ANGEL: i just wanted you to know
i’ve
i’ve had sex before
TESS [striking a match on his bare chest and lighting her cigarette]: yeah me too, guy
I’ve even been to Suffolk
ANGEL: what does Suffolk have to do with anything
TESS: oh i thought we were just listing obvious shit to each other
ALEC: my god
Tess
please
leave me be
I am a preacher now, and cannot do this
I don’t want to have sex with you again
TESS: i literally never wanted to have sex with you
i didnt even want to have sex with you the first time
ALEC: TEMPT ME NO FURTHER
TESS: i named your baby Sadness and I buried it in the dirt
ANGEL: Tess I’m back from Brazil
I’m ready to give our marriage another shot
TESS: oh hell yes
it’s stabbin’ time
ANGEL: it’s what time
TESS: it’s
thatching time
i said it’s thatching time
i’m so happy we’re going to be married again and i can’t wait to live in a traditional thatched cottage with you
ANGEL: what an odd thing to say
ANGEL: Tess
you’re covered in blood
TESS: don’t worry
it’s not mine
ANGEL: what happened?
TESS: enough questions
i’m in a stabbing mood
and i’ve only done one stabbing today
TESS: i killed Alec for us
ANGEL: like
as a metaphor
right
TESS: no
with an actual knife
with this knife
ANGEL: you mean like
you stabbed the connection between the two of you
emotionally
TESS: no
i literally stabbed him in the heart and face to death
ANGEL: haha
you’re such a kidder
TESS: let’s fuck at Stonehenge before the cops catch up with us
ANGEL: why Stonehenge
TESS: because it’s metal as fuck is why
plus all those rocks look like giant stone dicks
TESS: oh shit
it’s the heat
shit
ANGEL: I will not leave you again
TESS: babe i want you to promise me something
ANGEL: anything
TESS: while i’m in jail
promise me you’ll fuck my sister
ANGEL: what
TESS: she’s never fucked anyone
and you’re good as hell at doing it
i think she’d really like having sex with you
ANGEL: what
TESS: just nail her up good a couple times
i’d really appreciate it
Tags: books, teenage dirtbags, tess of the d’urbervilles, thomas hardy
This is so much more enjoyable than the actual book.
pretty much exactly what i came down here to say
I was absolutely convinced that at the end of the book, Tess hanged herself in a barn. It made for a very wacky experience when I finally read the book. (“Didn’t this used to have a different ending? How did I end up with the director’s cut?”)
Re: hanging – could you be thinking of Jude the Obscure? Harding was a seriously messed up dude, as far as I can tell.
No, I think it came from a reference (that I’d obviously misunderstood) in some mystery novel.
Though yeah, Jude was another wacky-ending one. (I kept thinking, as I was reading, that the logistics of the whole thing didn’t really work. Which probably makes me a horrible person, but sorry Mr. Hardy, I’m just not buying this.)
…i gotta read Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
No. No you don’t. This is much better.
I mean unless you are into one woman bearing the entirety of male awfulness and internalizing it all into self hatred then by all means.
Haha best comment. Thank you I will never read it now
You should be a Cliff’s Notes writer.
I’ve got to teach it! If there are titters when we study the Stonehenge scene, I’ll know who to blame, Ortberg 🙂
This is an improvement 1000 times over. That’s the Tess I wanted.
Yeah, this should really be issued as a corrigendum to the novel.
Somehow I’ve managed to miss this book completely, although Wikipedia tells me there’s an adaptation with Gemma Arterton and Eddie Redmayne? So maybe I’ll have to give it a try?
be prepared to be horrified. (disclaimer: I really really really love the book and all adaptations, but @rubeseatsinfo is 100% correct)
It’s a pretty good adaptation! I mean, I loathed the book (by the book I mostly mean Angel Clare) but this is a very interesting production. Even more fun when you know that the trailer with the costumes burned down after they filmed the first episode and they had to make new ones out of whatever came to hand.
That adaptation and every adaptation is horrifying and will destroy you.
