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Authorial Intervention in 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles'

Example 1 The seduction of Tess. P. 90 on.

"Why is it that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a course pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the course appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order."

Here Hardy voices his sense of the tragic 'doom' the innocent Tess must suffer and the failure of the human mind to find any justification for the sufferings that she, and , by implication, all humanity must, in one way or another, go through.

Example 2. Hardy's views on religion. P.109.

"The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal look, demanding the personal pronoun for its adequate expression.......One could feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky. The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that was brimmimg with interest for him."

This statement about - and personification of - the sun tells us a lot about Hardy's feelings about conventional Christian belief. Here he aligns himself with a kind of paganism, with his belief in the sun as the 'sanest' of gods.

See? O.K. Look for other examples of Hardy's intervention in the text. They are important. These interventions are often examples of Hardy's own 'philosophising'. If you aren't aware of them you may miss the philosophical background to the text.