Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Stonehenge...the end
The setting in the last few pages of the novel is important because this is where Tess meets her ultimate fate; death. She falls asleep at Stonehenge where she is eventually taken away by the police to the gallows. I think Hardy chose Stonehenge as symbolic scene for his heroine’s demise because Stonehenge’s name actually means hang or gallows, which is how Tess dies. Also, Stonehenge is ancient and in a way a kind of ruins, which is exactly the story of Tess’ family and name D’Urberville. For example, Angel says, Stonehenge is “older than the centuries; older than the D’Urbervilles!” Also, Tess sleepily rests on an “altar” which is a place for sacrifice or a religious ceremony. This is an appropriate place for Tess because her life becomes entwined with sacrifice and society’s view of religion.
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Working on what Lilly has said, Stonehenge is also one the oldest sites of pagan rituals. Throughout the novel, there has always been a sense of pre-Christianity, of something purer and more interconnected with the earth, like Tess.
To go back to the beginning of the novel, it is a representative of the Christian church that brings about this entire series of events that throws Tess into situations that always work against her. Hypothetically, it seems that if Marlott and the surrounding area stayed in its pagan stage, and wasn't interrupted by Christianity, such a situation would not have occurred. Tess, as we've discussed, is almost a goddess of nature, a goddess of perhaps the pagan era. So now, not within her element, fate almost seems to work against her.
But it seems correct that Tess, as a pagan goddess of sorts (perhaps), should end her tragic existence in a place deeply symbolic of that era past.
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