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Highly controversial because of its frank look at the sexual hypocrisy of Victorian society, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles was nonetheless a great commercial success when it appeared in 1891. It is now considered one of the finest novels in English.
Using richly poetic language to frame a shattering narrative of love, seduction, betrayal, and murder, Hardy tells the story of Tess Durbeyfield, a beautiful young woman living with her impoverished family in Wessex, the southwestern English county immortalized by Hardy. After the family learns of their connection to the wealthy d’Urbervilles, they send Tess to claim a portion of their fortune. She meets and is seduced by the dissolute Alec d’Urberville and secretly bears a child, Sorrow, who dies in infancy. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer Tess love and salvation, but he rejects her—on their wedding night—after learning of her past. Emotionally bereft, financially impoverished, and victimized by the self-righteous rigidity of English social morality, Tess escapes from her vise of passion through a horrible, desperate act.
With its compassionate portrait of a young rural woman, powerful criticism of social convention, and disarming consideration of the role of destiny in human life, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is one of the most moving and memorable of Hardy’s novels.
David Galef has published nine books: the novels Flesh and Turning Japanese; two children's books, The Little Red Bicycle and Tracks; two translations of Japanese proverbs, Even Monkeys Fall from Trees and Even a Stone Buddha Can Talk; a work of literary criticism, The Supporting Cast; an edited anthology of essays called Second Thoughts: A Focus on Rereading; and, most recently, the short-story collection Laugh Track. In addition, he has written more than seventy short stories for magazines ranging from the British Punch to the Czech Prague Revue, the Canadian Prism International, and the American Shenandoah. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Newsday, the Village Voice, Twentieth Century Literature, The Columbia History of the British Novel, and many other places. He is a professor of English at the University of Mississippi, where he also administers the M.F.A. program in creative writing.
Although Hardy was a gifted student at the local schools he attended as a boy for eight years, his lower-class social origins limited his further educational opportunities. At sixteen, he was apprenticed to architect James Hicks in Dorchester and began an architectural career primarily focused on the restoration of churches. In Dorchester Hardy was also befriended by Horace Moule, eight years Hardy's senior, who acted as an intellectual mentor and literary adviser throughout his youth and early adulthood. From 1862 to 1867 hardy worked in London for the distinguished architect Arthur Blomfeld, but he continued to study -- literature, art, philosophy, science, history, the classics -- and to write, first poetry and then fiction.
In the early 1870s Hardy's first two published novels, Desperate Remedies and Under the Greenwood Tree, appeared to little acclaim or sales. With his third novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, he began the practice of serializing his fiction in magazines prior to book publication, a method that he would utilize throughout his career as a novelist. In 1874, the year of his marriage to Emma Gifford of St. Juliot, Cornwall, Hardy enjoyed his first significant commercial and critical success with the book publication of Far from the Madding Crowd after its serialization in the Cornhill Magazine. Hardy and his wife lived in several locations in London, Dorset, and Somerset before settling in South London for three years in 1878. During the late 1870s and early 1880s, Hardy published The Return of the Native, The Trumpet-Major, A Laodicean, and Two on a Tower while consolidating his pace as a leading contemporary English novelist. He would also eventually produce four volumes of short stories: Wessex Tales, A Group of Noble Dames, Life's Little Ironies, and A Changed Man.
In 1883, Hardy and his wife moved back to Dorchester, where Hardy wrote The Mayor of Casterbridge, set in a fictionalized version of Dorchester, and went on to design and construct a permanent home for himself, named Max Gate, completed in 1885. In the later 1880s and early 1890s Hardy wrote three of his greatest novels, The Woodlanders, Tess of the d'Urbevilles, and Jude the Obscure, all of them notable for their remarkable tragic power. The latter two were initially published as magazine serials in which Hardy removed potentially objectionable moral and religious content, only to restore it when the novels were published in book form; both novels nevertheless aroused public controversy for their criticisms of Victorian sexual and religious mores. In particular, the appearance of Jude the Obscure in 1895 precipitated harsh attacks on Hardy's alleged pessimism and immorality; the attacks contributed to his decision to abandon the writing of fiction after the appearance of his last-published novel, The Well-Beloved.
