Moral Implications of Madness: Female Sexuality and Violence in Sir Walter Scott’s “The Bride of Lammermoor” and Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles”
The following paragraphs are an extract from my master’s thesis. For those curious and courageous souls who may wish to read the entire lengthy essay, I attached the corresponding link at the end of this excerpt.
Introduction
In an article published in March of 1888, Thomas Hardy expressed his admiration for Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Bride of Lammermoor, which he commended as “an almost perfect specimen of form” (Personal Writings 121). Achieving a “sense of entrapping unity,” Scott’s tragic romance employs a pervasive and potent symbolism that consistently presages the hero’s fate and his inability to escape it (Millgate 731). Adopting the same technique, Hardy attempted a similar structural cohesion in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the work that he began shortly after publishing his praise of The Bride. As several scholars have noted, a “close examination of the two novels reveals the … [multiple] affinities between them” at the level of setting and plot as well as characterization and theme (729).[1] Both novels rely upon legends and omens to emphasize an inevitable destiny and advance the story toward a tragic conclusion. Either in a Gothic or a pastoral manner, both authors draw on the pagan to illustrate the rural landscape and transform it into an active force that shapes the characters’ identities and development. Most importantly, both works involve a climax in which an innocent young woman is condemned by her lover for lack of virtuous firmness. Devastated by his rejection, she commits an act of extreme violence that, considered unnatural to her gender and tender personality, is categorized as madness. Despite such striking similarities, however, The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) and Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) deliver remarkably divergent views regarding female sexuality and violence. Though indulging in several descriptions of feminine beauty, Scott deprives it of eroticism by painting an angelic, even childish portrait of his heroine. Hardy, on the other hand, reveals his appreciation for female sexuality in his sensual descriptions of the feminine form and the fertile landscape in which it flourishes. While Scott’s fears of female rebellion and violence lead him to contain it through an indisputable attribution of madness, Hardy vindicates his heroine’s fierce assertion of will and desire, an act of desperation rather than insanity. Scott tacitly acknowledges the failure of patriarchal society to protect the women who depend upon it for security and honor; Hardy condemns it. In a profoundly radical gesture, Hardy denounces the injustice of his professedly Christian society and argues for an alternative moral code, based on the natural world, in which female sexuality and virtue coexist.
Formal Overlap: Scott’s Gothic Destiny and Hardy’s Determinism
“But there is a fate on me, and I must go, or I shall add the ruin of others to my own.” (Scott, The Bride 206)
Due to Walter Scott’s extraordinary popularity, John Henry Raleigh has made the impressive claim that to “have been alive and literate in the nineteenth century was to have been affected in some way by the Waverley novels” (10). Among them, John Farrell identifies The Bride of Lammermoor as perhaps the most impactful on Victorian writers. A “seminal text for Victorian literary history,” this tragic romance served as “a major source for three of the most powerful and radically disturbing works of the period: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Tennyson’s Maud, and Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles” — which, like The Bride, all reflect a “brooding projection of crises in the worlds they explore” (53–54). In other words, to best illustrate the great changes, concerns, and doubts of their age, the three Victorian authors “imitate not the Walter Scott who gave so much comfort to their contemporaries, but The Bride of Lammermoor which is Scott’s own dark, reneging codicil to the text of historical progress constructed so elaborately and resourcefully in the other Waverley novels” (60).[2] Rather than perpetuating the narrative of personal and political resolution and advancement that characterizes most of his novels, The Bride offers a bleak account of history in which its characters are the “victims of their inheritance”: their fortunes are “emblematic of inevitable and ‘natural’ social and historical change leading to personal tragedy for those who are the destined victims of the hatreds and rivalries thus engendered” (Hollingworth 97, 101).[3] It is this conception of fate as the “inevitable consummation of the forces of history working upon the individual” that, I argue, so intrigued Thomas Hardy (100). In the same March 1888 article, Hardy goes on to articulate a deterministic philosophy, claiming that the novels possessing the greatest educational merit are those “which impress the reader with the inevitableness of character and environment in working out destiny, whether that destiny be just or unjust, enviable or cruel” (Personal Writings 118). He focuses on contemporary rather than historical sociopolitical dynamics, but Hardy, like Scott, weaves a tale that demonstrates the formidable command of such impersonal forces over the individual. Certainly, their methods differ according to period and genre: Scott’s depiction of fate, foretold by prophecy and potentially influenced by witchcraft, is profoundly romantic, whereas Hardy’s belief in destiny stems from his conviction that human life is fundamentally tragic — a cynicism that is distinctly Victorian.[4] Yet the two works are united by their portrayal of actions and events as predictable, due to individual character, and unavoidable, due to social conventions and constraints.
