Compare the ways in which the writers of Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Handmaid’s Tale present the themes of power and control

Compare the ways in which the authors of Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Handmaid’s Tale present the subjects of power and control

This essay will analyze how the lives of the heroines of the two novels – Tess Durbeyfield and Offred – are both dominated by the effects of a major event and why this consequences in them populating without the power to alter anything. The treatment will concentrate on the battle between masculine and feminine powers ; how the writers use different techniques to pass on the quandary of the characters to the reader such as alterations in the signifier of the narrative, and symbolism ; and will briefly advert the issues of important power in relation to Christianity and Utopian and dystopian societies.

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For Victorian society Tess’s colza means that she becomes a fallen adult female, one who is to populate in the shadow of holding been defiled and to hold given birth to an bastard kid. It is thwarting to the reader for her to be bound by this guilt:

But this encompassment of her ain word picture, based on scintillas of convention, peopled by apparitions and voices averse to her, was a sorry and misguided creative activity of Tess’s fancy – a cloud of moral hobgoblins by which she was terrified without ground. [ 1 ]

Although Hardy presents the heroine who seeks a new life for herself – person who succumbs to the ‘irresistible, cosmopolitan, automatic inclination to happen sweet pleasance somewhere’ ( p.138 ) – there is a darker more unconscious force at work ( in Tess’s ain head ) whereby she can non carry through the hopeful inclinations to which she aspires. Because of the moral restraint which she feels is imposed upon her from the outside she therefore denies herself the idyllic love affair with Angel Clare.

In contrast,The Handmaid’s Talenowadayss Offred, the heroine who is physically confined by the governments of a futuristic universe where adult females are subservient to work forces and must reproduce to repopulate the universe. Offred’s psychological repression arises out of her physical state of affairs as she remembers back to her old life with her hubby and kid. She has to believe that she no longer has that sort of control – the freedom to love, to be in an equal relationship – has gone: ‘Those old ages were merely an anomalousness, historically talking, the Commander said, merely a good luck. All we’ve done is return things to Nature’s norm.’ [ 2 ] Atwood uses a broken narrative signifier to underscore the loss of continuity in the lives of the servants, where they do non cognize from one twenty-four hours to the following what is traveling to go on to them. For case, when Offred is walking with her friend Ofglen they all of a sudden feel under menace:

Something is go oning: there’s a disturbance, a bustle among the shoals of autos. Some are drawing over to the side, as if to acquire out of the manner. I look up rapidly: it’s a black new wave… . (HT,p.178 )

Short sentences generate a confused feel to the narrative which creates a feeling of suspense and malaise in the reader, promoting them to sympathize with Offred’s state of affairs. Atwood uses many paragraphs to construct up to the terrorization minute when the two misss think they might be about to lose their lives – ‘I freezing, cold travels through me’ , ‘But I can’t aid seeing.’ (HT,p.178 ) . A adult male is killed, and in a concluding little paragraph before the terminal of the chapter the minute all of a sudden ends every bit rapidly as it began – ‘it’s over, in seconds, and the traffic on the street sketchs as if nil had happened.’ By utilizing these techniques Atwood distorts the reader’s perceptual experience of clip leting them to place farther with Offred who, in her regimented being, has an altered sense of the transition of clip – ‘Time’s a trap, I’m caught in it.’ (HT, P.153 ) .

Hardy’s heroine Tess creates a more frustrating character as when she has the opportunity to take control over state of affairss which contrive to acquire the better of her, she remains inactive. Frank Giordano [ 3 ] suggests that we see grounds of this in the really first scenes where she appears at the May Day club where brides are chosen:

Tess entirely wears a ruddy thread in her hair – proposing her precedence among celebrators of the local Cerealia – but Angel fails to detect her, ‘owing to her backwardness’ in seting herself frontward. With a expression of reproach, Tess shows Angel her letdown when he departs, and loses her ‘spirit to dance once more for a long clip, though she might hold had plentifulness of partners’ ( I’d Have My Life Unbe, p.162 ) .

