Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, is a novel by Thomas Hardy.
Parson Tringham
tells John Durbeyfield, a local carrier of Marlott, that he is descended from the Norman family of D'Urbervilles. Popped up by this information, together with his wife Joan, they encourage their daughter Tess to seek the kinship of the parvenu Stoke D'Urbervilles who have adopted the ancient name.
In the D'Urbervilles household, she is seduced by vulgar Alec, their son, and bears a child who by divine mercies eventually dies. Making a fresh start at life, Tess works in southern Wessex at the fertile Talbothays farm where she meets Angel Clare, younger son of a parson. After an inner conflict and struggle within herself, she accepts his marriage proposal. On their wedding night, Tess confesses to Angel her unhappy past. Being puritanical, he recoils and found it hard to accept Tess's past. Angel leaves her and goes off to Brazil.
Tess seeks employment at the upland farm Flintcomb Ash, belonging to the tyrannical Farmer Groby. There she is again afflicted by the advances of Alec D'Urberville, now an itinerant preacher. Alec insists that Tess is more his wife than Angel's and pursues her relentlessly. Entrapped, Tess lives with Alec at Sandbourne.
Angel returns to England, by now a changed man. He looks for Tess and finds her in Sandbourne where she is living as Alec's wife. Reconciliation for her is too late. In
despair, Tess kills Alec and had a brief idyllic moment with Angel. She is soon arrested, tried, and hanged in Winchester jail. So ends the life of Tess of the D'Urberville.
This book by Thomas Hardy provoked a controversy, primarily for its
rejection of the conventional Victorian heroine.