The Conflict Between Agriculture and Industry

Many writers of the Victorian Age wrote about the Industrial Revolution and its disruption of the agricultural way of life in England. The negative side of industrialism is one of the central themes of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, as well as a topic of discussion in Charles Dickens' Hard Times, Friedrich Engels' The Great Towns, and John Ruskin's The Stones of Venice. The latter three writers develop different arguments against industrialism. Hardy uses the conflict between Alec Stoke-D'Urberville and Tess Durbeyfield to illustrate the conflict between agriculture and industrialism. He uses Tess to illustrate the agricultural way of life, the old way of life, and Alec to illustrate the effects of industry on this way of life. Alec overpowers Tess and makes her impure, much like industrialism made everything it infected dirty. Tess has no choice but to unite with Alec, despite her repulsion toward him, because of circumstances beyond her control, much like farm laborers were forced to the cities and into the factories.

Hardy constantly associates Tess Durbeyfield with nature through out the entire book. She grows up in a secluded village surrounded by hills, and at the book's open, Hardy stresses her purity by calling her a "mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience" (26). Her eyes are large orbs full of expression and emotion, which reinforces her innocence. Her mother wishes that she marry Alec, that question being the first one out of her mouth when Tess returns home from Trantridge. Tess refuses to marry Alec simply to further her own and her family's social standing, because, as she says: "'I have never really loved you, and I think I never can'" (93). Instead, she obeys her natural feelings and rejects Alec. She also obeys her natural feelings in loving her baby despite its impure origins because it is a "gift of shameless Nature" (111), and even "fell to violently kissing it some dozens of times, as if she could never leave off" (106).

Hardy associates the origin of Tess' rally with spring, saying: "A particularly fine spring came round, and the stir of germination was almost audible in the buds; it moved her, as it moved the wild animals, and made her passionate to go" (115). Tess then leaves home on "a thyme-scented, bird-hatching morning in May" (117) and goes to Talbothays dairy, where she meets Angel Clare, who sees her as a "fresh and virginal daughter of Nature" (137). The first thing Angel notices and responds to in Tess is her innocence, which he associates with nature. Under Angel's gaze, Tess acts like a "domestic animal," (137), one of many comparisons of Tess to various animals.

Tess is most happy at Talbothays because this is where she is closest to nature, which does not reject her like society does because of her impure history. Even at home, before Talbothays, she escapes into nature, where "On these lonely hill and dales her quiescent glide was of a piece with the element she moved in," and she would walk "among the sleeping birds in the hedges, (watch) the skipping rabbits on a moonlit warren, or (stand) under a pheasant-laden bough" (101). Hardy infuses her time at Talbothays with natural imagery, placing Angel and Tess together early in the morning, "the non-human hours" when "they could get quite close to the waterfowl" (147) . The happiest time of her life is this summer season and the worst time, when Angel leaves her and she must go to Flintcomb-Ash to survive, is the dead of winter. The say she and Angel admit their love happens during the time when "Dairyman Crick kept his shirt sleeves permanently rolled up. . . open windows had no effect on ventilation without open doors. . . the flies in the kitchen were lazy. . . Conversations were concerning sunstroke" (165). To contrast, Tess' time as a laborer at Flintcomb-Ash is marked by working "in the morning frosts and in the afternoon rains" (305). The only thing that sustains her is talk of the happy times of summer. Hardy associates Tess with seasons to further show her as a part of nature.

