What I'm Reading This Week...
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
My copy of Tess, as you’ll see below, is a beat-up old paperback. Inside the front cover, I found my name and “Box 1081,” my college mailbox number. The last time I read Tess, I was about 20 years old. I’m fascinated by how differently we react to books when they come to us at different times in life. What had stuck with me from my last reading of Tess was the vague recollection of a lush, romantic dairy farm and a passionate love affair, along with a nagging sense of disappointment as a reader that was, nevertheless, overcome by the conviction that this was one of the best novels I had read up to that time. So, it’s interesting to return to it 36 years later with the expectation that it might feel quite different and to realize that Hardy’s descriptions of the dairy farm are still lush and romantic, the love affair is still passionate, and I would still log it as one of my favorite novels. I haven’t reached the ending yet (I can’t remember it), so whether I will still feel disappointed remains to be seen, but I suspect that the first time around, I didn’t realize that I wasn’t reading a Jane Austenesque romance. What else is different this time? My parental reaction to Tess’s parents’ behavior. My evolving understanding of Hardy as an amazingly enlightened man of his time. The revelation that, subconsciously, I was deeply influenced by this novel when, 20+ years after reading it, I wrote my own. I’ve been wanting to reread Tess for awhile, and I’m finally reading it now because a group called Classics and the Western Canon, which I sometimes join, is currently discussing it on Goodreads. You can check out the conversation here.
What are you reading this week? Do you have a memorable experience of rereading a book many years after first reading it?
Interesting, Kathy, that on the day you posted, I was finishing a re-read of Hardy's "The Woodlanders." I had taught it as part of a Hardy seminar 30 years ago. Like you experience with "Tess," I couldn't recall how the novel was going to conclude (a good thing, in a way.) But it also says something about Hardy as writer--how he allows his characters to be manipulated by forces even outside of his control. It makes, still today, for interesting shadows and pathways for his wanderers. "Woodlanders" indeed.