The tragedy in both The Bride of Lammermoor and Tess of the d’Urbervilles culminates in the painful early death of the heroine, whose youthful inexperience leads to her victimization and destruction. She is exploited by an avaricious aristocratic authority, whereupon she faces condemnation from family, religion, and the law — the very resources that should protect her, rather than punish her once it has failed to do so. In Walter Scott’s novel, Lucy Ashton is a sweet “girl of seventeen” (31) — not quite a woman — whose “secret delight was in the old legendary tales of ardent devotion and unalterable affection” (40). Her romantic imagination precipitates her attachment to Edgar Ravenswood, a dispossessed heir and political enemy of her father who strikes her as a brooding noble hero. Nurtured by tales of chivalry, Lucy dreams of marrying him; but such a hope, the product of a childish heart and unworldly mind, is completely divorced from her sociopolitical reality and proves to be merely an “enchanted web of fairy tissue, as beautiful and transient as the film of the gossamer” (65). Her vow of love and fidelity to Edgar is discovered by her mother, who, as a descendent of a distinguished Scottish family, rejects their intended union out of pride and ambition. Lady Ashton intends to marry Lucy to a man who will facilitate her son’s career, and she denies the legitimacy of her daughter’s secret pledge based on its violation of holy scripture and British law. Employing psychological and emotional warfare, Lady Ashton gradually weakens Lucy’s reason and resolve, which are ultimately obliterated by the Master of Ravenswood’s rash and bitter denunciation.
Though a practical girl unencumbered by romantic dreams, Tess Durbeyfield is as innocent and pure of heart as Lucy Ashton. She, too, is on the threshold of womanhood and lacks an adult understanding of the world. Described as a “mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience,” Tess does not understand the intentions of Alec, the seducer posing as her kinsman, until it is too late (8). Berating her mother’s decision to keep her in ignorance, she asks in an agonized voice, “How could I be expected to know? I was a child when I left this house four months ago. Why didn’t you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn’t you warn me?” (64). Though Joan suspects that the new d’Urberville cousin may take advantage of her daughter, she comforts herself by imagining that Tess would then coax him into marrying her; when Tess scorns to do so, motivated by a pride and set of principles incomprehensible to her mother, Joan is angry not with Alec, who has compromised her daughter, but with Tess, who has failed to raise herself and her family through a connection with him (38, 63–64). John Durbeyfield also assigns blames to Tess, bemoaning the disgrace that her premarital pregnancy casts on his illustrious d’Urberville lineage. Rather than protecting their daughter’s safety and honor, they have put her in harm’s way for the sake of ambition, in a manner similar to Lady Ashton’s sacrifice of her daughter’s happiness and use of her as an instrument of social and political gain. Like Lucy, Tess is wrongly and catastrophically renounced by her beloved Angel, who, like Ravenswood, interprets evidence of exploitation as proof of moral weakness. However, unlike Lucy, Tess comes to repudiate the world that has condemned her. Based on her experience with professed Christians, Tess rejects the Old Testament God who would punish victims for their persecutors’ sins, believing that a more forgiving and humane system of ethics must exist since her reason and emotions rebel against the one she has been taught. She resiliently survives the scorn of society and overcomes the internalization of guilt until she is broken by the man in whom she has placed all her trust and love. Despite his more progressive aspirations, Angel’s adherence to traditional and punitive views on female sexuality lead him to abandon Tess and cause her true fall, in which she becomes the mistress and murderer of Alec. Ultimately, Tess is executed by society’s notion of justice, yet she accepts her sentence with sublime composure as the consequence of her crime — the taking of his life — which she considers the almost inevitable conclusion to the path her life has taken since Alec set that fatal “trap” for her in her “simple youth” (303).
The tragedy of both novels is heralded by their titles, which are rather unexpected ones. Neither heroine is explicitly referred to by the titular words, yet they call attention to key elements of the story. The Bride of Lammermoor is actually a combination of terms. First, it recalls Lady Ashton’s derisive nickname for her daughter, whom she calls the Lammermoor Shepherdess since Lucy’s mildness and “want of spirit” appear to her “as a decided mark, that the more plebeian blood of her father predominated in Lucy’s veins” (41). Yet the prominent word Bride primarily echoes the prophecy that foretells the doom of the Ravenswood family: “When the last Laird of Ravenswood to Ravenswood shall ride, / And woo a dead maiden to be his bride, / He shall stable his steed in the Kelpie’s flow, / And his name shall be lost for evermoe!” (185). Rather than merely indicating Lucy, the title establishes her fatal connection to Ravenswood and defines the work as one thoroughly Gothic.
