Lady Dedlock from 'Bleak House' v. Tess d'Urbeville

                                                         A Comparison 

    Les Foins (Haymaker) by  Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884), from 1877.Public Domain, courtesy of 'Wikipedia'.

The purpose of this post is to look at the plight of two fictional characters 'Lady Dedlock' and 'Tess', created some 40 years apart, but dramatically  depict how a woman who had a child 'out of wedlock' could be 'ruined'. Both Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy were highly critical of the treatment of their plight.

A great deal of  Charles Dickens's 'Bleak House' (first published via installments 1852-1853)  concerns hidden past, and how the power that those individuals who have discovered a secret  about another person can wield. Lady Honoria Dedlock,  has had an illegitimate child before her marriage. She keeps this from her husband Lord Lester Dedlock, but once this fact is discovered, her life crumbles. The child is actually the joint narrator of the novel, Esther Summerson, who was brought up being told that her mother had done something dishonourable and then died 

“You are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born like them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart” Chapter 3 

Originally Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the d'Ubervilles'  was considered too explicit in the original form we read today, with too many harsh criticisms of Christianity and to bold in its portrayal of human intimacy.  A watered down version appeared in 1891. Tess was from a rural Dorset background. After misfortune hits her family, made worst by her father's delusion of grandeur after being told by a parson that he was really descended from the aristocracy, Tess is seduced, possibly raped by her employer's son Alex -see BRADY for full discussion. She returns to her family and gives birth to a son she named Sorrow, who dies soon a few months afterwards.  The scene where Tess and her younger siblings 'baptise' the dying baby is particularly hard hitting and was left out of the original version of the novel TOMALIN. ('Bleak House' for it's part had nine deaths of babies and children.)

 After leaving home again, Tess is courted by a young gentleman farmer, Angel Clare. Tess resists his advances at first , still ashamed of her past, but eventually succumbs. On their wedding night, Angel Clare confesses that he has already 'known' a woman, Tess discloses the fact that she already had a child, who was now dead. Angel Clare is horrified to realise that Tess was not the innocent milk maid he imagined her to be, and soon  he leaves her to go abroad, but insists that he will support her with money and one day will return. By contrast there is no indication that Honoria Barbary in 'Bleak House' was raped or otherwise taken advantage of by her former lover. 

Lady Honoria Dedlock's secret is exposed, and she goes on the run, already hounded for her 'shame'. Lord Dedlock has a stroke after her apparent desertion. It is highly plausible that Lord Dedlock would have come to terms with her past. Lady Dedlock is eventually found dead in the cemetery where her former lover- Esther's father- is buried. Angel Clare remains abroad far longer than expected, Tess is re-united to Alex, driven by poverty and his own manipulation. He  convinces her that Angel will never return, and they live together as if they were married. Angel Clare in fact comes back and finds Tess, wanting to resume their marriage. Tess realises that Alex has lied to her, and kills him with a knife. Tess and Angel Clare go on the run for a precious few days before she is apprehended and hanged for murder. 

The Lady Dedlock appears permanently cold and aloof, she manages to meet Esther, supposedly  by chance in the woods near Chesney Wold, and tells her that she is her mother. She shows Esther great tenderness, which is reciprocated, but they still agree to have only formal and distant contact. Unlike Tess who seemed prepared to look after her baby, Lady Dedlock could not possibly do this. At the end of 'Bleak House' Esther reveals another secret, she is now happily married to a doctor with two children. The stigma of being illegitimate has been overcome, which is quite a controversial end to a Victorian novel.

Even though forty years separate the creation of Lady Dedlock and Tess, a woman who has had a child out of wedlock-even from different class backgrounds has to be punished to the point of destruction. The ritual humiliation of the 'fallen woman' seems an end in itself. The leading solicitor Mr Tulkinghorn in 'Bleak House' is determined to destroy Lady Dedlock, the lesser 'small fish' legal clerk -Mr Guppy-has already made a bungled attempt to extort her,it is hinted that he has already discovered her secret. Guppy is after money, possible status. Tulkinghorn appears to be motivated by a hatred of women.

Lady Dedlock's former lover , a one time soldier, makes a meagre living out of copy righting for a legal company, living in a dismal room in house near Chantry Lane, using the name 'Nemo'. He dies from opium use, probably by an accidental overdose. 

Tess 'D'Urberville finds her life wrecked by  two men . Alex who was a cad and a bounder. Uses his money and status to take advantage of Tess's poverty and youth, but at the very end is prepared to live with her as if they were man and wife and risk being ostracised by respectable society. On one the other hand Angel Clare emerges as a  hypocrite, who holds Tess to a standard that he has not kept to himself as regards pre-marital sex and keen to shame Tess for years for not being the woman that he thought that she should been. Significantly,Victorian readers seemed less concerned about Angel-Clare's double standards than a modern readership -see MILLGATE for further discussion.

It is worth mentioning that Hardy's opposition to Christianity was also generating opposition, whilst Dickens appeared to have avoided such a provocative stance. 'Tess' when on to become Hardy's most successful novel. His last book 'Jude the Obscure' ( 1895) faced even more opposition TOMALIN . Jude marries, his wife emigrates after they have son and Jude started a relationship with his cousin Arabella. The couple live together as if they were married, and have two children. It all ends in death and tragedy. 'Jude the Obscure' was also held to be anti -religious. 

Even though both Dickens and Hardy portrayed the figure of the  unmarried mother in a sympathetic light, they were realist writers, and knew that the morality of the day would demand that the characters they created were somehow punished. Yet both the characters of  Tess and Lady Dedlock now evoke infinitely more sympathy than condemnation. 

Mr Bleak,formerly Michael Bully 

Brighton

26th June 2023 

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Sources

Books

'Double Vision and the Double Standard in Bleak House by Virginia  Blain, from 'Bleak House -Contemporary Critical Essays, edited by Jeremy Tambling, from New Casebook series, Macmillan, 1998.

'Tess and Alec: Rape or Seduction?' by Kristin Brady, from 'Thomas Hardy The Tragic Novels-A Selection of Critical Essays' edited by R.P. Draper, Casebook Series Revised 1991. 

'Thomas Hardy Tess of the d'Urbevilles'  Edited by Geoffrey Harvey, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001 

'Thomas Hardy-A biography revised', Michael Millgate, Oxford University Press, 2004 

'Thomas Hardy-The Time Torn Man', Claire Tomalin, Viking/Penguin 2006 

Online article 

Dickens’s Perception of Female Personality: Representation of Lady Dedlock and Esther Summerson in Bleak House, online extract by Azmi Azam 

Related article from this blog 

(Elizabeth) Martha Brown Executed    The woman Thomas Hardy saw hanged when he was aged 16

More 'Bleak House' posts from this blog 

Can Chesney Wold be located?

A Sketch of Mr Guppy A scoundrel or a 'Good Sort'?

The Ghost's Walk  The short story contained within Chapter 7 of 'Bleak House'.