(but it’s also such a good book because Thomas Hardy)
I feel bad for everyone who had to read it in high school, it’s actually such an awesome book. I hated it in HS but looooooved it in grad school. (FWIW my undergrads told me they loved it when I taught it, along with Lolita. In both cases I think it helped a lot that they were being taught by a feminist who identifies rape as rape and takes it for granted that the main men in both books are total villains)
I was so mad at my teacher for making me read this. I have problems enough without sad stories making me miserable, but Hardy’s writing is Just. Too. Beautiful.
Mallory, I hope I’m not being too forward, but I want to marry you.
and live in a traditional thatched-roof cottage?
THATCHED ROOF COTTAGEEEEESSSSSSSD
Look it’s a very important book and Hardy was doing a Very Good Thing by trying to convince other old timey men to stop being Dickbags to Women but if I do one good thing on this earth let it be preventing modern women from reading Tess of the D’Ubervilles.
SECONDED. It’s a worthy life goal.
The Woman Pays. Ugh.
There is, more than twenty years after the fact, an entire class from a Philips Andover summer session who remembers me, if they remember me at all, as “the one who hated _Tess of the D’Ubervilles_ with the white-hot heat of a million suns.”
In my last quarter of undergrad, we read this in my victorian lit class and every time tess/alec was discussed I made sure to repeatedly say RAPED or harp on how it was rape not sex. My professor was amused, my classmates were not. SUCK IT HATERS
I had the same experience in a lit class, but with “the handmaid’s tale”. They kept discussing “the sex scene”. I kept interrupting, “no, RAPE scene. Just because she doesn’t fight back doesn’t mean it’s not rape”!
Did…did they not understand that? Really? I’m thankful for my class, then. The only dude in the class even looked up the psychological impact, etc. of rape and was both 1) horrified and 2) impressed that Hardy was so accurate
I wish my high school English teacher thought like you. I don’t remember the plot at all but I remember vividly thinking that it was a dead classic and no longer relevant. And yet I read the whole thing. Angrily.
He may have been trying to convince other old timey men to stop being Dickbags, but he really got entirely too voyeuristic with it.
Plus if you can’t convince Roman Polanski not to be a dickbag, I don’t think there’s much point to it.
Oh god, I’d forgotten he directed that. UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH.
Hm, Tess of the D’Urbervilles as 19th-century Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
YUP. 15-year-old me was pretty viscerally horrified when we read it in English class and a guy in my class said, with an “I’m-so-clever-right?” grin, “Well, TECHNICALLY he didn’t rape her, because hey, she didn’t say no!” And our (female) teacher laughed and said, “That’s a terrible thing to say!” like it was a joke. Not like it was a thing that had maybe happened in real life to people in the room.
I never made it all the way through this book, but I’m more than happy to believe that this is how it all went down.
I never have either. I’ve tried to read it several times, but I’ve never succeeded. I like this version much, much better than the first few chapters of the actual novel, though.
Hoo boy did I sure forget like. Most of the plot of Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Was there actually stabbing? I think I only remember her burying a baby… or maybe I remember nothing??? helpppp
she does murder the rapist yes, after having to go back and be supported by him because angel is a dbag. and the baby does die earlier yes.
I was going to post the same thing. I read this in high school and all I remember about it is that I hated it (although I did read the entire thing).
This is perfect Hark, a Vagrant! material.
My high school class despised Tess so much that the English department decided to remove it from the curriculum entirely. The rage of fifty teenage girls was not to be denied.
Dirtbag Tess would have been a vast improvement.
That’s fantastic! For some reason my Brit Lit teacher sincerely loved Tess of the d’Urbervilles and assigned it year after year as the only novel in the late 1800s section. It took me years to realize that a ton of fantastic, funny, not at all preachy literature had been published in the same time period because Tess had tainted the whole literary era for me.
My high school class despised Tess so much that the English department decided to remove it from the curriculum entirely.
A (male) instructor in our department continues to include this in his curriculum and I feel so gross every time I post that course description because UGH.
” because it’s metal as fuck is why”: the only reason needed to do anything, ever.
Light years more awesome than the musical, which I’m terribly sad I saw (never getting those hours back).
http://variety.com/1999/film/reviews/tess-of-the-…
Love the French pocket book edition image
(professor recently pointed out to us that all the books he requires are available from Livre de Poche because they’re cheap, and if not cheap enough, easy to steal)
A+ prof
Is that strawberry a metaphor? NAH.