If Tess is a daughter of Nature, then Alec Stoke-D'Urberville is a son of industry, as suggested by his last name, which conjures images of coal. He lives on a farm, but it is not wholesome and natural like Tess' world, but unnatural. It serves no real purpose except as a home for a blind old woman and her chickens. The night Alec takes advantage of Tess, she notices him at the dance: "She looked round and saw the red coal of a cigar: Alec D'Urberville was standing there alone" (79). Hardy uses industrial imagery to portray Alec, specifically on the night he harms Tess. Tess stumbles upon Alec later in the book during her lowest time, when she is so desperate for help she tries to go to Angel's parents. Alec, as the "low, winter sun" (322) shines upon him, sees Tess in the back of the barn where he is preaching. One characteristic of Alec is self-centeredness, as shown by the way he has little regard for Tess' feelings, instead focusing only on the fact that he desires her. This is a characteristic that Engels writes about in The Great Towns as being part of the industrialized city: "nowhere is this selfish egotism so blatantly evident as in the frantic bustle of the great city," where one finds "The disintegration of society into individuals, each guided by is private principles and pursuing his own aims" (Norton 1704). Alec pursues his own aims from the time he gives her a ride to Trantridge and ignores her pleas to slow down to his wearing on Tess with his constant presence at Flintcomb-Ash, despite her pleas for him to leave her alone. Hardy links Alec with industry, Tess' winter and an unnatural farm, suggesting a negative view of industrialism.

Because Hardy uses Tess to represent nature and Alec to represent industry, the events that link Tess and Alec must have a special significance in the conflict between agriculture and industry. The most significant link between them happens the night he leads her deep into the forest and rapes her. Although Hardy is ambiguous as to the extent of Tess' compliance, it is very clear that he takes advantage of her and she is not to blame. Alec renders Tess impure: "upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern" (89). Tess is permanently changed, and "An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our heroine's personality thereafter from that previous self of hers" (89). The only product of their relationship is a sickly child, Sorrow, that dies as an infant. According to Hardy, the results of industrialism overpowering and ruining agricultural life are certainly unhappy.

Tess tries to start over and goes to Talbothays, where for a time, insulated and surrounded by nature, she finds a measure of contentment with Angel. Although she knows her past will eventually catch up to her, she delays telling him her secret and naming a wedding date to preserve "a perpetual betrothal in which everything should remain as it was then" (217). When she finally does tell him, he is so disturbed he tells her: "forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one person; now you are another. My God -- how can forgiveness meet such a grotesque -- prestidigitation as that!" (245).

Like Alec's destruction of Tess' impurity, industrialism makes agricultural life filthy. Dickens describes the filthiness of industrial life in Hard Times when we writes of "a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it" (Norton 1711). This town is "a town of unnatural red and black, like the painted face of a savage," with "interminable serpents of smoke," and "a black canal" and "a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye" (Norton 1712). All of this unnatural dirt would not exist except for industrialism causing it.

Another incident that links Alec and Tess, and shows the conflict between the two, is the threshing scene at Flintcomb-Ash. While there is still "nothing to show where the eastern horizon lies," (343), Farmer Groby puts Tess at work on the huge machine, a "red tyrant that the women had come to serve" (344). There is also an engine, black, sooty and grimy. Hardy contrasts the engine man with "this region of yellow grain and pale soil, with which he had nothing in common. . . .He was in the agricultural world, but not of it. He served fire and smoke" (344). Hardy describes in detail the never-ending drudgery of the long day. Unlike other field work that Tess has done, "there was not respite" (346) and here she has no opportunity to pause her ceaseless work for even a moment. Tess cannot even turn her head from her labor.

The old men, members of the old way of living which is being destroyed by this new technology, reminisce about the days of hand-labor "which, to their thinking, . . . produced better results" (345). Likewise, Ruskin writes in The Stones of Venice that the workers "feel that the kind of labor to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less than men" (Norton 1437). He writes that the people who labor are "Divided into mere segments of men -- broken into small fragments and crumbs of life" (Norton 1438). Hardy says Tess' work is reduced to untying "every sheaf of corn. . . so that the feeder could seize it and spread it over the revolving drum" (345). She is nothing more than an extension of the machine. Engels also says that the "division of labor has been pushed to its furthest limits," and this division is "the essence of modern industry" (Norton 1705). Dickens extends the monotony that Hardy decries when he writes of people who "went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next" (Norton 1712).

