Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy is fast becoming one of my favourite authors; that man knew how to spin a seriously good yarn, and I am going to have serious book hangover now after finishing Tess. Emotion wrenching characterisation? Tick. Amazing imagery? Tick. Page-turning plot? Tick. 500 pages felt like 50. Tess is an amazing protagonist - beautiful and pure at heart, she stalwartly endures the major change in circumstances thrown at her throughout the book, tearing our hearts apart with her readiness to carry the can for the men who have wronged her. Alec d'Urberville is a superb and complex villain of conflicting layers, and Angel Clare... well, let's just say Hardy played with his character so cleverly at one point I shouted aloud "what a complete s**t!" much to the surprise and consternation of my husband.These trials and tribulations were all played out with the backdrop of Wessex painted as if with an artist's delicate brushstrokes. I watched the mist clear across lush green valleys as I walked side-by-side with Tess along the lanes and byways, felt the dew on the hems of my skirts, and felt the warmth of the sun on my face as I looked out across the dairy courtyard to the views beyond.My only criticism with this book is with this particular Penguin Popular Classic edition, which felt a need to give away most of the plot on the book jacket. This spoilt a number of plot points which Hardy had done a great job of concealing, and seemed very unnecessary.5 stars and then some for the literary equivalent of John Constable.

Spellbinding, suspenseful, and a must-read. Cannot believe I have not read this before, but glad I read all of Jane Austen first. Hardy was absolutely brilliant! It's been awhile since I spent days raging to family about a character or cried on walks while listening to audio (I also read portions from my hard copy which has been on my shelf for years).

John Durbeyfield is a poor artisan in the village of Marlott finds out that he is a descendant of an old family the d'Urbervilles, which is now extinct. He and his wife are overjoyed. There is a rich family of the same name in the next county. So they sent their daughter, Tess to their supposed relative to better her prospects. There Tess finds out that they have adopted that name. Eric d’Uberville is a womanizer and he seduces Tess. Tess gets pregnant and returns to her own house. The baby is born and dies. Tess moves away from her house and takes up a job as a dairymaid. At the dairy farm, Angel a parson’s son who is learning the farming profession, falls in love with Tess and after a lot of persuasion Tess agrees to marry him but she could not bring herself to tell him of her past. On their honeymoon when she tells him about her past Angel is distraught and leaves her to go to Brazil.Tess moves away to a farm and works as a farm hand. She has a chance meeting with Eric who again tries to seduce her. Tess resists his overtures again and again. In the meantime Tess’ father dies and the family is forced to move out of Marlott. Finding herself cornered Tess implores her husband to come to her and forgive her. As she gets no reply from Angel she takes up with Eric for her and her families sake.In Brazil Angel is having a torrid time and returns to England. His stint in Brazil has cured him of his reserve against his wife and seeks her out but it is already too late. When he meets Tess she is shattered and in her rage kills Eric and runs away with Angel. The husband and wife spend a peaceful week in a deserted house before the law catches with them. Tess is tried and executed.A very well written book of love and loss.

