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Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Posted on January 13, 2008 
Filed Under Book Review

Tess Durbeyfield is a young peasant who lives in 19th-century south England, and whose naive hopes are those of every young woman of her social class. However, when her father discovers that they are in fact the last direct descendants of the old and noble D’Urbervilles family, her life is turned upside down. Tess is sent by her parents to attend Mrs D’Urbervilles, a rich old woman, yet who has only borrowed that name considered dead and buried by everyone; there, she meets her ‘cousin’ Alec, a young seducer with a darker purpose, and falls victim to his schemes.

A few years later, obeying her heart rather than her reason who tells her that she is forever ‘dirty’, the young woman desperately attempts at finding happiness and a normal life with Angel Clare. But she soon realizes that what she had to bear in her teen years has forever doomed that hope for her; her fate slowly but surely takes her toward a terrible choice from which Angel himself will fail to save her.

At first, I admit that getting into this story was a little hard; that said, it might very well have been because of my nasty habit to systematically read the notes at the end of a book, which disrupted my reading. Nevertheless, I tend to consider that this book is a must-read among Thomas Hardy’s works; the description he writes of rural England, of the opinions and ways of living of different social classes, and of the trials of his poor heroine (caused much more, in my eyes, because of the protagonists’ choices and personal pride rather than by fate) make up a very interesting picture in the end.

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