Anti-Realistic Presentation of Female Body in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy's writing, particularly his last two novels, Tess of the d’Urbervilles (۱۸۹۱) and Jude the obscure (۱۸۹۵),reflects the author's fluctuation between two types of standards: the Victorian standards of morality and ethics, andthose of modernism. This conflict of standards can be well-observed in Tess of the d’Urbervilles that, according toDale Kramer, "portrays simultaneously the energy of traditional ways and the strength of the forces that are destroyingthem" (۴). Given this fluctuation, some critics believe that Hardy is a transitional novelist while others opine that he isalready a modernist challenging the Victorian values such as the style and representation of women. Peter Widdowsonargues for the latter statement as he makes the point that "it is a critical truism to say that he is a 'transitional' writer,but I wonder now just how transitional, or whether Hardy was not in fact already there, already a Modernist" (۷۶).Terry Eagleton introduces Hardy as a "novelist whose work […] is always on the point of breaking through its owncontaining forms" (qtd. in Widdowson ۷۴). In other words, Hardy is a novelist who challenges many conventions ofhis time including those related to sexual standards and women, and that is why Linda M. Shires calls him "a protomodernistin his last three novels especially" (۱۶۱).