becoming pose the Without the splendour, then there is no telling what might happen.
by Paul • Fool and Jackson, £5.95. she loves.
328 Upper St, London NI. TESS is a film worth seeing despite the romantic and sensationalist trailers.
Thomas Hardy's novel is true to the spirit of the book even if overglamorised and slick.
It portrays a young woman living in a farming community in the 1880s. This was a time when agriculture was rapidly mechanised and taken into the hands of a few wealthy landlords, often with devastating effects on the comThe tragedy of Tess is that she comes from the old world but she is part of the new, and Hardy uses her situation to exhypocrisy and harshness of the new society Hardy romanticising was socialist.
rural life he was critical of the effects of industrialisation on human and the money-centred values of the new capitalism.
Harshness is uprooted and has to camp in URUS SLOY Tess's family Her father dies of arink aue to tne marsuncs. of and the machinery in troduced into the farms is so noisy that the workers can't speak to one another.
Tess faces a choice between Alec D'Urberville, who offers her money and material comfort in exchange for sexual ser vices, and Angel Clare, whom When Tess marries Angel she admits to her previous relaPolanski's film version tionship. Angel declares that she is not the innocent girl he married and abandons her:
The two men in the film illuminate the two roles that women are obliged to play on the one hand the whore, and on the other the innocent wife whose sexual services are for the exclusive use of the husband The conflict between them tears Tess apar Like a lot of women. she blames herself and her destiny I was born * nave liver bad and I shall die bad.
Rebellion Her fatalism was part of the old way of life, but in the new world there sense of an all-pervading power that machine. money, which individuals can neither fight nor avoid.
Capitalism was there to stay everyone was • torceo IC adapt.
alongside Tess's fatalism and passivity are the sparks of rebellion against her treatment by men.
Hardy's writing caused great scandal in its day. Tess of the D'Urbevilles was labelled as 'disagreeable ridiculous and affected', but it was a tragic ex posure of the new capitalis values and the institution marriage.