More so than The Bride, the title of Tess emphasizes the issue of degraded bloodlines: Tess is not merely a Durbeyfield but also, and more importantly, an obscure descendent of the d’Urbervilles. Significantly, it is the discovery of her aristocratic lineage that begins Tess’s tragic journey. Upon her parents’ request, she seeks out others with the d’Urberville name and comes into contact with Alec, who initiates her into a world of shame, sorrow, and suffering that eventually crushes her. The relationship is essentially a causal one, as Hardy establishes “a structural parallelism … in the very first pages between Tess’s parentage and her parenthood, between her aristocratic blood and her ruin” (Garson 132). Tess is thus doubly “a woman with a past” (132): she has been an unwed mother and descends from a Norman family, whose blood Angel views as corrupted and corruptive — the cause of what he sees as Tess’s fallen character.
Throughout the two novels, the inescapability of fate as an inherited or anticipated destiny — the result of individual character, family lineage, sociopolitical forces, and historical movement — is illustrated by the recurrent appearance of legends and omens.[5] In The Bride of Lammermoor, two fables surround the Ravenswood family. The first is the prophecy that foretells the doom of “the last Laird of Ravenswood,” suggesting that the Master will be the final possessor of that title; his death effects the extinction of his family and, symbolically, that of feudalism. The second myth surrounds the Mermaiden’s Fountain, where dashing Edgar first exchanges words with sweet Lucy. Considered a fatal spot for one of his family, the fountain purportedly witnessed “the fate of a beautiful maid of plebeian rank,” the mistress of one of his ancestors, “whom he slew in a fit of jealousy, and whose blood was mingled with the waters of the locked fountain, as it was commonly called” (58–59). Though Ravenswood does not physically injure Lucy, his brutal words of condemnation serve as the fatal blow that eradicates the last traces of hope and rationality from her mind. This legend of gendered violence is mirrored in Tess by the infamous story of the d’Urberville coach. At first reluctant to speak of such a “dismal” tale, Alec vaguely mentions that the “sound of a non-existent coach can only be heard by one of d’Urberville blood, and it is held to be of ill-omen to the one who hears it. It has to do with a murder, committed by one of the family, centuries ago” (279). When Tess, who has been hearing such ominous phantom noises, tells him to elaborate, Alec carelessly explains, “One of the family is said to have abducted some beautiful woman, who tried to escape from the coach in which he was carrying her off, and in the struggle he killed her — or she killed him — I forget which” (279). The fact that Alec does not remember the crucial action exposes his lack of compassion as a man who, having committed a similar crime, cannot comprehend its gravity. His ignorance of the story’s details and implications mirrors his ignorance of his fate, his inability to anticipate his death at the hands of the one he has wronged. In a reenactment of the legend, Tess, the maiden unwillingly deflowered, turns her abductor’s violence against him, murdering him in self-defense and in vengeance. Thus she evolves from vulnerable victim into formidable agent, who defends her will and her body through the only means available — her own conviction and strength.
In addition to these legends, both The Bride and Tess are memorable for their striking use of omens. Such signs frequently appear from the natural world, which at key moments reflects the characters’ circumstances and intensifies their emotions. In Scott’s Gothic novel, as Lucy and Edgar “arose to leave the fountain which had been witness of their mutual engagement, an arrow whistled through the air, and struck a raven perched on the sere branch of an old oak, near to where they had been seated. The bird fluttered a few yards, and dropped at the feet of Lucy, whose dress was stained with some spots of its blood” (209). While Lucy is alarmed, the Master is furious. He asks the hunter, “Do you know the ravens are all under the protection of the Lords of Ravenswood, and, to kill one in their presence, is such bad luck that it deserves the stab?” (210). Far from subtle, this scene convinces the reader of the lovers’ unavoidable tragic ending: the birth of their attachment is marred by the death of an animal that represents the fortunes of the Ravenswood family, already doomed by prophecy. Likewise, the day of Tess’s marriage to Angel Clare is overshadowed by an avian omen. As the pair bids farewell to their friends, the dairy’s “white [cock] with the rose comb” — marked by the colors of the marriage bed — emits a call that “thrilled their ears through, dwindling away like echoes down a valley of rocks” (169). Uttering this trumpet-call of a warning “straight towards Clare” (169), the rooster announces that Angel has been cuckolded, beginning to expose the past which will soon destroy their present and future (Parker 276).
