log #5

Book : Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Author : Thomas Hardy

Page : ~32

"Tess of the d'Urbervilles", published in 1891, is a novel by Thomas Hardy. The story is mainly about the sexual moral of the late Victorian England in the 19th century. In the first chapters, the main character- Tess - had already been through the nightmare of her life. A sad and tragic experience I could never imagine but probably happened commonly in the real world. 

The family of Tess was not a wealthy family. One day, her father was told by a parson that their family name, Durbeyfield, had a connection with a noble family of D'Urberville. So she was sent to visit the D'Urberville and claim their relationship. By doing this, they might have got some interest of this wealthy family and made their life better. There she met her cousin, Alec, and the tragedy happened. He was attracted by Tess, and he raped her while she was sleeping. She even got pregnant and had a baby afterward. What was worse, her baby was dead because of illness. 

I had seen the movie of this story filmed by BBC. The story was the one that made you think deeply after watching it. Sexual harassment happens often every day in our world. Our society is now a more open-minded one. We will protect the victims and give them a hand to come over the sorrow. But this book gives us the opportunity to peek at the society in the past and their reaction towards sexual harassments. Tess may be considered as an unclean woman even though she was innocent. This is very sad.

I chose this book because I am working on a news project of the rape in India. They share quite similar ideas. From reading news articles and watching a movie, it gave me a different way to see how the harassment happened around us. I also had similar experience which I shared once in class. I was slightly harassed by the Indian twice when I was in India. Relating to my own experience, I had much stronger feeling when doing this project. I also learned that we as women need to fight and protect for ourselves. Do not stay quiet when you are being invade.