Tess
Durbeyfield is a young and naïve country girl, who is also the eldest daughter
in a large, poverty-stricken family, living in the small village of Marlott. Her
father, John Durbeyfield, who is prone to drinking and putting off work,
discovers, by chance, that he is a descendant of the ancient but extinct royal
lineage of the D'Urbervilles. Her mother, Joan, discovers that a wealthy family
of the same name lives in a nearby town and, after an unfortunate accident in
which the Durbeyfields’ only horse is killed, she sends Tess to Tantridge
mansion to go "claim kin".
Because
Tess was the cause the death of her family's horse, she feels obligated to earn
money to buy a new one...unaware that the current family of D'Urbervilles are imposters;
she sets off on her journey. When her family fall on hard times she is
sent to the D'Urbervilles, rich landowners who are mistakenly assumed to be
relations. Tess meets Alec D'Urberville (who allows Tess to claim kinship, but
is a relative in name only). He takes a liking to the young and impressionable
Tess and relentlessly pursues her. Eventually, he leads her into the Chase &
commits the most heinous crime – rape. Tess returns home distressed and bares a
child, which dies after a week. Torn by shame and regret, Tess decides to go to
work away from home, on a dairy farm, where she meets Angel Clare, a beautiful
man who loves her deeply. However, when he proposes to her, she is torn between
lying to him by omission versus telling him of her past with Alec -- a choice
that would likely alienate him in terms of the strict morals of Victorian
Britain. Finally, she succumbs to Angel's pleas for marriage. On their
wedding night, Tess reveals her secret and everything that had happened to her
before meeting him.
In
a rage, he heartlessly leaves her to earn a living, alone, in Brazil with a
promise of maybe returning someday. Tess's life gets even worse after
this. She is forced to find work labouring on farms, her only hope that one day
her beloved Angel will return.
A
chance meeting with the reformed Alec dashes these hopes as his old obsession
returns and he beguiles Tess with promises to help her and her family in place
of her long absent husband.
Her
family suffer further losses and, abandoned as she is, Tess is obliged to turn
once again to Alec D'Urberville for help. When Angel returns to find her living
as Alec's mistress, she takes desperate actions in a tragic effort to free
herself.
***
This
was a very controversial book at the time of writing as it is sympathetic to a “fallen
woman”. Tess is one of the most tragic heroines in English literature and
Hardy shows her as a victim of circumstance caught up in a moral dilemma. Hardy
takes us into nineteenth century rural Wessex and describes his characters, the
countryside and the way of life so well, that we think we are there."
-Sam
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