Grace Notes And Tess of the D´Urbervilles - Contrasting Similarity - Society’s Effect on Single Mothers

Freddie Naish 26th September 2002

Grace Notes And Tess of the D´Urbervilles

Contrasting Similarity

Society’s Effect on Single Mothers

The two novels proceed as follows,

Tess of the D´Urbervilles was subtitled A Pure Woman and published in 1891. It is one of Hardy´s saddest tales of rural troubles. Tess is the daughter of the poor John Durbeyfield who learns from the village parson that his family is related to ancient nobility, being the last in the line of D´Urberville. In trying to make use of this connection, Joan - John’s wife - suggests that Tess pursue the son of the local family of D´Urberville. As it turns out the D´Urbervilles have merely taken the name for convenience but, nonetheless, Tess becomes involved with her son Alec who although giving her employment, takes advantage of her and in unpleasant circumstances seduces her. They have a child together who dies early and cannot be baptised because he is illegitimate. The second stage of the novel concerns the family of the Reverend Mr Clare and his son Angel. Angel and Tess marry but when she admits the incident with Alec their relationship is torn apart leading to Angel’s departure for South America and Alec's second attempt to ensnare Tess. This leads to murder, escape and superficial impurity on the part of Tess who is finally brought to "Justice". This is an exceptionally bleak novel that offers little relapse from the persistent cruelty of fate (or as the novel would have it the President of the Immortals) against Tess. At the time the novel was considered pessimistic and immoral. Henry James thought it thoroughly poorly conceived, which reminds us of a certain conversation between a pot and a black kettle.

Catherine McKenna, the protagonist of Bernard MacLaverty's third novel, Grace Notes, is a young female composer who, in the course of the book, performs two creative acts: she gives birth to a daughter, and she completes her first major symphonic work. Catherine struggles to come to terms with her artistic gift, the challenges of motherhood, and the pain of an abusive relationship, all while battling a debilitating post-natal depression. Despite this serious subject matter, Grace Notes comes as close as any of MacLaverty's novels to having an upbeat ending. The author himself attributes this to the challenging political climate in his native Northern Ireland. This novel, which enacts the triumph of hope over despair in its final pages in an evocative description of Catherine's work in performance, stands as one of the first literary fruits of the ceasefire. The end of the novel, however, is not the end of the story, and in this way MacLaverty cautions against the belief in miraculous solutions to deep-seated problems.

The two novels in question, “Grace Notes” and “Tess of the D´Urbervilles” (hereafter referred to as “Tess”), raise surprisingly similar issues for books written in such different times and among such varying attitudes. However, the period difference does highlight some major contrasts, most relevantly, the censorship that would have taken place, had Hardy alluded to any details concerning sex or seduction. In both books, the situations and moral messages reflect the author’s opinions and ideas on ethical subjects such as premarital sex, pregnancy, single motherhood, and above all, the trials and tribulations of love. Obviously, the two heroines, Tess Durbeyfield and Catherine McKenna, were born into very diverse circumstances: Catherine came from modern day family, with the opportunity to do pretty well whatever she wanted to in life, with only mild restrictions coming from her parents and her financial situation. Tess, by contrast, was brought up in a poor, country family from the 1890´s. This simple but vital contrast, is highlighted, perhaps inadvertently, by Hardy´s colloquial use of old, country dialect in the characters´ speech, such as, during Tess´ conversation with her brother Abraham, “Bain´t you glad that we’ve become gentlefolk, Tess?” “Not particular glad”, and in Mrs. Durbeyfield proud announcement to her husband, “I’ve got miself a projick”. For Tess, there was nowhere really for her to go. She couldn’t have had a career to speak of, only to become a farmer’s wife, nor could she have moved away from her village and family without a husband, as that would have been seen as inappropriate. It would have been presumed that Tess´ life would have become very much like her mother’s: she would have married, become a mother, and lived as a housewife. However, neither of the girls fulfilled the fate that was expected of them for the same reason: they both partake in pre-marital sex leading to the conception of a child. So, for Tess, as her future depended mainly on finding a good and loving husband, Alec's actions towards her effectively ruined Tess´ life. The circumstances in which the sex evolved, however, could not have been more different, and the authors use different descriptive techniques accordingly. Catherine and her boyfriend, Dave, both consent willingly to intercourse. They thought they were very much in love and MacLaverty portrays that with his simple but beautiful description, “Dave had lured her with his cheeky English voice, with his wit and his dark good looks. She remembered walking with him to dig peats, their boots rattling through the heather. The bog was like drum skin; a trampoline and she could feel the vibration of his step walking beside hers. They’d kissed in this wilderness beneath the hugeness of the sky. Indeed it was on the moss where they’d made love for the first time. A place so public, so open that it was private- a place where people could be seen and heard approaching for miles. His language does however contain a hint of sadness, which indicates some of the problems and misery that lie ahead as implications of sex. Tess´ relationship contained no love on her behalf, and although Alec hints at his love for her frequently, he never actually declares it, merely implies it by scolding her for not loving him, “don’t you love me ever so little now?” There is deception in their relationship. Alex deliberately misleads Tess into thinking they are related by calling her “Coz”. Tess is also very wary of him, perhaps even scared: “I don’t want anybody to kiss me, sir!” Hardy portrays this fear with his eerie and confusing descriptions, leaving the reader unsure as to exactly what has happened, “everything else was blackness alike, and upon her eyelashes lingered tears.” Hardy avoids details of the tragic rape, by using metaphors, for several reasons. Firstly, he wants to leave some details to the readers´ imagination, thus not dispelling the air of mystery that he created with his narrative. Secondly, he wishes to protect the dignity of Tess, with whom, during the writing of the book, Hardy seems to have fallen in love, so that she remains pure and unsullied in the eye of the reader. Finally, the simplest, yet probably the most influencing reason is that if the author had included graphic descriptions, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the book would have been banned. The heroine’s reactions to pregnancy are almost impossible to contrast, as we know little of Tess during her confinement, only that her own family feel that she has sullied their name, which is ironic, as it is clear that her mother’s intentions were for her to be with Alec.

