A longgg read… I do not remember when I bought these books of Thomas Hardy. May be even back in uni? I guess yes, there used to be Pandora Bookstore in the campus. I remember there were two books, that were packed together from Penguin Classics.
Now years later, I told myself I need to give them a go. So I started reading the most famous book of Thomas Hardy. I had no clue about the story and started reading without any expectations.
It is a long read because it is not a page-turner. The language he uses was hard for me to read. He also writes accents the way they are spoken. In the end I figured out it was a perfect scenario for a Turkish movie.
I was quite impressed the way Hardy describes things though, using word combinations that I would have not expected from his century.
her heart was not indexed in the honest freshness of her face
page: 285
I also thought all the reactions that Angel gave after Tess’ confession were so weird. He thought he was betrayed, but why? Tess had to endure something she was not willing to be part of. She was a victim and still, Ange used words like “divergence”, “contradiction”, “discordant”, just because “Tess” pretty innocent face did not give him a feeling that she could have been raped, forget about rape even she could have had sex. What has one to do with another?
Also the fact that one is from the country side? Why does it make that person somehow “innocent”? I actually find it naïve that he thinks this way. There is even a verse in Turkish “Taşra hep hazırdır aşka” which translates into “the country side is always ready for love”.
Anyways, the story is tragic, however Hardy’s descriptions of things are very well worth to read!
Things that Impressed me
Tess’ passing corporeal blight had been her mental harvest p:150
they have sent an aura over his flesh, a cold breeze through his nerves, which well-nigh produced a qualm; and actually produced, by some mysterious physiological process, a prosaic sneeze. p:181
He was getting to behave like a farmer, he flung his legs about, the muscles of his face had grown more expressive, this eyes looked as much information as his tongue spoke and more. The manner of the scholar had nearly disappeared, still more the manner of the drawing-room young man. A prig would have said that he had lost culture, and a prude that he had become coarse. p:192
He observed his own inconsistencies in dwelling upon accidents in Tess’s life as if they were vital features. .. Her unsophisticated open-air existence required no varnish of conventionality to make it palatable to him. p:200
the exhausted seedling of an effete aristocracy p:282
He argued erroneously when he said to himself that her heart was not indexed in the honest freshness of her face; but Tess had no advocate to set him right. Could it be possible, he continued, that eyes which as they gazed never expressed any divergence from what the tongue was telling, were yet ever seeing another world behind her ostensible one, discordant and contrasting? p.285
All the way along to this point her heart had been heavy with an inactive sorrow, not there was a change in the quality of its trouble. s: 373
I say it all earnestness that it is a shame for parents to bring up their girls in dangerous ignorance of the gins and nets that the wicked may set for them, whether their motive e a good one or the result of simple indifference p:384
