And as a part of my intense holiday program I was on a reading spree. And one of the bestest books I’ve read this summer was Tess of the D’urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. And I sincerely recommend it as a must read except that it’s a bit of a tough one so you might have to struggle initially (I had to). It’s a brilliantly written piece of work that makes you fall in love with the heroine, feel injustice at her misfortune and depression at her misery. When she bears it all silently you want to fight for her, for what is she but a pawn at the hands of cruel fate!
(There are many many wonderful lines that, if patience permits, I shall put up.)
End here I must add a spoiler alert in case you intend to read it. J
Her innocence and childishness are Tess’ greatest attributes and yet her greatest weaknesses. Like the author says she is a child trapped in a woman’s body. Her love is pure and of the kind which I doubt exists beyond the pages of a book. Is it possible to love someone so much that his existence defines your own? So much that values, principles and life only hold meaning if you see them in his eyes? So freaking much that your only regret ever is being away from no matter what he does? I could probably say a lot more about it but it would never be enough.
When I was reading the book one thing nagged at me the most. I couldn’t believe it that Tess should keep loving Angel in that selfless, devoted and revering manner. Never was there a moment of doubt. Many a doubts about herself and her worth but not one about him. Her love was complete even during the darkest moments, probably all the more then as she suffered miseries that had never been so undeserved. I thought she was foolish and silly when she was willing to forgive him after he was such a jackass. The worst part!??!?? Her only regret when he finally came back was that she didn’t wait just a little more!!! And I wanted to scream at him and throw things for not having enough faith in her. He would never deserve her. And that is when it hit me. Just when things could probably get right again she could ruin it if she didn’t accept him! She had to react the way she did because life would never be worth living without him right?!? She was practically living in hell every moment away from him. Then why stick to his follies and find a way back to hell when you could get out???
Life can be a bitch sometimes and frankly it doesn’t matter who you are. You have to keep struggling through it and hope that better things await you. Some things are always going to be beyond your control, you just have to try your best at what is within your control and hope it will be enough.
And now for a few excerpts from the book....
“In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say ‘SEE? ‘ to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply ‘Here!’ to a body’s cry of ‘Where?’ till the hide-and-seek has become an outworn and irksome game. We may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human progress these anachronisms will be corrected by a finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social machinery than that which now jolts us around and along; but such completeness is not to be prophesied or even conceived as possible. Enough that in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a prefect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came. Out of which maladroit delay sprang disappointments, anxieties........”
“‘By experience,’ says Roger Ascham, ‘we find out a short way by a long wandering.’ Not seldom that long wandering unfits us for further travel, and of what use is our experience to us then? Tess Durbeyfield’s experience was of this incapacitating kind. At last she had learnt what to do but who accept her doing now?”
“Thou hast counselled a better course than thou hast permitted. “
“This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so?”
“Life is a mishap...”
I have lots more that I loved but have lost them right and don’t have the book. Le sigh... I am so buying it!! So more to come some day. J
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