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Would Tess of the D'Urbervilles have been raped or seduced, according to today's laws in the UK?

56 replies

KindDogsTail · 06/05/2016 23:48

Tess of the D'Urbervilles was discussed by Melvin Bragg and his guests yesterday on radio 4 In Our Time www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b078zcrr
The question came: was she raped or seduced? One speaker said it was clear that Tess had not wanted it to happen, but consensus seemed to be that it is not clear whether she was raped or seduced.

I re-read Chapters 11 and 12 and it seemed to me that it was certainly rape. In my opinion the book, though in a subtle way, describes acquaintance rape. It even seems that Tess was half asleep when it happened.

I understand that when it was written Tess herself would have been blamed for having been with the perpetrator, and for not fighting him. Also, as she was not attacked, in those days, (and in these as far as some are concerned) this would have been evidence that she just seccumbed to seduction but not actually been raped. Now, however I feel sure she had not given consent.

Some people who may have been raped in this way might have been listening and felt rather concerned that the people discussing the book seemed so uncertain.

I was wondering what other people think.

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Original poster
KindDogsTail · 10/05/2016 10:53

Thanks very much everyone for your answers. It has been very interesting to hear what everyone thought about this question.

I need to leave this thread now, but am going to read the book again including in various editions.

Meanwhile I'll post back if any response comes back from BBC Radio 4 following my complaints about how this rape in the text was discussed last week on In Our Time.

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Original poster
KindDogsTail · 09/05/2016 22:51

That's interesting paintandbrush, I did not know the term coercive abuse.

You are right about society using the tiniest doubt to turn it against the woman.
I have forgotten the details of the opening scene of The M Sisters, but do remember the poor girl at the party and the horror of her rape while it was all going on so happily.

I think Hardy tried to show what Alec did to Tess was rape too by saying that it was the same as what Tess's Norman ancestors/returning soldiers in armour had done to peasant girls once (which even the audience in Hardy's day would have realised meant rape) even if what happened to Tess was not as violent.

Given that modern German law apparently does not even recognise that a girl not fighting a rapist, does not mean she was not raped , Hardy was very far ahead for his own time.

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paintandbrush · 09/05/2016 21:16

Poor old Tess. She's abused by one man after another. D'Urberville is a textbook example of the coercive groomer- coercive abuse was recently criminalized, if anyone remembers.

We'd call that rape today, but what Hardy's brilliant at is showing how society exploits the tiniest doubt to turn it against the woman (see the opening scene of the Magdalene Sisters for an example of this).

Far from the Madding Crowd also has subtle but omnipresent feminist threads running through it.

NeverEverAnythingEver · 08/05/2016 20:28

Tess was raped. I'm so angry for her. And how I hate Angle Clare!

And I can't see any reason to say that she's not raped.

Original poster
KindDogsTail · 08/05/2016 13:41

Me too Pedestrian!

I have only looked up the most specifically related chapters (11 & 12) on line, after hearing the programme.

I wrote in to the IOT contact the other day.
Today I have just written in to Radio 4 Feedback.

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Pedestriana · 08/05/2016 13:21

When I've finished the stack of books on my desk, I'm going to reread Tess!

Original poster
KindDogsTail · 08/05/2016 12:54

Thanks, Pedestrians
Yes, I think what you and Patti say is right.
That is very interesting about Mrs Gaskell.

The first 1891 version was not what Hardy had first written, but even there it had a false marriage with a false registrar (rape in modern times I believe) and drugging (rape in modern times).

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Original poster
KindDogsTail · 08/05/2016 12:49

Tinkly

In the constraints of the attitudes of the time, Hardy wrote a really radical book didn't he?

That's what I've been thinking too, Tinkly. It is quite extraordinary.

In the start of the programme before it became so annoying, it was discussed that Hardy had a very good relationship with his mother and his knowledge of women came from her.

He was also so honest about himself that when he was about seventy he wrote of an experience when he was a young man: He had watched a very beautiful young woman being hanged and had felt sexually aroused while watching her swinging there. If he had the bravery and the integrity to admit this dark side of himself it explains why he could take on anything.