In the later 1890s Hardy returned to the writing of poetry that he had abandoned for fiction thirty years earlier. Wessex Poems appeared in 1898, followed by several volumes of poetry at regular intervals over the next three decades. Between 1904 and 1908 Hardy published a three-part epic verse drama, The Dynasts, based on the Napoleonic Wars of the early nineteenth century. Following the death of his first wife in 1912, Hardy married his literary secretary Florence Dugdale in 1914. Hardy received a variety of public honors in the last two decades of his life and continued to publish poems until his death at Max Gate on January 11, 1928. His ashes were interred in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey in London and his heart in Stinsford outside Dorchester. Regarded as one of England's greatest authors of both fiction and poetry, Hardy has inspired such notable twentieth-century writers as Marcel Proust, John Cowper Powys, D. H. Lawrence, Theodore Dreiser, and John Fowles.
Author biography from the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Far from the Madding Crowd.
Hardy’s background suggests the dualities in the patterns of his fiction: the Victorian belief in social improvement versus a skepticism about the efficacy of reform; a love of the natural world versus the knowledge that nature is a mindless, impersonal system; and a nostalgia for previous eras despite the recognition that he himself probably would not have flourished back then. Born in 1840 and brought up in the rugged countryside of Dorset, which he turned into the Wessex of his fiction and poetry, Hardy became intimately acquainted with not just the local flora and fauna but seemingly every rise and bend in the region, or as Hardy mentions regarding Tess: “Every contour of the surrounding hills was as personal to her as that of her relatives’ faces.” But Hardy went beyond the little village of Stinson near his home. The school he attended from age nine to sixteen was in Dorchester, 5 miles away, a distance that he walked back and forth daily. Thus, when he opens a scene with “It was a hazy sunrise in August. The denser nocturnal vapours, attacked by the warm beams, were dividing and shrinking into isolated fleeces within hollows and coverts, where they waited till they should be dried away to nothing,” or describes how the “ripe hue of the red and dun kine absorbed the evening sunlight,” the pictorial naturalism speaks with the authority of someone who’s done a great deal of traipsing through the southwest of England. In fact, Hardy also drew upon real towns and their citizens. Thus, Dorchester becomes Casterbridge, Marnhull is really Marlott, Sturminster-Newton turns into Stourcastle, Trantridge is suggestive of the real town of Pentridge, and so on. (See the Map of Wessex and the Index of Places in this edition.) Even during Hardy’s lifetime, commentators compiled descriptions and photos of “Hardy country.” Visitors still make pilgrimages to those towns and other landmarks, a surprising number of which have been preserved.
Yet, living in the village of Higher Brockhampton near Stinson, Hardy grew up as many of the old rural ways were dying out: livelihoods, such as that of John Durbeyfield, described as a haggler or peddler; formerly independent businesses, such as inns, gradually taken over by franchises; and customs, such as May Day, a festival hearkening back to “when one-handed clocks sufficiently subdivided the day”; or simply the way John’s wife, Joan, makes a mirror in the country way, by hanging a sheet on the outside of a window. Taking longer to fade are attitudes, such as the timeworn view that a woman with a sexual past is “ruined”—but not a man.
Hardy only half regrets the vanishing of old ways. After all, the small rural towns of England in the mid-nineteenth century formed a world in which the family washing was never quite done, drinking was the sole pastime for many, and the death of a horse meant the loss of a livelihood. When Tess is down on her luck, she hires herself out first as a dairymaid, then as a reed-puller, and finally as a digger for swedes, or rutabagas. These jobs involve hard manual labor, as well as cooperation among workers. Hardy describes the tasks in the kind of detail that a novelist uses when the readership may be only half acquainted with its rural past: singing at cows to coax a greater yield of milk, or how to draw straw from corn stalks. If Hardy is able to place us in a bygone world, in fact he had the same transporting effect on his contemporary readers; most were far removed from rural life. At the same time, the rigor and plod of agricultural work forms a comment on the condition of the rural poor. As with Dickens’s novels, Hardy’s writings—including an essay from 1883 called “The Dorsetshire Labourer”—led to social change. Hardy, after all, was born into a world both more genteel and more barbarous than ours, with aspects that shock us today, even as ours, with its blatant sexuality, would shock people then. Hardy couldn’t directly refer to the rape scene between Tess and Alec in the forest, and what little he hinted at disturbed many of his readers. Yet our own society, so inured to erotic display, is more offended by social injustice. Unfair as Hardy’s world seems, his citizens observe a certain decorum and a sense of charity that partly compensate for life’s inequalities.
