Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. It is Hardy's penultimate novel. Though now considered to be a great classic of English literature, the book was poorly received at the time of its initial publication. The book provides a poignant portrait of Tess, the heroine.
Plot summary
Template:Spoiler The story concerns a simple country girl, Teresa "Tess" Durbeyfield, the daughter of uneducated (and rather shiftless) peasants. Tess's father hears from a local clergyman that apparently the Durbeyfields are descendants of the medieval noble family d'Urberville. Upon hearing this, Tess's father sends her to the local nouveau-riche (Stoke)-d'Urberville family. Tess begins working at the d'Urberville house, and attracts the attention of the playboy son of the household, Alec D'Urberville. In a rape (although the scene is open to interpretation), Tess is seduced and made pregnant by Alec. Tess returns home in disgrace, but the child she bears soon dies, leaving her free to leave her village once again to look for work. She travels the countryside and finds employment at a dairy. While employed as a milkmaid, she encounters the morally upright son of a minister, Angel Clare, who falls in love with her. Tess agrees to marry Angel, but on their wedding night, she confesses that she is not a virgin and explains what happened with Alec d'Urberville. Angel becomes upset; he cannot reconcile his real affection for Tess, his wounded pride, and his image of Tess as a virginal Mary figure. Angel abandons Tess and tells her she is on her own.
Ashamed to go back to her family or to the dairy, Tess finds work as a day laborer working with then-new threshing machines. While working there, Tess's younger sister Liza-Lu finds her and tells her that their mother is gravely ill. Tess returns home to discover that her mother has recovered but her father has died. The family then loses the lease on their cottage and is forced to travel the countryside with all their possessions searching for lodgings and employment. At this point, Alec d'Urberville re-appears and a desperate Tess agrees to become his mistress so that she can support her family.
Angel Clare has been traveling overseas and at this point returns to England to find Tess. He discovers her living in a hotel with Alec d'Urberville, well-cared for but miserable. Tess murders Alec to run away with Angel. They flee together on foot, but the police catch up with them at Stonehenge in a memorable finale. Tess is hanged for the murder of Alec.
In Tess of the D'Urbervilles, through the central themes of sex, class perceptions, material longing and family betrayal, Hardy manages to suggest the ambiguities of time and change and divine power versus human reason.
Symbolism and Themes
Hardy's writing is often considered to illustrate the "ache of modernism", and this theme is notable in Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The heavy machinery seen in Flintcomb-Ash are portrayed with infernal imagery, and at the dairy, a statement is made that the milk sent to the city has to be watered down because the townspeople can't stomach whole milk. Both instances are commonly interpreted as indications of the negative consequences of man's seperation from nature, both in the creation of destructive machinery and in the inability to have joy in unfiltered nature. Tess can be viewed as a personification of an earth goddess due to numerous pagan and neo-biblical references made about her. Early in the book she participates in a festival for Ceres, the goddess of the harvest, and when she performs a baptism she chooses a passage from Genesis, the book of creation, over more traditional New Testament verses. Also, while at Stonehenge, commonly believed to be a pagan temple at the time of the novel's writing, she is clearly seen in terms of a pagan goddess. This symbolism may help to explain her character as the personification of nature, which is assaulted by the various other characters within the book.
Adaptations
The book was successfully adapted for the stage by playwright Ronald Gow, becoming a triumph on the West End in 1946 starring Wendy Hiller. It also been adapted several times for television and film. For example, Tess was filmed in 1979 by Roman Polanski.
External links
- Society and Social Criticism in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles (html) (doc)
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles at Project Gutenberg
- extensive analysis, content discussion