This is an enjoyable read, and I found ‘The Maiden’, the first of six ‘phases’, to be five star, really getting it off to a great start. I’ll describe the main elements of its plot (mini spoiler alert), but not too much beyond that. We’re first introduced to Tess Durbeyfield’s father, who is somewhat lazy and a drinker; when he finds out he has a connection to an ancient family in the region, he comes to have some unrealistic, high falutin’ hopes about falling into fortune. One night when he can’t drive his beehives to the market for the following morning’s sales, Tess goes in his place. Unfortunately, she falls asleep at the reins, which Hardy describes cosmically: “With no longer a companion to distract her, Tess fell more deeply into reverie than ever, her back leaning against the hives. The mute procession past her shoulders of trees and hedges became attached to fantastic scenes outside reality and the occasional heave of the wind became the sigh of some immense sad soul, conterminous with the universe in space, and with history in time.”Shortly afterward, in a shocking sequence, Tess gets into a violent accident with a wagon coming the other direction, which kills the family horse. The resulting financial hardship encourages her parents all the more to send her off to the distant d’Urberville family, to work on their property and form a connection with them, but there she becomes the prey of the dastardly Alec d’Urberville. Hardy hints at Alec’s intentions in ways that make the reader cringe, and in an absolutely brilliant sequence late at night after a dance, he rapes Tess. In the morality of the time, this stains Tess; she feels guilty over it for the rest of the novel and unworthy of a future husband, while Alec happily goes on with his life. Grrr.Hardy was a transitional writer in the late 19th century, including old school melodrama in his writing, but also modernist psychology, and challenges to religion and the morality of the day which deeply offended Victorians. As an extension of that, his (ostensible) protagonist Angel Clare, the more enlightened gentleman who finds Tess and falls for her, is a transitional thinker. On the one hand, Angel is aware of evolution and flouts religion and conventionality, but on the other hand, he has old-fashioned about a woman’s virtue. Between the outright evil of Alec, who Tess has fled, and Alec’s hypocrisy, it’s hard to like either character, or to know who is worse, but I think that’s part of Hardy’s point. The unfairness of life for women will almost certainly make you grit your teeth, and Hardy may go on a teeny bit too long in the center sections of the book, but there is a lot to like here.Quotes:On art:“She thought, without exactly wording the thought, how strange and godlike was a composer’s power, who from the grave could lead through sequences of emotion, which he alone had felt at first, a girl like her who had never heard of his name, and never would have a clue to his personality.”On beauty:“How very lovable her face was to him. Yet there was nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality, real warmth, real incarnation. And it was in her mouth that this culminated. Eyes almost as deep and speaking he had seen before, and cheeks perhaps as fair; brows as arched, a chin and throat almost as shapely; her mouth he had seen nothing to equal on the face of the earth. To a young man with the least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never before seen a woman’s lips and teeth which forced upon his mind with such persistent iteration the old Elizabeth simile of roses filled with snow. Perfect, he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand. But no – they were not perfect. And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.”On death, I thought this was an interesting perspective, and yes, our ‘deathday’ is out there somewhere for all of us:“She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year; the disastrous night of her undoing at Tantridge with its dark background of The Chase; also the dates of the baby’s birth and death; also her own birthday; and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share. She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen and among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel the chill of each yearly encounter with such a cold relation? She had Jeremy Taylor’s thought that some time in the future those who had known her would say, ‘It is the- th, the day that poor Tess Durbeyfield died’; and there would be nothing singular to their minds in the statement. Of that day, doomed to her terminus in time through all the ages, she did not know the place in month, week, season, or year.”On knowledge:“’Because what’s the use of learning that I am one of a long row only – finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that’s all. The best is not to remember that your nature and past doings have been just like thousands’ and thousands’, and that your coming life and doings’ll be like thousands’ and thousands’.’‘What, really, then, you don’t want to learn anything?’‘I shouldn’t mind learning why – why the sun do shine on the just and the unjust alike,’ she answered, with a slight quaver in her voice. ‘But that’s what the books will not tell me.’”On religion, harkening back to worship of the sun:“The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal look, demanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression. His present aspect, coupled with the lack of all human forms in the scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment. One could feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky. The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that was brimming with interest for him.”And this one, questioning God in a world of cruelty:“The calmness which had possessed Tess since the christening remained with her in the infant’s loss. In the daylight, indeed, she felt her terrors about his soul to have been somewhat exaggerated; whether well founded or not she had no uneasiness now, reasoning that if Providence would not ratify such an act of approximation she, for one, did not value the kind of heaven lost by the irregularity – either for herself or for her child.”And:“Once upon a time Angel had been so unlucky as to say to his father, in a moment of irritation, that it might have resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the source of the religion of modern civilization, and not Palestine; and his father’s grief was of that blank description which could not realize that there might lurk a thousandth part of a truth, much less a half truth or a whole truth, in such a proposition.”Lastly this one, an example of Hardy taking a simple scene on a dairy farm and both putting it in perspective in the bigger picture, but also pointing out it’s no less important than scenes of royalty; this quote really has it all, compared to how simply it may have been put:“Long thatched sheds stretched round the enclosure, their slopes encrusted with vivid green moss, and their eaves supported by wooden posts rubbed to a glossy smoothness by the flanks of infinite cows and calves of bygone years, now passed to an oblivion almost inconceivable in its profundity. Between the posts were ranged the milchers, each exhibiting herself at the present moment to a whimsical eye in the rear as a circle on two stalks, down the centre of which a switched moved pendulum-wise; while the sun, lowering itself behind this patient row, threw their shadows accurately inwards upon the wall. Thus it threw shadows of these obscure and homely figures every evening with as much care over each contour as if it had been the profile of a Court beauty on a palace wall; copied them as diligently as it had copied Olympian shades on marble facades long ago, or the outline of Alexander, Caesar, and the Pharaohs.”

I picked up Tess to listen to during the last week of September to celebrate Banned Books Week. Originally published in 1888, this book was often censored for sexual content. It is still often included as required reading in many high schools - and is still occasionally censored.

