Joanna Stolarek

Siedlce University of Natural Sciences and Humanities, Poland

A Comparative Analysis of the Portraits of Tess in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the

d’Urbervilles and Roman Polański’s Tess

Synopsis
The aim of this article is to examine the complex and profound portrait of Tess in Thomas
Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Roman Polanski’s Tess with respect to nature, landscape,
mythology, ritual practices and above all in terms of tempestuous social relations, in particular
men’s degrading treatment of women in conservative Victorian society. The author of the paper
would like to depict and explore these issues, with a focus placed on Hardy’s and Polanski’s
fascination with the heroine on the one hand as well as on their artistic manipulation of the
eponymous character on the other hand.
Key words: T. Hardy, R. Polansky, Tess, nature, mythology, Victorian society

Gender, sexuality and tempestuous relations between men and women constitute the core
of almost all Thomas Hardy’s novels: a writer who was sceptical, distrustful, and hostile to
the dramatic social and cultural change - predominantly technological - change that affected
English farms and villages in the second half of the 19th century. The author’s seeming
conservatism, based on devotion to the rustic, pastoral picture of the English countryside, in
particular his home (rural Dorset), did not, however, prevent him from exploring topics
related to sex, physical desire, extramarital love and strained, love-hate male-female relations,
which were considered taboo by the majority of writers in the Victorian era. The issues of
gender and sexuality are ubiquitous in Hardy’s work, especially in the novels of character and
environment, such as Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), Far From the Madding Crowd
(1874), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) or Jude the Obscure (1895). In these novels the
author presents the emotions experienced by his powerful, elemental characters, principally
those of his female protagonists.
It is undoubtedly in Tess of the d’Urbervilles that Hardy created the most profound and
mature picture of a woman and yet simultaneously raised the most controversial issues related
to gender at that time - femininity, male-female relations - thus mocking Victorian
conservative attitudes to women, the hypocrisy and two-facedness of rural communities,
particularly their silent acceptance of domestic violence, disregard for women’s education,
intellectual development and independence, and above all, their lack of respect for female

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sensitivity, emotional complexity and spiritual maturity. The novel’s eponymous heroine is
frequently regarded as Hardy’s most favourably-portrayed female protagonist and so she has
attracted the interest of the reading public as well as critics, reviewers and film directors.
The aim of this article is to examine the novel alongside Roman Polański’s film Tess
(1979) which I believe constitutes the most faithful, refreshing and thought-provoking
adaptation of Hardy’s novel. Polański’s screen version conveys the black determinism which
makes the main protagonist’s life a miasma of despondency as well as depicting sexual
double standards, class consciousness, and religious legalism.1 I will also examine the visual
elements of landscape, as well as the role of mythology and ritual practices. I explore Thomas
Hardy’s and Roman Polański’s ambiguous attitudes towards women: their complex, in-depth
portrayals of the female protagonist, and, more importantly, their artistic control, along with
the greater sadism in depicting the vicissitudes of the eponymous heroine and their dexterous
manipulation of the audience’s views and expectations.
As was previously mentioned, Hardy and Polański portray the main character in relation
to nature which plays a pivotal role in the novel, constituting an integral part of Tess’s life,
being a vital unspoken witness to the protagonist’s elation, and more often, her affliction and
agony as well as the inaudible voice of the narrator and the author’s latent alter-ego. Both
Hardy and Polański excel at creating tension and establishing particular moods via landscape
and scenery. As a folklorist and anthropologist as well as social critic, Thomas Hardy usually
depicts and contrasts human misery, personal crisis and social conflicts against a background
of frequently grim, dismal weather and natural forces which seem bent on crushing a sensitive
and imaginative individual. In the case of Tess of the d’Urbervilles, nature remains apparently
immune to the protagonist’s suffering or gradually suppresses and overwhelms her. On the
other hand, Tess herself constitutes the essence of nature, protecting its purity and innocence
against the invasion of civilization, and against man’s violence and savagery.
In a similar vein, Roman Polański, in a painterly detail shows how nature reflects and
highlights Tess’s hardships and tribulations, yet simultaneously exposes her beauty, honesty
and purity. Taking into account the visual quality of the scenes in Polański’s film, it is worth
briefly referring to several 19th-century painters.2 This aids viewers in their interpretation of
the film, for instance when regarding various landscapes where Tess appears: in the fields
with her baby; walking through the mud to see Angel’s family; surrounded by the police at

1
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. “Tess directed by Roman Polanski”, 2012.
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?d=7662.
2
Arthur Rankin. “Painterly Moments in Roman Polański’s Tess”. 2008
http://sensesofcinema.com/2008/cteq/tess.

