Thomas Hardy is well known for his striking depictions of the scenic landscape in which his stories are set. Along with these physical landscapes, Hardy also paints a detailed portrait of the life of West Country rural villages. In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Tess spends her happiest months working as a dairymaid at the Talbothay’s dairy in Dorset. Dairy farming in England during the nineteenth century, especially in counties such as Cheshire, Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Kent, was a very lucrative business. It also was one of the few agricultural professions, and professions in general, that was almost equally dominated by both men and women. Life as a dairymaid was a very respectable one. Thus, it is important that Hardy would choose such an occupation for Tess, especially for the happiest time of her life.

Dairy farming typically consisted of raising cattle for the main purpose of cheese and butter making. It is the production of these valuable and coveted cheeses, which were slightly different from one farm to the next, that rendered the most wealth for those in this agricultural trade. Historically, cheese making is the job of the wife and women in the household, not the men. This economic opportunity creates a very distinct social setting and different social order and rank from many other jobs and societies of the period. Women held a good deal of power and were often highly respected. Sally McMurray says in her essay “Women’s Work in Agriculture: Divergent Trends in England and America” that it is “clearly the social structure of English cheese dairying” that has “historically exerted a major influence on the industry” (McMurray 248).  The reason for this major influence on the historic social structure is due to the “distinctive sexual division of labor” (McMurray 248). The roles of men and women in dairy farming were very divided. The dairymen were in charge of feeding, herding and sheltering the cattle. They also worked the fields, grew and harvested the feed for the cattle, tended to other livestock and maintained the pastures and meadows. These are all stereotypical “outdoor” jobs. The women traditionally managed the indoor sphere of the farm. Their indoor duties included making the cheese, making rennets (a coagulating agent procured from the calves’ stomachs), rearing the calves and pigs, making butter, doing other housework and caring for the children. Thus, the cheese making was universally the women’s job, and arguably the most important of the farm since the cheese made the most money (McMurray 249).

McMurray stresses the importance of the male world being primarily “outdoor” and the female area of dominance as being “indoor” since this set-up “reflect[s] the long-standing patterns common in most of the west” (McMurray 251). Despite this strong gendered division of labor, men and women almost always shared the milking of the cows. This is clearly seen in the Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Much of the growing relationship between Tess and Angel Clare occurs at the dairy farm where they are working together and both milking the cows on a daily basis. Hardy brilliantly explores and depicts the social relationships and statuses in the dairy-farming world through the social interactions of Tess and Angel at the Talbothay’s farm. This is most evident near the end of Phase 3, “The Rally” when there is a back and forth description of the thoughts and feelings of both Tess and Clare while they are working. Here, Tess becomes deeply aware of Clare ’s interest in her and internalizes his gaze: “She then became conscious that he was observing her; but she would not show it by any change of position, though the curious dream-like fixity disappeared, and a close eye might easily have discerned that the rosiness of her face slowly deepened, and then faded till only a tinge of it was left” (151).  Next, Hardy turns to Clare ’s thoughts and feelings. The sensations felt by Tess pass over to Clare:

“The stimulus that had passed into Clare like an annunciation from the sky did not die down. Resolutions, reticences, prudences, fears, fell back like a defeated battalion. He jumped up from his seat, and, leaving his pail to be kicked over if the milcher had such a mind, went quickly towards the desire of his eyes, and, kneeling down beside her, clasped her in his arms” (151).

Hardy uses the realm of dairy farming as a safe and socially acceptable place for Clare and Tess to meet one another and fall in love. The connection between the two characters is meticulously depicted here. This climax moment of all their previously flirtatious interactions shows the intense attraction that has developed between them.

