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Influence, Great Depression, Marriage/Last Yrs, Censorship - Coggle Diagram
Influence, Great Depression, Marriage/Last Yrs, Censorship
Hardy's Influences
Hardy is supposed to have based Tess upon Augusta Way- a real milkmaid at Lower Bock-Hampton whom he knew an
The powerful erotic drive behind Tess provides a clear picture of Hardy's fascination with the literary figure of the sexually available woman
Hardy had a number of love affairs in his life and affairs with unconventional and beautiful upper-class married women like Mrs Florence Henniker and Lady Agnes Grove in the 1980s when his marriage with Emma was in serious trouble
Hardy's erotic imagination plays a powerful and influential role in his attempt to demythologize the fallen women tradition. This same image contributes mightily to the sexual freedom accorded to the new woman at the turn of the century
Tess's death draws on his experience of witnessing the execution of a woman he knew called Martha Browne for the murder of her husband
Details e.g. the blood stain on the ceiling when Alec is stabbed and the piercing and haemorrhaging of the horse prince are drawn from reports in local newspapers, the Dorset Country Chronicles
Hardy overheard a drunk on a street corner of Dorset town singing about this Norman ancestry and he noted the decline in social status of the Hardy's and had heard a paper read about the Turberville family buried over at Bere Regis
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Censorship
Hardy was told to make omissions of a sexual and religious nature and introduce incidents designed to satisfy the demands of propriety e.g.. a fraudulent 'wedding' that Alec arranges to make Tess believe she's married before giving herself to him
Hardy's direction as an artist was bringing him into immediate conflict with the conventions of Victorian publishing. Indeed, upon reading his manuscript the firm had commissioned Tess refused to publish it
The novel drew extensive criticism from publishers and Hardy found his work almost unrecognizably altered upon its first appearance as a serial novel in The Graphic Magazine (1891-92)
A famous example of absurd changes Hardy found himself compelled to make is the introduction of a wheelbarrow where Angel conveys the milkmaids across a flooded road, since carrying them in his arms as Hardy initially composed the scene- would be regarded as unacceptable shocking
In effect, Hardy was waging a war with the double standard that operated within the magazines that published most original Victorian fiction during the period
Last Years (+ Marriage)
The discovery of the bitter diaries she kept, detailing her unhappiness with her husband added to Hardy's guilt and remorse about their last years.
His guilt at the neglect and unhealed divisions of recent years mingled with idelaized and re-imaginations of their earliest times together
Emma died in 1912 at age 71 and the suddenness of the loss and the poor terms between Hardy and his wife at the time of her decease haunted Hardy
The marriage with Emma that had began so brightly and turned to bitterness and emotional estrangement ended without reconciliation
Precisely 43 years after his first encounter with Emma- he made what was virtually a pilgrimage to St Juliot in the company of his brother Henry.