It is possibly her deficiency of ability to take control of a state of affairs that causes Tess to be taken advantage of. Again, when Tellurium is sent off by her female parent she permits her female parents to rinse and dress her in the white ‘May Day’ frock. The usage of May Day in both novels is an of import symbolic gesture. The twenty-four hours is used to observe the Virgin of Spring, and harmonizing to Sharon Wilson [ 4 ] signifies a new beginning, every bit good as being a labor vacation, and a women’s rightist tattoo protesting unreal birth methods. Furthermore, inThe Handmaid’s Taleit represents the ‘natural, anarchistic birthrate that counters the ‘procreation by fiat’ of Gilead and Ceaucescu Romania.’ [ 5 ] May Day is an of import symbol as it represents the beginning of a maiden’s independency in a sexual universe ( the Virgin of Spring ) , and interestingly, yet paradoxically, is besides used as the international call for aid. This dual significance of the May Day symbol can be seen in Hardy’s novel where Tess has the possible to dance with Clare – to stay independent of guilt – but does non take it, and alternatively ends up entirely with Alec D‘Urberville and suffers the effects of their brush in The Chase. It is exactly because of their brush ( which she herself induced ) that she is presented as a demoiselle in distress – naming for aid -throughout the remainder of the novel, one whom Angel Clare urgently wants to deliver.

Tess, handicapped by her guilt, appears non to be able to defy the force per unit area from those who believe they hold power over her. For illustration, as Giordano illustrates – during her first meeting with Alec, Tess is both hypnotized and repelled by him, yet unable to defy his demands:

he can do her bloom with his flattery and can straiten her with his pressing mode ; and when he insists that she accompany him, Tess, despite her wants, consents. When he forces her to eat strawberries from his manus, in a minute that foreshadows the seduction in the Chase, she once more obeys, subjecting – here, as she will at that place, – ‘like one in a dream, ’ and she continues ‘eating in a half-pleased, half loath province whatever d’Urberville offers her. (I’d Have My Life Unbe, P.165 ) .

Indeed when Tess has yet another opportunity to take control and get away her guilt by seeking aid from Clare’s household she turns her back on the state of affairs. When she encounters Clare’s brother Cuthbert she loses her assurance and accordingly fails to run into Clare’s male parent who would hold shown her compassion. Hardy tells us that:

she went her manner without cognizing that the greatest bad luck of her life was this feminine loss of bravery at the last and critical minute through her gauging her father-in-law by his boies. Her present status was exactly one which would hold enlisted the understandings of old Mr and Mrs Clare. (Tellurium,p.146 ) .

Here Tess no longer seems to be in control over her luck. A greater, more powerful force is at work which conspires against her – something that steps in ‘at the last moment’ to forestall her from making the one thing which would assist her. This phenomenon is a characteristic of Hardy’s dystopia or universe order where worlds ever seem to be at the clemency of a larger force, akin to Fate, whereby things can non work out. The ultimate defeat for Hardy is that the job lies within Tess herself, but she is unable to make anything to alter it.

However,The Handmaid’s Talenowadayss a really different vision of human civilization to that of Hardy. The issues of power and control are concerns which Atwood communicates to be great jobs on an international degree. Further to Hardy’s vision where Tellurium represents the emotional homo being who can non suit into society, Atwood develops the thought of a dysfunctional society so that it becomes a planetary non an person job. Danita Dodson [ 6 ] suggests that the servants are representative of modern-day casualties of a patriarchal-based imperium – such as Native Americans, African-Americans and adult females who have been ‘historically locked off from the Utopian American Dream.’ Dodson goes on to state that American history is built upon the myth that the U.S.A. is ‘anti-imperialistic because of its documented resistance to the dictatorship of evil imperiums around the world.’ She calls this the ‘paradigm of denial’ which has caused many Americans to disregard the true nature of imperial dealingss within their state. Atwood shatters this paradigm of denial and forces us to acknowledge how earnestly ‘American imperialism and patriotism history for the inhibitory order which becomes the Republic of Gilead.’ It is Dodson’s thought that within The Handmaid ‘s Tale lies the powerful suggestion that ‘progress toward planetary human rights will ne’er be possible until states of “ freedom ” face their ain incarcerated dystopian realities.’

