Tess of the D’Urbervilles is one of Thomas Hardy’s most tragic yet beautiful novels. Written towards the end of the nineteenth
century, it follows the life of Tess Durbeyfield who finds herself the victim of extreme poverty. The innocent, simple village life she shared with her parents is cruelly disrupted when, her family falling on hard times, she must stay with her upper-class “relatives” and be their maid. Here she meets Alec who seduces her and brings about her downfall. Opinion is divided as to whether Tess invites the advances of the unrelentless Alec, but the reader cannot fail to empathise with Hardy’s tender portrayal of a young woman who is destroyed by those who possess more power than she does by virtue of their birth. The novel explores the harsh religious mores that Tess is judged and condemned by, the position she is born into due to her lowly status as a poor woman in an extremely hierarchical and patriarchal
society, and the psychological torment that she suffers as a consequence. The novel also highlights the dual standards prevalent at the time in Tess’ doomed marriage to Angel, a man whose name does not correspond with his past.
Despite meeting him on equal ground, he cannot forgive her for her status as a fallen woman and Tess continues on the path to destruction that her unforgiving society has laid for her.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles is Hardy at his most lyrical and most tragic. The loving descriptions of the Wessex countryside and the gentle delineation of Tess’ character are coupled with a powerful undercurrent of intolerance, hypocrisy and injustice. Far from using Tess as a mouthpiece for his own views, however, Hardy succeeds in creating in Tess a woman who, despite her powerlessness, exudes a natural sexuality and strength that defies even the worst treatment she meets at the hands of the men she falls victim to.