Tess Durbeyfield comes from a poor family that are descendents of the noble D'Urbevilles. In the hopes that Tess can marry a distant cousin, Alec D'Urbeville, Tess' parents send her to work in his household. Instead, young Tess is seduced by Alec and her reputation is ruined. She goes to work as a dairy maid in a distant farm where she is unknown. She falls in love with a handsome gentlman, Angel Clare, throwing Tess in a dilemma of whether or not she should tell Angel of her past.

This book is a wonderful example of the double standard of sexual conduct held during Victorian times between men and women. Although Tess' problems are really caused by men, she pays the ultimate price for their behavior. I found this story haunting - so beautifully written and told, and so sad. Wonderful narration by Simon Vance!

Quite the phenomenal book. This was the first book that I have read by Thomas Hardy and it leads me to believe that his other stuff should be well worth my time to pick up. The story in this was phenomenal as well as the pace and way in which he carries the story along as far as the detail used. It was quite brilliant and very refreshing to read. It seems to go well with this time of year(fall), which was a fortunate coincidence.

So depressing that I never quite finished. I skipped to the last few pages about halfway through the book.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Each character is exceptionally well fleshed out - none are held above all as perfect, no character is so flawed as to be irredeemable. Yet, I never felt particularly compelled or biased for or against any character. I never felt invested. I couldn't revel in one character's comeuppance, or celebrate another's successors. If I were to re-read this book, it would only be for the plot, never for the characters.

So, This is the first Hardy that I have read. Unsure whether I should have picked this one as my first to read though. It was not a happy book. Very quickly I saw that Tess's young life became 'oh so complicated.'Throughout that though, I ploughed on through the book, realising very soon, that there was no happy ending. Not the happy ending that I wanted. Irrespectively though, I did really 'enjoy' this book. I found it very well written, descriptive and a book that had the ability to grab me and keep me intrigued.I would recommend this book.

This is definitive Hardy: Verbose and pastoral, with highly-detailed descriptions of the scenery that make the setting as important a character as the characters themselves.Tess is all innocence, vulnerability, and well-meaning ignorance. Decended from a now-impoverished line of a noble family, she and her family are resigned to a life of hard work. Her life is thrown into upheveal when she becomes the pawn of two rich men: Alex, with bad intentions, and Angel, with good. No matter what their intentions, their meddling sends Tess to her downfall. She overcomes seduction, or rape, depending upon your interpretation of the scene, only to suffer the hypocrisy of the man she loves, who cannot forgive her for having the audacity to be forced upon. Classism clashes with the reality of the poor working woman's life. Injustice is a major theme, and Hardy spends much time on bringing home the point that Tess, though not a bad person, is constantly outcast as a sinner. If this all sounds familiar, think of its American counterpart ``The Scarlet Letter." But while Hester Prynne wears the symbol of her sin on her breast, Tess carries her shame inside of her, only to cause a furor when she confesses under the innocent delusion that Angel will forgive her. With Hester's sin exposed, society can gradually adjust ot the idea of her disturbing presence. Tess's sin confessed disrupts the illusions of her innocence, causing her to be rejected in an impulsive burst of hypocrisy, immaturity, and vengefulness. In fact, we can judge the morality of the characters by the way they treat Tess.The book is rife with symbolism, a dream for English majors bent on interpreation. Those simply reading for fun may be put off by Hardy's wordiness. He often says thirty words when five will do, but this is all part of his distinguishing style. If you're the type to get lost in words, Hardy is an excellent choice of an author.

I could barely make it halfway through this book before I had to toss it aside. I hate it when the author tries to write a sentence phonetically, instead of just typing it out in standard English, and then saying (spoken in a _____ accent). It makes it very difficult to read. That bit aside, the little that I did read seemed to be following a very tragic route. Firstly, her parents are extremely foolish, and very poor, and have a string of children to feed. She accidentally kills the family horse, and then tries to restore honor by going to work for what she thinks is her rich relation (they aren't even related). Her mother hopes she will marry the rich relation. Instead, he rapes her. The child that she has (aptly named Sorrow), dies in infancy. That is about the point where I started to just lose interest. It's a bit depressing to be reading about rape and infant death. The book does have some redeeming qualities. For instance, Hardy was a bit of a rebel for his time- he wrote things that seriously wounded Victorian sensibilities. He wrote of poverty, death, and rape, at a time when that was not considered to be part of "polite" conversation. What today might be considered mild, was certainly at the time the book was written, considered outrageous. This is probably the reason why this book would be included on a school's reading list.