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the film’s end. In fact, each scene reveals that the protagonist’s complex characterization is as
moody, intense and forceful as the scenery that surrounds her. This characterization is
augmented by the cinematography which works, therefore, to enhance the viewer’s
understanding of the film and highlight’s Polański’s meticulous filmmaking.3
Some art critics and film reviewers, like Arthur Rankin, the author of the article
“Painterly Moments in Roman Polański’s Tess”, perceive the area and landscape depicted in
certain crucial moments of Hardy’s novel and Polański’s film as claustrophobic, confining
and suppressing. The critic draws particular attention to two fragments: the scene when Alec
rapes Tess and a final moment when the protagonist is surrounded by the police and equally
hemmed in.4 As for the former, Hardy and Polański use mist to conceal and shadow the scene,
underlining the problematic nature of the rape:

She was silent, and the horse ambled along for a considerable distance, till a faint, luminous fog, which
had hung in the hollows all the evening, became general and enveloped them. It seemed to hold the
moonlight in suspension, rendering it more pervasive than in clean air.5

The mist continued after the rape had taken place, and Tess immediately vanishes into thin
air.

Having buttoned the overcoat round her shoulders he plunged into the webs of vapour which by this time
formed veils between the trees. She could hear the rustling of the branches as he ascended the adjoining
slope […] with the setting of the moon the pale light lessened, and Tess became invisible as she fell into
reverie upon the leaves where he had left her. 6

Hardy purposefully conceals the rape scene and its victim in order to emphasize the
impossibility of discussing openly the issue of sexual abuse. Polański, on the other hand,
presents the contentious issue in his film, yet, as previously mentioned, he uses fog to obscure
the scene. James Morrison argues:

After Tess is raped, her beauty is seen to be polluted, her marginal visibility denied. Polański
emphasizes this point by making Angel Clare’s rejection of her more fickle than it seems in the book.
7
As rape victim Tess is never visible – or as the film would have it always visible, but never seen.

3
Loc. cit.
4
Loc. cit.
5
Thomas Hardy. Tess of the d’Urbervilles. London 1994, p. 86.
6
Ibid., p. 89.
7
James Morrison. Roman Polanski. Urbana 2007, p. 33.

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 As regards the claustrophobic feature of the area and landscape, one ought to refer to the
final scene when Tess foresees her death and is soon to be arrested by the police:

They had proceeded thus gropingly two or three miles further when on a sudden Clare became
conscious of some vast erection close in his front, rising sheer from the grass. They had almost struck
themselves against it.
‘What monstrous place is this?’ said Angel.
‘It hums,’ said she. ‘Hearken!’[…]
They carefully entered beneath and between; the surfaces echoed their soft rustle; but they seemed to be
still out of doors. The place was roofless. Tess drew her breath fearfully, and Angel, perplexed, said-
‘What can it be?’8

It was, of course, Stonehenge, where Tess was to be apprehended.9

It is impossible to analyse satisfactorily the role and significance of nature without
referring to the mythology and ritual practices which saturate Hardy’s work. In Polański’s
Tess the cinematography underlines the mythological elements of the British novel in
manifold scenes, the most representative of which are undoubtedly the opening and closing
moments of the film. For example, at the very beginning the audience is given a long shot of
the women walking down a country lane, passing a crossroad and entering a field, and it is the
mosaic of colours, or rather the interplay of white and red tinges which attracts the viewers’
attention. All the young girls are dressed in white, and like the others, Tess is in white with
white flowers in her hair. The predominant colours, white and green, ironically call to mind
life and fertility, they epitomize fecundity and blossom. Nevertheless, the red ribbon in Tess’s
hair momentarily veils or spoils the image of blissfulness and harmony, evoking a sense of the
imminent misfortune and tragedy of Tess’s fate. The colours of white and green give way to
red colour at the film’s end.10 Therefore, the fertility rituals of the opening lead to the
sacrificial rituals of the closing.
Moreover, like Hardy, Polański uses images of the sun to suggest and illustrate the
protagonist’s fate. In the opening scene the setting sun creates an impression of Tess’s
oncoming doom, whilst during the closing scene the rising sun seen through the upright
stones of Stonehenge strengthens the characterization of Tess as a sacrificial victim. Such an
ironic construction of Tess as sacrifice, victim or ‘offering’ is presented in two ways in the