During a break from this industrial labor, Alec finds Tess and tells her he has given up preaching. He is thus the same person he was when he raped her: "'Here I am, my love as in the old times'" (349), significant because his presence in this industrial atmosphere again links him to industry. He also tells her, "'I was your master once! I will be your master again. If you are any man's wife, you are mine!'" (351). Tess is also forced to serve the machines she labors for; the engine man serves industrialism. This scene intensifies when she slaps Alec with her heavy leather glove, showing that the two never can and never will be reconciled. Just as Alec leaves her, her works starts, an unceasing flow between elements associated with industrialism. "Tess resumed her position by the buzzing drum as one in a dream, untying sheaf after sheaf in endless succession" (351). Alec hovers around the scene the rest of the afternoon, watching Tess, further linking himself with the industrial atmosphere.

The relationship between Alec and Tess is unnatural from its inception. Tess naturally feels a dislike for Alec from their first days spent together: "She had dreaded him, winced before him, succumbed to adroit advantages he took of her helplessness. . . he was dust and ashes to her" (97-98). These feelings do not change. He forces himself unnaturally upon her because of his desire for her, and even after she marries Angel, he forces himself back into her life by showing up at Flintcomb-Ash again and again. Another detail, perhaps, that shows how they do not belong together is the fact that Tess is the first one awake in the mornings at the dairy, a place where everyone has to get up extremely early, whereas Mrs. Brooks, the maid who discovers Alec's murder, remarks that Alec "was not an early riser" (403). This relationship produces only a sickly child and loads of guilt. Hardy contrasts this with the relationship between Tess and Angel, born in the natural cocoon of Talbothays; they are compared to Adam and Eve, two people perfectly joined by the hand of God.

When Tess finally joins Alec near the end of the book, it is because she is forced to by circumstances beyond her control. Her family has no land and nowhere to love, but Alec promises to take care of them, saying to her at the family burial ground, "'The little finger of the sham D'Urberville can do more for you than the whole dynasty of the real underneath'" (385). Tess does not know when or if Angel will ever come back and she has her family to worry about. Alec tells her she is a simpleton to expect Angel's return and she must think of her family. Tess finally succumbs to Alec and rejoins him. This is like the enclosure movement in England, during which the farm laborers were forced off the land, and having no where else to go, moved to the urban centers to work in the factories. Hardy, in an essay he wrote for

Longman's Magazine in 1883, before he wrote Tess, says the process "which is designated by statisticians as 'the tendency of the rural population towards the large towns,' is really the tendency of water to flow uphill when forced." For all her resistance, Tess has no choice but to join Alec, just as the farm laborers whom Tess symbolizes have no alternative but to serve industrialism.

The final conflict between Tess and Alec results in his death. He taunts her in the moment of her greatest pain, when Angel does come back, as she says, "'Oh, you have torn my life all to pieces. . . .I can't bear this! I cannot!'" (402). Alec responds with "more and sharper words," (402) showing that he has little sympathy. In the ensuing moments, she kills him. The entire course of their time together is marked by conflict and pain. The relationship does not come together naturally, like that of Tess and Angel, but is forced by Alec upon Tess. Alec benefits from this relationship in that he gets what he desires, even though he is murdered. Tess gets nothing but suffering. She triumphs momentarily over Alec, but is then executed for her crime, showing that the agricultural way of living, which she represents, is gone for good: "something moved slowly up the staff and extended itself upon the breeze. It was a black flag" (419).

All of the writers portray the negative aspects of industrialism. It is filthy, reduces the workers to machines and fills their days with monotony, and makes people selfish and self-centered. Hardy, using the relationship between Tess and Alec, shows how industrialism ravages and destroys everything pure and innocent about agricultural living. The two ways of life do not belong together, yet are unnaturally joined by the overpowering of industrialism. Tess of the D'Urbervilles ends on a somber note, with the execution of Tess and the permanent destruction of the way of life she represents. Angel and Liza-Lu join hands at the end and walk away together, but Tess, the person around whom both of their lives centers, is gone.