It took me forever and a day to get stuck into this one. Tess' discovery of her aristocratic ancestry sparks a chain of misfortune and disaster which leads to her tragic downfall. Knowing the basics of the plot, I wasn't expecting sunshine and happiness from this book, but I was struck repeatedly at just how downright miserable Hardy is. My annoyance at Tess and the other female characters for their weakness and dependence came second only to my anger at the two male protagonists for their piggishness and idiocy. It wasn't until about half way through the story that I got properly hooked, but any book that can make me tut and sigh audibly, as this one did, could be considered a good read.

I feel like this was almost two different books. I was really enjoying the story, sympathising with Tess, and admiring the author's progressive attitudes, when at the very end the whole thing derailed. Before the ending, I would have given the book a 3 star rating. It was engaging, had some complex characters, and really dealt with the idea of the fallen woman in an amazing way. But then....

For me, the story fell apart when Angel returned and found Tess living with the cruel Alec. That was not how I'd imagined the story would go! I'd hoped Alec could be redeemed, and be a genuinely good friend to Tess, if not a lover. That when Angel returned Tess would cast him off, give him a roaring lecture for being such an idiotic hypocrite. His crimes against Tess were far worse than Alec's in my opinion. The majority of this novel was thoughtful and innovative, but the ending read as a trashy, old timey, conservative, romance.

Truthfully, I found the book really hard to take. It's a terribly depressing novel, and the idea that this is what happens to a 'pure' maiden is really disconcerting, especially since Hardy's intentions were for it to be a very realistic depiction of a woman. Seriously -- everything unfortunate that can happen to someone happens to Tess.

After all of this time, and after all of the books I've read, this is my first Thomas Hardy novel. To be really honest, PBS recently ran the BBC production of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and I wanted to read the book before I watch it (it's still on TiVo). Now I'm afraid...this book was so incredibly depressing! That's not to say I didn't love it. I won't rehash the plot; there are wonderful examples of critique, criticism and plot summaries all over the internet. I found Tess to be a complex character -- while she is certainly a very tragic figure, she is proud, able to face adversity and determined to do what it takes to survive in the most trying of situations. The male characters of this novel I found to be the least likeable, no matter who they were. But on the other hand, it also struck me that one could argue that men like Angel were also victims of the times -- although he felt himself to be more idealistic than other men of his generation, and although he escaped his father's plans for his future, he was still a product of ingrained proper Victorian society, where scandal could ruin a "good" family. He has to go to a place where societal ideals mean nothing before he turns himself around. As a human being, this doesn't excuse his behavior, but it does help to explain it. I enjoyed reading this book, but it was like watching the proverbial train wreck -- you just know what's going to happen and yet you cannot turn away. I see many more books by Hardy in my future. I'd recommend it for others who might be considering reading this author's works; if you're not into tragic heroines you may consider skipping it. Overall, a fine book, one I'm very happy to have read.

Never has a story gripped me more and made me fiercely proud to be a woman of our modern era. For a book that Hardy meant to create a conversation about the treatment and view of women, I would say he succeeded...even today. You fall in love with Tess, you feel for her pain, and you cheer her on in the hopes of some happiness. Tess, the book, is horribly tragic, but makes its point about the subjugation of women and the double standard placed on women of the Victorian era.

It's a well written piece of fiction, but oh, after reading it, one thirsts for a book with a happy ending.

The essence of the plot is appealing, but Hardy drapes everything in so much symbolism and imagery that it makes it so difficult to get to the actual point. I downloaded this on my Nook since I somehow made it through high school and college without reading this, and I've been slogging my way through it. It will happen. Eventually.

It was very well-written in style, but so pessimistic in its outlook! Pretty torturous to read at times, but worth it if you like to expose yourself to a variety of classics.

the first 80% of the bookmare rather slow. lots of repetitions and hidden meanings that uounalmost miss the rape until you read that she has a baby. thrn you roll your eyes for a long time while thr main characters are courting and then again when they make themselves miserable. however, the ending was a surprise and for me the best part of the book when Tess finally took some action.

Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Thomas HardyStory of a woman who is raised in the 1800's and does manual labor for her parents as a milk maid.She had once gone with others but one man refused to dance with her and he meets her again and she never forgets him.Loved learning the process of doing the job of milk maid, so much more than i ever realized. Skimming and then the milking.She is tortured being married to the Aristotle and really treasures everything she sees in Angel.Drastic changes when Angel returns.... summaries of other works by the author are listed at the end.I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).

