian, but of all they had seen which humanity would never see, they brought no account. The traveller's ambition to tell was not theirs. (p. 367) The cataclysmic horror exhibited in Nature portends tragedy for Tess, while it reinforces the sense of the oneness of all phenomena. This idea occurs again when Hardy refers to the reflection of the stars overhead in puddles below. He writes that' 'the vastest things of the universe [were] imaged in objects so mean" (p. 296). All Nature and mankind appear to be one large organism. Laird writes that "Hardy's emphasis on Nature as norm is by no means confined to the Ur-text of Tess, and in Ls we find Hardy broadening the theme to take in the Darwinian idea of man's kinship with his 'weaker fellows in nature's teeming family' " (p. 43). Hardy writes that, on occasion, "inanimate objects seemed endowed with two or three senses, if not five" (p. 157). In this almost sentient natural setting, Hardy says that Tess "becomes part and parcel of outdoor nature, and is not merely an object set down therein" (p. 111). She is "a figure which is part of the landscape" (p. 357). Tess is also part of the past. In the D'Urberville mansion Tess hoped for some accident that might favour her, but nothing favoured her. The shrubs on .the Vicarage lawn rustled uncomfortably in the frosty breeze; she could not feel by any stretch of imagination, dressed to her highest as she was, that the house was the residence of near relations; and yet nothing essential, in nature or emotion, divided her from them: in pains, pleasures, thoughts, birth, death, and after-death, they were the same. (p. 380) Because Hardy emphasizes Tess's oneness with both past and present phenomena, Laird believes that "Hardy sees much of the responsibility for Tess's effeteness as circumstantial, rather than personal, and believes that she should not be judged too harshly by the reader for an inherited passivity and submissiveness" (p. 114). Hardy stresses the oneness of all men in all time so often that we cannot overlook the unified impression. Even when Tess and Angel are poles apart spiritually, they are "two limbs of one life" (p. 322), and to Tess Angel seems "to be her double" (p. 285). There is even a sameness which characterizes life in Brazil and life in Wessex. Hardy describes the deaths of babies in Brazil in a manner 9 Kelly: Hardy's Reading in Schopenhauer: Tess of the D'Urbervilles Published by Digital Commons @ Colby, 1982 192 COLBY LIBRARY QUARTERLY which is similar to Tess's experience with Sorrow: "Mothers from English farms trudg[ed] along with their infants in their arms, when the child would be stricken with fever and would die; the mother would pause to dig a hole in the loose earth with her bare hands, would bury the babe therein with the same natural grave-tools, shed one tear, and again trudge on" (p. 432). We are shortly thereafter told about Sorrow's obliterated grave, and we can't help seeing the universality of an indifferent Providence, randomly inflicting suffering and pain. This is the nature of existence. The earth, according to Schopenhauer, "rolls from day into night, the individual dies, but the sun itself shines without intermission, an eternal noon. Life is assured to the will to live; the form of life is an endless present, no matter how the individuals, the phenomena of the Idea, arise and pass away in time, like fleeting dreams" (I, 362). The immutability of the Will in time and the meaninglessness of the individual in history are ideas Laird clearly detects in Hardy's revisions. He examines Hardy's "melancholy lesson" in this excerpt from Hardy's second layer: The season developed & matured. Another year's instalment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches & other creatures, took up their positions in their allotted division at being there, others stood in their place, -wIte-Rand Rei#IeF of time with no aspect of surpriseAthough only a year agoAthey were net flevlers, leaves, nothing ~f th95e IhiMg5 inorganic ehemiesl nightingales, thrushes, ner finGhes, nar anything more than .QeaQ..~articlessf earth, '/later,