8
Thomas Hardy, op. Cit., p. 501.
9
Ibid., p. 504.
10
Arthur Rankin, op. cit.

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film. First, the woman is offered up to Alec and the D’Urbervilles by her parents’ craving for
social status and wealth. Tess’s father and mother plot to have her introduced to the family
and expect to have the introduction lead to a successful marriage, but, unfortunately, their
projects have tragic consequences. Here, Polański employs a few significant visual clues to
highlight life’s adversity, particularly the protagonist’s naïve, unfulfilled expectations and her
impending doom. An illustration of this is the scene in which Tess walks up to the house of
the D’Urbervilles through a Gothic Cathedral-like grove of trees only to become disillusioned
by the newness of the house, which underlines the newness of the D’Urberville name which
had been bought by Alec’s father. Hence, reality destroys expectations much as the
relationship between Alec and Tess will shortly disillusion and ruin her. 11 Secondly, this first
scene between these two characters evokes the opening of the film via the use of fruit and
flowers and thus highlights the vision of Tess’s fate. As Alec offers Tess strawberries,
seductively placing one of them in her mouth, the red colour of the berry alludes to the red
hue of the gown the protagonist wears in the scenes following her murdering of Alec, as do
the roses he uses to decorate her dress. Polański delicately stresses the correlation between
strawberries, roses and death in these closing scenes. As we can observe, the colour red
reappears when Angel sees the tiny bloodstain on the hem of Tess’s petticoat when they are
on the train after the murder, and when the landlady perceives a small patch of blood on the
ceiling. The colour red which dominates in the final scenes of the film refers to suffering,
pain, torture, guilt and atonement, but first and foremost, it mirrors the protagonist’s own
demise, and ironically, her sexuality and physical beauty. Paradoxically enough, it is at the
threshold of death that Tess celebrates a genuine emotional and physical reunion with Angel
and it is during this period that he fully admires his wife’s physicality as well as her spiritual
devotion. The abundance of the colour red here reflects the correlation between demise and
beauty, suffering, agony and seduction, physical torture and the sexual bond. For Tess, red
symbolizes love which is a fierce destructive, unpredictable passion that works against loyalty
and frustrates those who possess it.12
Like to Thomas Hardy, Roman Polański shows the significance of nature, mythology, ritual
practices and colour symbolism with reference to Tess’s fate in order to underline a
discriminatory, degrading treatment of women in late 19th-century England and strained male-
female sexual relations. One cannot fail to notice that every villain in Tess of the
d’Urbervilles and Tess is a man, and both Hardy and Polański show the audience a harsh

11
Ibid.
12
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, op. cit.

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world in which women are not respected and men have no feeling for them. This applies
especially to Angel, who despite being Tess’s beloved man, turns out to be ultimately self-
centred and egotistical, in fact the darkest character in the novel. The author and particularly
the film director depict Tess as the only genuine character who possesses true feelings and
emotions. Nastasja Kinsky, playing the role of Tess, confirmed this in an interview, asserting
that Hardy’s heroine exerted a considerable impact on her career and life experience and that
she, herself, had changed with the part. Kinsky added that Tess is a rich, complex character,
defined by her patience, strength and courage and that she had always dreamed of being a
person like her. Finally, the actress concluded that Polański’s Tess is about the evil of the
majority of people, the story of how laws and society can only destroy pure individuals.13
Moreover, Kinsky’s fascination with Tess reflects Sharon Tate’s interest in Hardy’s
protagonist. One may assume that it was probably Roman Polański’s late wife, a tragic victim
of Manson’s horrific mass murder in 1969 who motivated him to turn a Victorian novel into a
film and to whose memory the film is dedicated.
Hardy’s and Polański’s profound, complex portrayals of Tess indubitably mirror their
genuine sympathy with the heroine, yet at the same time one cannot escape the impression
that both dexterously manipulate their main protagonist, and allow the other characters,
especially males, seduce, persecute and mentally torture her. In view of this Tess
convincingly performs the role of an innocent, passive victim of men’s sexual gratification
who is led by some unspoken destiny and doomed to die in the end.
Having examined the above aspects of femininity and gender relations in Thomas Hardy’s
Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Roman Polański’s Tess, one can conclude that Hardy and
Polański both had a fairly ambivalent attitude towards the book’s eponymous heroine. On the
one hand, Hardy and Polański seem to pay tribute to the protagonist, extolling her utter
loyalty and devotion to her beloved, her sacrifice, courage and great sensitivity as well as
emphasizing her distress and victimhood. On the other hand, both Hardy and Polański
deliberately manipulate the heroine. Tess is an a tool for Hardy and Polański, an attractive
feminine literary and film heroine. Nevertheless, it is worth remarking that contrary to
Hardy’s expectations, the publication of Tess of the d’Urbervilles aroused scathing criticism
from its British audience. This bitterly disappointed Hardy and after the critical reception of
the next novel, Jude the Obscure, he gave up writing novels in favour of poetry. In contrast,

13
Interview recorded at: Jeremy Richey, „Polański’s Tess 30 Years Later”, June 24 2009.
http://mooninthegutter.blogspot.com/2009/06/Polański-tess-30-years-later.html

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Polański’s film adaptation received an enthusiastic and rousing reception from critics and
audience alike, and was regarded as a gripping and provocative retelling of Hardy’s novel.

Bibliography

Allingham, Philip. V. 2000. “The Novels of Thomas Hardy: An Introduction.” in

The Victorian Web. Literature, History & Culture in the Age of Victoria. Ed. Philip V.
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www.victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/intro.html (29.08.2013)
Brussat, Frederic and Mary Ann. “Tess directed by Roman Polański.” 2012.
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=7662 (30.08.2013)
Garson, Marjorie. 1991. Hardy’s Fables of Integrity: Woman, Body, Text. Oxford: Clarendon
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Hardy, Thomas. 1994. Tess of the d’Urbervilles. London: Penguin Books.
Morrison, James. 2007. Roman Polanski. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Rankin, Arthur. “Painterly Moments in Roman Polanski’s Tess.” March 2008.
http://sensesofcinema.com/2008/cteq/tess/ (25.08.2013)
Richey, Jeremy. “Polanski’s Tess 30 Years Later.” June 24 2009.
http://mooninthegutter.blogspot.com/2009/06/polanskis-tess-30-years-later.html
(30.08.2013)