Many great classics would be rendered dull by no-fault divorce.

[azurelunatic]

I read Tess of the d'Urbervilles on Sunday.

I offer the following content notes:

Animal harm, relationship coercion, acquaintance rape, coerced birth, era-typical child death, religious guilt (Christian), patriarchal fuckery, marital cruelty, attempted murder, abandonment, religious evangelism (Christian), religious coercion, rampant hypocrisy, familial coercion, coercion by means of family, actual murder, execution. Plus a side dish of substance abuse and attempted suicide.

Tess needs, in this order:
* A comprehensive and livable benefits and employment assistance program
* Gap insurance for horses
* Healthcare for her dad
* A taser
* Public transportation
* A working knowledge of what date rape is and that being asleep is not the same as consent, therefore he raped you
* Plan B and a rape kit
* Legal aid
* Benefits for her family
* Substance abuse care for her dad
* A boyfriend who understands that a dirty weekend with a sex worker is not the same as rape
* No-fault divorce
* A large shipping box with an angry swan (as f_fa recommends)
* A job with modern safety and care standards
* Societal acceptance of atheism, paganism, and agnosticism
* A restraining order against Cousin Daterape
* A lawyer who has successfully defended self-defense vs. Mr. What Do You Mean, Restraining Order? manslaughter cases
* A younger sister who looks nothing like her

Comments

[vass]

* to be in a book in a different genre, by a different author

Last time I read any Hardy (it was Return of the Native, not Tess) basingstoke said "Thomas Hardy = Chuck Palahniuk. Very rough read." I thought that was very correct.

[azurelunatic]

I have not read any Chuck Palahniuk to date. Should I not bother?

[synecdochic]

Do not bother! He is of the genre of Dude Author who thinks that "disturbing unlikeable people = Great Literature" and it would annoy the fuck out of you.

(I have read a bunch of his stuff for Reasons, and some of it is okay enough, and it's definitely interesting as social commentary on a particular form of constructed masculinity, but it is not a thing you would enjoy.)

[vass]

What Rah said. Gritty realism, where you know it's Real because it's unpleasant and cynical and depressing, even if there's not necessarily anything else realistic about it.

[sithjawa]

I had to read that for a class in high school once. It's amazing I still eat strawberries.

My review:

It is the single most scarring media I have ever partaken of.

I only got through that class by vivid fantasies about violence against pretty much everyone male in that book, including the "nice" guy.

I hear that at the time, it was quite revolutionary for not making nice lies up about how women are treated. That did not help me with wanting to wring the neck of every male in the book and also shake Tess while shouting "it's not your fault" for about five hours straight, which would not have helped but would have made me feel better.