Comparing Main Characters from Different Times
Comparing Main Characters from Different Times
Things are not always as they seem. For instance, take Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, Stephen Crane’s Maggie: Girl of the Streets, and Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. At the surface they appear to be quite different. Tess written in 1871 by a British man by the name of Hardy, Maggie written by an American in 1893, and Carrie being written by an American in 1900. All disparate. Or are they?
Hardy, Crane, and Dreiser’s writings share an important relationship, the heroine. The striking Tess, the ragged Maggie, and the naive Carrie are dynamic women crafted by these great men. Although disparate , Tess, Maggie, and Carrie are almost identical in nature. For example, Hardy’s Tess is a quite "fine and handsome girl"(Hardy 12). Tess’ beauty differs from that of the other girls in her town. Her "peony mouth and large innocent eyes add eloquence" to her beauty. Tess is the only young woman in the town who can "boast" such "pronounced adornment" as a red ribbon in her hair. As the novel begins Tess appears as a "vessel of emotion untinctured by experience"(14). She is the mere age of seventeen. Naive to the happenings around her, the reader gains the sense that Tess is simply as Hardy portrays her, innocent with "her twelfth year in her cheeks" her "ninth sparkle(ing) from her eyes" and her fifth year noticeable in her mouth. An image is painted of a young woman, with a young woman’s body, a child’s face, and at times a child’s mind. Tess possesses a flaw, her naivety, and perhaps even her beauty. In addition, Stephen Crane’s heroine Maggie grows in his novella, yet maintains one thing, her gorgeousness. The beginning of the novella portrays Maggie as nothing more than a "small ragged girl"(Crane 6).
Later in the novella Crane depicts Maggie as a young woman who has "blossomed in a mud puddle." Maggie, now the age of sixteen, is a "most rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl"(16). Crane’s Maggie has grown out of abuse. To the reader’s surprise she, like Hardy’s Tess, is beautiful. Maggie is a rose blooming in a land of ashes. Attractiveness, however, also proves to be Maggie’s flaw. Maggie’s good looks take her no where in the end of the novella. She becomes a...