GOD I HATED THIS BOOK SO MUCH. ALL THE MEN IN IT ARE TOTAL DOUCHE CANOES, ESPECIALLY THAT ANGEL LAD WHO CAN’T FORGIVE HER BECAUSE SHE BANGED ANOTHER DUDE BEFORE HIM. JESUS MAN. DOUBLE STANDARDS ALL THE WAY.
TLDR; I’ve hated this book since I read it in high school, and have forever after called it ‘Tess of the Durrrbrains’ as a result. Not that any of Thomas Hardy’s books are a laugh riot. Jude the Obscure anyone?
and by ‘banged another dude’ I think you mean ‘was raped’
This could only possibly be better if there was even more stabbing.
Pro tip from my younger self: if you know an adolescent/teenager named Tess, do not recommend this book to them. Do not tell them it’s a feminist masterpiece. Do not blame them when they start morbidly summarizing the book to acquaintances who ask if they’ve heard of it.
D:
As another Tess (who was named for the book, I’m not sure if you were), I feel so, so vindicated by this piece.
From now on when someone asks, “Like from the book?”, I’ll reply, “No, like the dirtbag from The Toast”.
I wasn’t named for the book but people often ask and it leads to a friendly discussion of murder and hardscrabble farming. If we wanted to get really highbrow we also could tell people that we’re named after the Contessa from Carmen San Diego.
Dear Mallory, I would love you forever and name my next cat after you if you did dirtbag Jude the Obscure. I mean, it would be a long post, because literally everyone in that novel is a dirtbag, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.
I also want a dirtbag Bathsheba Everdene, except she’s already a pretty big dirtbag, soooo…
Am I the only person who, upon seeing the headline, yelled “I AM READY,” then almost died laughing from my own brilliance?
Gosh, I hope not.
I didn’t, but I love you for doing so.
“of the d’Urbervilles” feels weirdly redundant
So what do we need to do to get this post to rank #1 in Google for high school students who search “what happens in Tess of the d’Urbervilles” for their term papers?
This is beautiful. My mom and I, for reasons I don’t remember, caught the first half of the movie on Masterpiece Theater (I never actually read the book, but I read John Irving and it came up a lot, so I felt like I read it?) We got so caught up in the plot that we tried to tune in again for part 2, but couldn’t figure out when it would be on. I ended up reading the Sparknotes for the second half and called my mom and was like, “Ma, listen to how they did Tess dirty.” We were shocked, we were hurting for poor Tess, we agreed that it’s for the best that we didn’t get to watch part 2.
I want to send her this, but she wouldn’t understand it and would be very scandalized because sex and swearing.
I’d be like, look ma, Tess is redeemed.
This is beautiful. My mom and I, for reasons I don't remember, caught the first half of the movie on Masterpiece Theater (I never actually read the book, but I read John Irving and it came up a lot, so I felt like I read it?) We got so caught up in the plot that we tried to tune in again for part 2, but couldn't figure out when it would be on. I ended up reading the Sparknotes for the second half and called my mom and was like, "Ma, listen to how they did Tess dirty." We were shocked, we were hurting for poor Tess, we agreed that it's for the best that we didn't get to watch part 2.
I want to send her this, but she wouldn't understand it and would be very scandalized because sex and swearing.
I'd be like, look ma, Tess is redeemed.
My AP English teacher had us read this. AND then showed us the Roman Polanski film, just in case we didn’t hate it enough in book form. I want to send this to her.
so much
Much better than the book!
Wait, Angel’s in Tess of the D’Urbervilles? How did Joss pull that off?
I was hoping the horny milkmaids would figure into this somehow.
Yes! I always thought so, too. But it turns out to make sense. She is of the family d’Urbervilles, who are long, long, long separated from any actual French language.
And, oh god it’s been 20 years since I’ve read this but it’s slowly coming back… I think there’s a whole crappy class element to this story too, where she’s poor but of the d’Ubervilles which is the old timey fancy family of the area, so it’s like we’re supposed to feel extra sad about life being unfair because she’s from a “good line” or whatever and yet is now poor and downtrodden. And the guy who rapes her is I think a new money guy who is taking the old d’Uberville estate or name or gah never mind. Shite.
YES. In a way he's the real dirtbag here. Fucking rape-culture embracing fucker.
Belatedly, so much WORD.