An enchanting, yet tragic story, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, has definitely shown its true Realism colors. Demonstrating how a woman's gender and status will always make society belittle her, Tess was a young maiden representing purity, natural beauty, innocence, and virtue. She has shown us the acts of sacrifice for love and her own sex. This story is calling out to woman everywhere, and for all history.
Tess was a woman who stood strong no matter how unlucky she had been presented as. For example, when her rich and cynical cousin Alec had seduced/raped her while she was sleeping she had still tried to go on with her life. This shows that Tess was innocent no matter what people thought about her and she only wanted to find happiness in her life. In addition, her child Sorrow had died because it was so unhealthy, but she did stay in remorse. Her baby's name also tells us that her relationship between her and Alec was built with sorrow and sadness and ended in that way.
She was also a great woman of virtue. Like from the very beginning she had protected her father from the rude gossipers, even though she knew herself that he was like that. This shows that although her family had put shame upon her, she had still treated them with respect and kindness. Furthermore, before she was about to get hanged, she asked her only true love to marry her sister. This shows, that even though she loved him, she showed no jealousy but desired what was best for him.
But most of all, Tess was a woman of sacrifice. For example, when she had stabbed Alec to death in order to gain forgiveness from Angel Clare. This shows that even death and immorality cannot withstand her overflowing romance and love for Angel. In addition, before she gets captured, she sleeps on the Stonehenge; in that time, the Stonehenge was an immoral icon. This shows that she was lying there as if she was a sacrifice to the Heathen gods and in the same way she was sacrificing her life as the police came to arrest her.
This fictional character signifies all women that have sacrificed their lives all because of men's greed and pride. Women who have tried to make a difference in this world so that maybe someone could not bias them because of their gender. But Thomas Hardy recognizes them, and asks us to recognize them too. He also aks us as Eves to continue to fight for our rights and their rights even in the 21st century, and all the centuries to come until we have finally reached our goals of being Adam's equal in all society, and in all humanity.
9 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Tess is one of the more depressive novels I've read lately. My wife will attest to the fact that I have a strange affinity to depressing stories. With that in mind, let me say that I really enjoyed this book.
The writing was at times a bit too much for me for the reason that I get annoyed at many 18th and 19th century novels...namely, that Hardy focuses far too much on minute descriptions and in-depth analysis of setting and location. Don't get me wrong, I love a vivid and lush environment and I much prefer a fleshed out character to a flat one. I just sometimes feel that all of the flowery descriptions slow down the story telling element too much. There were a few paragraphs/pages that I tried to skim through in order to get to the next relevant points of plot. Still, I don't know that I'd want to edit out the descriptive text since it does comment on the narrative itself in a metafictional sort of way.
The main characters in this book are wonderfully composed. They are absolutely and completely frustrating but they are superbly crafted nonetheless. I wanted to smack each of the main characters on many occasions.
Tess is far too willing to simply be acted upon and then to bemoan her fate. Alec is an absolute pig (although towards the end of our experience with him, it's debatable just how awful he truly is). And Angel is far too inconsistent to be liked at all...at first he seems almost lovable...then he deserves to be hated...then he seems slightly adequate...then he becomes repulsive again...he's just far too wishy-washy in his behavior and ideals to ever be fully redeemable.
The story itself falls into the realm of realism taken to its extreme. The plot elements felt almost like the Bible story of Job...whatever could go wrong willgo wrong. And even though Tess was generally found to be almost whining about her circumstances rather than trying to make things better for herself, the story was still rather thought provoking since it makes you wonder just how you would handle horrific circumstances and what can truly be done about them. Is it better to try and solve the problem or better to just let fate and happenstance take its toll.
Personally, I try to make the best out of any bad situation...perhaps that's why I like "depressing" stories...they make me realize my life could be worse and they help inspire me to always think of the best possible outcome.
I'm sure this book won't be for everyone. Those who want a happy fairy-tale romp through a girl's life would do better to stay away. Those who are easily frustrated by fallen characters, will find themselves hating all of the primary roles in this book. The book isn't terribly lengthy (~300-400?) but some of the longer descriptive passages do crawl by at times.