InThe Handmaid’s TaleOffred – unlike Tess – does non yield to the higher authorization which has control over her. She rebels through her relationship with the Commander, her relationship with Nick, and, most significantly through her recording of her life. Although the servants are subjected to a simplistic and strictly controlled life, they paradoxically hold the greatest power in Atwood‘s futuristic narrative as merely they can reproduce. Offred uses her feminine power to derive comparative freedom by befriending the Commander. Their relationship is a changeless battle between him – the male in bid – and her, the fertile servant:

On the 3rd dark I asked him for some manus lotion…

We use butter, I said. When we can acquire it. Or oleo…

Butter, he said, chew overing. That’s really clever. Butter. he laughed.

I could hold slapped him.

I think I could acquire some of that, he said, as if indulging a child’s want for bubblegum…

For him, I must retrieve, I am merely a caprice. (HT,pp.167-8 ) .

Throughout her fresh Atwood includes subdivisions of related address without the usage of address Markss. This gives the text a little air of unreality, promoting the reader to sympathize with the unlikely and unusual world which Offred finds herself in. Offred’s address is frequently crisp and clipped, uncovering small. This is juxtaposed against the signifier of the first individual narrative which frequently falls into watercourse of consciousness so that Offred’s innermost ideas are revealed: ‘I don’t have to state it. I don’t have to state anything to myself or to anyone else. I could merely sit here, peacefully… .Why fight? ’ ( p.237 ) . The narrative therefore becomes a agency of release from the strict control which Offred lives under. We see her apologizing to the reader: ‘I’m sorry there is so much hurting in this narrative. I’m regretful it’s in fragments, like a organic structure caught in a crossfire, or pulled apart by force. But there is nil I can make to alter it.’ There is great uncertainness about who and where she is and what the hereafter will keep, which is emphasised by the deficiency of control which she has over her ain life. She can no longer rely on people, therefore her reader becomes the most of import figure in her life – the one she can swear: ‘Because I’m stating you this narrative I will you into being. I tell, hence you are.’ ( p.279 ) . Her narrative, although disjointed and stating of a servant imprisoned, has become one of the lone things she does hold control over – something which, unknown to her, will stay after she has gone, and act upon the great heads of the hereafter.

Ironically, the one entity which is supposed to be the most august, and in which Offred should swear in is God, but in Atwood’s narrative Offred finds the new faith to be flawed. Standing in forepart of machines which print out supplications she admits to Ofglen her agnosticism about the government:

At last Ofglen speaks. ‘Do you think God listens, ’ she says, ‘to these machines? ’ She is whispering: our wont at the Centre.

In the yesteryear this would hold been a fiddling adequate comment, a sort of scholarly guess. Right now it’s lese majesty.

I could shout. I could run off. I could turn from her mutely, to demo her I won’t digest this sort of talk in my preence. Subversion, sedition, blasphemy, unorthodoxy, all rolled into one.

I steel myself. ‘No, ’ I say. (HT,P.177 ) .

A new system has been imposed ; one that carries with it aspects of the old. It is supposed to be respected and obeyed by all but there are many belowground communities which do non mind the new rules. Hence the ‘we’ and ‘us’ which Offred finds herself a portion of. In a similar manner Hardy excessively is preoccupied with the go throughing off of old traditions and the fading authorization of Torahs which were one time respected. The difference nevertheless is that unlike Atwood he does non hold anything to replace it.

