Tess of the d'Urbervilles: An Erotic Retelling

When Tess’s humble father finds out that the family may be descended from nobility, he sends Tess to renew relations with the more prosperous side of the family. To her grave loss, Tess learns that name and wealth do not guarantee upright behavior. Thus her life begins a downward trajectory, further and further from Angel, her first and truest love.

To flee her shame, Tess leaves for another city. Whereas Hardy’s original text had Tess engage in dreary farm-work, this rewriting exchanges a bordello for Hardy’s scrabbly potato farm allowing Tess to master her womanly powers, sexual and otherwise.

And while Hardy refers in passing to Angel having visited an older woman in London, this version examines his visit in more and more explicit detail.

Having travelled so many miles and done so many things, when fate allows her Tess to meet again her girlhood love will she be able to escape her past and finally find happiness? Or as before, will the final scene have a hangman’s noose around her neck?