by Thomas Hardy

Here we suffer grief and pain,
Here we meet to part again.
              ~ Thomas Hardy in Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Tess of the D'Urbervilles is a story of a young girl who loses her innocence due to circumstances of life. It deals with her struggles in the 19th century British society. Having become a victim Tess goes through a lifetime of suffering for a 'sin' inflicted upon her by Alec D’Urberville.

Later, Tess finds a job as a dairymaid where she meets Angel Clare the ambitious son of a priest. Angel pursues her and they get married. On the wedding night Angel tells Tess of his liaison with a prostitute and she confesses her past to him. Tess forgives him; but Angel abandons her.

Hardy beautifully portrays her innocence when Tess says to her mother:

Thomas Hardy

"How could I be expected to know? I was a child when I left this house four months ago. Why didn't you tell me that there was danger in men-folk? Why didn't you warn me?"

On the character of Hardy's heroine, Irving Howe wrote:

Tess is that rare creature in literature: goodness made interesting. She is human life stretched and racked, yet forever springing back to renewal... She comes to seem for us the potential of what life could be, just as what happens to her signifies what life too often becomes.

She is Hardy's greatest tribute to the possibilities of human existence, for Tess is one of the greatest triumphs of civilization: a natural girl.

In an explanatory note to his readers, Hardy himself writes:

"...I would ask any too general reader, who cannot have endure to have said what everybody nowdays thinks and feels, to remember a well-worn sentence of Saint Jerome: If an offence comes out of the truth, better is it that the offence come than that the truth be concealed."

And addressing his critics, he says:

"That these impressions have been condemned as 'pessimistic' - as if that were a very wicked adjective - shows a curious muddle-mindedness. It must be obvious that there is a higher characteristic of philosophy than pessimism or than meliorism, or even than the optimism of these critics - which is truth.

"Existence is either ordered in a certain way, or it is not so ordered and conjectures which harmonize best with experience are removed above all comparison with other conjectures which do not harmonize. So that to say one view is worse than the other without proving it erroneous implies the possibility of a false view being better or more expedient than a true view; and no pragmatic proppings can make that idolum specus stand on its feet, for it postulates a prescience denied to humanity.

"And there is another consideration. Differing natures find their tongue in the presence of differing spectacles. Some natures become vocal at tragedy, some are made vocal by comedy, and it seems to me that to whichever of these aspects of life a writer's instinct for expression more readily responds, to that he should allow it to respond. That before a contrasting side of things he remains undemonstrative need not be assumed to mean that he remains unperceiving.

"The more written the more seems to remain to be written; and the night cometh. I realize that these hopes and plans, except possible to the extent of a volume or two, must remain unfulfilled." --Editor

Tess and her baby, poignantly named Sorrow, in a cornfield: Nastassia Kinski in the Roman Polanski directed film Tess (1979). Thomas Hardy's World, Molly Lefebure

Book Review

Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) is generally regarded as Hardy's finest novel. A brilliant tale of seduction, love, betrayal, and murder, Tess of the d'Ubervilles yields to narrative convention by punishing Tess's sin, but boldly exposes this standard denouement of unforgiving morality as cruelly unjust. Throughout, Hardy's most lyrical and atmospheric language frames his shattering narrative.

The novel centers around a young woman who struggles to find her place in society. When it is discovered that the low-class Durbeyfield family is in reality the d'Urbervilles, the last of a famous bloodline that dates back hundreds of years, the mother sends her eldest daughter, Tess, to beg money from relations with the obvious desire that Tess wed the rich Mr. d'Urberville. Thus begins a tale of woe in which a wealthy man cruelly mistreats a poor girl.

Tess is taken advantage of by Mr. d'Urberville and leaves his house, returning home to have their child, who subsequently dies. Throughout the rest of this fascinating novel, Tess is tormented by guilt at the thought of her impurity and vows to never marry. She is tested when she meets Angel, the clever son of a priest, and falls in love with him. After days of pleading, Tess gives in to Angel and consents to marry him. Angel deserts Tess when he finds the innocent country girl he fell in love with, is not so pure.

Photo Credit

Hardy portrait: Thomas Hardy's World by Molly Lefebure

Source: Book Review