Tess Too? Revisiting the Chase Scene in Tess of the d'Urbervilles in the #MeToo Era

Abstract

Near the end of a virtual talk on Victorian Literature I gave in the summer of 2020, one of the students asked me a question about whether Tess, the titular heroine of Thomas Hardy’s novel (1891), was raped or seduced by Alec d’Urberville. As I tried to give a thumbnail version of my thoughts on the question, I remembered how the same question had turned a class of one of the graduate seminars I took decades ago into all but a shouting match between equally impassioned students and fueled many a spirited discussion in the seminars I have taught since. The notorious Chase scene now calls for a revisit, in the #MeToo era, to answer the nagging question of rape or seduction, and indeed, of Tess being pure or not so pure, and innocent or complicit in her own destruction (Brady). Before we follow Tess as she scrambles into the saddle behind Alec on that fateful September night and rides with him into the Chase, “a large hunting territory” created by the reign of William the Conqueror (Sargent 3), let us try to reestablish some basic and most pertinent facts gleaned from what the narrator has told us prior to that moment in the short, tragic life of Tess, about which most readers can probably agree despite being divergent in moral predispositions, critical perspectives, and literary sensibilities. Tess Durbeyfield, a 16-year-old daughter of simple and poor parents, with only a few years of education at the village school, is pretty, sensitive, proud (feeling hurt when she is not chosen by Angel as a dance partner and when her father makes himself “foolish” publicly about having “knighted-forefathersin-lead-coffins” at Kingsbere) and responsible, the de facto head of the large Durbeyfield household (“six helpless young creatures”). It is young Tess who takes the beehives to Casterbridge in the wee hours because her father is too drunk and tired to do so. This leads to the accidental killing of Prince, the family horse and principal means of livelihood, which leads to Tess (guilt-ridden for the horse’s death, duty-bound for the struggling family, and pressured by her mother who cherishes a foolish “nuptial vision” for her if she knows