Lia Hanhardt

Source: The source for my remediation exercise is from Tess of the D’Urbervilles, particularly the scene when Tess and Alec have their first encounter after the rape (307- 311). During this scene, Alec runs after Tess after she stumbles upon him mid-sermon. Following a brief encounter, Alec makes Tess swear that she will “never tempt me [Alec]- by your [Tess’] charms or ways” (311).

Destination: Text message.

When I reflect upon the relationship between Alec and Tess, this scene oddly stands out to me from all the rest. As I was reading the novel and experiencing all the atrocities inflicted upon Tess, I felt an overwhelming sense of frustration at Tess’ helplessness. However, this frustration was not directed at Tess but at all the characters surrounding her and acting upon her. All the people in Tess’ life, especially Alec, guide the arc of her life for her despite her attempts to take control of the downward spiral it quickly takes. To me, this is the scene when my frustration was most heightened. I believe text message is the medium that would most effectively convey this helplessness experienced by Tess as well as the inability to listen to what others say that is crucial to Alec’s behavior to Tess. While being a fast and easy way to communicate with other people, text messaging is a tricky mode of communication, because everything except the written words actually texted is absent and not imparted to the person with whom one is conversing. The facial expressions, body language, intonation, and knowledge of the environment of both participants are all absent when texting, stripping this form of communication of any hint of each other’s intentionality, context, or meaning. When communicating with another person, the words actually spoken are just one aspect to understanding the other person, and one’s words can be most fully understood when taken in combination with the entirety of the immediate context. In novel form, the free indirect discourse is what supplies this context and allows the words of each character to be most precisely understood. In this scene between Alec and Tess, then, readers are provided with the environment surrounding Alec and Tess, the body language of each, and some of the emotions experienced by both. When translating this scene to text message, all of this gets lost. However, I believe that this loss of context clues actually gets to the heart of what this scene accomplishes for Alec and Tess’ relationship. After Tess accidentally chances upon Alec during his sermon, Tess runs away in the hopes of avoiding him and not having to interact with him. Alec, though, chases Tess and talks to her. Ironically, he seeks her in order to make her promise not to seek him. Additionally, he incorrectly attributes causation to Tess for his ill-founded and unreciprocated feelings, claiming she actively tempts him and so implies she is responsible for the rape. This is the source of my frustration as a reader. Tess is not in any way to blame for what has happened, and she in fact actively tried to prevent it. Alec, though, does not listen to what Tess actually says and instead gets carried away by his own fancies, falsely interpreting the context and failing to read both Tess and her body language. In this way, I think text message is an appropriate destination for this scene. [Type text] [Type text] [Type text]

Since Alec fails to read the context clues within this scene, his dialogue is already text message accessible, and the ease with which Alec ignores everything Tess’ words and actions convey can be befittingly paralleled by the sheer volume and depth of his text messages in comparison to Tess’ short and sparse messages. Additionally, the unique medium of text message permitted me to take some creative liberties when it came to Tess. As a reader who is intensely frustrated by Tess’ passivity in comparison to the other characters that act upon her, I thought text message would allow Tess to feel more comfortable and enable her to stand up for herself in a way that was impossible throughout the novel. During person-to-person interactions, Tess is easily overpowered by other characters and so gets acted upon. Given the fact that texting involves zero person-to-person contact and that it is often faulted as enabling people to say things they would not otherwise say if they had to say it to someone’s actual presence, I imagined that texting would endow Tess with the courage she has lacked and allow her to say things to Alec that I always hoped she would say. During this scene in the novel, Tess already displays slightly more courage than she shows during all her interactions with Alec at Trantridge. Given this look into how Tess would act if she felt free to say what was on her mind, I envisioned this modern, texting Tess unleashing some of her pent-up sass on Alec. However, at the heart these characters are still the same as they are in the novel, so Tess is still overpowered by Alec and ultimately is persuaded to make the promise, and Alec fails to actually hear what Tess says, guaranteeing that Tess experiences her eventual downfall.