I'm either bored or traumatized, but it's all good

I don’t have anything to say about Love in the Time of Cholera. Really don’t. I feel bad, because I know that I should love Marquez and that many people thinks this book is amazing, and it has all this nuance I am sure. But I just was bored. I didn’t really enjoy 100 Years of Solitude, per se (I always think of it as 1000 years of solitude; it certainly felt long enough), but it is rich and complex. I found Love in the Time of Cholera surprisingly bland. And that’s really all I have to say. Really. I’m sorry.

Ah, Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The question here really is, how do you like your portrayals of violence against women? We’ll take a second shot at this when we get to The Handmaid’s Tale.

But for now, let’s start with Hardy’s novel. It’s beautiful; Tess is an amazing character. I love her voice and the way we are in her head, and yet not in so many ways. But, I found this one extremely hard to read. It may not have been the best week for me to be reading a work where one of the main themes is violence against women. If you do read it, be prepared. There were times when I just had to stop reading for a few seconds.

What really stood out to me was the victim blaming that permeates the novel. Obviously as the rapist Alec is horrible, but Angel is not much better (her parents are equally victim blaming; gah). One way that we justify victim blaming is through dehumanizing victims. Throughout the novel, Hardy repeatedly brings up Tess’s humanness and the ways the different characters view Tess. Angel muses on the fact that Tess is fully human, a full person living her own true and real life, not just a thing defined in relation to him. At the same time, Angel clearly doesn’t fully comprehend this or what it means, which is why Angel ultimately is able to be so incredibly cruel to Tess.

Alec doesn’t even pretend to see Tess as a full person. He completely defines her in relation to him, to his needs and desires. That’s why he rapes her in the first place, and why later, after he thinks he has changed/ “converted,” he still only thinks of his need to absolve his guilt over his actions, not what Tess needs.

Next time, The Handmaid’s Tale and Howards End.