Hardy is concerned with the loss of traditional Victorian moral values. As an atheist, he was distressingly cognizant of the weakening authorization of the church ; how God was progressively no longer seen as omnipotent. An illustration of this attitude can be seen in the senior Mr. Clare who is presented by Hardy as a pious adult male who quotes from Corinthians I, ‘We are made as the crud of the world.’ His credo, Hardy says, ‘quite amounted, on its negative side, to a renunciant doctrine which had cousinship with that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi.’ As Pamela Jekel illustrates:

‘Like the old sign-painter who was seting up anti-sexual messages on walls, a painter who said he had been inspired by Mr. Clare, Hardy shows us ‘the last monstrous stage of a credo which had served mankind good in its time.’ Here is Hardy unconsciously staring at one of his egos – his pessimism – and denouncing it with another – his humanitarianism. AndTellurium,his servant, says, ‘Pooh – I do n’t believe God said such things.’’ [ 7 ]

Furthermore, Hardy’s subtitle ‘A Pure Woman, ’ symbolises Hardy’s belief that society was come ining a new stage where traditional morality and societal ordinance were losing their power. Yet unlike Atwood’s narrative where a futuristic new government makes new moral regulations, Hardy’s narrative seeks to re-establish older, more antediluvian, about heathen values. Tess, as an fornicatress and murderess is someway exempt from Victorian values. As Giordano says of Tess – she is a ‘pagan in a post-Christian world. , ’ [ 8 ] and as Hardy himself said of Tellurium:

I still maintain that her unconditioned pureness remained integral to the really last ; though I frankly ain that a certain outward pureness left her on her last autumn. I regarded her so as being in the custodies of fortunes, non usually responsible, a mere cadaver floating with a current to her terminal. [ 9 ]

This statement of Hardy’s was a bold and powerful one to do in the late nineteenth Century as it would hold crossed Victorian attitudes. Yet as Evelyn Hardy reminds us, ‘Hardy ‘s strong belief was based on the words of no less a instructor than Christ himself. ‘Judge non that ye be non judged ‘ , or ‘Go and sin no more ‘ , might hold been placed on the rubric page alternatively of the lines fromTwo Gentlemans of Verona. [ 10 ]

In decision, the two novels basically differ in their visions and readings of the subjects of power and control. Atwood provides a vision of the hereafter where regulations which are meant to be absolute are however broken by people like the Commander, without guilt. In contrast it is Tess’s guilt which prevents her from being a portion of society and from adhering to the moral and Christian Torahs. Hardy efforts to free Tellurium from her yesteryear and to take her from the restraints of society’s moral Torahs, an enterprise if you like to hedge his ain dystopia. However, it is non plenty for either the heroine or the writer. For Atwood it is the procedure of Offred’s recording of her narrative which encourages her to last ; it is this violation of the regulations she lives by which enables the endurance of her narrative. Whereas Tess leaves nil buttocks, Offred’s personal rebellion in the signifier of her narrative is Atwood’s message that control and the power to change the hereafter lies within the person, non within society.

Bibliography

Atwood, M, 1996,The Handmaid’s Tale.London: Vintage

Dodson, D.J. , 1997, ‘We Lived in the Blank White Spaces: Rewriting the Paradigm of Denial in Atwood ‘s ‘The Handmaid ‘s Tale, ’ Utopian Studies, Vol. 8

Hardy, E. , 1954,Thomas Hardy: A Critical Biography.London: Hogarth Press

Hardy, T. , 1991, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. London: David Campbell’s Publishers Ltd.

Giordano, F.R. , 1984,I ‘d Have My Life Unbe: Thomas Hardy ‘s Self-destructive Fictional characters.Heart of dixie: University of Alabama Press

Jekel, P.L. , 1986,Thomas Hardy’s Heroines: A Chorus of Precedences.New York: Whitston Publishing

Wilson, S.R. , 1993,Margaret Atwood ‘s Fairy-Tale Sexual Politicss.Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi

To be a Nurse

Compare the ways in which the writers of Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Handmaid’s Tale present the themes of power and control

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