Tess of the d’Urbervilles

"Tess of the d’Urbervilles" is a novel written by the English author Thomas Hardy in 1891. The novel was originally published in serial form by the British illustrated newspaper The Graphic the year before it’s official release in 1892. The book was well received by the public and became a literary classic. In 1897, just 6 years after it’s original publishing, the novel was adapted into a Broadway play which achieved great success and ran for 5 years. The play was then adapted into one of the first motion pictures in 1913, starring Minnie Maddern Fiske as Tess Durbeyfield who portrayed the same character in the play.

The novels titular character, Tess Durbeyfield, is a young woman who discovers that her family has noble blood and is sent to work for the matriarch of her line in a large house in another village. While working in the house, Tess meets the old noblewoman’s son, Alec d’Urberville and he become taken with her. Alec begins trying to convince Tess to become his lover and, when he is unsuccessful, rapes her. Tess becomes his lover after the rape because she fears him and eventually escapes to return to her parents home.

Tess soon leaves her parents home to take a job in a dairy where she meets a young clergyman’s son named Angel Clare. Angel is also taken with Tess right away and considers her pure and virginal. Tess keeps the secret of her relationship with Alec until after she and Angel are married. Angel is angered by the revelation and abandons Tess for one year. When he finally returns...

Hardy felt that its heroine was a virtuous victim of a rigid Victorian moral code. Now considered Hardy’s masterwork, it departed from conventional Victorian fiction in its focus on the rural lower class and in its open treatment of sexuality and religion.