The experience of motherhood is not always one of unadulterated joy for Catherine, however, and MacLaverty set out deliberately to deal honestly with the whole spectrum of emotions associated with it. It is a measure of his empathy and powers of observation as a writer that he is able to capture a woman's perspective as convincingly as he does. As he remarked in an interview shortly after Grace Notes was first published, “I really wanted to get the female voice right. . . . My earlier work was full of fathers and sons, but this one is more concerned with ...

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Like MacLaverty, Catherine is a lapsed Catholic who finds in her artistic vocation a way of fulfilling a spiritual need. The grace notes of the title are the notes between the notes, decoration becoming substance, but MacLaverty also plays on the religious connotations of grace- both unearned assistance from God to man and thanksgiving. In seeking as Stephen Dedalus had done before her to transmute, in Joyce's words, “the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of ever living life,” Catherine has the example of such composers as Vivaldi (“a priest who never bothered to say mass”) and Janácek (who wrote a mass while denying that he was a believer). An even more powerful influence is the Russian composer Anatoli Melnichuck. As a student, she had wondered at the spiritual quality of this music by someone who lived in the Ukraine, “a country which had long ago dispensed with religion and the spirit.” When she visits Melnichuck in Kiev, however, she discovers a living faith that was too powerful to be stamped out by government decree. Music, he tells her, is “the grace of God,” “a way of praying.”

Though Catherine does not recover her faith in the course of the novel, she channels her religious impulses into her composition. She, too, is working on a mass, and she calls her symphonic piece “Vernicle” after the medals that pilgrims wore to show where they had been. The end of art and the end of religion are really the same, she decides- communication, and communion, between people. Through Catherine's critiques of “aleatory” and “theoretical” music, MacLaverty gets in a few sly digs at the kind of art that seems designed more to impress a baffled audience with the cleverness of the artist than to say anything substantial. Catherine's music

. . . is simple . . . the way life is simple -- a woman produces an egg and receives a man's seed into her womb and grows a baby and brings another person into the world. Utterly simple. Or so amazingly complex that it cannot be understood. So far beyond us that it is a mystery. And yet it happens every minute of every day. How can something be utterly simple and amazingly complex at the same time? Things are simple of complex according to how much attention is paid to them.

