Theme Of Tess In A Pure Woman

Tess certainly seems innocent when she first arrives at Trantridge. An innocent person can be described as “having little experience of the world, especially of sexual matters, or of evil or unpleasant things” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary) sin, guilt, or moral wrong in general” (Oxford English Dictionary). She is innocent because she does not “understand [Alec’s] meaning till it [is] too late” (77). In the Contrary, Tess is not as innocent as she was before she entered the Chase. In a moral sense, however, it is more complicated. The rape of Tess is one of the most ambiguous scenes of Hardy’s novel. Hardy remains vague about what happens exactly during the rape scene and does not describe Tess’s reaction to her violation. Although the narrator condemns Alec’s act by asking: “where was Tess’s guardian angel?” (74), and commenting on “why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus” (74), Tess’s actions and emotions themselves are not mentioned. This narrative gap is ambiguous because of the events surrounding the rape. It is from these events that the reader must derive whether Tess’s motives, Hardy’s subtitle to the novel, “A Pure Woman,” is interesting because Tess is clearly not a virgin anymore when she leaves Trantridge, and cannot be pure in the physical sense as her maidenhood is no longer intact. However, she might still be considered pure if her motives are morally good. According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, purity in this sense