ABSTRACT
Thus in reconstructing the case of R v Durbeyfield, and in keeping with the realist genre, the fictive narrative is less subject to constraints. Firstly, kernel and satellite events may be arranged purely according to the potency with which they impinge upon the subject. According to this account, the fact of rape, bearing an illegitimate child, even social ignominy may be tolerated with a degree of philosophical acceptance until another event forces the realisation that the destruction of Tess’s virginity dictates her subsequent fate. Angel Clare, Tess’s husband, finds the fact distasteful and intolerable; it is a disability which effaces her very identity – ‘You were one person; now you are another’ (Tess, p 298). However eccentric or uncharitable such a reaction may seem to present eyes, it is clearly quite consistent with former cultural values. Legal doctrine would have some difficulty in encompassing this causal link between the rape and its elevation to the status of an irrevocable event since the elevation is largely dependent upon the chance involvement of a third party.39 Yet this depiction is faithful to a factor only obliquely recognised by the law – that the potency of a provocation (if we can so regard the rape) is as much shaped by culture and custom. ‘Impulsive’ ‘unpremeditated’ behaviour is thus not merely descriptive of a human reaction, refereed by the standard of the reasonable man, it is acculturated, predetermined by a social register of insults.
