improbable conversions and sleep-walking routines
Posted by Malini on September 27, 1998 at 11:16:07:
In response to Unbelievable parts of "Tess", written by Kay on September 24, 1998 at 11:24:41
] ] Alec as a preacher is simply too far fetched for me... it's the first thing that that happens to me with Hardy, but I simply has this feeling of "unreality" about the whole business...and then, his fascination with Tess after all those years, when he could have found her if he had wanted to...I simply don't buy it.
] I wondered myself why Alec didn't look up Tess sooner.... Alec as a preacher certainly was far-fetched. And it's surprising how fast he gave it all up once he met Tess again. Tess' second hand, half understood objections were sufficient to cause a breakup of his whole belief-system.
Alec as a preacher I found extremely peculiar, and it particularly bothered me that just as I was beginning to come to terms with his change of heart he switched right back again.
The fact that he didn't look her up never bothered me; she was only one of his numerous conquests, he didn't know he had fathered a child, and I figured he only realized she was special because she got to him again when he did see her.
] What did you all make of the gothic sleepwalk scene? On the VirtViews board, many were glad that the A & E version did not show it because it would have spoiled the realism. I think the whole sleepwalking scene was written to give Tess the hope that someday Angel's subconscious love would work its way to the surface again.
I have to say that I really missed the sleep-walking scene in the A&E movie. I don't pretend to sympathize with Angel's conscious rejection of Tess, but I do think it misrepresented him by suppressing the manifestation of his subconscious love. And the symbolic foreshadowing of him putting her in a coffin in a D'Urberville church seemed to me a pretty crucial link between the two halves of the story.
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