Thomas Hardy chooses a third person omnipotent narrator for his 1891 novel Tess of the d’Ubervilles. The narrator’s omnipotence is confirmed at the end of Chapter VIII when Tess has gotten out of Alec’s gig and insists on walking the rest of the way to Trantridge. The narrator says, “She might in truth have safely trusted him now…” (86). The ‘in truth’ here exerts a certain amount of authority and certainty that only an omnipotent narrator can provide. The narrator then proceeds to over sexualize and objectify Tess throughout the novel. And it is this objectification that is more disturbing than the treatment Tess receives from the other characters in the story. By telling a tale of fallible and flawed men, who were raised within the context of a particular time and culture, Hardy may very well be commenting on the nature of these particular men and protesting against the culture that produced them. But by allowing his narrator the same licence to continually sexualize Tess, and to then empower that licence with the gift of omnipotence, Hardy undercuts any protest he attempts to make. Indeed the narrator’s treatment of Tess constitutes tacit approval for anyone to treat Tess, and all women, in this same fashion precisely because it happens in the absence of other characters.
There is a passage from chapter XIV of the novel that highlights and exemplifies the narrator’s treatment of Tess. This passage occurs after Tess has been raped by Alec and given birth to but not yet named Sorrow. She is working in a corn field gathering the harvest. The narrator begins by pointing out that the older women wear overalls but the young ones are abandoning these despite the fact that they are considered to be “the most appropriate dress of the field-women” (117). Here the reader trusts the narrator’s statement because the narrator has been shown to have knowledge of all things. Therefore if Tess is not wearing the ‘most appropriate’ dress, then her dress, by implication, is inappropriate. The narrator then singles Tess out for closer inspection. “This morning the eye returns involuntarily to the girl in the pink cotton jacket [Tess], she being the most flexuous and finely-drawn figure of them all” (117). There are, I think, two important items to point out in this sentence. First ‘the eye’, the eye of the narrator and the eye of the audience, is drawn involuntarily to the girl. Since it is involuntary, and therefore no fault of the beholder, the agency of this attention must lie within the object itself –an object that is as has been said before inappropriately dressed. Second the use of the world flexuous is an odd choice. Flexuous means full of bends and curves, which is in itself a lascivious but not unexpected description of a finely-drawn woman, however flexuous is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, generally reserved for scientific use when describing animals or vegetables, things other than a human being. So from the start of this passage no one but the narrator and the reader are observing Tess, and we are observing her in a very particular way.
The passage goes on to describe Tess’ labor, and the words chosen in the description imply a sexual act is taking place. To be clear, Tess is gather and bundling corn under the noon sun in a heavy jacket and gloves to protect her hands and arms. But the narrator has Tess patting the tip with her left palm, stooping low and moving forward, pushing her hand under the bundle, to hold the corn in an embrace like that of a lover (117). The corn here, is clearly a phallus. And Tess, who is kneeling in front of, then patting, and embracing this phallus with her “naked arm” (117) while her skirts are “now and then lifted” by the breeze (117), is just as clearly engaging in a sexual act with this phallus. The narrator ends the passage with “feminine smoothness becomes scarified by the stubble, and bleeds” (118). Not only does this phrasing bring to mind the blood that may accompany the loss of virginity, but it echos the description the narrator gives of Tess’ rape from earlier in the novel. “It was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a course pattern as it was doomed to receive…” (104).
Alec is a man who thinks poorly of women, a man who blames Tess for his actions, and he is a man who does not believe his actions in the forest constitute a crime. What then can be said of the narrator observing Tess harvesting corn? The narrative purpose of this scene is to demonstrate Tess is working, and working hard. Beyond that, the scene shows Tess as a lonely woman, both avoiding others and others not bothering her. And finally this scene sets up the next scene where Tess nurses her doomed child. The sexualized nature of the description of her labor constitutes another violation against Tess –it is a sexual encounter she did not ask for, willingly participate in, or appear to want. And the description of her dress before the sex act implies that the violation is her fault. The narrator’s omnipotent power only intensifies this assignment of blame because if there were a better, more true, description of this harvest then the narrator would have provided this better description. Therefore I must place the narrator in the same category with Alec, as a man (or heteronormative entity) who does care for or respect women in general and Tess in particular.