the yard is copulating: a pair of amorous flies just attempted to land on my knee, and i have suspicions about the rustles down the hill. the yard has not been reading thomas hardy, or it would know better. i was aware that jude the obscure is a tragedy, but i had no idea that sue bridehead's last pregnancy would end in a children's hour murder-suicide; just now, i've reached the bit in tess of the d'urbervilles where the love-child is christened SORROW and promptly expires. i might have preferred the pre-1912 edition of the story - the version where, for the delicate eyes of his magazine audience, hardy skips over tess's violation altogether. this "intact" version isn't exactly lurid; one wonders how sex, implied primarily in the phases' transition from MAIDEN to MAIDEN NO MORE, could compromise anyone. one also wonders why d.h. lawrence was so keen on criticizing hardy (like jude, my norton edition of tess is full of his blathering) - his flesh-positive angle is fine in principle, but his reasoning is customarily off-topic.
And Tess, despising herself in the flesh, despising the deep Female she was, because Alec D'Urberville had betrayed her very source, loved Angel Clare, who also despised and hated the flesh. She did not hate D'Urberville. What a man did, he did, and if he did it to her, it was her look-out. She did not conceive of him as having any duty towards her.

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