All that Hardy says of Tess´ behaviour during her pregnancy, is that she goes into a long period of seclusion, which is not surprising, considering the attention an unmarried, pregnant woman would have drawn in that period of time. It appears that the only time she ventures out is to go to church, at which Tess feels uncomfortable and conspicuous, as if everyone there is laughing at her. Although not during pregnancy, it is apparent after the birth that Tess also wanted to rid herself of the baby, “she wishes the baby and her too were in the churchyard”. However, when faced with the reality of losing their babies, both girls undergo a dramatic change of heart, Catherine only when her post-natal depression starts to lift and Tess just after she has given birth. Catherine “had hoped that her child, when it came along, would have helped but it had made things even worse. Having a child turned into a different problem.” MacLaverty uses this sad statement to portray not only her dire situation but also the confusion both “girl-mothers” were feeling. For Tess, however, it is not until after the baby’s birth that she realizes that she loves it. On the night of “Sorrow’s” illness, Tess becomes distraught at the thought of losing him, “O merciful God, have pity, have pity on my poor baby.” and more importantly to her, because of what Christians believed at that time, that her baby might die unchristened, and therefore be destined to spend the rest of eternity ‘in limbo´ between heaven and hell. This is one period during the novel where Hardy questions the morality of society, and the influence it has over people like Tess: “Alone on a desert island would she have been wretched at what had happened to her? Not greatly.” Hardy criticises the hypocrisy of the people around Tess, pointing out that although they are perfectly happy to entertain themselves with gossip about her, and use her as a “moral warning,” feeling themselves to be superior to her, they can also condemn a new born baby to becoming “an offence against society” just because of the way in which it was conceived, and then deem to call themselves moral and just. This area is also one in which the two author’s style differ majorly. Hardy´s omniscient narration allows him to imprint on the reader his own questions and outrages, the reader hearing his thoughts expressed almost as a soliloquy, “But, might some say, where was Tess´ guardian angel?” whereas MacLaverty uses Catherine as a puppet, to say what she wants to say through her, in a form easier to identify with. Another significant difference between the girls was the fact that Catherine had people she could talk to about her situation. She had the obvious option of her best friend, Liz, on whom she seemed to rely quite heavily during the tough times, although she didn’t necessarily always want her. Her mother was always there for her if she needed her, even though it may have been difficult for both of them to talk about it, she would have been there to support Catherine had anything bad happened. Tess on the other hand, had none of this support to fall back on. Her mother was much more distant from her than Catherine’s mother, to such an extent that they hardly spoke. Tess´ father was so ashamed that he wouldn’t even let the priest in to baptise the child as it was dying. She also had no close friends that she could tell all her problems to. It appeared in fact that she only had her religion to rely on, but it seemed that God wasn’t listening to her either. In the end, she had no one, which certainly must have made her ordeal so much worse. Almost as important as the reaction of the main characters to their troubles, is the reaction of the people around them. Both Catherine and Tess were hurt and disappointed by their mothers´ reaction, which was one of anger and disgust. Catherine’s mother scolded her for having sex, “Oh you dirty… Jesus, Catherine, how awful. How awful” whereas Tess reprimanded her mother for the opposite reason, “if only you’d have told me.” In both cases, mother and daughter outwardly tried to shift the blame onto each other, although all of them almost certainly blamed themselves inside. In both novels, the general reaction from people not close to the girls is one of interest, as Hardy says, “she was the most interesting personage in the village to many. The workers around Tess seemed to admire her courage, even though they still did this behind her back, as they didn’t appear to want Tess to know that they didn’t think badly of her. They would rather Tess suffered, thinking that everyone hated her, than give the impression that they condoned her actions. Just as their mother’s reactions differ, so do their final relationships with them. Hardy attributes much of the blame for Tess´ ruin to her mother portraying Tess´ reluctance to go to Alec overpowered by her mother’s persuasion. It is therefore not surprising that Hardy chooses to leave their relationship broken until Tess´ unfortunate death, when it was too late to resolve, thus making her mother seem even more hateful in the reader’s eye. Catherine and her mother, however, after the initial coldness between them, seem to bury their hatchet to as much of an extent as can be expected, taking into account their differing opinions. She realized that in today’s society, it matters very little if a baby is born out of wedlock, being a far more accepted common occurrence rather than an ostracised sinful deed. MacLaverty does this to show that single mother’s these days can survive, as long as they have support from their families. “Grace Notes” also ends happily in the fact that Catherine is finally content with herself, “And Catherine knew that it didn’t matter whether her friend liked it or not. As long as she liked her “. On the contrary, Tess, as well as ruining her short-term life as he rapes her, Alec is also the reason for her ultimate demise, as she is hanged for his murder.

In conclusion, coming from different eras, one might not expect Hardy and MacLaverty’s main moral messages to be the same. Most are however, and the two writers are in agreement as they say that both mother could have and would have survived with a baby in their worlds, had it not been for the attitudes of the people close to them. Indeed, Catherine does survive, with Anna becoming “a fine thread being drawn through a garment, mending tears.” as it is so aptly put by Doherty in “Dear Nobody”, another book of very similar style to Tess and Grace Notes. Hardy also makes it clear that Tess would have had a wonderful new life with Angel, had his timing been different. So, although both pointing out the sometimes terrible consequences of having a baby without a husband, neither writer condemns it. Rather they condemn society for exacerbating the inevitable struggle of being a single mother.