Still, I whole-heartedly recommend this book to those who are willing to look imperfection and awful situations square in the face and come away smiling. It's not a happy book. It's not a terribly fast past book (which can also be frustrating...I wanted to shout Just do it to Tess many times).
But it is a wonderfully rich book and definitely worth getting into.
7 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sun Aug 17 00:00:00 EDT 2008
I love this book. It is actually my favorite. Tess's story is tragic, as many others have pointed out. She's manipulated, used, abused, and eventually just breaks. The story is more or less a psychological study of this poor girl. I recommend this book to everyone who ever asks me. It's beautifully written and truly a wonderful book.
5 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Tess Durbeyfield is beset by guilt over the accidental death of one of her family's horses - a main source of family income. In an attempt to create a social connection and to gain financial assistance for her family, she entreats the d'Urbervilles to acknowledge an ancient familial connection. Unfortunately, Alec d'Urberville is taken with Tess and rapes her. Her life is haunted by his sexual assault from that point forward. Eventually, Tess begins to recuperate and finds employment elsewhere as a dairymaid. Her days as a dairymaid are happy and peaceful until she falls in love with Angel Clare. She agonizes over telling him of her tainted past, and when she confesses the truth on her wedding night, Angel is repulsed over her past and her deception of waiting to tell him. Tess is parted from her true love and never fully recovers, even when he returns to her.
Tess of the d'Urbervilles is more than a sad story. It pays homage to the type of unhealthy family atmospheres that many children are raised in. The death of the horse is a direct result of her father's drunkenness and irresponsibility, though Tess never realizes this. When her parents hear of her misfortune, her mother reprimands her for not seeking marriage to the very man who raped her. The story also explores the mental effects that sexual assault can have on a person. Tess experiences extreme guilt, depression and feelings of unworthiness - common feelings for victims of sexual assault. In the end, as she is continually subjected to Alec d'Urberville, she experiences insanity which results in extreme actions.
This particular edition included an introduction and notes about the text which I found helpful. However, I thought the girl on the cover did not resemble the maiden of the book. The girl on the front is plain and unremarkable, whereas, Tess, according to the text, is remarkable.
I can see why this book is considered a literary classic, but I can't say I enjoyed it. That being said, I think everyone should read this book once. Tess is a memorable character that one can not help being fascinated with.
4 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I thoroughly enjoyed reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles because, as with most well-written novels, I was instantly endeared to the characters. You truly sympathize with the main character, Tess, and feel all the unfairness life heaps upon her. Hardy's characters come alive with passion and sorrow (and a little sarcasm) and he paints a clear picture of the duplicity of how one action so drastically affects two people. The opinions expressed on religion, morality and humanity give much food for thought. I felt at times the language ran on a little long, but I highly reccomend this book. <BR/><BR/>One word of warning though...it's not a happy-ending book, and I was pretty depressed the whole of the next day. That being said, I'm still glad I read it and am looking forward to seeing the mini-series.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Thu Sep 04 00:00:00 EDT 2008
I really enjoyed this book and found that it had a lot of unexpected turns. At times I found it a little hard to relate to the main character but enjoyed it all the same. Unfortunately I am finding that the classics do not alway end 'happily ever after'!
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sat Dec 22 00:00:00 EST 2007
Thomas Hardy was way ahead of his time, and Tess is one of the most memorable characters in literature. One can't help but become emotionally involved and reminded of many of the problems with society that have changed little a century later.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sun Jul 16 00:00:00 EDT 2006
I somewhat enjoyed this novel. However, at times I was confused about what was going on because of the descriptiveness of the writing. This novel seems to have a deeper meaning but it was kind of hard to pinpoint it. At times the writing is very bland and boring, but the dialogue is very enjoyable. It was extremely emotional and touching.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sun Apr 22 00:00:00 EDT 2012
There are whole paragraphs in this edition that seem not to have been transcribed well. Sentences don't make sense, punctuation is missing, weird symbols appear in random places. Sometimes a page will just end midway with no period. The next page moves on normally, but it makes me wonder what I'm missing. If this were a hard copy I would return it to the store. Not sure if that's possible with e-books.
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Wed Jul 09 00:00:00 EDT 2008
I have read Tess multiple times and looking forward to the next time, too. The enchanting scenes (when Angel carries Tess across the water) and emotionally shocking scenes (the ending, beginning with Angels return) draw you in. Yes, the novel is tragic but beautiful all the same.
