Tess D Urbervilles, The Fountainhead, And The Awakening

On September 13th 2009, Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift at the VMAs, leading her to victimize herself for years to come. In novels such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Fountainhead, and The Awakening, victimization of women is caused by the relentless harsh acts of the surrounding males, not unlike Swift. Tess is seduced into a submissive murderess, Dominique allows males in her life to control her decision making, and Edna’s fate is sealed through her disastrous actions involving men.

Apart from characters in the following novels, Tess D’Urberville is a victim almost from the moment the novel is launched. With the untimely death of her family’s horse, Prince, comes the entrapment of guilt which follows her through the novel. The arrogant

Early in the novel she mentions how she saw a greek god statue she liked, "I threw it down the air shaft…So that no one else would ever see it"(Rand, 104). This philosophy is what leads her to associate with Ellsworth Toohey, testify against Howard Roark, and marry Peter Keating. Keating did not meet her emotional requirements for a husband, nor did she appreciate his attributes. She married him as a punishment for not publicly supporting her true love, Howard Roark. Roark, being the free-thinker he is, made it difficult for Domonique to make decisions about her love life. This self penalizing behavior was brought about by the men in society constantly telling her how wrong she would be if she chose Roark, because his ideas are so different. In this way, Dominique begins to realize how corrupted the ideals and social standards are, and overcomes the rut she had fallen into, while at the same time gives in to her feelings rather than hard-wired

Her ultimate downfall is received through the assumptions that the repercussions to her actions will have no effect on her and that they will resolve themselves. When becoming bored with her housewife routine, Edna starts up a steamy affair with a man named Robert. He eventually leaves to go to Mexico, symbolizing how unstable the decisions Edna is making are. This instability follows her back into her family life, and she decides to become independent. But, the unhealthy spirals she submits herself to earlier in the novel continue, leading to her death by drowning in the end, “She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known”(Chopin,125); an act that symbolizes the embrace of social death she experienced in her life. The events leading up to the undoing of the women in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, The Fountainhead, and The Awakening were dire in the sense that men pushed each woman over the edge. Each downfall is symbolized: the emotional death of Tess D’Urberville when she is hanged, the moral death of Dominique Francon when she marries Roark, and the social death of Edna Pontellier when she drowned. Taylor Swift dramatizes her life through the lense of social media, but the lense of these three women demonstrate the real drama of love, loss, and