Tess of the D'urbervilles - Tess is a young girl visiting her cousin Alec, who is of a higher class the Tess, Alec takes advantage of this and controls where they go and what they do. Hardy

Authors Avatar

Darren Maxwell

Tess of the D’urbervilles

Tess is a young girl visiting her cousin Alec, who is of a higher class the Tess, Alec takes advantage of this and controls where they go and what they do. Hardy presents Alec as a scheming man and there seems something weird about him, Tess on the other hand is of completely different character to Alec, she seems like a vulnerable girl and has no control over what they do or where they go.

In the first extract Tess comes over as very uneasy around Alec, for example when Alec called her a ‘pretty girl’ she blushed, also Alec directs the conversation and answers in short sentences and in not much detail at all ‘yes when they come’ and ‘I suppose I have’ show this. I think that in this extract it shows that Tess has little or no power in the relationship, it shows this how Alec directs the conversation and how he gives Tess no chance to do what she wants to do as he shows Tess around the ground.

Join now!

There is a lot of evidence in this extract that Alec treats Tess as inferior to himself, maybe because Tess isn’t from as higher class background as himself or just because he is sexist and thinks that women are inferior to men. There is evidence of this when Alec asks Tess ‘where do you live? What are you?’ This shows that the two characters are not at all close, you would think that if you had a cousin coming to stay you would find out who they were and know where they come from or even know them before.

...

This is a preview of the whole essay