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Fri Jan 18 00:00:00 EST 2008
This was a well written book, but if you are going to read it, be prepared because it is one of the most tragic books i have ever read. Don't expect a happy ending, it concludes, so you aren't left hanging, but like most books during this time period. It is depressing. For like a whole day after i read it, i felt very down. BUT if you can handle it, it is good. I don't regret reading it.
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Tue Oct 09 00:00:00 EDT 2007
I've read this book over and over again many times during the past 10 years and each time I read it, I come away with something that I missed the previous time. I feel that Thomas Hardy is a genius and Tess is his greatest character. This story of a young woman wronged by society still rings true in our day. No matter how much women are given equal rights, it's still a man's world. Take the time to read this book and I promise that it will become one of your favourites as well.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sun Feb 04 00:00:00 EST 2001
This book was very terrible. there is nothing even close to appealing in this book. The dialect is absolutely impossible to understand. It is the most difficult book i've ever had to read and I would never read this book again. Please don't read it, you're doing yourself a favour, trust me!!
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Wed Dec 15 00:00:00 EST 1999
This book is so hard to read. I have to read it for my high school English class and the dialect is crazy. It is so difficult! I mean, not to spoil it for anyone or anything, but I didn't even realize that she was raped. Really and truly, no idea. If you are going for a book that is not hard to understand and that is enjoyable, I'm sorry to say, but do not go for this book. Have a great life everyone! ~Krysti
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sun Oct 14 00:00:00 EDT 2012
Was interested in the story until it took forever to be told. Tess could not walk a few feet without an overkill of scenery description. Got tired of skimming through these areas.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sun Aug 15 00:00:00 EDT 2010
I Also Recommend:
I enjoyed this book, you can really get attached to Tess as a character a feel for her and what she is going though. I cried a lot reading this book and there were times where I had to take a break from it. Over all I liked the book. If you like Classics go for it!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Mon Jul 06 00:00:00 EDT 2009
The writing style, characters, and plot were all excellent, but the ending was very depressing.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sun Nov 04 00:00:00 EDT 2007
Tess of the d¿Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy enthralls its readers with the life of Tess Durbeyfield and the trials she is faced with. Hardy captivates the reader by characterizing the characters so well that it elicits certain responses to certain characters like sympathizing with Tess, loving Angel, and hating Alec. Tess is portrayed as the naïve, beautiful country girl who is going to live a fairy tale life when a handsome prince will sweep her off her feet. Thus, capturing the hearts of the readers, and immediately setting us against Alec, the antagonist, without a shred of sympathy. Alec pesters Tess with his ¿love¿ and ruins her chances by robbing her of her innocence, forever scarring her. Tess is presented with one chance to right her life with Angel, the love of her life, and her, his. Their unconditional love for one another touches the reader, evoking feelings of hope and optimism for the couple, although their happiness is ephemeral when Alec yet again, dashes it. By this point, the reader is frustrated and seething with anger toward Alec who constantly ruins things. There finally comes a point when Tess and Angel are reunited and the reader breathes a sigh of relief, but Hardy takes an unexpected twist at the end, leaving the reader unsatisfied and discontent. It feels like Hardy has taken us on a great roller coaster, and we¿re climbing up a steep incline, only to slowly glide down a tiny hill, and at the very end, there¿s a sharp turn, jolting the reader. The overall book is fabulously unsatisfying.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Sun Jul 08 00:00:00 EDT 2007
This book was complete and utter trash. Tess is quite possibly the dumbest character in all of literature and the most annoying. The beginning of the book is really good and then you get to about page 170ish.... Whatever, the ending made me laugh hysterically.
1 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
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Posted Tue May 31 00:00:00 EDT 2005
This has got to be one of the most disappionting books that I have ever read. First of all the topic or focus of the book is very loose so the book is hard to follow and you can easily get side tracked. The over all writing style is the main problem of the book though. The writing style is more like a text book than an actual story so it almost seems like a chor to read it. However the over all idea is okay because Tess's charecter does have many emossional complexities and has to face many emossional challenges. It is interesting to see how her relationship with men can change when she lets her history or past get the best of her. The idea for this book was not bad but the whole writing style seemed very uninspired. I can see why this was Hardy's last book, people got sick of his boring writing style!
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Overview