Wow I’m selfish.

It'd have to be Thomas Hardy, and here's why.

In my senior AP English there was this girl and we used to butt heads like crazy. She's an intelligent human being, good writer, but we both have different interpretations of...well, everything. Including Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles', in which a young woman named Tess Durbyfield is raped and impregnated by a man named Alec. Their child is stillborn and Tess's reputation is trashed, but eventually she moves away to a farm and meets a man named Angel and they fall in love. But after they are married, Angel tells Tess she is not the first woman he's been with. And when she tells him her story, HE IS DISGUSTED BECAUSE WHAT SHE WASN'T A VIRGIN YOU DECIEVED ME, blah blah blah, he makes her life miserable and eventually leaves the country for some 'business'...Tess moves back in with Alec, thinking Angel will never return. But all of the sudden he DOES, and then Tess goes freakin' wacky and SHANKS Alec's rapey butt, and tells Angel to marry her sister because then the fuzz come and she's executed for Alec's murder.

So.

Brittany INSISTS that Tess is 100% to blame for the events. She INSISTS that if Tess stayed with Alec in the first place, everything would have been fine.

I disagree, because ALEC RAPED TESS. Throughout the first third of the book, Tess tries to thwart his downright creepy efforts to seduce her. And it got to the point where he had to FORCE himself upon her to 'claim' her, and even then, Tess didn't stay with him BECAUSE SHE NEVER LOVED HIM. Why should she sacrifice her happiness for a reputation?

The entire book is a criticism of Victorian society's gender roles. Hardy explores how women were objectified by men who based their value on whether or not they were virgins, or 'claimed' by other men. THAT IS THE POINT OF THE BOOK. PERIOD.

SO.

The reason I'd wanna talk to Hardy is to get him to backslap the dumb outta Brittany BECAUSE SHE'S WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

Selfish, yes. Effective? If he was like alive at this point, probably. But alas, I guess I'll have to choke her myself.