Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Summary

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman follows Tess Durbeyfield, the eldest daughter of a poor family in the Wessex village of Marlott, from girlhood to her execution. The plot begins when her feckless father, John Durbeyfield, learns from a parson that he descends from the ancient Norman family of d'Urberville. Hoping for help from supposed rich relations, her mother sends Tess to the Stoke-d'Urbervilles, a newly rich family who have bought the name. There the son, Alec d'Urberville, pursues her, and one night in the Chase he takes advantage of her; Hardy leaves the episode between seduction and rape. Tess returns home pregnant. Her baby, whom she baptizes herself and names Sorrow, dies in infancy, and the vicar refuses a Christian burial. Seeking a new start, Tess works as a milkmaid at Talbothays dairy in the fertile Valley of the Great Dairies, where she and Angel Clare, a clergyman's son learning to farm, fall in love. She tries to tell him about her past, but her letter slips under a carpet. On their wedding night Angel confesses an earlier affair of his own; Tess forgives him and tells her story, but he cannot forgive her and leaves for Brazil. Abandoned, Tess endures heavy labor on the starved upland farm of Flintcomb-Ash. Alec, now a converted preacher, reappears, abandons his religion and pursues her again. After her father dies and her family is evicted, Tess yields and becomes Alec's mistress to support them. Angel, changed by hardship, returns too late. Tess kills Alec, joins Angel, and the two spend a few days together in an empty house and at Stonehenge, where she is arrested. The novel ends with her hanging at Wintoncester, while Angel and her sister Liza-Lu watch the black flag rise. Hardy's subtitle, "A Pure Woman", challenged Victorian moral judgment of sexual 'fallen' women, and editors forced him to cut and alter the story for its magazine serialization. Its challenge to the moral judgments of its society, its scenes of rural work and its sense of fate made it one of the most debated books of the 1890s; it remains among the most widely read Victorian novels.

Top Lessons

• Judgment and double standards

  Hardy calls Tess 'a pure woman' to challenge a moral code that blamed women for sexual wrongs done to them while excusing men. Angel's failure to forgive what he expects to be forgiven himself exposes the double standard.

• Chance, character and fate

  A lost letter, a dead horse and a chance meeting push Tess's life toward disaster. Hardy invites readers to ask how much is fate, how much is society and how much is choice.

• Land and labor

  The fertile Talbothays and the barren Flintcomb-Ash mirror Tess's fortunes, and the threshing machine shows rural work changing with industry. The novel records a disappearing way of life.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The novel depicts the death of Tess's infant and the period's attitudes toward illegitimate birth, and Hardy shows rural poverty's toll on health.

• Phase the Second, Chapter XIV

  Tess baptizes her dying infant, Sorrow.