A lot of research has been done on the economic status of dairy farming and the position of women during the end of the nineteenth-century with the rise of capitalism. It is fascinating to see how the process of cheese-making on dairy farms was very slow to change during this time of industrialization and mechanization. Many researchers attribute this to the important female role in the cheese-making process. McMurray says that “English cheese-making women worked in a setting in which cultural values, agricultural conditions, and the nature of their work combined to support their continued participation” (McMurray 249). This was also helped by the fact that the cheese-making business grew throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Accurate records are somewhat scarce, but it is estimated that at its peak during the mid nineteenth century, the national annual production was about 1.8 million hundred-weight of cheese. Historian David Tyler estimates that 40% of all milk was used to produce cheese; thus opportunities for women was wide-spread in the north and west of England where dairy production was growing most rapidly (McMurray 250).

The most characteristic dairy farm was small and privately owned, usually under 100 acres. In some areas, farmers rented cows from larger farms in order to make their cheese and butter. This happened most notably in Dorset, where Hardy sets Tess, although, there doesn’t appear to be any indication that the Talbothay farm was one that rented cows from a larger farm. The number of dairymaids working for the Talbothay’s, about six or seven, would actually suggest that the farm was a “middling” to large farm with its own cows, mostly likely proving to be a fairly successful farm (McMurray 251). Annually, even small farms could produce about seven tons of cheese, which was typically sold at local fairs and markets. Sometimes the cheese was sold to factors, or middlemen who specialized in the cheese trade. This was increasingly as the nineteenth century progressed into a capitalist society (McMurray 251).

Women retained so much power and status at a dairy farm because of their individual knowledge of the cheese-making process. Knowledge of cheese production often passed down from mothers to daughters. When extra help was needed at larger farms, dairymaids were hired. And even with the addition of extra help, the farm wives usually supervised the production of their cheese with a “scrupulous” eye. Even though the dairymaids were there to help the dairying family, working as a dairymaid brought these women, like Tess, relatively good wages. In the agricultural and rural social statuses of the time, dairymaids were highly respected and were treated well. Deborah Valenze says that “on a modest scale, dairying could provide income for single women and widows lacking any other means of support” (Valenze 145). Many dairymaids lived with the farmer’s family and were seen as socially higher than the servants in the home.

 
The social respect and higher social status are results of the large skill and expert knowledge that women had for the cheese-making process. The production of cheese is often described as a very secretive process that only the women have knowledge of. Thus these secrets and inherited knowledge were so valuable that they gave women more power and a higher status. Essentially, the cheese and butter they made paid the rent of their farm and paid most of the family bills. The men were dependent upon the cheese their wives and dairymaids created. Milk was a highly perishable commodity and was difficult to trade in urban markets due to its propensity for spoiling quickly. The manufacturing of cheese and butter allowed dairy farmers to sell their milk in another form that could easily be stored for quite sometime – thus connecting their isolated farm with the more profitable urban market. McMurray quotes William Marshall who toured Gloucestershire and North Wiltshire for the Board of Agriculture in 1796. He says that cheese making is “a private manufactury, - a craft, - a mystery secluded from the public eye, and what may appear extraordinary, the minutiae are seldom familiar, even to the master of the dairy, in which they are practiced” (McMurray 255)! He is shocked that the production of cheese is so secretive and so much controlled by the women. He later goes on to complain about the mystery of the production because of the lack of consistency among same types of cheeses from different farms due to each woman’s own secret. He sees a lack of regulation: “The art is evidently destitute of principles so far from being scientific, it is altogether im-mechanical. It may be said to be at present, a knack involved in a mystery” (McMurray 255). This male sense of mystery lasted well into the nineteenth century, even with the strong growth of industrialization throughout many parts of England.

 
Thus, because women originally had so much power in the cheese making trade due to their secretive knowledge, they were able to resist mechanization, industrialization, and therefore capitalism, for quite a while longer than most other trades. And it was in this successful and generally warm and inviting dairy farming society that Hardy places his heroine, Tess. He uses his depictions of the rural dairy life as one to show a specific place within the landscape, one that is safe and secure for Tess, as well as one that gives her the respect that she would never have received anywhere else because of her unfortunate situation in life. Sadly, this blissful life does not last forever once Tess is honest with Clare about her horrible past and he leaves her till the end of the novel when Tess eventually sacrifices herself for love.

© Copyright Clare Keating & Katie Hickey 2007