Perhaps it made him realise how men blame women for the parts of themselves they find unacceptable. So perhaps he wrote Tess because he needed to show that the hanged girl/Tess was the innocent one.

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Pedestriana · 08/05/2016 12:36

I agree with Patty - I have always seen it as rape. Not in terms of brutal rape by a stranger, which is the archetypal stereotype, but as the more 'subtle' date-rape which causes such controversy.
Hardy portrays well the double standards of the time, and when I have read it, I feel he is soundly on the side of Tess.
I wasn't aware of the alternative versions of the text. If this is the case (not casting aspersions on that, just something I wasn't clued up on) then clearly it is rape.

Elizabeth Gaskell uses similar techniques (see "Ruth") to contrast the naiivety of women at a certain period of history against common misconceptions that 'spoiled goods' are just that, and if a woman didn't know she was "doing wrong" then she should have. But obviously to know about sex would have made her "forward" and probably "wicked."

TinklyLittleLaugh · 08/05/2016 12:36

How interesting. I read Tess about 30 years ago (for pleasure not study) and I've never really thought about what a feminist slant Hardy puts on it. In the constraints of the attitudes of the time, Hardy wrote a really radical book didn't he? How awful that the whole grooming, disbelieving, victim blaming thing still goes on today.

Original poster
KindDogsTail · 08/05/2016 12:28

So many people here have given very lucid answers and the consensus here has been that Tess was raped. Quite a few were told this by their teacher at school too.

I was a bit surprised though, as Tess of the D'Urbervilles is such a famous and well loved character, more people did not respond. So I posted in Books in case people who looked there had not happened to look in feminism.

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Original poster
KindDogsTail · 08/05/2016 09:53

Thanks everyone
CeeBeeBee
I don't think it was Hardy's intention either. He makes it clear. Yet one of the academics said 'We could not know'. Her reason? It seems to boil down to the fact that Hardy did not describe the actual raping step by step. 'He was using Greek tragedy techniques where we do not see'

Wolpertinger
I think that is right too. He is extraordinary in seeing the outrage of what can happen to women in a time when they were always blamed.

Errata
It is absolutely depressing. Many sixth form girls and university students - the very girls who often read this book - will have been raped in a similar way. Possibly very recently.
Thanks for describing that process of how self blame comes about, how Hardy described how Tess was drawn into that and your analysis of the text to explain what Hardy meant.

I wrote into the programme's Contact but they probably won't pay much attention.

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Errata · 08/05/2016 08:51

Of course it was rape - I didn't hear the programme, but it's pretty depressing that that conversation was had in 2016 with potentially rape survivors listening and hearing academics discussing a famous literary rape and downgrading it to a 'seduction where one party is not wild about the situation'.

Hardy is actually very good on the power dynamic and the grooming and guilting process that makes Tess - as with so many women in 2016 - feel confused about their own consent, because they briefly responded sexually/or were acquiescent to their rapists at some point previous to the rape. (The 'was stirred to confused surrender awhile' surely makes that clear - that her response was both confused, acquiescent and, crucially, finite, and that it was at some point before the rape took place, but that she was definitely not acquiescent or consenting when he raped her.)

When the narrator says Alec's ancestors dealt even more brutally with peasant girls, it seems implicit that what he means is simply raping them without the minimal 'attentions' of offering them a ride home from somewhere they are stuck and a jacket. So rape without the trappings of 'date rape', though as we all know, that's a false opposition, anyway.

Wolpertinger · 08/05/2016 08:36

I'm glad I only heard the first few minutes of the programme then, I'd have been seething.

I've always thought Hardy loved Tess, she was raped and he was writing as best he could to highlight the situation of ordinary women and rape in a time when they didn't make it into books and were thoroughly blamed for their fate. At the end of the book you are left furious it's taken Angel so long to make her happy and that the law can't see what she has gone through.

CeeBeeBee · 07/05/2016 23:08

Tess was definitely raped. I've read the book at least twice and have watched 3 adaptations including the Polanski version. Polanski's version seems to show Tess as a willing partner who later regrets responding to his advances. I don't think it reflects the Hardy's intention of the book.

I think that with Tess being working class, she didn't stand a chance of being vindicated against a socially powerful man like Alec; she was going to get the blaming and shaming either way. Angel is a hypocrite.

