Tess of the d’Urbervilles The plot John Durbeyfield, a peddler who lives in the village of Marlott, discovers he is a descendent of a rich and aristocratic family, the D’Urbervilles. His family has already fallen on hard times and the situation gets worse when their horse, which is their only means of sustenance, dies. Therefore, his eldest daughter Tess is persuaded to go to the village of Trantridge and to start working as a poultry maid on the D’Urberville estate. She resists her master Alec’s attempts to seduce her. Finally, he takes advantage of her in the woods one night after a fair. Later she finds herself pregnant. She returns to her village and gives birth to a baby boy who dies soon after. She leaves her father’s house and goes to a distant valley, where she accepts a job as a milkmaid at Talbothay’s Dairy in a rich agricultural region of southern England. There she meets Angel Clare, a clergyman’s son who is interested in new farming methods. They fall in love but Tess feels she should tell Angel about her past. She writes him a confessional note and slips it under his door, but it slides under the carpet and Angel never sees it. They get married but when, on their wedding night, Tess tells Angel about her past, he leaves her and goes to Brazil. She bears great sufferings and hardship and is forced to take a job at Flintcombe Ash, a barren region where she works in the fields in winter. She hears a wandering preacher speak and discovers that he is Alec D’Urberville, who has been converted to Christianity by Angel’s father, Reverend Clare. Tess finally agrees to become Alec’s mistress and lives in the seaside resort of Sandbourne. Angel comes back from Brazil, finds her and tells her he has forgiven her. They are both still passionately in love but it is too late. Out of despair, Tess kills Alec and flees with Angel. She is arrested at Stonehenge while she is sleeping on the stone of sacrifice, and she is finally sentenced to death by hanging. Before she dies, she asks Angel to take care of her younger sister Liza Lu, whom Hardy describes as a younger spiritualized image of Tess. In the last scene Angel and Liza Lu walk away from the town where Tess has just been hanged. The Characters Tess is very clever and beautiful, she is presented as a victim and embodies the qualities of affection and trust, the powers of suffering and survival. In spite of her misfortunes, she has the energy to endure and go on living. She is presented through symbolic images – often drawn from the natural world – that stress her beauty, innocence and vulnerability. Yet, she has great courage and strength of character, fighting back against the many hardships fate puts in her way, never wanting to be a victim Alec D’Urberville is a rich young man who bears a title his father bought. He believes that his social status gives him the right to seize what he wants regardless of any morality. He is a heartless aristocrat who seduces Tess and ruins her life. Angel Clare is Tess’s true love but represents the establishment and morality of the time. He breaks away from his family because of his modern and liberal ideas: he follows the theories of John Stuart Mill and Matthew Arnold. He sees Tess in idealized terms, and proves strict and dogmatic when that illusion is spoilt by Tess’s confession of her past experiences. The Themes The subtitle of the novel, ‘A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented’, introduces the theme of distorted Victorian morality. Hardy deals with issues of morality in two ways: one is the relativity of moral values, which vary according to time and place; the other is the opposition between man-made laws and nature. These themes are explored through the experiences of Tess as she faces the troubles of life. Tess is trapped, her freedom of choice is limited by a series of events – the death of the horse and the discovery of the family origins –, and filial duty. Although it was Hardy’s most successful novel it did cause a scandal at the time and was first refused publication because it presented a sympathetic portrayal of a women who would have been considered immoral in Hardy’s days. Tess is a ‘fallen woman’, having had a child out of marriage but Hardy’s subtitle is unequivocal, he admired Tess and saw her as a genuinely good person, a victim of her circumstances who tries to fight back. The specific moral issues come into play with Tess’s pregnancy by Alec. Tess feels guilty but Hardy suggests that this feeling is unnecessary for a number of reasons. Most importantly, the people of her village do not morally censure her. She has an illegitimate child, but they still accept her as an individual, a member of the community, and do not look upon her as an outcast.
