STONEHENGE IN LITERATURE

STONEHENGE&

TESS OF THE D’UBERVILLES

• Stonehenge's most famous appearance in fiction comes at the end of Thomas Hardy's Tess Of The D'Urbervilles (1891), when the doomed lovers, Angel Clare and Tess, on the run from the police on a wild night, stumble upon it in the dark. Only gradually do they realise where they must be. As Tess lies prone on the altar stone, the imagery of her sacrifice to the forces of society is made brutally clear:

"They had proceeded thus gropingly two or three miles further when on a sudden Clare became conscious of some vast erection close in his front, rising sheer from the grass. They had almost struck themselves against it.

" 'What monstrous place is this?' said Angel.

" 'It hums,' said she. 'Hearken!'

"He listened. The wind, playing upon the edifice, produced a booming tune, like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp. No other sound came from it, and lifting his hand and advancing a step or two, Clare felt the vertical surface of the structure. It seemed to be of solid stone, without joint or moulding. Carrying his fingers onward he found that what he had come in contact with was a colossal rectangular pillar; by stretching out his left hand he could feel a similar one adjoining. At an indefinite height overhead something made the black sky blacker, which had the semblance of a vast architrave uniting the pillars horizontally. They carefully entered beneath and between; the surfaces echoed their soft rustle; but they seemed to be still out of doors. The place was roofless. Tess drew her breath fearfully, and Angel, perplexed, said:

•" 'What can it be?'

"Feeling sideways they encountered another tower-like pillar, square and uncompromising as the first; beyond it another and another. The place was all doors and pillars, some connected above by continuous architraves.

" 'A very Temple of the Winds,' he said.

"The next pillar was isolated; others composed a trilithon; others were prostrate, their flanks forming a causeway wide enough for a carriage; and it was soon obvious that they made up a forest of monoliths grouped upon the grassy expanse of the plain. The couple advanced further into this pavilion of the night till they stood in its midst.

" 'It is Stonehenge!' said Clare...

"...In the far north-east sky he could see between the pillars a level streak of light. The uniform concavity of black cloud was lifting bodily like the lid of a pot, letting in at the earths edge the coming day, against which the towering monoliths and trilithons began to be blackly defined.

" 'Did they sacrifice to God here?' asked she.

• Tess‘s final journey is a symbolic one through the world of sounds, colours and lights. Hardy manages to create not a photograph of the landscape, but a certain mood of the characters, using different elements of nature: the night, the roads, the birds' songs, the beautiful colours of landscapes.

• Here, Stonehenge, a collection of giant stones arranged in a circular form has special connotation for the novel, apart from its purpose to serve as an astrological calendar and a ceremonial place for religious or tribal worship. It draws Hardy's philosophy about the indifference of nature to suffering and it shows man's ephemeral character, civilization and human's vanity. But its main symbolism is that it represents death for the heroine who eventually accepts her destiny, that of a heathen and her rejection by the Christian religion as a sinner. This Temple of the Winds implies the idea of primitive religion, worshipping nature while performing rituals, being older than the centuries. Its symbolic shape and its location in a landscape not disturbed by man, represents both solitude and death, the Stone of Sacrifice: 'vast upward structure, close in his front, rising sheer.

• Tess and Angel stop in Stonehenge after they have traveled a long way and need rest. The stones are still warm from the sun, radiating heat all during the cool night. Tess realizes that her mother's family is from the area, "One of my mother's people was a shepherd hereabouts, now I think of it. And you used to say at Talbothays that I was a heathen. So now I am at home." Angel recognizes that Tess is "lying on an altar" - like a sacrifice to the ancient pagans who used to practice there. In a modern sense, Tess is sacrificed to the laws and morals of the nineteenth century.Another important element is nature, which contributes to the final scene: the coming of light is the coming of death, the winds die out, the stones are still and the scene is now ready for the sacrifice: the sky was dense with cloud, some fragment of a moon.

•The physical props are suggested by vegetation and stone. The turf, the grass help her finding her way along to an open loneliness and black solitude, that one could both 'see' and 'feel'. Then, the stone is an obstacle, an interdiction 'rising sheer from the grass'; this shows the eternity of nature versus the Man's ephemeral character, the time immemorial and rituals: Stonehenge. All in all, Tess's experience and nature elements present a very important connection, as they contribute to the solemnity and the tragedy of the moment when Tess is hanged.

• Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a novel written by a story-teller and not by a powerful analyst.

• The “Stonehenge” fragment begins with Hardy-the-architect's description of the monoliths. The author's eye for the significant details is to be mentioned. The atmosphere is set at this stage; darkness, coldness, wildness, and greatness are supported by the symbolical paraphrases used by Tess and Angel to denominate Stonehenge : Forest, pavilion of the night, heathen temple.The description of the Great Plane and its symbolic stones (the Stone of Sacrifice and the Sun Stone) follows. From dusk to dawn, whole nature accompanies Tess.

• Hardy describes the elements (still or moving, dark or light, colourful or colourless) in such a way to suggest Tess's thoughts and emotional states. The communion between character and nature may be followed throughout the text: when Tess is falling asleep everything is dark; reserve, taciturnity and hesitation are the qualities of the landscape at that moment even the night wind has died out. Then gradually, the reader is prepared for the moment of Tess's awakening: the light is growing, the stones are no more dark, but they are glistening green grey. The reader is announced that something is going to happen through some significant phrases as foe example, the light is strong or the sunbeam which shines full on Tess's face. The reader can probably feel as Tess feels, that everything has become clear, that the heroine does whatever she has to do so the memorable phrases “It is as it should be” and “I am ready” climax the whole passage. The Stonehenge scene shows the idea that Hardy's novel's nature does not help the characters, but only projects the human tragedy on the primordial axes.