Hardy’s use of nature imagery

Image Credit: Flickr

Hardy uses Stonehenge, the ancient sacrifice site to the Nature Gods of the Celts, purposefully, to show how the naturalistic Tess and her rural simplicity becomes a sacrifice to the city-bred predator Alec.  The location of Stonehenge, rising tall amidst the barren landscape, acts as an appropriate metaphor to Hardy’s vision of rural greatness versus predatorial urban living. At the climatic point in Tess of the D’urbervilles, where the heroine falls asleep on one of the stone slabs of this ancient site, she then  wakes up to the silent pillars of men, the policemen, watching her and waiting to take her to the city to be hung, for her  natural act of revenge. The policemen from the city become tools of urban justice while the innocent Tess, positioned as she is on the natural rocks of Stonehenge, become the sacrificial victim to city mores and justice.