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Comparing Tess of the D'urbervilles and Mrs Dalloway in the Possibility of Happiness for their Central Characters. Joy, fulfilment and ambition. $3.90
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The possibility of happiness in both texts are continually questioned and often times moments of
happiness are undermined by the inevitable return to despair. Hardy and Woolf approach this
differently but there are times that the writers appear similar.
Small moments of joy suggest a possibility of happiness. Clarissa, for instance, loves the life in the
city. Woolf illustrates this joy through an accumulation of elements that appear to bring the city to
life. Woolf mentions the ‘bellow and the uproar’ and the ‘brass bands, barrel organs’ and other
sounds that make the city so vibrant to Clarissa. Woolf’s use of sensory overload with the plosive
alliteration enhances the readers engagement with the scene and the accumulation of these
elements illustrates Clarissa’s passion for London. Clarissa ends her thoughts about her love for
London with a lyrical: ‘loved, life, London’. The joy that the city brings gives Clarissa an appreciation
and a chance for a happy life. Hardy does something similar with Tess, whilst walking to Talbothay’s
Tess gets overcome by a feeling of excitement as she leaves the Vale of Blackmoor. Hardy notes that
‘her spirits, and her thankfulness, and her hopes, rose higher and higher’. Alike to Woolf, Hardy
accumulates all that makes Tess feel uplifted – demonstrated best by his repetition of ‘and’
(polysyndeton). In this, Hardy suggests that happiness is on the horizon. The use of ‘and’ three times,
adds a youthful element to Tess because children often repeat ‘and then’ when recalling stories. This
could mean that Tess has the possibility of happiness as she is still young, a child, with her whole life
ahead of her.
However, Hardy undermines these happy moments by having the omniscient narrator interrupt to
tell the reader that Tess’s happiness is never lasting. Hardy illustrates this best when Tess becomes
settled at Talbothay’s, he says; ‘Tess had never in her recent life been so happy as she was now,
possibility never would be so happy again’. The narrator disrupts the happy scene to inform the
reader of Tess’s fate. This foreshadows future unhappiness and sets the tone as pessimistic. Unlike in
Woolf, most of Hardy’s happy moments come at a cast. For example, in Trantridge, ‘Tess paid the
penalty of walking about with happiness’. This conveys that total happiness might be unobtainable
for Tess. This tragedy is characteristic of a Hardy novel. Woolf, on the other hand, has her characters
be more melodramatic when it comes to feelings of despair. When Richard is at lunch with Lady
Bruton, Clarissa is very forceful in thinking; ‘He has left me, I am alone forever’. Although, Clarissa
knows that this is irrational and that he hasn’t left her, she let’s the smallest situations taint her
possible happiness. To some extent Woolf mimics the pessimism that Hardy portrays but overall, it is
only Woolf’s character’s that assume the worst. Septimus, is another example, when he see Rezia
without her ring, he immediately assumes that ‘their marriage was over.’ This jumping to
conclusions puts Woolf’s characters at risk of tainting their possible happiness.
Characters possible happiness doesn’t just come from a feeling of joy, happiness could also come
from acceptance and fulfilment. For instance, both Clarissa and Tess become content with the idea
of death. Hardy, more obviously, named Phase the Seventh, ‘fulfilment’. In this phase, Tess, herself,
registers that ‘this happiness could not have lasted’. This suggests that she accepts her inevitable
death and is content with the idea of it. She even says to Angel that she is ‘glad’. Clarissa, also,
comes to accept the idea that life ends in death. She remarks that ‘she had never been so happy’
near the end of the novel. Continually throughout the novel Woolf mentions the phrase ‘fear no
more the heat of the sun – the ‘sun’ being death. It isn’t until the end that Clarissa fully
acknowledges the meaning of it and grows to willingly accept it. This presents the idea of happiness
in death. Whilst Tess is ‘glad’ death has come - and she sees this as an opportunity for happiness –
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