TinklyLittleLaugh · 07/05/2016 22:26

Yes Polanski's defence team tried to present the anal rape as consideration to not get her pregnant. Vile, vile man.

Original poster
KindDogsTail · 07/05/2016 22:15

Thanks for making that clear about Polanski Lurcio. I had even realised the extent of how awful he had been, but had known the girl was underage.

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LurcioAgain · 07/05/2016 21:56

Polanski's crime is creepily and hideously similar in some ways - he groomed a young girl, got her drunk/high so that she was unconscious (cf. post upthread about Hardy's two versions of the scene - in one version, D'Urberville does drug her), then anally raped her. (Apologies for being so explicit, but my understanding is that the American crime of "statutory rape" can apply to consensual sex between underage teenagers - just wanted to make clear to anyone not familiar with the Polanski case that his actions were rape under pretty much any legal and moral definition of the word rape).

Original poster
KindDogsTail · 07/05/2016 21:21

LIfe of Briony
So you too thought it was rape and discussed that it was in class.
How annoying of Polanski. Of course he had his reasons for that as he had been indicted for statutory rape of a young girl in America.

You can still hear it if you would like to on radio 4 iplayer; also I wrote a transcript out of the relevant part of the discussion earlier on in the thread.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b078zcrr

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Original poster
KindDogsTail · 07/05/2016 21:15

Mama1980
Its interesting it led to a discussion about consent at your school.
I worry that school/university aged victims of rape may have been listening as the book is particularly popular for that age group.

It may be that Hardy was asked to blur and soften the words in the rape scene as you may have read once.

Even as it is, it is very clear what Hardy wants us to think. Tess's intention had been to get away as fast as possible. It was pitch dark.
She was, completely exhausted and sound asleep when he bent down and his cheek touched her face. We are told she had no guardian angel. The rape of peasant girls in the past is then alluded to. She knew that a serpent hissed where birds sang. A little later Alec told her he had done her wrong. She had a baby.

It's unfathomable why some of the speakers on the programme were quibbling about whether she had been raped or not!

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LifeOfBriony · 07/05/2016 21:05

I didn't hear the programme.

I read Tess for A level and read it again in my 20s - I've always believed it to be rape. This was what we concluded after discussion In class. I remember going to see the (Polanski?) film in the early 1980s, and commenting to the friend I was with that in this film it wasn't made clear that she didn't want to.

Mama1980 · 07/05/2016 20:51

I always read it as rape, and it was taught to me that way at school, I remember because it led to a discussion about consent.
I believe there has been some literary discussion about whether or not Hardy was made by his publishers, to 'soften' and blur the lines/words surrounding the rape scene so it didn't fall foul of public decency laws then. I will try to find where I read that argument.
Totally agree by the way, despise Angel more and more every time I re read it,

Original poster
KindDogsTail · 07/05/2016 20:40

FreshwaterSelkie
Gah. I might have to write in
Yes, it might be worth it.

I have tried. I particularly don't like it that some listeners will have been raped in a similar way.

VestalVirgin
It is very ironic...isn't it!

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VestalVirgin · 07/05/2016 20:21

In the version I read it was definitely rape. It was not described in detail, but we knew that a) he was lusting after her and b) she didn't like it one bit.

There is no way she would have consented. If I remember it correctly, she only accepted to go with him because she feared for her life, or at least very seriously for hear health, in the fight she was in.

It is very ironic that the author wrote it clearly as rape (he is very insistent that Tess is innocent), probably in an attempt to educate his contemporaries ... and it is STILL argued about. Confused

FreshwaterSelkie · 07/05/2016 18:18

Those bits that you've quoted contain exactly the phrases that set me off, kinddog.

"explicitly physical rape"
"explicit rape, or whether it was some kind of forced seduction"
and
"seduction, rape...whatever it is".

It really disappointed and angered me because basically I bloody love IOT and hearing rape myths on it, from women no less, pissed me right off. I was walking the dogs while listening and they were arsing about and I hoped that while I was dealing with that I'd perhaps missed the bit where they had prefaced what they were saying with "Hardy's audience would have thought...", but no, it stands as I heard it. Gah. I might have to write in.