Lastly, old and unsightly family portraits haunt each pair of lovers, as if their ancestors were observing and undermining their attempts to build a future free of past grievances. With regard to physical features, the Master so closely resembles his vengeful forebear, the aptly named Malise Ravenswood, that Lucy’s younger brother believes he has come to their home with bloodshed rather than reconciliation on his mind (195). As it turns out, Edgar and his ancestor do return to the Ashton manor and inflict severe distress upon its inhabitants: the Master disrupts Lucy’s signing of the marriage papers and seals her madness, while the portrait of Sir Malise, which mysteriously reappears during Lucy’s wedding celebration, seems to “frown wrath and vengeance upon the party assembled below” (336). In both instances, Malise’s portrait serves as a warning to the onlookers, proclaiming their impotence to escape the personal and political feuds of earlier generations. As a result, Brian Hollingworth argues that rather than supplying “the romantic ‘horrors’ of the Gothic tale,” such portents perform a narrative function: “the supernatural — in the form of omen, prophecy or legend — intervenes like a Greek chorus at those moments when Lucy and Ravenswood seem most likely to escape their tragic destiny as a means to remind the reader of the inevitability of their destruction” (100). Moreover, since these prophetic moments are often grounded in “plainly observable phenomena” — that is, they are informed by the characters’ personalities and situations — they “suggest the close correlation between destiny and historical inevitability” (101). Though its Gothic elements should not be dismissed, Hollingworth fruitfully calls attention to the fact that the novel is more than a fanciful romance. Dramatizing momentous historical events of the seventeenth century, The Bride of Lammermoor is as much Scott’s retelling of a thrilling legend as his literary exploration of the messy transition between feudalism and capitalism, the divine right of kings and constitutional monarchy (Arata).[6] Both “antiquarian scholar and national minstrel,” Scott revived but also revised romance: in addition to granting it a national and masculine identity, he historicized it (Duncan 4, 13–15). Lucy and Edgar’s romance is fated to end in failure due to prophecies and portents but also because reconciliation is impossible between old blood and new money, “the declining feudal aristocracy and the rising bourgeoisie” (Kerr 95–96).
While the Ashtons are haunted by Ravenswood portraits, Tess and Angel’s romance is hindered by grim paintings of female d’Urberville ancestors. As Angel regards these portraits, installed in the walls of a mansion that was previously the d’Urberville seat, he is unsettled by the subtle yet unmistakable physical resemblance between his beloved and these rather monstrous figures, whose sharp features seem to reveal a “merciless treachery” and “arrogance to the point of ferocity” (170). These paintings prove Tess’s lineage to Angel but also confirm his prejudice against ancient families as inherently dissolute, passing down moral flaws as well as physical traits. Voicing nineteenth-century theories of degeneration, Angel views Tess’s early loss of chastity as an ethical failing indicative of her degraded aristocratic lineage (Nunan 290). “I cannot help associating your decline as a family with this other fact — of your want of firmness,” he tells her. “Decrepit families imply decrepit wills, decrepit conduct. Heaven, why did you give me a handle for despising you more by informing me of your descent! Here was I thinking you a new-sprung child of nature; there were you, the belated seedling of an effete aristocracy!” (182). Unlike in The Bride, however, the d’Urberville portraits are instrumental as well as symbolic. When Angel is tempted to forgive Tess and lie with her as his wife, he again catches sight of the paintings, in which he reads a “[s]inister design,” a “concentrated purpose of revenge on the other sex — so it seemed to him then. The Caroline bodice of the portrait was low — precisely as Tess’s had been when he tucked it in to show the necklace; and again he experienced the distressing sensation of a resemblance between them. The check was sufficient. He resumed his retreat and descended” (184). Perceiving a malevolent depravity in the painted features — a threat both disturbing and seductively sexual — Angel erroneously conflates ancestor and descendent and turns his back on Tess.
[1] See also Farrell and Pinion.
[2] See also Kerr 85–86.
[3] See also Waswo. While Waverley is saved by circumstances instead of his own efforts, Lucy and Ravenswood are doomed by fate (i.e., the insurmountable conditions of society and the thrust of history) despite their attempts to evade it (318–20). This “subordination” of the hero to “the narrative action of historical events” is, Waswo argues, Scott’s “main structural and semantic modification of traditional romance” (316).
[4] In an interview Hardy remarked, “I hate the optimistic grin which ends a story happily, merely to suit conventional ideas. It raises a far greater horror in me than the honest sadness that comes after tragedy” (Tess 388).
[5] Hart cleverly describes such a method as “formal momentum” (66).
[6] See also Hart 50.
As promised, here is the link to my thesis. You can download the entire document by clicking on the words “1 Liebman Hana 2023 MA.pdf,” highlighted in blue under the caption “Files,” to the left of the abstract.