 This was the first time for reading a Hardy novel, and it wasn't quite so bad as what I thought it would be. Hardy's pastoral descriptions of country life in the English countryside were so acute. The courtship between Tess and Angel was beautifully portrayed, before Tess's shattering confession, and the lurking Alec D'Urberville in the background was a very strange rival.. There were patches where Hardy would ramble on about something completely allien to me and would then return to the story, which is why I have rated it lower. But when it got back on track, it was great. I did not agree with the ending, though.

Dear Tom,Why do I keep reading your books? No one, and I mean no one, treats his characters (or her characters) as badly as you do. Well, maybe with the exception of Upton Sinclair, who must have been greatly influenced by you.I read Jude the Obscure several years ago and closed the book with a "Never Again." I was sure I could not bear to read another one of your books after somehow finishing it in spite of that awful letter from the kids "Because we are too menny". I can't figure out what your overall point is except that if one is poor, one is destined to be miserable and that is all there is to it. I guessed what Tess would be about just from its title. I've read lots and lots of other 19th century fiction. Many books have treated the issue of women who lose their chastity, as it would have been put at the time. Many books are pretty grim about their fate. However, you manage to make it worse than the norm because your characters are so very sympathetic. As I read on, I know that Tess' life is going to go from bad to worse, that her ridiculous level of nobility will end up undoing her, that all bad things will happen to her. Sure enough, but what else would we expect of you. What is the point, Tom? Why do you write these novels? What do you want your readers to do? Unlike Dickens, you don't seem to be a social reformer. You don't seem to ever paint the slightest possibility of an alternative to all this woe. On the other hand, your respectful-but-not-convinced portrayal of evangelical Christianity doesn't seem to show religion as a way out, either. Were you just trying to convey existentialist despair? Weren't you a little too early for this?I am really giving you up this time. This is it. You have been too cruel on your characters and your readers and this is the last of your novels I plan to read. How could you, Tom? You are too cruel, and I will never forgive you.Yr servant,Anna

When I finished this book at 10:10 P.M. on Dec 8, 1964, I said: "i am overwhelmed--powerful, stark, overpowering. I have not been so impressed and awed by a novel in years. Most other novels I have read pale into triviality in comparison. In wroking backwards in my list of books read certainly nothing since Roger Martin du Gard's novel can compare, and it is discursive and tedious in comparison. The same can be said of From Here to Eternity, which I read in April of 1961.. It is true the plot is strained at times, unlikely. But the strength of the prose makes up for that. The final paragraph is typical of the harsh Hardy prose: 'Justice was done and the President of the Immortals, in Aesclylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the D'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as for prayer, and remained thus for a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on.' What a story! What a style! I am impressed.

Profoundly affecting.

Almost to the very end, I was suspecting that contrary to all my expectations for novels of this era, that this would be the most depressing book I had ever read. However, the end has a few surprises, although it's probably not what you'd expect. The style of the book, and the beginning, however, are not depressing, nor dark (although many sad, dark and depressing things happen—it's not reflected in the tone, even when the author openly admits that things are about to get worse). It's pretty wild.Tess goes through tons of trials in this book, and few, if any, of them are very much her fault (although she still gets blamed for a certain one that certainly isn't her fault throughout most of the book—and it might appall modern readers that the people of the time shunned her for it—it appalled me, anyhow).The book seems to have some stylistic elements and fragments of plot similarities between Jane Eyre, The Scarlet Letter and some of Charles Dickens' novels, although most of the book is quite easy to follow. There is, however, one important thing I missed due to the style (although I learned what it was later, out of necessity), but one compared with however many in other books of the age isn't so much.This is a drama foremost, I think, although it has several elements of romance (but the darkness of what she goes through might detract from the romance elements during its evolution, at least, and thus I say drama is foremost).I think the book was worth reading, although I didn't realize it so much until just before I finished it. I'm not saying that the book is boring or anything—it's certainly not. It's just that you expect Tess to get a break here and there, but, well, she doesn't, really, except in a few particulars that I shouldn't explain (especially as some of those turn out to be bad, after all).I wonder if this book inspired A Series of Unfortunate Events.The ending is satisfying, in a way, although I have no words for what you might think of it.I think the book grows on one more after a while of having read it, and reflecting back on it.

It broke my heart, but I loved it.

Beautiful--Hardy doesn't write a story, he paints one. But so, so sad!

It's one of the best, most capturing books I've read in a while.Tess touched my heart in everyway. I couldn't stop crying during the story. How could anyone be born so unfortunate, so weak yet so beautiful, so cursed by society, her family and most importantly her husbend Angel. I didn't know how could she have forgiven him so easily after he abandoned her. I know how she felt but I couldn't stand how her life has ended, she just doesn't deserve such an ending. Tess will always stay in mind forever.