WEEK I
During the first week of the second semester, our class analyzed the author’s tone in certain sections of Tess of the D’urbervilles. I learned that tone can be used to separate the significant scenes in a novel from others. We wrote an essay on the Baptism scene in the novel, which allowed me to further analyze the author’s change in tone during this particular section to make it stand out from the rest of the book. Overall, this week taught me to pay more close attention to diction and tone changes throughout any novel to see what is significant and what is not as significant.
WEEK II
During our second week, we read many other texts in our literature book to compare women’s roles during the time period. This was also helpful in the analysis of Thomas Hardy, because we were able to discover central themes that he hints in all of his works, whether novels or poems such as “The Ruined Maid” and “The Darkling Thrush”. We explored the themes that were expressed in these poems, and they were helpful because it also aided us in finding the central themes in Tess of the D’urbervilles as well.
WEEK III
Further analysis of women’s role in society was studied during this week. We asked ourselves seven specific questions concerning the women that we had recently read about, such as Tess. Our responses to these questions enabled us to see how split society was decades ago. This allowed us to better visualize Tess’ journey, and how hard her life must be as a woman during that time.
WEEK IV
Once again we analyzed women’s importance in Tess of the Durbervilles. We wrote an essay about women and their effects on society by using Tess as an example. Through this essay, i realized that perhaps the most important aspect of understanding Tess is to understand women during this time period.
