Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles, originally subtitled A Pure Woman, is about Tess d’Urberville’s tragic dilemma between her seducer, Alec, and her named husband, Angel, both of whom intrude into her life. In epic form, Hardy describes Tess’s life from about the time she is 16 or 17 to about 21. The plot centers solely on the female protagonist. The reader not only observes her actions but also understands her motivations, her continual struggles, and her efforts to overcome circumstances and events caused by providence and fate.

In Tess, Hardy addresses Victorian beliefs about class, morals, patriarchal society, conventionality, and the influence of fate or chance in individuals’ lives. The novel begins with Tess’s father learning of his lineage in the d’Urberville family and thus feeling that work is beneath him. It is fate that Tess is the firstborn of her family, creating feelings of responsibility for its members. Blaming herself for the loss of the family’s livelihood, Tess’s guilt causes her to acquiesce to parental pressure to seek help from the rich Mrs. d’Urberville, her supposed relation.

Fate intervenes and Tess meets the son, Alec d’Urberville, before she meets his mother, and consequently Alec presents her as just a servant. Ironically, Alec’s family isn’t aristocratic; they only purchased the name because no one claimed it. It allows them to disassociate themselves from their past. Meeting Alec first proves paramount in directing Tess’s future. Alec seduces and rapes her; she returns home disgraced, pregnant, and unmarried. The child fathered by Alec dies, and Tess flees to a place where her past is unknown to try to find happiness.

Working as a dairymaid at Talbothays Dairy, Tess encounters Angel Clare. Angel is ironically named, as he proves to be no guardian to Tess and also because he claims to have rejected religion. Angel is there to become a dairyman after deciding not to follow his father into the clergy. Tess and Angel fall in love and decide to marry even though Tess is concerned about her past and worries about confessing all to Angel. On the eve of their wedding, Tess slides a letter of confession under his door, but as fate would have it, the letter slips under the carpet and Angel never receives it.

Realizing Angel didn’t read her letter, Tess convinces him to exchange confessions on their wedding night. Angel tells of a previous indiscretion and is forgiven by Tess, but when she reveals her past victimization, Angel rejects her—an act of power interesting to feminist critics. Angel’s actions show that he is a product of Victorian convention, hypocrisy, and double standards. His sensibilities are offended because Tess isn’t the “pure and virginal woman” he believed her to be.

The story continues with Angel in South America. Tess, dependent on herself to make a living, is working under deplorable conditions at another farm. Finally, in desperation, she sets out to appeal to Angel’s parents for help; fatefully, she overhears Angel’s brothers discussing his marriage and tragically misjudges the character of Angel’s parents by the negative comments of his brothers, causing her to abandon her plan.

On her return trip, fate once more intervenes and Tess encounters Alec, who convinces her that Angel will never return. He pleads with her to come with him; she refuses, but as her circumstances and those of her family worsen, she eventually succumbs to his pressure. At long last, but not until after Tess has joined Alec, Angel returns to Tess, who tells him he is too late. In anger and frustration, Tess kills Alec for once again destroying her life and her only chance at happiness.

She spends a few blissful days in hiding with Angel, but the novel ends tragically: Tess hangs for her crime.

Hardy employs numerous Gothic elements in his work through omens, symbols, and biblical references. A sign painter appears throughout the novel, painting signs with biblical warnings and foreshadowing events to follow. The day Angel proposes to Tess, he sees the “red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake,” symbolizing impending evil. A cock crows in the afternoon on their wedding day, which also signifies betrayal and denial, as Peter denied Christ before his crucifixion.

Angel’s fateful decision to spend their wedding night at the old d’Urberville mansion proves to be unfortunate. The two life-size portraits of her ancestors upset Tess and symbolize the treachery that will follow. These portraits also keep Angel from entering the room later to reconcile with Tess. Perhaps the most prophetic is the scene in which Angel tells Tess that her situation might be different if “the man were dead,” pointing out the effect her past would have on their children, and foreshadowing the ultimate demise of Alec.

Hardy reveals the double standards and hypocrisies of his time. He addressed Tess’s sexuality and presented her as a sensual protagonist, thus redefining the role of women. As an independent and passionate woman, Tess represented a new characterization of woman, threatening the accepted Victorian model of women in society, but these characteristics resulted in her isolation and execution. Hypocritical Victorian values play a vital role in the heroine’s loss of innocence and death.

When Tess stabs Alec in the heart, her action symbolizes retribution and rebellion against a system that had already judged her guilty, though she had committed no crime. Subsequently, she ends up in the hands of the authorities and becomes victim to another hypocritical value of the Victorians: that one must pay for their sins.

Fate or providence proved true in Tess’s case. She was destined to die with the d’Urberville curse. Defeated by an unaccepting society, she took the law into her own hands. While Alec’s payment for his sins seemed fair, Tess’s only crime was that of being a woman caught in a hypocritical value system. The reader feels her death is unjustified.

Bibliography

Anonby, John A. “Hardy’s Handling of Biblical Allusions in His Portrayal of Tess in Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” Christianity and Literature 30, no. 3 (1981): 13–26.

Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D’Urbervilles. A Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical, Historical, and Cultural Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Edited by John Paul Riquelme. New York: Bedford Books, 1998.

Harris, Nicola. “An Impure Woman: The Tragic Paradox and Tess as Totem.” Thomas Hardy Yearbook 26 (1998): 18–21.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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