Black and White
I started reading Thomas Hardy’s ‘Tess of the D’Ubervilles’ (A Pure Woman) again last night. I’ve read it before so you’d think that knowing the end would dissuade me from reading it again. But it doesn’t. It’s an instructive piece and I suppose from time to time I feel the need to go back to that place of instruction to relearn the lesson it provides.
The story is a great tradgey, in parts, the unforgiveable (to me) hypocrisy (especially by Angel) stare back at me like my reflection in a mirror, it’s that obvious. To be fair, it might be seen now as simply a greater hypocrisy of the day. Or is it? Is there a difference, autumn of 1890 and Winter of 2008? Maybe, maybe not.
Why read it again? Well, sometimes it’s easier to see the darkness in a fictional character than acknowledge that we ourselves are capable of having such darkness in us too. What darkness? Hypocrisy, discrimination, prejudice … judgements such as these.
Blackey says it’s something he doesn’t understand about humans and I admit it’s something I don’t understand either. We’re both silent for a moment. Then my mouth runs away with my thoughts and before I know it, I say it.
“But what about in the animal world when a mother might know she has a weak, sick baby on her wings and she just leaves it to die. What is that if not a hypocrisy, a discrimination or a prejudice? Silent for a moment longer, Blackey looks me in the eye and says, “in my world, that’s life, at least the cycle of life.”
I’m stunned, bug-eyed infact. Is Blackey advocating death for the weak and sickly? No, never. My natural inclination is to follow an argument to it’s logical conclusion but in a case like this, what’s logical to me may be somewhat illogical to him.
This then, we conclude, is where we draw the line in the sand. We’re two worlds colliding, mine and Blackey’s, both with their own ways and means of dealing with the issue. Is one rather than the other wrong? Big question, requiring no small answer. We leave this conversation as we began it, friends. And me, with another piece of the puzzle that shows me another side to my friend Blackey.
I owe Thomas Hardy alot. I owe him for the insight his book provided to a sticky issue that even good friends can speak and dispute about and still come away friends. There’s that and the fact that having differences of opinion need not mean the end of the friendship but the deepening of it.
And let’s not forget his character Tess, who murdered but in the end did face up to the consequences of her actions. Maybe she’s more of a heroine than you know, read about her, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Maybe like me, you’ll find her circumstance will not allow our thinking to be quite so black and white.
